The CBC’s Neil Macdonald embarrassed himself this past week by letting loose on all things religious under the guise of a warning about new Conservative leader Andrew Scheer. “Andrew Scheer says he won’t impose his religious beliefs on Canadians. We’ll see,” says his headline.
In the meanwhile, however, we can worry about the likes of Neil Macdonald imposing his views on us instead.
Mr. Macdonald starts badly by claiming that he is rigorously committed to facts while “religion, though, is something else. It is by definition not fact-based. It is a pure belief system.”
As a scholar of religious studies, I am unaware of any reputable textbook or dictionary that would define religion in this peculiar way.