The loudest voices are often a minority

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday February 9th, 2009

What if I could find a clever way to say that men were better than women? Would you allow me to put up a poster all over town making fun of women?

What if it was saying, in a nice way, of course, that Caucasians were the master race?

How about if we made fun of people with different sexual orientations, or perhaps people who are too tall?

Okay, surely we could make fun of the elderly. . . .

Hopefully the majority of my readers are shaking their heads and asking what I am on about. Fair enough.

Here is what astounds me, religion, especially the Christian religion, is not afforded the same basic rights and protections that we afford almost any other group.

Every time someone wants to go on record attacking religious people for erroneous views, it becomes national news, and everyone weighs in on the argument instead of asking "could you be saying the same sort of thing about any other single group of people?"

You have probably heard the news that the TTC (Toronto Transit Commission) seems to be okay with allowing ads on the buses and subway which read: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

It started in the UK after a comedy writer, Ariane Sherine, saw an evangelical church ad on a bus. In an online blog with a local newspaper she wrote that if she were to declare on London buses that a lion had escaped from the city zoo, she'd be required to give evidence, so why wasn't any required of Christians for their advertising? Sherine hoped to raise enough money for a set of counter-adverts on London buses if enough people pledged £5. Her appeal brought pledges of £140,000 (about $250,000) and the proposed campaign became far more widespread.

Over there, the ads have unleashed a wave of public response, with one devout Christian bus driver in the south of England being supported by management in his refusal to drive a bus adorned with the ad. The slogan has gained attention from some Members of Parliament, who have called on the government to ban it.

I am not trying to be pro or anti these ads; my beef is completely different. Religious fundamentalists, of whatever stripe, account for somewhere around 12 per cent of all religious peoples. I mean there are only 12 per cent of Muslims who are fundamentalist, 12 per cent of Christians, Baha'i, Hindu, Buddhist, you name it.

Now, it is the religious fundamentalists that believe if you do something wrong you are going to burn forever in a lake of fire. Every other religious person believes, in one variant way or another, that God is love; that humanity is progressing towards something. Most religious people also believe that we were created as rational, thinking, inquisitive beings who become scientists and surgeons and surveyors for a reason. By "created," I also mean that solar energy mutated the zygotes in a mud puddle billions of years ago and voila.

Unfortunately it is the fundamentalists who both speak loudest and get heard the most; think Jerry Falwell and Osama bin Laden.

Then you have reactionary bus advertisements that paint everyone with the same brush. God is going to get you if you have fun. . .

Back to my opening paragraph; is there any other group we could paint with one brush and get away with it? No, there is not; it was rhetorical question.

So what of free speech? I have always understood that in order to qualify for free speech the facts have to be straight. As a local politician said to me one time not so long ago, you don't pick fights with people who buy ink by the barrel. The other side of that is that if you are crazy enough to put your opinions down for thousands of people to read, you have to be right, or you will get called on it.

Do you know how long it took for someone to call me on writing that Tim Horton's makes such and such a profit on a cup of coffee? I had a letter in my inbox in three hours from the federation of coffee growers pointing out that I had doubled the profit margin.

This level of accountability is not a bad thing, merely a curious thing when religious slogans are free to make exorbitant claims for or against God that really are not based even on a factual representation of the people on either side of the debate.

That in the end is my pet peeve. I wish people would stop assuming that those loud and outrageous voices are the majority -- and I am talking about politics, religion, health care, journalism, or in fact any expression of opinion.

The majority of people are in fact moderate in their thinking and actions. This especially needs to be said in terms of religion.

It would seem that more arguments, fights, and outright wars are developing around religious intolerance every day, most of which are based on totally false portrayals.

The United Church in Toronto has the best response I can think of. They are buying their own advertising and changing one word: "There probably is a God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life!"