Atheist Hymn – The Book of Sagan

That’s the testament of Carl Sagan – I’ll come back to him in a moment.

I’ve been competing in a competition run by the CBC (Canadian equiv. of the BBC) on Facebook. The competition is called the Great Canadian Wish List. The top wishes in each category will be featured on a national broadcast on Canada Day. In the last two weeks, my wish has gone from 700th place to 15th place and it is still rising. More supporters are needed.

If I win, I won’t argue for the disestablishment of theism, the removal of God from the Constitution or the removal of the head of the Anglican church as our leader. I will not repeat the legion of crimes that go unpunished and unadmonished because of their origin in religion. Nor will I mention the names of Adrian Yeatts, Lisa Kosack or the many other Canadian children who died because of the vagaries of church-state separation.

What I will do is talk about the glory of a free humanity.

As part of that I will bring up the Golden Record. The Golden Record was created by the famous atheist, Carl Sagan. This record is placed aboard all interstellar probes – of which there are 5 so far – and contains greetings in 55 languages and songs from around the world.

It is right that it contains songs – these seem to be the easiest form of cross-cultural communication and maybe not coincidentally, these are often the first things attacked by the theists. From their moronoic condemnations of “devil music” to the beatings suffered by Afghan musicians under Taliban rule – religion is at war with music.

Here is an atheist’s contribution to that war – Sagan’s Golden Record / A Hymn to the Glory of Humanity:

Greetings from the Secretary General of the UN

‘Hello’ – Greetings from the people of Earth

Bach, ‘The Brandenberg Concerto’

Java, court gamelan, ‘Kinds of Flowers’

Senegal, percussion

Zaire, Pygmy girls’ initiation song

Mexico, “El Cascabel,”

USA, “Johnny B. Goode,”

Japan, shakuhachi, “Cranes in Their Nest,”

Bach, “Gavotte en rondeaux”

Azerbaijan S.S.R., bagpipes

India, raga, “Jaat Kahan Ho,”

Top 20! Atheism is on the march. Bite me Pastafarians!

My CBC wish (see the sidebar to the right of this) has made the top 20!  My wish was for an atheist Canada.  I’ve refined my pitch and found that this one below works best:

Tories, Liberals, Dippers – atheism is not a party issue. It’s an issue of conscience and admitting what you know logic is telling you – There is No God.

Issues that are backed primarily by the faithful will win this vote. Get atheism into the top 10 and make sure that when the time comes, and they get their day in the sun, the CBC will be forced to give some airtime to the 30% of non-religious and atheistic Canadians.

Click here to support atheism.

I try to never swear on my blog but …

these anti-anti-abortion people are assholes. Note the emphasis on the ‘these‘. I’m talking about the pro-choicers on the CBC’s Great Canadian Wish group on Facebook. [psst vote for my wish].

On the message board on the front page there’s a posting titled “Suggestions for a catchier name for the “ABOLISH ABORTION” ummm… group…“.

Here are some of the suggestions from that posting:

• Let’s take it back to the good ole coat hanger days
• Population control. Breed more Christians now!
• Want to have more sinners to serve our lord and saviour Jesus Christ? Abolish abortion
• mama why did you kill me ?
• Save the Little Bastards
• dumpster diving

You can read the whole thing here. I’m almost embarassed to share anything with those people. I hope none of them have voted for my wish.

The debate is really ugly – if it can even be called a debate. The pro-lifers have fallen back on religion and* [this part has been crossed out because Suzanne showed it to be false - my bad] the pro-choicers, unfortunately, many like those shown above, have been assholes.

There’s a good response from a woman named Karen Krisfalusi:

I’m not just a Pro-Choice woman, I’m also a Canadian and a citizen and a Parliamentarian and somebody who believes very strongly in trying to create consensus and pull people together. I’m troubled by interest group politics. I’m troubled by divisive social debate. I’m troubled by people who cannot acknowledge the merit in the position of those that they oppose, who cannot accept the ambiguity and complexity of some issues and be willing to support conciliary gestures, even though they don’t cost them anything but perhaps some willingness to acknowledge that the other side of the issue has some merit.

Kim Campbell when she was Minister of Justice