Our mission at CFI Canada is to help educate Canadians in the application of skeptical, secular, rational and humanistic inquiry. Implied in this is that such education requires that all of our members, and indeed all citizens must be treated as equals and are free to take part without coercion of any kind, including sexual. During this wave of sexual assault and harassment reports it seems we must make this explicit.
CFIC commends those who have made their experiences of sexual assault and harassment public. It is their courage that will fuel change and help make organizations such as CFIC and Canada better. CFIC believes that no one should have to fear harassment at our events and is committed to working to help create an organization and Canada free from such harassment.
Your article at http://centreforinquiry.ca/blasphemy-laws-still-exist-in-the-united-states/ is missing a very important perspective. I was a victim of Blasphemy in Oklahoma from which their laws very effectively protected me, and they could just as easily protect any of you in the same way. The Secretary of State, in her public office, openly referred to my deeply held religious convictions as “nonsense” and refused to perform her official duties relative to my convictions. Convictions against being compelled to follow certain religious beliefs and practices are also religious convictions. After making a formal complaint of Blasphemy against her to the State Attorney General, and others, including the Department of Risk Management, they corrected the problem to my satisfaction such that I agreed to have the charges dropped. Their laws read in part something like, “Making a demeaningly disparaging remark in public against anyone’s deeply held religious convictions constitutes the crime of Blasphemy and is punishable by…” This is a very good Blasphemy law and should be on the books and enforced in every jurisdiction of the world, provided it is carefully qualified and used sparingly.
“CFIC commends those who have made their experiences of sexual assault and harassment public. It is their courage that will fuel change and help make organizations such as CFIC and Canada better. CFIC believes that no one should have to fear harassment at our events and is committed to working to help create an organization and Canada free from such harassment.”
The above statement is NOT a position of “skepticism” but one of EMOTIONAL-favoring position that IS ‘religious’, NOT ‘logical’. You, as the rest of this dumbed-down society are favoring a means of ABUSE by demanding DEFAULT FAITH in select people and their CLAIMS rather than to MEASURE the truth by what we deem is ‘due process’.
I’m guessing that the reason here in Canada this is so prevalent is because many of you organizers are either “apostate” believers who traded a religious belief in specific gods for belief in specific people based on emotional cultish thinking. Here in Canada our Constitution is biased FOR religion and I’m shocked that no one here is even concerned to make this issue the logical necessity to repair. You cannot fix the system when we have constituted SPECIAL GROUPS based on genetic stereotypes.
We need to appropriately define PROBLEMS based on their logical means NOT emotional ones. If SPECIAL classes of people are deemed superior to ‘trust’ simply based on the apparent heinous reality assumed SHOULD the accused be actually guilty, you are taking a stance of FAITH in the same means that the extreme religious groups behave. It is NOT rational to presume claims without EVIDENCE!!!
Censorship in this group is also apparently something you guys are embracing which only adds proof that you are feigning ‘skepticism’ here. What efforts HAVE been done also appear to be STEREOTYPICAL interpretations of the evangelical religions BELIEFS about how Atheists think. I’m guessing someone in this group is going to delete what I’ve written again. It is hard to believe that “no comments yet” should also prove that others have not tried to post here. So is this site being redirected to the Vatican or the Discovery Institute (for right-winged interests)?
thank you Scott for voicing these most important points