The last time I saw Richard

I picked a nice picture of him, don't you think? I actually did come across a picture of a very morose- looking Richard Dawkins sitting in a cafe but I thought no, better not, I try to keep things above the belt here folks. The last time I saw Richard (Dawkins), I was watching a clip on YouTube of The Agenda with Steve Paiken interviewing Dr.Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss. I've listened to Richard Dawkins talk a number of times and you know the thing that has intrigued me on those occasions, is when I've caught a glimpse of his humanity or his spiritual side. On one occasion I remember he and Stephen Hawking having a televised conversation where in response to Dawkins sighing and looking upward as if to say, what's it all about, Hawking glanced at him and quipped with a tone of indifference, something to the effect of why is this (the big questions) an issue for you?

Well, the answer should be obvious shouldn't it? We're all searching for meaning, we all want to think that somehow it matters that we're here, that deep down sense of human dignity, I am somebody, life matters, doesn't it? So, it was interesting for me to listen to Richard Dawkins talk about getting a lump in his throat, being moved almost to tears when visiting a large telescope. Or Krauss, talking about being inspired by the thought that we are stardust. Gosh, that's another Joni Mitchell song isn't it, two Joni Mitchell songs in one blog, must be because it's Friday! Stay calm, everyone.

Anyway, but here's the thing with the new atheism, often when the new atheists talk, they talk about science as being an end in itself. Is it? I'm sympathetic to some of those ideas to a point, I think okay, perhaps we can measure well-being and misery, success and failure, human flourishing, but then it always happens, I keep thinking. You have a field of study, you look at it, study it, study it some more, break it down to understand it better, and then what? It's all parts, isn't it? Where in that study do things get built up again? How does humpty dumpty get put back together? Are we more than the sum of our parts? Says who? The objective reality is, that in a vast universe that is burning up and winding down with us in it, we're pretty insignificant.

But that lump in the throat, that inspiration, if it's all just matter, stuff acting and reacting against other stuff in the throat, why would it matter if we care or not? Well, having listened to enough secularists along the way, I think I know what some would say. They would admit that there is no ultimate meaning in all of this, but they would quickly rebound in saying that we can create our own subjective meaning.Okay, but why should I accept someone else's subjective existential meaning over my own? And that's the thing with the new atheists, is that they talk about other people's beliefs as delusional, while demanding that you accept their subjective meaning over your own, which is why I'll take Neitszche's unsparing honesty about such things over the new atheists' smily scientism any day. In other words, if it's all just opinion, one person's crap shoot for meaning over another's, I think I'll trust my own intuition.

And I'll tell you why, because I don't see a madman or a Charlatan when I read the New Testament, nor do I see myth as a genre when I read the bulk of the Bible. I see a book that tells it like it is, praise God, that speaks to my deepest needs and aspirations. It's bigger, it's a bigger hope than simply trying for a comfortable life for myself and others in the here and now. I don't mean to knock anyone else's sense of purpose here, that's not my intent, only to speak from my own experience and to acknowledge what is seldom acknowledged in secular circles, that science and technology may have wonderful outcomes in many respects, but science is often credited with much more than it can possibly offer on it's own.

In concluding, science is not on the side of atheism. The assumption that it is amounts to subjective secular interpretations of science. Dawkins himself appeared to agree with Krauss in the Steve Paiken interview, that (evolution is not inconsistent with theology), nor is the big bang, nor is the information content of DNA or cosmic fine-tuning (I would add). But while science is not on the side of secularism, it appears that our secular culture has an appetite for expressions of secular opinion. These are two qualified scientists who are talking popular level secular philosophy while not being adequately trained in philosophy to deconstruct their own arguments. Nor am I, for the record, but I enjoy listening to people who are, and it sounds reasonable to me to think that with theism, unlike atheism, there is the possibility of an objective foundation for rationality and ethics and purpose and aesthetics, in the groundwork of an intelligent designer. And that for me, is a thought that truly inspires, even if I'm objectively wrong.


thanks for listening,

M.A. Harvery


The Agenda:"Rise of the New Atheists"  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEClFXjx_fQ

and here's Joni: "The last time I saw Richard"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C01MY7MlJd4

image: Richard Dawkins





Finally, I decided to include this, for anyone who may be interested.  This is the third part of an interview with William Lane Craig. Dawkins has refused to debate Craig, but Krauss has engaged in some recent dialogues. Craig is a double PhD. in philosophy and theology.

Here's the link:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/mediaf/podcasts/uploads/RF_Podcast_Examining_the_Content_of_the_Krauss_Debates_Part3_2013.mp3

The entire series and debates, etc., can be found at:

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/reasonable-faith-podcast/latest

and here's a YouTube page containing the Australia dialogues/ debates between Craig and Krauss:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=craig+krauss&oq=craig+krauss&gs_l=youtube.3..35i39l2j0l4j0i10l2j0l2.27749.31940.0.32329.12.12.0.0.0.0.97.934.12.12.0...0.0...1ac.1.11.youtube.1FY47wY2wR0

Phobias here there and everywhere (weapons)

I have four little girls, all quite young, and they're all afraid of spiders. In fact, they seem to be afraid of anything with more legs than the fluffy, sometimes very large, dogs and cats in the neighborhood that they're always running up to and begging passers-by to pet. But for whatever reason, where the littlest of critters are concerned, my girls seem to recoil with fear, as sometimes I am kept from getting to bed because they're still awake and sobbing,"there's a spider in my room." Get me a shoe girls, or better yet, get your own shoe," I sometimes have been known to say from my soft and weary pillow.

But sometimes I tell my kids this story of when I was a little girl and I was also paralyzingly afraid of spiders, until that day when I was looking through some cardboard boxes in the old farmhouse where I was raised in rural Nova Scotia. I must have felt something strange when I stopped what I was doing and looked down to realize that a very large spider with very long legs had landed on my very bare foot."What did you do Mom," they then ask, their eyes big with anticipation, knowing the story. I then open my eyes big and pause dramatically, and then lean towards them as they get excited, "well I jumped and I screamed and I shrieked and I ran, and you know what?" I realized sometime after that that I wasn't afraid of spiders anymore.

I'd be lying if I said that I've never experienced anxiety about the sorts of things I'm writing about these days. Much like the neurotic, we politically incorrects often know we're not P.C. I'd also be lying if I said I've never experienced social anxiety in approaching or befriending people who I know hold very different views than myself. But I think it gets easier, dare I say. And you know what else, as someone from a rural background myself, I think we should have more compassion for people who may not be in a position to meet people who hold different views than themselves. I say that knowing, that's where some of the political divide is, between rural and urban, between parts of the world that are more open, and parts of the world that are unaccustomed to technology, media, development, etc.

Sometimes it is a phobia, a fear of the unknown, a fear of the other that drives people's behavior, but I'm inclined to think that often it is also that people have a different set of reference points, a different holy book, a different culture, a different language, political system, history, etc. What bothers me is when I hear the term "phobia" thrown around as a weapon, or "anti," and especially the word "hate" thrown around as a psychological tactic used to intimidate and silence people who are well-different. Ironically, it appears that when people fail to really engage those who hold different views, they aren't acting in a spirit of openness themselves. It becomes about power, doesn't it? They aren't trying to understand the other person's reference points, the things that are dear to them. Ironically, it often appears that they are acting from fear or judgement themselves, as they tell others not to judge.

I'm not saying that people don't sometimes have a right to be frustrated, or have legitimate concerns. Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not telling anyone what to think here. I'm just asking for the right to respectfully disagree, without being labelled and harassed. What I am suggesting is that rather than throwing around words like "hate" and "anti" and "phobia," that we truly begin to understand where different groups of people are coming from as a means to more effective dialogue. Maybe, just maybe, both sides have a point, and maybe we can learn something from each other's differences, as we begin to move forward.


Thanks for listening,

M.A. Harvey



Jars of clay: Weapons

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojZQwCJk2hY


Image: Yip, that's him!

Slow change and redundancies

I got it all, looking back, how the world was created in 6 literal days, how the world was oh so new, when my world was new too, being all of 11 years old. The Bible believing summer camp where time still passes slow in my memory, like a southern drawl in a long skirt on a summer's day, and this Canadian kid trying to understand why people looked at me funny when I said I was Catholic. But for one week in the then summer my days were filled with big ball volleyball and sermons to make you fear God and man and rock and roll. It's a long time ago now, though it left a mark on my psyche and a spark in my imagination, a hope of something more and though new conversations seem to have found me over the years, an old debate still catches my ear now and then.

But I've grown up, and everything is complicated when you grow up, at least that's how it seems to me, answers elude and venom ignites, but compromise seems to sit snugly in the middle of my newfound balance. I don't care anymore if Darwin was right, in fact I could not care less. I'm not threatened by whether the earth is thousands or billions of years old-it matters not, because all time and material process really demonstrate on a theistic worldview is what a friendly greeter at a local church door who's walked with the Lord for 40 years will tell you when you're down, that the Lord's mill grinds slow but it grinds fine. Or something like that, but in other words, often God takes his time. Unless you talk to a Biblical literalist, but then you'd have to go looking for one of those, but most of us I expect have mellowed on the age old controversy. But if you stop to think about it, evolution was never a threat to theism, though an anti-intellectual strain of American culture may have felt so in another time. Whether God created in billions of years or thousands of years, what difference does it make to the average theist now?

I've heard it said though, that prior to Darwin, atheism was not taken all that seriously, could that be true, that atheists once kept quiet? It's hard to imagine isn't it, those of us that have grown up in a hardened secular culture, but when Dawkins says that evolution made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist, what would happen if it was demonstrated that there were problems with evolutionary theory? How would the now secular institution respond? After decades of making the rest of us feel like we're all bumbling idiots for believing our senses, that if it looks like a designed duck, well it simply cannot be...even if that duck is no longer assumed to be constituted by simple self-assembling 19th century inspired blobs. That duck has DNA, a self-assembling library of genetic code. Code... as in programming? Now this would be the part where I get all sheepish, as opposed to ducky, because I know that I'm just another baa in the barnyard of a very complicated subject, but does it not seem like the upwardly mobile specimens of courtly opinion have some splainin' to do?

Coming down to earth, I'm not going to pretend to be equipped to discuss this controversy in full, but here's what I don't understand, why is it always assumed that theists are the only ones who could possibly have an agenda? A lot has changed since the 19th century, since the HMS Beagle expedition, not to mention a famous caricature of a 1925 trial, but no amount of new evidence seems to shake our commitment to a Darwinian view. I try to keep an open mind, maybe the answer is somewhere in the middle. I try to listen to both sides, but I'm acknowledging what has been an overlooked truth for a very long time, that a sophisticated theism has nothing to fear of evolution, but evolution remains the lifeline of a secular worldview, a secular worldview that has quite arguably become institutionalized. It's not a scientific argument, I know that, but I think the emotional and personal and spiritual nature of this discussion is often overlooked.  And there is no neutral ground, contrary to popular opinion, materialism has metaphysical implications too. I say this while qualified academics are being punished for seeing the obvious implications of systematic complexity in the building blocks of life. But interestingly, they are only noting what most of us observe consciously or unconsciously all the time, the intelligibility and apparent design of an ordered, predictable universe, the same order and predictability that makes science itself possible.

So, theists are not the ones whose worldview would be shaken by the possibility of problems with evolutionary theory. And yet it is theists or any theory with possible design implications that is assumed to be false from the get-go, not that ID's critics are stopping to think about it long enough to understand ID before dismissing it. As for me, I'm an example of what I suspect is the real reason why evolution has never gained the unquestioning acceptance of the masses. It's not about fundamentalist religion, it's about the conundrum of something coming from nothing and the mystery of how one species could morph into another. To the common, it makes no sense. We just don't see it happening in the barnyard. No sensible person would deny that micro evolution is a fact, varieties of plants and animals, variation within a species, but supporters of evolution seem to care little about distinguishing between small changes or variety within a species and the enormity of what macro evolution would entail. To my knowledge there remains to be no lab-demonstrated, predictably repeated evidence of macro-evolution. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I remember a minister saying with sympathy once, that it would have been hard for people to realize that the sun didn't revolve around the earth, that it would have shaken people's views about so much, about themselves, about a human being's place in an insecure world. As theists we've been analyzed, put on the couch, summed up and diagnosed. It's not hard to imagine that people might seek comfort in an insecure world, but neither is it hard to imagine that some people might seek comfort of another kind, the thought that they will never be summed up themselves, that there are no absolutes by which to be measured or need to be forgiven...and maybe if this life is not so bad as human history has often been, is it that unlikely that some people might prefer to live it out in relative western ease, without the thought of an overseer or accountability to an ultimate moral authority? In other words, often the psychological arguments that are used against theists are a double-edged sword that cuts though our mutual subjectivity.

In nearing end, I was watching this clip the other weekend and I might have been sickened by it, if I hadn't seen so much of this sort of thing, that I just rolled by eyes. Stephen Meyer, I.D. proponent, trying to talk about science of all things, while a Darwin advocate had the usual rapt attention of listener support and sympathy, while she/they typically choose to limit scientific findings to suit her/their naturalistic expectations. Just once, I'd like to see a reporter question an evolutionist's motives, their worldview assumptions or potential bias. A few suggestions when broaching a subject with potential secular worldview implications, please stick to the science, just the facts please, what does a 1925 trail have to do with present day research, are you familiar with the latest research? What do you say to Dr. Meyer's point?

It's sad, but just once, I wish that the shoe could be on the other foot, that some of the questions along the road could be directed to the other side. It shouldn't be hard to explain the emergence of a duck, a simple duck to an audience that has long been taught to assume that a duck would just naturally emerge on a very long arduous evolutionary sideroad, but is it quite so easy to explain to an educated audience, the emergence of specified assembly directions inside the duck? The audience wants to know, where did the information come from? How was it assembled? What is the likelihood of complex machinery occurring from an unguided natural process? And finally, we might ask, at what point is a positive case for design characteristics, considered alongside the best evidence for evolution?

But you know, for me personally the sad thing about this discussion is that our present culture of slow change and institutionalized redundancies is that it is limiting the scope of human imagination and inquiry. When Dawkins says that some questions are the questions of a three year old he is right, they are, but those same unbridled questions represent the explorations of many of the greatest minds in human history, many of whom were theists whose personal convictions lead to the development of western science. The fact that it is no longer acceptable to ask unbridled questions, what does that say about our present day culture? If I may suggest, it's a teleological self-portrait, a purposeless design of a postmodern mind.


Thanks for listening,

M.A. Harvey


DNA image:





A few interesting links as starting points:

http://apologeticsuk.blogspot.ca/2012/02/one-long-bluff-review-of-richard.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a-h88ziYA4

http://www.idthefuture.com/2013/06/the_michael_medved_show_weekly_8.html

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4050638/the_coding_found_in_dna_surpasses_mans_ability_to_code_stephen_meyer/

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/04/revisiting_the058771.html

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4138621/the_digital_code_of_dna_solid_proof_of_intelligent_design_dr_donald_e_johnson/

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3507639/signature_in_the_cell_by_stephen_meyer/

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4104651/stephen_c_meyer_the_scientific_basis_for_intelligent_design/


Finally, here's that Myers/ Scott interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYfcOtLqbgo

Seeing red being blue

When I was a young kid, oh maybe it wasn't that long ago, but it always seems like you were younger when you're just past an old way of thinking. But I do remember looking back, even when I was in the debating club in high school, and really not understanding where people were coming from, who held different views than myself. Even earlier than that, I remember staring at the television and seeing signs as a pro-lifer,"keep your laws off my body" and wondering as a kid, don't they know that's wrong? I just couldn't understand it.

I think I get it now, it's the right of someone to make that choice at the end of the day, as hard as it may be for me to understand, why someone would make that choice. (Sigh). But I do remember thinking when I was younger, associating the word liberal more with the word libertine, to be quite honest. Now that I'm older, I think I get that it has more to do with liberty.

But you know the funny thing, I don't think of myself, speaking personally, as being liberal or conservative. I just think of myself as a Christian, a follower of Jesus, a person of faith. That's what I want on my tombstone folks, Margaret Harvey...walked by faith. I don't want any other partial or partisan or political tag attached to me, other than that I did my best to live out my faith as best I could, grit and all.

But sometimes I've reflected on conservatism and liberalism, and I think it would do us good as a society that seems to be becoming more and more polarized to remember the heart of the traditional political spheres. If liberal is about liberty and the rights of the individual, conservatism is a concern for the society as a whole and the needs of the society to remain cohesive, the best interest of the whole, the needs of the group, or at least that's how I've come to think about it in terms of social issues. I don't care for the term progressive, because it seems to suggest that if you're not on the progressive bandwagon that you're well -what's the opposite of progressive? You tell me. I prefer the traditional terms, liberal and conservative. Once again, liberal stressing the worth and dignity of the individual and conservative stressing the needs of the society, and the best interest thereof. There's a balance in there somewhere, right?

But you know, the occurrence that brought this reflection to mind, is that recently a Toronto Star reporter infiltrated a faith-based healing ministry in Toronto. The name of the organization is Living Waters. For me, this hits home as a person of faith, because I attended a Living Waters program myself not that long ago. For me, as someone from an emotionally abusive background, it was a positive emotional and spiritual healing experience. I benefited from the program, in short. The way in which this was done by the Toronto Star reporter upsets me, the deceit, the trickery, the breach of trust. This reporter lied about who he was, in short. In the articles that I read, there seemed to be little regard for the rights of people like myself, who want and actively seek out faith based healing programs, and the right of churches or faith-based organizations to carry out similar programs in accordance with their own beliefs. Nobody is forced into these programs, they are strictly voluntary.

Now I try to be fair, that's what I do, I try to be fair, and I try to look at things from different perspectives. I'm not involved in the leadership of Living Waters, I was only a program participant. For a better answer, one might want to talk to someone who would actually know their policies, but the sense I have is that generally speaking, the mistake that has sometimes been made by faith-based healing ministries is to try to change sexual orientation, which admittedly has lead to a lot of hurt for some people. If this is the complaint, to some degree at least, I understand and accept his basic general criticism. I have another blog piece that deals with that ideological divide in more depth. See: http://margaretannharvey.blogspot.ca/2013/09/defining-our-terms-heart-of-matter.html     
                  
That's a whole discussion in and of itself, as to what "healing" looks like, but I think that in that this issue is so emotionally and politically charged, and when it becomes more about what you're supposed to say or what you're opinion is supposed to be (sigh), let's just say that I'm skeptical of this reporter's coverage of Living Waters. Personally, I don't think for a minute that same-sex attraction is as simple as people like to make it, and let's be frank, that's where the criticisms arise, from supporters of the gay community. Nobody seems all that bothered by efforts to help people recovering from divorce, abuse, etc. And yet that is the 95% of people that Living Waters attempts to help with the minimal resources that they have. Little thought seems to be given to the needs of the vast majority of those people who are suffering in aiming to discredit and defund a program that is largely run by volunteers who give generously of their personal time. Nor is there any thought to the scope of mental illness in our culture or the connection of addictions or abuse to mental health issues and the inadequacy of services that are out there for people with limited means. I've lived it, frankly, and Living Waters was one of the few times in my life that I felt like someone took the time to listen. "There's a need," is a very believable quote that I remember hearing from a living waters volunteer. Yes, there is a need, and it appears that somehow in this process this professional journalist failed to observe that need. There is a need, and these are charitable programs in local churches that are helping to meet that need. Shame on the Toronto Star and Graham Slaughter, while they're attempting with a very narrow scope and a very broad brush to discredit the work of dedicated volunteers in our urban communities!

In continuing, my experience of Living Waters is that the program tends to be largely self-directed, as in, what would you like to talk about or pray about? What would you like us to help you with? In terms of the basic program, again, I know it to be fairly general in it's approach, and individuals speak from their own experience which frankly-they are entitled to. It would be true, I expect, that at some point a participant may not be suitable for the program, but I think one must keep in mind that these are church programs. If I may be so bold, I wouldn't go to Italy and complain about how everyone keeps speaking Italian. When in Rome..expect frittatas. I reserve my right to an opinion at the end of the day, bottom line, and am taking a stand for religious freedom here, which appears from where I'm standing to be going the way of the Greco-Roman Empire. Furthermore, I don't think it's that unreasonable of an idea to think that there could be environmental influences involved with same-sex attraction for some people at least. In much the same way that we ask the nature/ nurture question with most other issues, I don't think that's an unfair question to ask or consider.

My understanding is that much of the APA's direction on this issue is activist rather than research based. I understand that there is a very legitimate concern for LGBT rights that is driving much of the discussion that surrounds these issues, I think it may take years if not decades before LGBT issues can really begin to be viewed through an objective lens. My point is quite simple and stems from the personal narratives that I have heard which are very diverse. I expect that will be the conclusion of professionals as this controversy settles down in time (that individual narratives vary considerably), as those rights issues are addressed and understandable demands for equality are met. I can hope at least, that in time there will be more room for varying opinions, both professional and personal, but until then I acknowledge the bulk of that as my personal perspective at this time. Regardless of my opinion however, what does remain a fact, is that there is a substantial community of people who have struggled with these issues but yet choose to identify with their conservative faith communities rather than with their personal struggles with same-sex attraction, and this community is largely ostracized by the mainstream popularized view.

But for me, what I want people to hear when they're reading this, is that I affirm that it should be up to the individual to sort out what they wish to sort out on their own time with respect that there will be different narratives for different people, and not force one view on a whole group of people. I just want a faith based option to be available to persons who want that option, is that too much to ask? I think there is an understanding at least with some people that I've talked to in faith-based healing ministries that this is a complex issue, but again, Living Waters could give you a better answer on that themselves. And that's what I don't understand with this reporter's actions. Christian ministries are an outreach to the community, and lying is a sin if you're a devout Christian. If he had questions, why didn't he just ask, in an open-hearted spirit of dialogue and inquiry? Who did he think he was infiltrating -CSIS -on questions of national security?

More importantly, I would like to point out that a first point of Christian theology is that we're all broken people in need of redemption. Nobody is in a position to judge anyone else. I think there is an assumption in the culture that these ministries are somehow trying to hurt the gay community when in reality I think the truth is much the opposite, that many of these controversial ministries started before these issues were mainstream in churches or in secular media. I think that says something, that as much as we've made mistakes and learned along the way, that many of the people involved in these kinds of ministries are people like myself if I may say, who have a heart for the marginalized, and a desire to reach out to people who are hurting. These were ministries from the get-go, who were attempting to reach out to a community of people who have been traditionally marginalized by the larger society and in the church. 

In nearing close, I think it's important to stress, having participated in a Living Waters program myself, is the understanding that I gained during that process of how important confidentiality is in a program like Living Waters, and that's what makes me angry. Can you imagine, and this is fiction (any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidence), but take a moment, imagine that you have a woman who was raped on one couch, a man who was sexually abused as a child on another hypothetical couch, someone who's struggled with intimacy in relationships for all of their adult life, to finally find a program where you slowly begin to open up, knowing that you were told that your privacy would be respected, to find, a considerable length of time into a program that someone of another name was actually a reporter...do the math. And people like this only seem to be concerned with the brokenness of people who agree with them. Imagine that.

It upsets me. It also upsets me, getting back to my opening paragraphs, in talking about the principles of respect for the individual, the traditional principles of historic liberalism, in assessing what I've observed so much of in the media in recent years, in terms of how these controversial issues are covered.  More specifically, in terms of how GBLT issues are covered in the media. Namely, everyone seems to hand pick the stories (and this is on both sides to be fair), that fit with their own views. Trust me, you're not going to hear the stories of happily average gay families in socially conservative publications, nor are you going to hear about the person who's conservative Christian faith has positively impacted their struggle with same-sex attraction in liberal articles, posts, etc. (Sigh).

But they are both out there! I'm not asking anyone to agree with me here, if people do, gosh that would be really nice, but I'm one of the very few people I know of writing on these issues, who's actually trying to leave room for people to disagree with me. Does that make me liberal? Shocker to me if it does, but then again, I never did dogmatically identify with either political sphere. But wouldn't it be something if someone like this Toronto Star reporter, were actually to leave room for Living Waters, and the people like myself who would like to be able to say (and be heard in saying), thanks for your tax-deductable donation, it made a difference and we appreciate it! Please don't try to take our right to make decisions for ourselves, or the support of the few people who've supported us. If you don't like it, just don't go there, you know, kinda' like a strip club. Isn't that what liberals are fond of telling conservatives? Just-run along. It doesn't concern you. But I'm not going to say that. I'm going to say that it's a big enough world, for us to disagree and remain respectfully -civil                                                                                                                                          

Thanks for listening,

Margaret A.E. Harvey



Toronto Star article including statement from Living Waters:

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/10/05/toronto_christian_program_tries_to_heal_gays.html

taken from the above:

Women and men participate in a Living Waters program  to address a range of personal issues, -from sexual abuse to addiction, from anger problems to low self-esteem, from sexual identity to divorce. The vast majority of people who enroll in Living Waters want freedom from addiction and healing from abuse, about 5% of participants have unwanted same-sex attraction.  With ongoing research we have grown in our awareness that it is highly unusual for an individual to shift from being same-sex attracted to being exclusively heterosexually attracted and we discuss with our leaders and volunteers the importance of not promising this unusual kind of "change."

Living Waters Canada