Podcast For Inquiry – Centre for Inquiry Canada

A podcast for scientific, skeptical, secular, rational and humanistic inquiry.

You’ve got answers? We’ve got questions.

A podcast for scientific, skeptical, secular, rational and humanistic inquiry.

You’ve got answers? We’ve got questions.

Kate Cohen believes atheists should be out and proud

Kate Cohen talks about her journey from privately knowing she was a non-believer to writing We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe (And Maybe You Should Too). She discusses how being an atheist and a commitment to honesty informed how she raised her children, and how being forthright about her lack of belief in social interactions has simplified her life. We also talk about some of the challenges associated with being an open atheist.

Kate is a Washington Post columnist and some of the articles she references in the conversation are below.

A Car Ride with Lena

In America you have to opt out of religion in public life. That’s backwards.

America doesn’t need more God. It needs more atheists.

Podcast for Inquiry is hosted by Leslie Rosenblood and brought to you by the Centre for Inquiry Canada. Support Podcast for Inquiry on Patreon: https://patreon.com/PodcastforInquiry. Send your thoughts and feedback to podcast@centreforinquiry.ca.

September 25, 2024

Greg Oliver asks: Why is religious discrimination official provincial educational funding policy?

5Greg Oliver, founder and president of the Canadian Secular Alliance, believes that governments should not favour one faith over another, nor believers over non-believers. That three Canadian provinces continue to this day to fully fund a Separate school system for a single faith – Catholicism – is an egregious violation of secular principles that should guide our public policy. Greg explains why Catholic schools are funded, how two provinces stopped funding sectarian schools, addresses many myths about the separate school system, and what we can do about it. (Check out the new organization Alumni to Amend Section 93.)

September 11, 2024

Science Denial: Why It Happens and What To Do About It, with Gale Sinatra

Everyone is vulnerable to fallacies that can lead to misunderstanding scientific topics. In her book (written with Barbara Hofer), Science Denial: Why It Happens and What To Do About It, Gale investigates many of these, including:

Cognitive biases
Emotions

Motivated reasoning
Identities

Gale also explains what all of us can do to increase our scientific literacy. Science is better understood as a process, with different disciplines advancing knowledge via different means, employing various techniques. It is much more than just a collection of facts to be understood. We can also move from an absolutist view of the world to a more evaluative perspective, and with that additional complexity and nuance comes a deeper and more accurate understanding.

Learn more at https://www.sciencedenialbook.com/.

August 21, 2024

Anti-natalism with Mark Maharaj

Anti-natalism is the philosophical idea that choosing to have children is an unethical act. Mark explains what anti-natalism is, as well as what it isn’t, and describes how he came to subscribe to anti-natalist thought.

Learn more about anti-natalism from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://iep.utm.edu/anti-natalism/) and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/parenthood/#AntiNata)

August 7, 2024

Kelly Weinersmith asks: Are we ready to live off-planet?

Dr. Kelly Weinersmith (@FuSchmu) is the co-author (with her husband Zach) of Soonish and A City on Mars. Kelly maintains that while having humans living off Earth would be awesome, we’re simply not ready for it yet. She answers many of Leslie’s questions: Why can’t we go to Mars if we have the will? Why can’t we all just get along? Why should we expand? Why is building a habitable space station harder than settling on Mars or the moon? What laws would apply in any off-Earth settlement? Where should we focus our space research efforts?

Kelly also goes on a rant about Helium 3.

July 24, 2024

The search for truth, with Carolyn Biltoft

Carolyn Biltoft received her PhD in World History from Princeton University in 2010. Her work fuses the tools of world history, intellectual history, cultural studies and critical theory. Carolyn has thought deeply about the nature of truth, and realized that each person necessarily has an incomplete understanding, because we only experience a small aspect of reality first hand. Therefore, we need to trust the reports of others to gain a complete worldview. Misplacing our trust will compromise the accuracy of our model of reality. Carolyn delves into the implications of this insight, describes the similarities and differences between scientific and religious mindsets, and how this should impact our educational system.

July 10, 2024