By RANDY BOSWELL - CANADA.COM
Added: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:00:00 UTC

Thanks to Crapsquire for the link.
http://www.canada.com/life/Atheist+pathetic+Philosopher/1834362/story.html
Canada's most renowned philosopher has weighed in provocatively on the debate surrounding the "atheist bus" campaign, describing as "pathetic" the cross-Canada advertising effort to promote the idea that "there's probably no God."

In an interview published Monday by the British-based magazine Philosophy Now, McGill University professor Charles Taylor first labelled as "hilariously funny" the controversial bus-ad crusade, then compared the humanist groups waging the campaign to reactionary 19th-century bishops who got "very rattled and very angry" following the publication of Charles Darwin's landmark 1859 treatise about evolution, On the Origin of Species.

"Putting things on buses, as though that's going to make people somehow change their view about God, the universe, the meaning of life and so on," scoffed Taylor, a defender of religious faith and the recent winner of philosophy's two most prestigious international prizes following the 2007 publication of A Secular Age, his latest acclaimed critique of modern life.
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"I'm kind of flattered that he would comment on our bus campaign — though he's not terribly sympathetic," said Justin Trottier, the Toronto-based Freethought official who spearheaded the probably-no-God publicity blitz.

"But I think he misses the point on a number of fronts," argued Trottier. "The point of the campaign was not a response to rising religiosity, it's an affirmation of the rising number of unbelievers. Unbelievers have never been organized to the extent that they are now — whether they call themselves atheists or humanists or freethinkers . . . The movement for science, reason and secularism has never had these numbers."
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http://www.canada.com/life/Atheist+pathetic+Philosopher/1834362/story.html

TAGGED: ATHEISM, CAMPAIGNS, COMMENTARY