I almost forgot to mention the article in Saturday's Globe & Mail. It was an excellent introduction to the atheist, skeptic, humanist, freethinker community in Canada. The article introduced the Centre for Inquiry and mentioned that it was having a grand opening yesterday [Standing Room Only].
You can read the entire article on the Richard Dawkins website [ When the ain'ts go marching in]. Here's a short teaser.
The CFI is intended to be a place not just for lectures, but for an eclectic list of activities, from a science book club to less-cerebral pursuits such as yoga for freethinkers and "magic for skeptics."
There's a Sunday-morning meeting to discuss different aspects of humanism, and a monthly spaghetti dinner -- where, instead of a traditional grace, the lauded deity is the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a lampoon concocted a few years ago in response to the Intelligent Design movement's attempts to derail evolutionary teaching in Kansas schools.
The centre is also organizing social services, such as a regular meeting of Secular Organizations for Sobriety, which is an alternative to Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous. Another program, Religious Recovery, tries to ease the transition for people who are leaving organized religion.
According to 2001 census figures, nearly five million Canadians identify as having "no religious affiliation," compared with 13 million Catholics and eight million Protestants. That's a 44-per-cent increase since the 1991 census figures. In 1971, less than 1 per cent of the population claimed no religion.
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