Thursday, October 16, 2008

Ah, Democracy!

Two days ago I got to fulfill my chance to work for Elections Canada at the one of polling stations in my electoral district. It was a long day, but an interesting one too.

One interesting part of my day was seeing just how bad voter turn-out actually is. I shouldn't say I was surprised by this, since the reality of poor voter turn-out is constantly drilled into our heads here in Canada during high school (or, at least it was when I was there) in order that we will all grow up and instantly become good, caring members of the demos as soon as we turn eighteen years old.

Of course this poor turn-out might not necessarily be such a bad thing: if one isn't even bothered to come out and vote, then it may not be unreasonable to assume they don't actually know that much about the issues that a given election is being held over. So perhaps it's better to make no decision at all, rather than an ill informed one.

Then again, our election hasn't generated nearly as much buzz as the American presidential race (and good for them! The amount of interest in politics that race will inspire in young, first time voters is a good thing), and it's easy to get distracted by the politics of our southern neighbour, since the decisions of their president can affect us here almost as much as our own prime minister's governance can.

After about 14 hours at the polls we all packed it in and finished for the night. The Liberal MP won his third term in my electoral district, and Mr. Stephen Harper still gets to be Prime Minister with his minority Conservative Party government.

1 comment:

stuart said...

I am SOO MADD I just have to unload somewhere AND EVERYWHERE!!!!

I am an atheist and I have grown very disheartened by our self-defeatist culture. I was corresponding with one of the biggest atheist bloggers – the guy who guys by the name of ‘Sabio Lantz’ (he acknowledges that this is not his real name) over at http://triangulations.wordpress.com

I told him that he should read this new book called the Real Messiah by Stephan Huller which I had been turned on to by Robert Price. I wanted to reach out to every atheist blogger to tell them that we can finally disprove the entire rationale of Christianity at one fell swoop.

He send me back a nasty email and then proceeds to slam the book in a manner which is worse than anything ever said about the Real Messiah by religious nutbars:

http://www.amazon.com/Real-Messiah-Throne-Origins-Christianity/dp/1906787123/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246919916&sr=8-1

His negative review of this book is a depressing demonstration of the selfishness and self-defeatism that often pervades individuals on our side of the debate:

“My site and many others were spammed for the sale of this book. That alone is enough to stop me purchasing it until I hear amazing reviews from those I trust.”

The point is that I actually sent him links to positive reviews for
the book in Publishers Weekly:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6640240.html&

And a list of New Testament scholars who support the book:

http://plainview.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/jesus-was-not-the-messiah/

The aforementioned site was from a CHRISTIAN BLOG for God’s sake!!!

Look at the objectivity even with these people when compared to us.
Now I am not against someone having their own opinion about a book. ‘Sabio’ or whatever his fake name is can say whatever he wants about the Real Messiah IF HE READ THE BOOK. Yet it seems entirely self-defeatist to me for we atheists to deliberately sabotage a work whose specific intention is to destroy the Christian paradigm.

Unlike our enemies in the Religious Right we are rarely united, politically naïve and basically content to sit around engaging in intellectual masturbation while our rights are systematically stripped away from us.

My intention was not to spam anyone. I was simply trying to find a way for our side to go on the offense for once. We are always on the defensive while they (the religious folks) take shots at us.

I thought the Real Messiah was special because it is centered around a physical object which the author found in the Basilica di San Marco in Venice. It is universally understood to have been taken there by Italian sailors stole from the most ancient Church of St. Mark in Alexandria in the ninth century. Huller demonstrates that the throne goes back much further than that - i.e. all the way to the beginning of Christianity in Egypt.

In any event this throne is the real deal. It has an inscription written out in Hebrew letters and symbols which prove that Jesus was not the messiah of Christianity. Here are pictures of the throne:

http://www.therealmessiahbook.blogspot.com

We have to defeat the myth of Jesus Christ with another myth – a ‘rational myth’ to coin the language of Robert Price.

I am not asking you to ‘join my cause.’ I just want to defeat the oppressive ideas of Christianity with freedom and rational discourse. Is that really too much to ask?