thejollyroger

I think you underestimate our stupididy :)

If the rest of our culture becomes outdated and as unnecessary as Christianity, then it can fade into history as well. We also have a culture of denying gay rights, abortion rights, womens rights, rights of children and native rights and I'd gladly give up every single one of those parts of our cultural past. Canada was formed in part on all of those ideas as well and that does not mean we should be forced to stay in that mind set. Forced Christianity will take its place along side of the rest of cultural blemishes in history. The only cultural stigma that I want to see Canada retain is the one that sais we are diverse enough and intelligent enough to move past our differences and mistakes and we are prepared to do better in the future. Perhaps that IS the true culture of Canada ?

APPLAUSE !!!! P.S You forgot the catholic clergy as a source of concern...... and statistically speaking they are also more dangerous to children than terrorists.

Perhaps I'm misreading this and I appologise in advance, but it almost sounds like you believe Christianity should have different rights (if not greater rights) than all other regious beliefs ???

Again, can you support this claim with any verifyable literature ?? I'm yet to see literature on a public ban on prayer specifically in Canadian schools. Christianity has no pecking rights as far as religious organizations in Canada. It needs to be treated equally and fairly like all of the rest. However that must include being separate and free from Government and positions of authority. The people come first not the religion.

I think Canada makes a decent effort to be secular. If you look closely you will see that Canada only recognises religions that have a deity. They do not recognise Humanists as a religious organization what-so-ever even though by definition Humanism is a religion. In the US Humanist are fully recognized by the governmennt and in fact allowed to be legally registered as a religious organization. A small oversight in Canada, but the point is that being a truly secular society is very difficult to accomplish. I would conceed that we are very close however and it is the intention of Canada to be so. P.S Christianity did not built Canada...... Canadians did.

Paganism is a buzz word trumped up by the catholic church, generally meaning non-catholic. So, I'd take a guess at saying there are quite a few. The Catholic church considers me a pagan. I have questions for the earlier posters. 1. Someone stated that the lords prayer was taken out of the scholl system by the government. Do you have a source for that statement? 2. I belive that upon request of a religious minority for a prayer room, there are some requirements in Canada to supply this within reason. Can anyone provide the regulations on this ?

Sure, roads are more valuable to society, but people still have to learn that their actions have consequences and they have to behave responsibly or there can be serious repercussions. Be it driving or gambling or drinking: grown-ups have to understand their limits and live within them. By that line of argument, you can also take away police, condoms, birth control; and seatbelts. Just tell them to get a grip right ??? And roll back the legal drinking age and allow smoking as well. We can guage our own behavior right ? It's a very utopian idea to think we should just leave it up to the individual, however it is very unrealistic. People are dying and destroying their lives over VLTs and the Government needs to step in. As for on-line gambling? Another problem, but not at the level of VLTs. Government cannot make broad sweeping decisions for nothing. You need hard facts before you take away individual decision making. The hard numbers concerning VLT's are in the article I posted above. Particular the Canadian safety coucil staes that VLTs are the leading source of problem gambling. The facts are easily measured and a avenue to correct it is extremely clear.

Thats a strawman argument. Roads are a public service, not a revenue generating addictive form of entertainment.

Perhaps this is true. Statistically speaking, the most vunerable are low income males under 30 years of age with minimal education. These are the people who are providing those tax dollars, not Doctors and lawyers who can afford it. VLTs are in walking distance of nearly every home of college student and single parent families. Don't have a car or CPU? go to the bar get drunk and lose your money!!! No problem. Here are a couple of good article for the person that was just getting up yo speed on VLTs. Nova Scotia specific. Very good info here. http://www.gov.ns.ca/ohp/gambling/vlts/index.html Canadian Safety council http://www.safety-council.org/info/community/gambling.html

I don't trust any computer controlled gambling machines because they can manipulate the statistics and produce results which are not truly random. This does not mean the chances of winning are any different but the chances of 'almost' winning are much more than would be expected for a truly random game. This psychologically manipulates gamblers into believing that they should keep playing cause they were 'so close'. That simply is not true. Addictive and couter productive to an enriched society yes, but skewed in their approach no. The simple truth is that human nature is all that is required to fall victim to their addictive nature.

Hello All, School has started again and I was searching for current Canadian policy on prayers in our schools. Does anyone know if there is such a policy in writing somewhere ?