Keeping you up to date with our board meeting discussions!

Bus Ads:
We are getting ever closer to our bus ad goal, with designs falling into place and funding going well.  We’re still about $1000 short, so every small amount will bring us closer now.   You can donate on our merchandise/membership tab.   We’ve also given ourselves a deadline of August 31st for our design, so we will be submitting and looking for approval from Ad Standards Canada on that date.

This is one example of a design we’re playing around with, this was done quickly with free clip art images, so could be refined by taking more time to look for images.  Have a design for us?

Merchandise Sale!

We’re selling Grey T-shirts at 50% off.  Grab a bargain for $10 (while they last) and be a walking advertisment for atheism.  If you are interested in purchasing one (we have medium and large sizes available) they will be available at upcoming book club and roundtable events, or you can let us know via email or on the facebook group page.

 
Outreach Ideas

We’ve been approached by someone from Alpha Canada, and were wondering if anyone would like to take this course?  It’s free, we would meet every week for a 2-3 hour presentation and it lasts for 8 weeks.  If you are interested please let one of the board know so we can decide if we want to go ahead.

Other than that, we’ve been talking about more outreach events, like Ask An Atheist day at churches or even holding our own Atheism 101 class that would be open to the public and answer general questions about what being an atheist is.   Do you have an idea of where we can do outreach?

Special Guests

Save the Date!  Dr. Richard Carrier is coming to town!

Richard Carrier, Ph.D., is a philosopher and historian, specializing in contemporary philosophy of naturalism and Greco-Roman philosophy, science, and religion, including the origins of Christianity. He blogs regularly and lectures for community groups worldwide. He is the author of Sense and Goodness without God, On the Historicity of Jesus, Proving History, Why I Am Not a Christian, Not the Impossible Faith, and Hitler Homer Bible Christ, as well as chapters in several other books and articles in academic journals, and his namesake blog. For more about Dr. Carrier and his work see www.richardcarrier.info.

He’ll be coming on Sunday September 21st to speak about  “The Arguments For and Against the Resurrection Of Jesus”.   We do intend on opening this event up to local church groups if they are interested.   Keep up to date on this event by visiting our website regularly for specific details or you can request to be added to our email list by contacting us.

An Anti-gay group managed to hide their true intentions at the Vancouver Pride Parade this past weekend by passing themselves off as an atheist group from Calgary.

Bill Whatcott belongs to a Evangelical Christian activist group who managed to garner a spot in the parade on August 3rd by registering as the Calgary Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster.  Bill , who has ties to Edmonton having attended Grant MacEwan University, wore a t-shirt that said ”The Flying Spaghetti Monster is Gay”.   To not raise suspicions, the group went as far as creating a fake website complete with a fake contact phone number to ensure they would be approved a spot in the parade.   During the parade, the group handed out ”condoms”…which actually contained gospel verses condeming homosexuality, along with stories of how Jesus has set homosexuals free,  along with instructions on how to contact the Vancouver Pride committee to tell them about how harmful the homosexual lifestyle is.

To hide their true agenda, if someone was close to blowing their cover by opening the fake condom, they quickly exchanged it for a Trojan condom.

According to a report by the National Post in February of this year, Bill has already had previous court dates regarding this exact type of behaviour.   The Supreme Court of Canada upheld a hate speech charge against him which included a penalty of $17, 500 and a warning that if he kept spreading hate messages it could lead to contempt of court and jail.    In April of this year he was arrested again on a count of mischief for protesting outside of the University of Regina with signs that read ”Sodomy is a sin” and pro-life messages.     Bill justifies his actions on his website by quoting scripture and relaying stories from the bible where deception was approved of by God when doing God’s work.

The SEA want to make it abundantly clear that we are not affiliated with this group and do not in any way condone or support the message that Bill Whatcott and his members conveyed at the Pride Parade in Vancouver.    In fact NO atheist /secular groups in Alberta are affiliated with this group, despite their fake group name being somewhat similar.   Some (but not limited to) of the legitimate atheist and secular organisations in Alberta are:  CFI Calgary, The Calgary Secular Church,  University of Calgary Freethinkers, University of Alberta Atheists and Agnostics, Grant MacEwan Heathens and Friends,  and the Secular Humanists of Alberta.

It is a concern that the Calgary Pride Parade is in a few weeks time, we do hope that either he is arrested again by that stage, doesn’t have plans to show up or hasn’t managed to secure a spot **.   The Center For Inquiry does have a spot in the parade and they should be recognizable by their banner, which was published this week.

(**edit to add:  it has been brought to my attention that it was unkind and somewhat ridiculous to wish he be arrested , and I just wanted to say that yes,  I threw that comment out there without much thought.  As he is already going against what court orders have been given to him, I assumed the next course of action would now be another arrest (as stated in the National Post report) so was following that thought process through.  My intent  with that statement was my hope he will be unable to find his way into the Calgary Pride Parade)

In the meanwhile, let’s take this opportunity to spread a message of acceptance instead of hatred and donate to either the Pride Centre of Edmonton or the Calgary Pride groups.  We all thoroughly enjoy walking and showing our support in the Pride Parades annually, and we sincerely hope this will not hinder our future participation.