Welcome!

 Welcome!  SEA Events  6 Responses »
Aug 232015
 

Bus Ad

Welcome to the Society of Edmonton Atheists’ blog. 

Look to the right for information on how to:

If you’re not in Edmonton, we also have a resource list of other groups in Alberta that you may be interested in.

The “About” tab up above will give you a bit more information about the group’s history and current Board members. If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can use the “Contact Us” tab above.

You can also visit our FAQ for more information on our 2015 bus ad campaign.

Any first-time comments will be moderated to reduce spam, so please be patient.

Thanks for stopping by, and we hope to see you out at some of our upcoming activities!

Saturday Highway Cleanup Cancelled

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Sep 202019
 

Turns out Edmonton Comic Expo is also this weekend and a whole bunch of our regular volunteers are attending that on Saturday.

We’ll cancel the Saturday event, in favour of a whole bunch of us showing up on Sunday to clean.   Please join us on Sunday, and if you need a ride, feel free to ask!

 Posted by at 6:25 PM

Continued Misinterpretation Over School Issues

 Secularism, St. Albert School Issue  No Responses »
Sep 122019
 

Recently, the topic of The Lord’s Prayer in public schools across Alberta has come back into public media discourse, after a St. Albert school sent a letter home to parents regarding their continued practice of allowing the prayer by segregating the students into prayer and non-prayer rooms each morning.

Along with this news, there has also been a lot of discussion surrounding government budgets for school systems, after the MacKinnon Report seemed to point towards major cuts to education and healthcare systems.    This has spurred a renewed interest in topics regarding public funding of duplicate systems in our province, and discussions about ending funding to Catholic Schools, including a resurgence of my OP Ed regarding the Catholic School funding issues from December of last year.  

In both these instances, the prayer issue and funding of Catholic schools issue, the media and readers miss the nuance within the arguments.  This leads to misinterpretation of the motivations behind these concerns, and people basically writing off the issues as attacks on religion, or as anti-theist in their nature due to what is seen as atheist bias.

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This is not the motivation at all and while most of us leading the charge on these issues are outspoken atheists, faith and religion aren’t really the point.    These issues could easily be swapped out for concerns regarding racism, or sexism. The concern that segregation is happening, and that one group seemingly has extra special privileges over the rest of us is what we are actually calling out, not the religion itself.

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 10:50 PM

Help ban conversion therapy!

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Aug 072019
 

Board member Tina put together some resources for us, in order to encourage the city, province and federal governments to ban conversion therapy.   Feel free to download these letter templates to use as is, or edit to make it feel more personal.

You can find local MP’s at this webpage:
https://www.ourcommons.ca/Parliamentarians/en/members?currentOnly=true&province=AB
All other MPs at:
https://www.ourcommons.ca/Parliamentarians/en/members

Also, remember that Federal Government mail can be sent free of charge.

Letters for Banning Conversion Therapy 

 Posted by at 8:09 PM

Summer Solstice

 Events, SEA Events  No Responses »
May 282019
 

Summer Solstice June 22nd, 4pm!      

This is at a private residence, so the exact address is not posted on the website or facebook page. Please message us or talk to us at one of our events in person to get the location.

Event is POT LUCK, so bring something for people to share (salads, chips/dip, crackers and cheese,veggie tray, fruit tray, pies etc) and if you are so inclined you can bring meat for yourself as a bbq will be availalbe for use.

Plates, cups, napkins, cutlery will be supplied. We’ll also have iced tea and lemonade.

Because this is a private residence, you are free to bring alcohol for yourself as well, make sure you arrange for a safe ride home if you do decide to drink.

We generally eat and then play some games afterwards, ending closer to 11pm or midnight. There is a yard, and areas where kids can play video games/watch movies to keep them occupied. Stop by whenever you can.

**PLEASE NOTE ANIMALS LIVE AT THIS HOUSE** (Three dogs and a rabbit). We can keep them isolated but if you are allergic you should take some allergy medicine prior to arrival.

This year we will be inviting all the groups we have had regular joint events with; Westwood Unitarian, Dying With Dignity, Secular Humanists of Alberta and the Secular Ethics Group in Stony Plain.

You can RSVP to the event on facebook, or by sending us a message:  https://www.facebook.com/events/282805132631948/

 Posted by at 10:21 AM

New Board Members

 News, People  No Responses »
Apr 072019
 

Thanks to everyone who came out to our annual general meeting this past week!   We discussed quite a few things, including what types of secular causes SEA will be supporting this year, as well as discussions on how we can be better LGBTQ+ allies, and different ideas for outreach.   Overall, a very productive meeting with lots of great ideas that will be researched and acted upon in the upcoming months.

Your executive members have remained the same, as those are 2 year terms, and 4 director positions have been filled.    Your 2019 – 2020 SEA Board members are:

President: Karen Lumley Kerr
Vice President:  Alexander Delorme
Treasurer: Mark Terpstra
Recording Secretary:  Tamara Pawluk

Directors:
Rob Chamberlain
Margaret Wardell
Ashley Zinyk
Tina Dmytryshyn

 Posted by at 4:51 PM

Be Ready Conference

 Secularism  No Responses »
Mar 222019
 

A few weekends ago I attended the ”Be Ready” Conference at the West Edmonton Christian Academy.   The organiser of the event had sent our page a message letting us know about a debate going on in Calgary as part of the weekend conference (which ran in both Calgary and Edmonton at the same time) because it included an atheist.   Unable to attend that, I looked at what was happening at the Edmonton event and noticed a talk entitled ”The Atheist Experience”


Continue reading »

 Posted by at 10:12 AM
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