By John Krebs, University of Oxford

Ocean acidification is causing fundamental and dangerous changes in the chemistry of the world’s oceans yet only one in five Britons has even heard of ocean acidification, let alone believes it a cause for concern. Around 97% of climate scientists believe global warming is principally driven by human activity, yet only 16% of the public know the expert consensus to be this strong.

These are just two examples of common misconceptions among the UK public on the science of climate change. When surveyed, many people report feeling unsure and confused about various aspects of the discipline. Furthermore, they lack trust in scientists: in the wake of the IPCC’s fifth assessment report, nearly four in ten people felt that scientists were exaggerating concerns.

We had a successful AGM on Sunday.

We reviewed some of the highlights of the past year and Colin presented our financial position. Thanks to our generous supporters and members, we've managed to turn our 2014 deficit into a small surplus for 2015!

We said goodbye to Kirsten who is stepped down from the board. With Goldis, she will continue to host the book club though. We also welcomed Anna d'Archangelo and Dan Hanna to the board.

We're looking forward to working with our new board toward an even greater BCHA through 2016.

By David Dunning, University of Michigan

In the hours since I first sat down to write this piece, my laptop tells me the National Basketball Association has had to deny that it threatened to cancel its 2017 All-Star Game over a new anti-LGBT law in North Carolina – a story repeated by many news sources including the Associated Press. The authenticity of that viral video of a bear chasing a female snowboarder in Japan has been called into question. And, no, Ted Cruz is not married to his third cousin. It’s just one among an onslaught of half-truths and even pants-on-fire lies coming as we rev up for the 2016 American election season.

The longer I study human psychology, the more impressed I am with the rich tapestry of knowledge each of us owns. We each have a brainy weave of facts, figures, rules and stories that allows us to address an astonishing range of everyday challenges. Contemporary research celebrates just how vast, organized, interconnected and durable that knowledge base is.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that our brains overdo it. Not only do they store helpful and essential information, they are also receptive to false belief and misinformation.

By Joseph P. Laycock, Texas State University

Robert Eggers' period horror film “The Witch” has been one of the surprise hits of 2016. It’s even gained a second wind since its February 23 release: the first weekend of April it played on 666 screens around the country, raking in an additional $465,000 USD.

The tale of a Puritan family turning on each other as they attempt to root out the supernatural evil plaguing their farm, the film won Eggers the award for best director at Sundance – and even frightened horror master Stephen King.

But neither of these accolades has generated as much buzz as an endorsement from The Satanic Temple (TST), a satanic political movement that first appeared in 2013.

The BCHA and Canadian Secular Alliance have been granted leave to intervene at the BC Court of Appeal in the case of TWU vs Law Society of BC. This means that secular voices will be at the table, arguing for the limits of freedom of religion when it conflicts with the promotion of a more just and equal society.

This is a huge opportunity for our organization and the broader secular movement in Canada to set a strong precedent to define secularism in Canadian law.

The case will be heard from June 1-3, 2016 and the hearings will be open to the public. We'll share the specifics closer to the date.

I helped out at the Vaisakhi Day celebrations with the Tarksheel Society yesterday. It was an invaluable experience. By noon we had over 100 visitors, and there were many others who gave us the thumbs up on their way by.

I asked one of my co-volunteers and he confirmed that Vaisakhi is more of a Punjabi cultural festival than a Sikh one.

Either way there was lots of good and free food, colourful costumes and wonderful folks to talk to.

During the 2015 federal election, Canada Revenue Agency published an advisory telling charities to censor partisan comments on their website, blogs and social media.

This follows the string of audits of charities' political activities since 2012. While further audits have been cancelled, active audits are still ongoing and the sector-wide chill remains in effect.

At this week's Sunday meeting in Vancouver, BCHA Executive Director Ian Bushfield will elaborate on how these symptoms are part of a system that silences Canada's civil society, including the BC Humanist Association, and how the government could instead encourage free debate.

Natural and legal rights are two types of rights. Legal rights are those bestowed onto a person by a given legal system. (i.e., rights that can be modified, repealed, and restrained by human laws). Natural rights are those not contingent upon the laws, customs, or beliefs of any particular culture or government, and therefore universal and inalienable (i.e., rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws)              Wikipedia

The confusion between these two types of rights, and the propensity of states, religious institutions, employers, philosophers and a host of other social and political entities to deliberately impose their own system of rights, makes it necessary for me to reclaim what could never be taken from me in the first place, and which I can never even give away: my Natural Rights.

Then, to consider the picture in full, I must accept the responsibilities which come with those rights, if I want to live my life with purpose.

There's an implicit irony in any declaration of Universal Natural Rights. For what is a right accept the liberty to choose one thing or course of action over another? And what is a Universal Natural Right accept one that is inalienable and applicable in any circumstance? The irony in those two statements is the conclusion that the only thing I cannot choose is to give up is my Natural Rights. They can be bludgeoned senseless, starved to death, choked to the point of unconsciousness, or – more often – forgotten in the grind of daily routine, but they cannot be given or taken away.

As for the responsibilities that make Natural Rights cohesive, directed and – if we so choose – contributory, they can and often are shunned, a failure of will that more-often-than-not renders proclamations of Natural Rights mere bravado.

Society at large – any social grouping – abhors any assertion of Natural Rights. Social groupings always have tyrannical underpinnings: you either obey the rules of the group, or you are punished, even outcast for your transgressions. This insistence on obedience is necessary, otherwise collective cohesion and action become impossible. Where we go too far is insisting that the rules must be obeyed without question – that the group has the 'moral' or 'religious' or other authority to impose its will not only on our actions, but on our very thoughts.

It is time, I believe, to moderate those demands for obedience. There will be many occasions when I have to moderate my expression of Natural Rights in order to work for the common good. In fact, most of my waking hours will be spent adapting to a collective purpose. But I am not surrendering my Natural Rights in those instances; I am setting them aside because I believe my own interests can best be advanced by adapting to a common set of rules designed to achieve a social or collective end.

Of course the group can impose its will if my expression of Natural Rights is perceived to be a threat to them or myself. No-one passes through life without having the will of a social group imposed upon him or her. Indeed, so immersed are we in the impositions of bodily function, family and community from the day we are born, that we rarely even arrive at the point where we are conscious of our Natural Rights. More likely we quickly come to consider our expressions of Natural Rights to be outbursts and tantrums or thick-headedness at best; hardened criminal activity or treason at worst.

I would hazard to guess that before the 19th Century the vast majority would have considered any inkling of Natural Rights an absurd fantasy to be atoned for rather than embraced. None of that diminishes the importance of Natural Rights at this point in our historical evolution. My belief is that Natural Rights have been an underlying possibility we are only now in a position to experience and express – that we are at that place in time where consciousness must consider the full expression of Natural Rights as necessary for humanity, for living spirit, to advance in the world.

Dangerous and frivolous as the expression of Natural Rights seems to the status quo, it will be the jostling and harmonizing of billions of individual wills that unleashes the full human potential. We may not get a chance to realize that level of freedom. The technological and social revolutions that have made the full expression of Natural Rights a possibility rather than a hopelessly abstract theory are also capable of clamping down and stifling free expression, and there are tyrants ever-ready to turn those powers against us.

That is why the Humanist movement is important to me. There are many unconnected strands in this essay, the most important being: How is 'moral' or 'collective' action possible in a world where Natural Rights are enshrined? That will have to be a topic for another entry.

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 2) / Killing gods is no laughing matter.

The new draft bill to allow physician-assisted dying in Canada will likely be made public later this week. However, a source told The Canadian Press that the draft bill will not give patients the right to make advance requests for assisted dying.

We have argued - along with many of you in your own words - that physicians should honour a patient's request when that request is made freely and explicitly in advance.

This isn't just a theoretical threat but one that could drastically reduce the right for those facing a diagnosis of dementia to choose an assisted death.

Please use Dying With Dignity Canada's updated email-an-MP tool to send a letter to your Member of Parliament asking them to protect our right to choose.

The heckler in the classic film Miracle on 34th Street calls Kris Kringle “a big, fat fake.” In court his defence lawyer argues that if the American people can believe in God – for “In God We Trust” figures in their national anthem and coins – without any proof, then they can also believe in Santa Claus.

Judging by all the white-bearded and red-suited men in shopping malls at Christmas, it appears that Americans now believe in more than one Santa Claus, just as there are those who believe in more than one god, like the Hindus of India or the Shinto Buddhists of Japan. But from the time of the Babylonian deity Marduk, the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, the Israelite god Yahweh and the Zoroastrian spirit Ahura Mazda, there has been the notion of only one god, bringing us ever closer to the true, round figure.