CFI Canada works to combat the harm of superstition, pseudoscience and religion by advancing the values of reason, science and secularism through education, activism and community.
CFI Canada is in the midst of planning for 2014. Our mandate covers secularism, atheism, pseudoscience and skepticism.
What do you think are the most important initiatives we should be working on, on your behalf?
Please add your suggestions in the comments below.
This page provides an opportunity for CFI Canada’s leadership team to gather input from members/Friends of CFI and others who are interested in the direction of CFI Canada. Respectful disagreement and discussion is encouraged, but we ask all participants to keep their comments reasonable and rational, and refrain from personal attacks. If you have specific concerns, please bring them to the attention of the CFI Board of Directors.
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Hi, CFI! I think it would be great to see CFI supporting Evidence for Democracy, the effort by Canadian Scientists to reverse the apparent muzzling of federal government scientists and cancelling of important research projects like the Experimental Lakes. It is clear that these two organizations have a lot in common, and probably have many common members.
Perhaps you are already on board. If so, it could be more visible.
Katie Gibbs can be reached at katie@evidencefordemocracy.ca.
The website is http://www.evidencefordemocracy.ca
The $10billion(stats can) tax deductible donation scam has got to stop. Approx. 50% is religious donations. My neighbor made the same as did, and because he tithed 10% plus to his church, paid over two thousand dollar less tax than I did. It’s time to stop them all.
“The CFI management team is looking for initiatives that are important to you, issues dealing with secularism, atheism, pseudoscience or skepticism.”
The most important topic for me is humanism, which includes “secularism & atheism” but, as defined in the Amsterdam Declaration 2002, arguably covers a broader scope.
I am comparatively much less interested in the topics pseudoscience & skepticism, particularly if resources are scarce.
My interests in CFI advocacy of humanism includes:
– greater public awareness and knowledge of humanism
– ensuring that the definition of “secularism” is not mutantly morphed into misrepresentations (eg. Quebec’s “secular charter” or Vatican positioning of it as moral relativism)
– greater advocacy for secular, humanist values in Canadian public policy
– greater public awareness and concern about *all* brands of religious fundamentalism
– ensuring that school boards with comparative religion curricula have teaching aids and reference material to introduce and educate about humanism with equal depth to any specific religion
– fostering academic research collaborations
– monitoring and “outing” the extent of religious lobbying in federal and provincial legislatures, most of which bypasses the Lobby Register
I want to see tax-exempt status removed from all religious institutions (schools, churches)
It is time ti remove the legislation that allows religious groups to not pay taxes. An argument could be developed to justifying the use of those taxes that are recovered for health care.
There is a huge area of support in the Seniors demographic. Many retired people would get involved if there were groups meeting in the daytime in Toronto.
I get the impression that most of your support is in the form of university students who can more likely meet at pubs or at meetings in the evening.
Please consider a Seniors group meeting in the daytime. I would attend.
Also have more speakers gatherings or book groups, again earlier in the evening.
Diane Sullivan
Thanks for your campaign for a better world!
My suggestion: support people and refugees in other countries who are being persecuted for their non-belief.
Hi and thanks for a great 2013.
In asking for directions for CFI in 2014, a cause that is very dear to my heart is scientific literacy.
I also think it is at the root of a lot of other problems that let pseudo science and religion dominate people’s lives.
Working towards a good grounding in scientific literacy for both kids and adults would be a great goal for CFI. This can be done through advocating changes to school curriculum and offering lectures and courses on what science is to the general public.
Of course the seminars you have hosted on things like UFOs and alternative medicine have been excellent and fun to attend. So definitely keep that up.
All for now,
Rob Neill
Medically assisted dying needs more open discussion. It is supported by 80% of Canadians but politicians are reluctant to tackle the subject.
Thanks for mentioning this. We had a series of talks and debates at several of our branches last year with the folks at Dying With Dignity. It was well received and we would love to do that again.
I wonder what could be achieved with a single focus target. I would like to see Health Canada held accountable for saying a treatment is effective. When they say for example a homeopathic pill is safe and effective the only basis for that is because the manufacturer says so. Focus on effective and get some measurable scientific standards for a product to meet to earn the label.
I am skeptical about the CAUSE of global warming, man-made or natural, but am beginning to feel marginalized from CFI for this particular non-PC kind of skepticism.
Someone above suggested daytime meetings for seniors. Good idea.
And keep up the campaign against homeopathic medicines. Their chemical composition needs to be marked on the labels. It should be easy enough to mark them all as “water and sugar.”
I joined because secularism, atheism, pseudoscience and skepticism are passions of mine and are hugely important locally, national and globally.
Social Justice topics, while incredibly important, are best tackled in forums specifics to those particular issues and strategies. Combining the the two dilutes and confuses CFI’s vision and mission.
I would like to have more events to go to, especially events where I can learn something. I like the Skepticamps, where you can practice giving presentations. I heard discussion a few months ago about a debate club starting up here. I would like to see more events along these lines at different times and locations, so I have a better chance of making it out to one of them.
We are not sure what branch you are close to. Our suggestion is to contact that branch leader – or email us at info@cficanada.ca
We’d be pleased to help.
Most of our group in Regina is really passionate about changing our school system to be only one public option, thus ending the unfairness and discrimination that the Separate school system offers.
We’d also like to have a lot more atheist and skeptic billboards and public advertising in our city because our province is very conservative, but youth are liberal and we’d like to get our numbers up. The first step is letting people know that there’s a happy, flourishing, and productive life outside of the church.
I agree with the poster above for CFI to align itself with the Evidence for Democracy movement and support Cdn science.
1) Keep pushing for legally recognized humanist/non-theist marriage officiants in all provinces.
2) Keep the heat on the federal government over de-funding and ignoring science.
3) Fight the tax-exempt and audit-exempt status of religious organizations
There are three areas that should be addressed in Canada:
1) To request confirmation from the four main political parties that they stand for separation of church and state
2) That we work strongly for a complete secular education system
3) That we request the Government move to equality in the tax system visa vie the religious versa the secular
It is interesting to see the progress that is being made in the USA by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Check out their website at ffrf.org
On goading the ROM into mounting a permanent display on human evolution…
The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) here in Toronto has no display on human evolution – they do dinosaurs, they do ancient culture, but they do not bridge the gap. There used to be a series of ROM fossils on display (Australopithecus on up, I think) that presented a fairly complete timeline of human evolution. I liked to visit this display from time to time (decades ago!) to see what new “Hominini” had popped up since my last visit. It’s getting harder and harder to keep track of human evolution these days, especially if one includes possible DNA differences (Denisovans, etc.). The area deserves a large, updated display but the ROM pleads poverty – despite actually having the old display of skulls in their possession. I suspect that their reluctance is more than financial, but it would be nice to find out what they estimate a small display (to start off with) would cost.
The situation Canada-wide is rather dismal. I read an on-line note by Sarah Bean (Montreal – works with Brian Alters) noting that no Canadian museum has such a display! Surely at least one major Canadian museum should have a comprehensive display of human fossils and origins – especially with the pace of new developments in the field (A. sediba, Denisovans, etc.).
I’ll be pursuing this on my own by contacting various ROM personnel (I’m a member) but maybe interest from a group of CFI folks might generate a more thoughtful reaction from ROM. Any interest in getting a group together to lobby ROM for action on this?
Cheers,
JJ
As an almost Permanent Resident from the UK, I’d suggest looking at the National Secular Society’s website in the UK here http://www.secularism.org.uk As a previous member, I can vouch that it has done a great deal to promote the causes shared by the CFI resulting in growing influence politically and socially.
The UK doesn’t suffer from the same level of religious nutbags in the public sphere compared with North America (I mainly mean the US) and we’re at least 45% atheist officially, (i’d say more than half realistically), although we do have our fair share of idiots.
I’d like to see some kind of international partnership arise with the NSS and other European Freethinking groups as the goals are the same if this hasn’t already happened, and the networks/infrastructures/support are already there. I think UK/European based perspectives would be very healthy to add into the mix as I’ve never really found the US at the forefront of the kind of change needed to combat the level of ignorance we need to combat. Still learning the situation here in Canada…
There are many excellent suggestions already in the posts above, the ideas I find most appealing from these are:
– promote the removal or remove all public funding from the Catholic school system in Ontario
– have a state-of-the-art display on human evolution in an Ontario museum, either in Ottawa or Toronto
– have more atheist or critically-thinking theme billboards and advertising in Toronto
– end the sale of homeopathic remedies in Ontario
– remove the governmental muzzle on Ontario science researchers
– remove tax breaks for churches and other religious institutions
Thank you for adding your suggestions for 2014. Each one is critically important and we will be discussing them at length here at CFI Canada. In time, we intend to send follow up emails to each of you. Thanks again, and we’re looking forward to more comments and suggestions.
Pseudoscience? Consider mental health practices, especially in private settings (I.e., the majority). There has been a persistent and galling failure of transfer of science “from bench to bedside”, particularly unfortunate precisely because of recent, significant advances made in evidence- informed intervention practices…that never get to those who need them most. Panaceas? Certainly not.
Better outcomes in less time, denied? Oh, yes.
This, In 2013.
Who benefits? The therapists. (Same money, less effort, longer treatments)
Big bucks + Closed doors + People, at their most vulnerable = Risky business. ( with risk to client arguably increasing with vulnerability (severity of distress)
Perhaps worthy of consideration?
I just wanted to drop a note saying that although I agree with most of the laudable issues that have already been suggested and that desperately need to be addressed, there is always the real-world context of time, effort and available funds.
It seems to me that with finite resources, CFI would be more effective if it simply focused on small but achievable objectives that could move things forward in a tangible way. You don’t want to go charging off in all directions. What can realistically be accomplished?
On one hand, CFI and all of its regional chapters, could offer its collective voice in solidarity with others pursuing other causes: political, economic, environmental, and so forth. On the other hand, CFI could take the lead on issues that it’s uniquely positioned to take up: science literacy, critical thinking, reason and secular approaches. These are of course not mutually exclusive.
On the education side of the CFI mandate, I suggest a laser-focused initiative surrounding a simple theme: “How do we know?” This can lead to a wide variety of community-based activities and educational products designed to strengthen reasoning skills in the face of pseudoscience.
On the policy side, CFI could focus on secularism in support of human rights given the 2014 events of Sochi and the fall 2014 opening of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg. This leverages a topic that the media will already be predisposed to pick up. So I’m thinking that a Winnipeg conference, perhaps in collaboration with other secular and humanist organizations in Canada would likely be very successful.