There are few words that I can add to what has already been said about the tragedy in Orlando.

I'll simply echo this comment from the British Humanist Association:

We must always stand up to hate. Whatever its motivations. And now more than ever, we have to think and reflect on everything we set out to achieve: a better world, informed by values of reason and empathy, love and kindness, and the courage to stand up to hate.

This summer, the BC Humanist Association, CFI Vancouver and members of the local skeptics community will once again be marching in the Vancouver Pride Parade to show our solidarity with the LGBTQ community. Everyone has the right to live free from hatred and persecution.

This is a historic day for compassion, dignity and choice. As of today, Canadians may request assistance to end their life with dignity. The era of suffering as a noble ideal is over.

Despite the federal government's fear mongering, there is no legal vacuum. This morning the Government of BC gave the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC's clear and compassionate guidelines "the weight of law." This means British Columbians can now request their doctor's assistance to end their suffering. Similar policies have been put in place across the country.

You can read more about these policies and what we've asked the Senate to amend in the government's proposed assisted dying bill.

What if there was only one law school in BC?

This question, raised by the justices of the BC Court of Appeal, underlies the importance of the case over this past week.

From Wednesday through Friday, I sat through the hearings in the case of Trinity Western University vs the Law Society of BC. The BC Humanist Association – alongside the Canadian Secular Alliance – was one of the interveners in the case. I live tweeted much of the case from @bchumanist and you can see those tweets here. Also check out #TWUlaw and the @TWULawSchool account for more reactions.

The following is a rough transcript of the report I posted on our podcast on Friday afternoon. You can listen to that here.

These are of course, just my impressions and opinions. I’m not a lawyer and as the BCHA intervened in this case, I’m clearly not impartial either.

So let’s dig into the background first.

While we're in favour of freedom of religion, that freedom has limits.

We only need to look to some of the so-called religious freedom acts in the USA to see the danger of letting religious freedom trample over the rights of women, the LGBTQ community and atheists.

That's why we're intervening in the BC Court of Appeal case over the proposed law school at Trinity Western University later this week. We need to put a clear limit on what is and isn't protected by religious freedom.

In the factum our lawyers helped us develop, which I highly encourage you to read, we argue that studying law is not a religious act protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that requiring all students - including non-Christians - to obey an evangelical Christian ethos is religious compulsion.

I'll be at the courthouse for the hearing from Wednesday to Friday and if you can't make it, follow the proceedings on Twitter under #TWUlaw.

By Terry S. Kogan, University of Utah

For years, transgender rights activists have argued for their right to use the public restroom that aligns with their gender identity. In recent weeks, this campaign has come to a head.

In March, North Carolina enacted a law requiring that people be allowed to use only the public restroom that corresponds to the sex on their birth certificates. Meanwhile, the White House has taken an opposing position, directing that transgender students be allowed to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity. In response, on May 25, 11 states sued the Obama administration to block the federal government from enforcing the directive.

Some argue that one solution to this impasse is to convert all public restrooms to unisex use, thereby eliminating the need to even consider a patron’s sex. This might strike some as bizarre or drastic. Many assume that separating restrooms based on a person’s biological sex is the “natural” way to determine who should and should not be permitted to use these public spaces.

In fact, laws in the U.S. did not even address the issue of separating public restrooms by sex until the end of the 19th century, when Massachusetts became the first state to enact such a statute. By 1920, over 40 states had adopted similar legislation requiring that public restrooms be separated by sex.

So why did states in the U.S. begin passing such laws? Were legislators merely recognizing natural anatomical differences between men and women?

The draft medical assistance in dying bill has overly restrictive criteria that will leave entire classes of people without access to an assisted death. Dying With Dignity Canada and the BC Civil Liberties Association, our allies in the fight for greater recognition of personal autonomy, have begun calling for the bill to be defeated.

While it’s easy to let the perfect become the enemy of the good, in this case good just isn’t good enough. No law is better than a flawed law.

The Supreme Court of Canada was clear: People who are suffering from a grievous and irremediable illness have the right to choose an assisted death. That decision does not have qualifications about a “reasonably foreseeable” death, nor does it restrict mature minors or people with mental illnesses from making that choice. It also doesn’t preclude making that decision through an advance directive.

If this bill passes in its current form, the people excluded by the Government’s assisted dying bill will be forced to once again turn to the courts to defend their rights. This means more time, more money and more suffering for those who’ve made their wishes abundantly clear.

On June 6 assisted dying becomes legal in Canada. The Government, however, is treating that date as an absolute deadline to push through its legislation. It has resorted to different procedural tricks to force the bill through - some of these tricks go farther than ones the previous government used to limit and silence debate over its more controversial legislation.

Over the past week this pressure has led to increasingly desperate antics by opposition Members of Parliament and the Prime Minister himself. This has delayed the bill's timeline and given us more time to make our case for Parliamentarians to reform - or outright reject - the flawed legislation.

Please write to your MPs and Senators one more time and ask them to stand up for choice and dignity.

Freedom of expression and the freedom to dissent are of vital importance to Humanists. This is why the BCHA has signed onto the new Voices-Voix Declaration.

The 2016 Declaration succeeds the previous declaration that decried the muzzling of government scientists, political audits of charities and general advocacy chill. With the election of a new government in October, the new Declaration calls for an overhaul of laws and regulations to foster a strong and independent civil society.

These changes are vital to ensuring that groups like ours are able to continue to challenge religious privilege and push for greater equality for all.

By Kelly C. Smith, Clemson University

NASA’s chief scientist recently announced that “…we’re going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade, and I think we’re going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years.” Such a discovery would clearly rank as one of the most important in human history and immediately open up a series of complex social and moral questions. One of the most profound concerns is about the moral status of extraterrestrial life forms. Since humanities scholars are only just now beginning to think critically about these kinds of post-contact questions, naïve positions are common.

Take Martian life: we don’t know if there is life on Mars, but if it exists, it’s almost certainly microbial and clinging to a precarious existence in subsurface aquifers. It may or may not represent an independent origin – life could have emerged first on Mars and been exported to Earth. But whatever its exact status, the prospect of life on Mars has tempted some scientists to venture out onto moral limbs. Of particular interest is a position I label “Mariomania.”

A number of years ago, I was fortunate enough to have a job that took me to Fort McMurray for a week to teach science workshops at local schools.

What struck me about the town was the incredible contrast between the wild beauty of the surrounding boreal forest and the massive tailings ponds of the oil sands only a short drive north.

So when I watched the scenes over this past week of tens of thousands of people forced to flee their homes in the face of this fire, my heart sank.

This is why I'm proud to announce that the BCHA has launched a fundraising initiative to do our small part for the people of Fort McMurray and neighbouring communities. We've secured a pledge to match up to $5000 in donations to the Canadian Red Cross for relief efforts - all of which will be matched by the Government of Canada.

So please visit www.redcross.ca/bchumanist and give a little bit to help those who were forced to leave everything behind.

In freethought


Ian Bushfield, Executive Director

I am a single vibration, in a single note, in a magnificent symphony, and in prayer I consciously respond to and add my voice to the chorus of life. March 16, 2016 Post

Just finished Gretta Vosper’s With Or Without God. She concludes with a discussion about the meaning of prayer in a universe where there is no god, and examines what the urge to pray might mean when there is no-one out there to pray to?

Vosper references Freud’s theory that prayer is a carryover from infancy, when we are wholly dependent upon our parents – primarily our mothers – for sustenance and protection. Our parents are the archetypes of God, projected into the larger world beyond the circle of family.

Seems an adequate explanation for the phenomenon of prayer, but I think it would be a mistake to settle on that as the only reason we pray. For a narrow atheist the Freudian theory is convenient because it effectively removes God from the equation and demotes prayer to the realm of thumb-sucking. In winning an argument, however, I think such a facile dismissal of prayer as a meaningful urge diminishes the relevance of atheism itself.

The correct definition of ‘atheism’ is a disbelief in the existence of a god or gods. That definition is not at all incompatible with a belief in a spiritual realm. And when you think about it, many of humanity’s most moving and convincing experiences are rooted in the belief in something irrational, something spiritual.

My convoluted, existentialist logic leads me to the unavoidable conclusion that, not only is the spiritual realm likely, it’s essential (Who am I?) – for me the irrational is perfectly rational, it would seem, and I have friends and enemies who will confirm that is my honestly expressed state of being. Without a spiritual realm history, art, science, humanism in its deepest and most elevating manifestations, becomes meaningless if not impossible.

But there is no such thing as spirit disassociated from energy and matter as far as I am concerned. Spirit is incarnate, always and everywhere. And individual manifestations of spirit evaporate when the material context they inhabit – commonly known as our bodies – dies. I experience and express the Life Force for my twinkling; the urge of the Life Force in me is to explore, express and experience the consciousness of the universe awakening; the awe and wonder of that arousal only resonate in me when I recognize myself as part of a much larger evolution – an evolution that encompasses me in both space and time.

Prayer, then, is my fervent, conscious hallelujah shouted into that greater, collective consciousness. I hope that shout is in some sense ‘heard’; that my celebration of the universe that is, and yearning for a world that’s better, will vibrate sympathetically in the realm of spirit.

And if it doesn’t? That’s a topic for future consideration in Why do I pray? – Take 3

Upcoming Ideas: Who am I? / Nothing out of Nothing – so every thing’s always been / The four aspects of living spirit: Physical, Emotional, Intellectual, Spiritual / Morality, Ethics and Natural Rights / Ego: The necessary illusion / Just because or jest because / I think, therefore I spam / Who do I pray to (Take 3) / Killing gods is no laughing matter.