The Vatican, according to Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, will hold a dialogue with non-believers (atheists) in Mexico next month. This follows up on a 2009 comment by Pope Benedict XVI that "the Roman Catholic Church should hold such meetings so non-believers could get to know God."

That the RC...

Secular Connexion Séculaire (SCS) and Centre for Inquiry Canada (CFI) have been tracking with dismay the Harper government's abandoning the defence of most human rights in order to focus exclusively on its concerns for the rights of religious minorities.

This government closed The International Centre For Human Rights...

Interfaith services and groups have become a fairly common part of our culture. As David Niose points out in Psychology Today, "it not only seems natural, but arguably even healthy, that various religious groups could come together in a time of crisis."

He goes further to...

The Harper government is a smoke and mirror government that confuses transparency with murkiness and should realize that such an approach usually results in the smoke smudging the mirror.

To begin with, the Conservatives managed to surf the system to a House of Commons majority with a minority of the...

When a country like Canada enshrines "freedom of conscience and religion" in its Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it gives itself a particular challenge. When that country seems determined to support multiculturalism, that challenge takes on further dimensions.

As a Secular Humanist, I am biased toward the...

Many comments regarding the appropriateness and potential effectiveness of the Canadian Office of Religious Freedom have been made; however, with the exception of a few reporters, no one has noted the exclusion of Secular Humanist or atheist organizations from whatever consultation that occurred.

The frosting on that cake...

How do Secular Humanists develop their ethics? This is the most consistently repeated question about Secular Humanism. Theists, in particular, have difficulty with the notion that ethics need not come from a set of rules laid down in an ancient book. Even Secular Humanists, put on the spot, have some...

Some time ago, Prime Minister Stephen Harper observed that separation of church and state is an American constitutional concept and does not apply to the Canadian constitution. He went on to say that separation of church and state in Canada has meant, traditionally, that the government will not...

After I spoke at the World Religions Conference last fall, someone asked me the following: "How can you get up in the morning knowing that this is all there, just this life and nothing more? Does this not leave you in a state of sadness and hopelessness?"

Au...

Some people think that "humanist" is just the new word for "atheist." That is not quite true. Humanists, at least the secular variety, are all atheists, but not all atheists are humanists.

Humanism can trace its western roots back to Thales, an Ionian Greek (c. 624-546 BCE), who contradicted...

I was one of many who emailed Prime Minister Stephen Harper the other day and asked him to meet with aboriginal leaders to start the long path to correcting the problems with the relationship between the Canadian government and the aboriginal peoples. I might have said long, winding path, because...