This is my first opportunity to post to this site, although my name may be familiar to some of you.  The organization I lead - the Freethought Association of Canada - is behind the famous (or infamous) Canadian atheist bus campaign. 

The following was cross-posted (with minor editing) to my personal blog Equalism Activism and of course to atheistbus.ca.  In the genuine interests of dialogue, which I believe all parties concerned are after, I'd like to post some brief impressions here regarding my recent experiences.

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It’s been getting really exciting recently with the bus campaign.  There’s been an interesting new development since the United Church of Canada got in on the fun.  We are actually succeeding in the primary aim we keep going on about, namely the formation of dialogue.  Over the last two days I’ve engaged in back to back panel discussion, live on air, with the Right Reverend David Giuliano, the highest representative of the United Church of Canada.

Firstly, last night Chris Hammond and I engaged with the Reverend for an hour on CP24 television and jointly fielded half a dozen callers.  The conversation was very level except after one caller gave her point of view that since Canada was a Christian country (talk of begging the question) we had no business impugning that fact, and that a person’s religion was too holy for offending it to be acceptable.  I had to say about three times - over her voice - that Canada has no such thing as a human right to not be offended (not yet anyway).  Luckily, the host of the show is a free speech attorney who worked to defend Ezra Levant, the former editor of the Western Standard who was hauled before the Human Rights commission in Alberta for printing the Mohamed Cartoons.  So Chris and I were in very good company.

This morning I was woken up to a phone-in discussion on a Waterloo, Ontario based radio show for a conversation with the same Reverend Giuliano.  Knowing each other a little better, we now had the opportunity to explore issues of faith and divinity in more depth, and the host prompted us with leading questions like whether atheists were just out for themselves (to which I responded by describing that as a fairly archaic characterization) and whether god was a necessary additive if everyone agreed non-believers could lead moral and deeply satisfying lives.

When the Reverend described how God to him was a transcendental entity which subsumed concepts like beauty, love and ethics, I agreed that such a transcendental belief assisted some, while explaining that many people are able to appreciate the majesty of the universe and lead lives of commitment to deep ethical principles without having to label these values with the imprimateur of God.  Also consider individuals like Gretta Vosper, head of the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity and United Church minister in Scarborough, whose book With or Without God, calls Christians to move towards the use of symbols in place of doctrine and belief.  It was an interesting conversation because without caller interruptions we were able to engage in more of a good natured critique of the other’s viewpoint, always staying positive and converging in some places along the complicated spectrum that joins our worldviews, and in fact concluding with the host expressing his belief that we would make great friends, to which we both readily agreed.

I’m very pleased that precedents such as these are moving atheism into the mainstream.  To respond to criticisms that what we are doing is trivial and pointless, I would point to such examples.  That’s what this campaign is all about.