My name’s Jason Thibeault. I’m a Canadian, an atheist, skeptic, feminist, video gamer, and Linux user. I’ve worked in the computer industry for ten years. You might remember me as “that guy whose girlfriend Jodi proposed to him via a Pharyngula ‘I Get Emails’ post“. Yes, I’m that Jason. And now I have the privilege of standing shoulder-and-shoulder with both PZ Myers and local blog-deity Stephanie Zvan of Almost Diamonds (AKA Our Lady of Perpetual Win), who originally helped Jodi organize the whole shebang and started the treasure hunt. Not to mention the dozen other big-fish in this pond with whom I now co-habitate! Thanks again, blog overlord Ed, for this opportunity. I truly hope that my frequent postings of Youtube videos about cats playing with tennis balls befits my new station.

I was raised a Catholic, and broke free of religion shortly after Confirmation, when I was made to promise to be a Catholic for the rest of my life. Such promises don’t sit well with me. I realized I didn’t believe in any of that God mumbo-jumbo at about the same time that I developed a penchant for reading my parents’ Funk and Wagnell’s Encyclopedia for fun. The Hardy Boys novels grew old around then, and I had a desperate thirst for knowledge. It wasn’t the greatest resource to use, but it was there, and it slaked that thirst for a little while. At least until the internet made it into my home via my first 9600 baud modem, anyway.

I became politically aware about the same time George W. Bush was elected for the first time — when I started to realize exactly what America was in for, I was motivated to learn all I could about politics in a very short time. American politics always seems like much more of a battleground than Canadian politics, so I was more often drawn to observe the US than I was my own local concerns.

I believe strongly in the separation of church and state. I don’t care that people have their beliefs, but where those beliefs intersect with public policy, I can’t help but speak up. For the most part, the wall that separates church and state is very intact here in Canada. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is an evangelical Christian, but if he were to express his religious views, the secular voting environment that Canada espouses would backlash against him. Because America’s wall is crumbling, and politicians there are presently evidently engaged in a race to the bottom with more and more aggressive fundamentalists gaining power, I often find the American political scene engaging enough to forget my local politics. Thus, I am a Lousy Canuck indeed.

Bear in mind that I reserve a few rights on this blog. I don’t like to ban people, but I will, if they repeatedly flout direct requests or attempt to proselytize one-sidedly. And if you contact me via any of the services I subscribe to, I absolutely (as it says in my bio) reserve the right to post any such contact. I’ll probably only do it if I consider your contact to be hateful or ridiculous. Otherwise, please, feel free to engage me in discussion on whatever topic is at hand. Please try to keep it on topic though, even if tangentially.

Since I hate using so many “I’s” in a post, we should leave it at that. Please feel free to browse my archives, as I’ve ported them all over from my old blog. There’s several years worth of stuff there, and some of it is even worth reading! I’ll compile a proper list of “must reads” as soon as all the migration kinks are worked out. For now, here’s three of the religion-related posts I like best:

Religion as a Mental Parasite
Why Prayer is Nonsense (five-part series)
In defense of my “meaning of life”

And my most successful skeptical post, which won me an appearance on Minnesota Atheists Talk’s radio show (be sure to look at some of the pingbacks near the end of the comments for further discussion):

If it smells like Funk, it must be astrology

There are a few kinks with this migration to speak of — the Object embed tag is disabled, so any non-Youtube embedded videos are probably broken. And the image library imported properly, but the actual embedded copies of the images are pointing incorrectly due to differences in how this site stores the media. I’ll have to go through my old posts and update as time permits. I’ll of course hit the highlights first. Mind the mess, folks.

And, of course, welcome!