To make Comments write directly to Jim at jimt@quixotic.ca
6
Feb
2020
Bad news for religious institutions – churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, and gurdwaras – the agnostics are winning.
The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, a conservative Christian organization, recently completed a poll of Canadians over the age of 18. In summary, they found that “half of Canadians are either agnostic, atheist or unreligious. And only a tenth attend religious services weekly.”
Like all polls, it’s a sampling of opinions and experiences. It put its questions to 5,000 Canadians, regardless of their brand of religion. So it’s not just about evangelicals.
The single biggest finding is that 50% of Canadians no longer claim any religious affiliation. They consider themselves agnostics, atheists, or “spiritual but not religious” (abbreviated to AASN).
Those who still consider themselves Christian – Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal, whatever – make up only 43% of the Canadian population.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Evangelical Fellowship, Rick Hiemstra, agnostics, atheists
2
In high school, we were taught that there were two immutable laws in nature -- the Law of Conservation of Matter, and the Law of Conservation of Energy.
Then the atomic bomb blew both laws into anywhere. They had to be combined: the total of matter and energy remains constant -- even if bits of each could be swapped. (Although I don’t think anyone has yet attempted to turn energy back into matter. )
That got me thinking about a variety of other so-called Laws.
For example, the Peter Principle, devised by author Lawrence J. Peter with Raymond Hull. It said, in essence, that institutions promote people to their level of incompetence.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: Peter Principle, Parkinson's Law, Kurzweil, Kuhn, Murphy
30
Jan
’m not sure what I believe about life after death. I’m quite sure that I don’t believe in life before life.
When I was about ten, my mother told me that my father had proposed to another woman, before he met my mother.
He had finished his Master’s degree. He had signed up to go to India as a missionary with the United Church of Canada. He invited this other woman to go with him.
She said no.
By a fortunate coincidence for me, my mother went to India about the same time, as a Presbyterian missionary from Northern Ireland. My parents met at language school. Six years later they had me.
Even at the age of ten, it occurred to me that if that other woman had said “Yes,” I wouldn’t be who I was. I would be someone else. Maybe even –horrors – a girl!
Tags: birth, death, Souls, conception, predestination
23
Flakes of winter snow sift down outside my window as I write these words. Millions of them. Billions of them. Burying the bird feeder. Burying my driveway.
I go out to shovel. Each snowflake weighs next to nothing. It’s amazing how much a shovelful of next-to-nothing can weigh.
No two of those snowflakes are identical, I’ve been told.
Maybe it’s true. Maybe it isn’t. The only way to prove it, either way, would be to examine every snowflake that has ever fallen.
But if you lived in Australia these days, who cares? When summer temperatures soar above 50 degrees Celsius, when fires create their own weather systems, a snowflake wouldn’t have, umm, a snowflake’s chance in hell of surviving long enough to be examined.
So many of the things that we humans argue about, divide ourselves about, even go to war about, are what a friend calls “head stuff.” Interesting, but irrelevant.
Tags: Rituals, Chesterton
19
The first phone call came at 7:05 a.m. I picked up the phone. “Dear Customer,” a recorded message began. “This call is to advise you that we have deducted $399.99 from your account to cover the renewal of your service policy. To approve this transaction, press one. To speak to a service representative, press two…”
I hung up instead.
I’m always tempted to talk back to recorded messages, the way I talk back to contestants on Jeopardy who know nothing about Canada. I’m even tempted to “press two” to see if I can tie the service representative’s mind into knots.
In philosophical circles, this practice is called the “straw man argument.”
Tags: straw men, scam calls