Secular Freethought Center

Amazingly some rich intelligent guy has agreed to pay the ~$15000/month rent in order for us to have a secular community center, provided we raise the rest of the money (internet, phone, maintenance etc). It's been really fun so far mostly because of the people. I always enjoy being around intelligent people and it is all the more enjoyable when they are completely reasonable (not having any remnant of childhood beliefs of elves or jesuses). We are going to start getting involved in the campaign to stop the funding of Catholic Schools in Ontario and I may start an initiative to call for an end to the Stem cell ban. It's really great, it's been soo long since I have been around a large and active group of such people and so I only felt I could get small doses of reasonable discussion with a rare few friends in person or here.

As for the center, the idea is for it to be a base for secular groups (we are currently courting the Toronto Humanists) and so give a meeting spot to the intelligent minority. The group I'm with (the TSA) is one group and we hope some others will join but it looks like the skeptics are out (I don't know why but it's some politics). So the task is now to try and find ways to rent the place when we aren't using it to raise money so we can do more campaigns.

Also the progress we have made and experience we have gained is helping other similar groups form in other cities. The prevailing logic is if there are 5 million non-religious people in Canada why are there only a few thousand Humanists. The answer must be (and the reason I never joined) that people don't know about these organizations and they don't feel they will get anything by joining. Naturally atheists are hard to court since they are very independent minded, but, as I feel, it is desirable to make intelligent friends and have a political voice.