Alom Shaha writes:

I’ve been delighted to find that The Young Atheist’s Handbook is being used in schools by teachers like Laura Cooper who wrote to tell me:

“I recently read your book, The Young Atheists Handbook, and would just like to say as a teacher of Religious Studies how useful I have found it. It is exactly the kind of book I have been looking for to use with my students, in order to help them to develop a more nuanced understand of Atheism.

I myself am currently completing a masters degree in Education and decided to focus my final research report on the issue of including atheism in Religious Education. I do appreciate how busy you are but I wondered if perhaps I could ask you to respond to some of the questions I have been asking other teachers during my research to gain your perspective on this topic? I have included the questions below

(1) How do you think atheism should be handled within Religious Education?

(2) What do you see are the benefits of including atheism in Religious Education?

(3) How would you respond to somebody who said that including atheism in Religious Education is illogical?

(4) At what point during their secondary education should students be introduced to Atheist beliefs in Religious Education?

Many thanks again for writing such an insightful book – I am already lending my copy out to a number of my GCSE students and have recommended it to my head of department.”

Laura has kindly said I can share her email and my response to it here. So, here are my answers to Laura’s questions:

By Emanuel de Kadt

As a survivor of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and having been raised in a liberal Jewish family, I held on to my rather wobbly religious beliefs for a long time.  In Brighton, where I have lived since 1969, I was actively involved in the Progressive Synagogue, in spite of feeling unhappy about many of the “certainties” proclaimed even in that open-minded environment.

My professional background is in sociology, and at the University of Sussex I worked for almost three decades in development studies on the social issues arising in poor countries.  But in the second half of the 1990s, for reasons of no interest here, I returned to the area of religion and society on which I had worked early in my academic career, having done a study in Brazil during the 1960s on Catholic Radicals – the priests and laypersons who both stood up against the military dictatorship and militated for progressive change in the church.  A very great deal has changed in the world since then: today it is radicals of a very different kind, at the opposite end of the spectrum, that demand our attention.

So I began to think about those modern-day radicals, now called fundamentalists, who are found in all major religions.  They are people who know it all, “because God told them so”.  In the first instance they want their co-religionists to accept their views, even impose these on them; in many cases they also have designs on others, further afield.  I was rather surprised to find out that such assertiveness had increased in the course of recent decades, during a time when religion was said to have been in decline.  In fact, quite the opposite is true: its reach and hold have been growing, and more conservative modalities have come more strongly to the fore.

That became visible quite a while ago in the Roman Catholic Church, in the reaction to the radicals I got to know in the ‘sixties, and to that most unusual Pope, John XXIII, who was minded to loosen the centralised authority structure of the Church.  Every single Pope since then has reasserted Papal authority while also moving the Church firmly back into traditional theological ground, and ensuring it was kept there through judicious appointments of conservatives as Cardinals.  There is a nuance, here: the Catholic Church has for long had well-developed social and economic doctrines, and these  – with the exception of anything to do with sex – have on the whole been progressive, notably with regard to poverty and inequality.

Among Jews the issues are bound up with the social and political dynamics in the state of Israel, and the conflict with the Palestinians over parts of the land supposedly given to the Jews by God.  There are those who actively pursue the implications in the political arena, aiming to speed up the coming of the Messiah, while others are ‘quietists’, content to let events take their course.  Diaspora Jews may be Zionists or not, but they cannot distance themselves completely from the issues around the question of a Jewish state, and its biblical justifications.  As for non-believing Jews, though they do not see the Bible literally as God’s word, many of them regard it as broadly valid insofar as it deals with history.  And while religious political parties have existed in Israel since its foundation, parties for which being Jewish is a central issue – in explicit contrast to the non-Jews in and surrounding Israel – are a very recent phenomenon.  So religion in a broad sense has strengthened its grip on Israeli society, too.

Perhaps the most striking change in the world is the rise of Muslim assertiveness and fundamentalism.  An aspect of this has been the emergence of associated violence, both as between persons who hold to different versions of Islam – most notably, of course, Sunni and Shi’a – and between Muslims and ‘non-believers’.  Some time ago one might still have argued (and I did) that violence was not the central issue, in spite of the fact that many Muslims have sympathy for violent ‘martyrs’.  But it is difficult to deny that in recent years such violence has come increasingly to the fore, however much Islamic leaders condemn it.  While all fundamentalists know that they are right, among Muslims that belief is also strongly held by the mainstream: it is unquestionable that Islam is the superior religion, one to which all mankind must eventually adhere.  This is a belief held even by most Islamic progressives (yes, there are progressive Muslims) – but they do not identify themselves as such institutionally, in contrast to organisations of Christian or Jewish progressives.

All this has relevance to broader themes of interest to humanists, such as human rights and multiculturalism, themes that are also explored in the book, Assertive Religion, which I eventually put together, and which has been published recently.  It is a book with a point of view, and to an extent it even is polemical.  In weighing up the impact of religion I have tried to be even-handed: there is much that is positive about the effect of religions and religious people on society, and concrete historical examples are not hard to find.  Yet over time my own perspective has become increasingly critical, even while I have tried hard to maintain academic objectivity.  Many actions undertaken ‘in the name of God’ have manifestly negative consequences; the justifications given are beginning to sound increasingly hollow.

We seem to be living in a time when faith and religion are having, or trying to have, a disproportionate effect on people, politics and society; a time, moreover, in which tolerance and mutual understanding are under pressure, increasing the risks of violence and political instabilities, to the detriment of all.  Ultimately, we need to insist that our multicultural societies will not be served by support for beliefs, held by an apparently still growing proportion of the population, which elevate religion into the be-all and end-all of life.  Humanists have an important role to play, here.

About the author: Emanuel de Kadt is professor emeritus in the department of cultural anthropology at Utrecht University. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including Catholic Radicals in Brazil; Tourism: Passport to Development?; Promoting Equity: A New Approach from the Health Sector (with Renato Tasca); and The Public-Private Mix in Social Services: Health Care and Education in Chile, Costa Rica and Venezuela (with Elaine Zuckermann).

Sectarianism in Northern Irish education continues to exist, with more than 92% of children attending either  Protestant or Catholic schools. But there are currently no plans by the Northern Irish Assembly to stop this sectarian divide in education.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/education/integrated-education-is-ignored-amid-slew-of-suggestions-29214348.html

Robin Wilson argues that Northern Ireland’s chronic divisions could cost as much as £1.5 billion a year.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/news-analysis/there-are-no-arguments-to-oppose-integrated-education-29214376.html

By Samuel Lawes

He sits in fresh morning sunlight
- the first man -
leafing through a new Queen Elizabeth bible.
Underlining.

He’s naked, eating figs with gusto.
He sips a brandy. Eyes the apples.
The charm in those blue eyes
has birds singing Beethoven’s 5^th.

Catch-22? He prefers Verdi
but only a miracle could have them singing
“Always miserable is he who confides
in Her his unwary heart…”

Yet he debates aesthetics with them.
He debates cruelty with cats; logic with chimpanzees.
The Cow and Monkey beg him to recant.
The solipsistic worm
would have him eat dirt and grovel.

He laughs and sips his brandy.
“In this new Eden,” he thinks, “we’ll rewrite the rules.”
The beauty of the garden is his unfailing inkwell.
As he begins to write, he suspect very strongly

that he has all his fun still ahead of him.

By Burt Flannery

According to the latest United Kingdom census, published in 2012, around 25 percent of the population no longer believes in God, an increase of eight percent in only six years.  The European average is higher still.  Scandinavians, for example, with their atheist majorities, have traversed much farther along the road to rejection of observant gods and extravagant ritual.  Their countries are among the most advanced, prosperous, peaceful and co-operative in the world and the people have found new ways to be kind to one another without agonising over a spy in the sky, an ever-watchful and judgemental God.

The large increase in the proportion of the United Kingdom’s unbelievers cannot be appropriated entirely to disaffection with either God or religion.  The other factor is simply this: as members of the older generation die, their unconditional belief is not being conserved by a sceptical younger generation.  The religious baton is not being passed on as unerringly as in yesteryear.  Whatever doubts there may be about the educational standards of today, the young are generally better informed than their forebears ever were.  This is an age of communications the like of which has never been seen before.  Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist and developer of the World Wide Web (WWW), is to be applauded for not seeking to enrich himself by surrounding his invention by a wall of patents.  Instead, the WWW became publicly available and ushered in a new age of enlightenment.  News, debates and opinions are available to everyone, 24 hours a day, and these encourage people, particularly the inquisitive young, to ask just one more question.  This is an entirely different scenario from that pertaining to the Age of Enlightenment that took place in 18^th century Europe and America.  As a cultural movement with the aim of reforming society using reason, it rejected the influence of faith, revelation, superstition and tradition believing in the advancement of knowledge through science.  Intellectual interchange was seen as the way forward whilst opposing intolerance and the many abuses perpetrated by both church and state.  It was, however, largely a movement by intellectuals for intellectuals and, despite flourishing for over 100 years, it could not be sustained.  It had not permeated the grass roots of society who remained ignorant of its ideals and noble intent.  In contrast, nowadays, almost everyone is exposed to a thousand times more information than could possibly have been imparted during the Enlightenment.  It is the impact of the age of communications on knowledge, opinion and evidence-based decision making that is pushing religion to the sidelines.  The young are increasingly reluctant to accept traditionally held views and it is, primarily, this that is hastening the move towards secularism.

They are told that Moses parted the waters of the Red Sea and that dead people were brought back to life, that Jesus was able to walk on water and that Mohammed travelled from Mecca to Jerusalem on a winged horse at a speed that would embarrass a Space Shuttle.  The younger generation finds these scriptural tales lacking in credibility simply because they are impossible.  Whilst tales such as these may serve to aggrandise religion for their elders, they serve only to devalue it in the minds of the young.  Why, they ask, despite centuries of repression, bloodshed and forced conversions is only about one half of the world’s population monotheistic?  Why, if only half the world believes in him, hasn’t God ordained a unity of faith?  To be told that it’s because he gave mankind free will is, to them, a particularly feeble answer.

Young people now know that the Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago which is emphatically at variance with scriptural accounts.  They are aware that fossil and DNA evidence age the first single-celled organism, a prokaryote, at around 3.6 billion years and that the first creature with a complex cell structure, a eukaryote, did not appear for almost another two billion years.  Such an inordinate length of time, they reason, is irreconcilable with an omnipotent, supernatural creator, namely God.  They also know that the first mammal, tiny and shrew-like, appeared around 225 million years ago after a further elapse time of nearly two billion years.  Surely, of all the arguments that can be arraigned against the existence of God, it is the argument from time that is the most compelling.

It is claimed by creationists that an animal as complex as a horse, for example, must have been designed which implies that there must have been a designer.  It is perfectly true that, constituting billions of cells, the horse is highly complex and if it had suddenly materialised without any historical lineage deep into its      primordial past, one would suspect it was the work of a supernatural deity.  On the contrary, however, scientists have demonstrated that the horse is the product of millions of years of Darwinian evolution and natural selection.  With greater knowledge of the natural world than was ever available to their forebears, young people know that a single design cannot take millions of years to implement.  If one can speak of design at all, such a time lapse would involve countless designs and re-designs simulating evolution in the absence of a supernatural designer.  An omnipotent deity would, after all, get the design right first time and would have no need of continual modification.

Recognition of the world’s imperfections also causes the young to question God’s existence.  In the words of Lucretius, the ancient Roman poet and philosopher:

“Had God designed the world, it would not be

A world so frail and faulty as we see.”

Examples of poor design are illness, disease, predation, natural disasters, evil, cruelty and murder (particularly on religious grounds).  If the Yersinia pestis bacterium, the cause of the Black Death of the Middle Ages, had been just a few percentage points more virulent, the whole of Europe’s population (and possibly the world’s) would have been extirpated.  As it was, 100 million people died.  Today, mosquitos act as a vehicle for many disease-causing viruses, transferring them to humans without themselves exhibiting any symptoms.  They are estimated to transmit disease to more than 700 million people annually resulting in over two million fatalities.  Young people rightly wonder how all of this can be part of a benevolent creator’s design.  Was it really part of God’s plan for man to co-exist with countless micro-organisms endowed with the capacity to wipe him out?  If, for some inexplicable reason, it suited God’s purpose to fill the world with harmful bacteria, wouldn’t it have made sense to equip humans with a prophylactic immune system instead of the delicate one afforded them?

When Sir David Attenborough, our most respected broadcaster, was asked whether his observation of the natural world had given him faith in a divine creator, he responded by making reference to the Loa loa parasitic worm, also known as the eye worm.  He said:

“My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things.  But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, a worm that’s going to make him blind.  And I ask them, ‘Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child’s eyeball?’  Because that doesn’t seem to me to coincide with a God who’s full of mercy.”

The only ‘evidence’ for God perceived by young people is based on aberrant holy text.  The more they apply logic and reason, the more they realise that the scriptures are works of fiction: fabricated, abridged and adulterated.  The great Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, wrote in a letter to John Adams, his friend and  predecessor:

“The whole history of these books (the gospels) is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it.”

He also wrote, in his latter years:

“Fix Reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion.  Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if   there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason than of blindfolded fear.”

The Book of Genesis purports that Adam was created the first man on Earth about 6,000 years ago but it has been scientifically established that modern man (Homo sapiens) first appeared almost 200,000 years earlier.  These early humans were polytheistic in that they ascribed anything they could not understand to a panoply of gods whom they constantly sought to appease.  It is clear that polytheistic religions have existed for many thousands of years and are widespread even today.  However, according to Genesis, seminal events took place around 4,000 years ago during the life of the Hebrew, Abraham, and the advent of monotheism.  It is as if, at this time, God thought to himself:

“Well, thousands of millions of years have elapsed since I created planet Earth.  Polytheism’s had a good run so I think it’s high time the Earthlings knew about me.  I need someone to spread the word.  I don’t think I’ll choose a polymath, a scientist or philosopher; it’s an itinerant tribesman for me.”

One would, of course, have expected God to appear efficaciously before everyone at the same time, communicate his laws and ensure a unified religion but, by opting for the single tribesman route, he ensured that subsequently millions of people would be killed defending their version of the truth.  Is it any wonder that young people have developed a mistrust of religion?

Moreover, it is written that Abraham entered into a covenant with God in which he was promised that his descendants would be made into a great nation.  The covenant was sanctified by the rite of circumcision in accordance with God’s command but why God, after tens of thousands of years of human existence, suddenly decided it was essential that the prepuce of an eight-day old child’s genitalia should be sliced off with the aid of any proximate sharp implement remains a mystery.  The young people of today, however, are not so naïve as to accept this at face value.  They know perfectly well that if God really found a morsel of flesh so offensive, he would not have endowed humanity with it in the first place.

Despite this, around one-third of the world’s male population is circumcised on religious grounds, chiefly according to the directives of Judaism and Islam.  Even in the United States, one of the world’s most medically advanced countries, one in 500 infants suffers acute complications owing to circumcision.  One can only imagine how high the figure might be in more primitive societies and how many children must have died from infection over the course of millennia.  Performing this process to ensure well-being on medical grounds is understandable but to do so because of some misguided religious rite is as preposterous as it is barbaric.

Why are we so conditioned to religion, anyway?  Belief in gods would have originated primarily out of fear and, from early forms of religion, humans would have derived consolation, comfort and a sense of security.  Their religion would have fostered togetherness, binding them to something much greater than their group or tribe and, furthermore, it would have satisfied their innate need for leadership.  The desire for leadership has a long evolutionary history and applies to most species of the animal kingdom: hence, for example, the mammalian alpha male (or female).  For their part, humans look to different kinds of leaders (meritocratic, military, political, spiritual and so on) to keep them safe or maintain a sense of well-being.  Leaders, of course, have their own need for leadership, ultimately in the guise of some divine power.  According to Bertrand Russell, the brilliant British philosopher and mathematician:

“Religion is based primarily upon fear.  It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes.”

After tens of thousands of years of propitiation to supernatural deities, it is quite possible that mankind has evolved to the extent that religion is virtually ‘hard-wired’ into the psyche.  If this is the case, for many people the dependence on some form of religion would be almost impossible to dispel.  To break free of this dependence requires considerable intellectual application.  Bertrand Russell pointed out:

 “This state of mind is rather difficult: it requires a high degree of intellectual culture without emotional atrophy.”

In reference to the scriptures, he added:

“A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.”

One can attend almost any church service and be told that “God is Love”, a statement unsubstantiated by daily events, both great and small.  There was no evidence of love when Aztec priests plunged their razor-sharp obsidian blades into the breasts of sacrificial victims to remove their hearts in deluded obeisance to the god, Huitzilopochtli.  Nor was there any sign of love when a mother and child were led to the gas chamber during the Holocaust.  There was no evident love when, in 1099, the Crusaders recaptured Jerusalem from Muslim dominion and swept through the streets as a raging torrent of barbaric and indiscriminate slaughter.  No matter, in consolation the ecclesiastical clerisy has assured us that God loved all the victims.  Today’s young people question why God remains unseen and never intervenes even when he is so desperately needed.

For its part, the priesthood has always preferred the laity to be ignorant and, consequently, compliant.  The obscurantism of these servants of God hindered progress through a process of repression and fear for centuries.  Nicolaus Copernicus, one of the great polymaths of the Renaissance, was a Polish astronomer and the first person to formulate a heliocentric cosmology.  His book, On the Revolutions of Celestial Spheres, published just before his death, is often regarded as the starting point of modern astronomy.  He could have published much earlier but was afraid that he would be condemned to death as a heretic by a priesthood that believed unconditionally in the word of the scriptures.  Had not Joshua, after all, commanded and stopped the Sun from moving around the Earth for a period of several hours to provide his army with more daylight?  The cosmos, therefore, was geocentric; there could be no debate.  Some years later, Giordano Bruno, the distinguished Italian mathematician and astronomer, was not so lucky.  Because he held similar views to Copernicus adding that the Sun was actually a star, the holy men drove a metal spike through his tongue before burning him at the stake.  Later still, Galileo, one of the world’s greatest scientists, was hauled before the priesthood and accused of heresy.  Using a telescope of his own invention, he had found conclusive evidence of heliocentrism.   In direct contravention of biblical text and possessing a lesser resolve than Bruno, Galileo recanted, with his tongue stuck firmly in his cheek.  He feigned acceptance when the priests told him he could not have seen what he claimed to have seen, that his eyes had deceived him.  He was spared Bruno’s fate and spent the rest of his life under house arrest, ordered to read seven penitential psalms once a week for three years.

In the 16^th and 17^th centuries, over a period of 125 years, religious wars in Europe between Catholics and Protestants accounted for the loss of over 11 million lives.  Even the events of the Holocaust of the 1940s (and a further 6 million deaths) have origins rooted in these times and in the exhortations and inflammatory rhetoric of Protestantism’s foremost priest, Martin Luther.  In the cruelest of all ironies, all of those who died had believed in the love of the same God.  Moreover, is it not baffling that benevolent revelation is invariably claimed by the least influential in society when it should be the preserve of the most powerful?  How much is really being achieved when a vagrant believes he hears God’s voice and becomes a born-again Christian?  As far as we can tell, God never commanded Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot to be kind to their fellow man nor did he ever appear before Martin Luther to convince him to speak well of the Jews.  If God ever appeared as an apparition before despotic leaders, it served only as justification for the atrocities perpetrated in his name.

Another reason for the young to question the authenticity of holy text and God’s existence is that many people they admire have done likewise.  Jonathan Edwards, for example, became the world’s greatest triple jumper and one of Britain’s most decorated athletes.  The son of a vicar, he spent most of his adult life as a devout Christian.  Initially, he even refused to compete on Sundays, his faith costing him a place in the 1991 World Athletics Championships.  He once stated:

“My relationship with Jesus and God is fundamental to everything I do.  I have made a commitment in that relationship to serve God in every area of my life.”

He was a regular presenter of the BBC Christian television show, Songs of Praise, until 2007 when he renounced his faith and his belief in God.  In an interview with The Times, he stated:

“When you think about it rationally, it does seem incredibly improbable that there is a God.”

Countless prominent people agree with him.  Famous atheists from the world of film and theatre include Woody Allen, James Cameron, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Paul Bettany, Emma Thompson and Daniel Radcliffe.  Political atheists of recent times include Roy Hattersley, Neil Kinnock, Ken Livingstone, Michael Portillo, Alastair Campbell, Nick Clegg and the Miliband brothers, David and Ed.  From literature, we have Kingsley Amis, Douglas Adams, Tariq Ali, Ken Follett, Stephen Fry and Graham Greene.  Those from the scientific community include Stephen Hawking, Brian Cox, Richard Dawkins, Francis Crick and David Attenborough whilst well-known names from entertainment and comedy include Billy Connolly, Alan Davies, Eddie Izzard, Ben Elton, Dave Allen, Terry Wogan and Michael Parkinson.  It was the late Dave Allen who famously said:

“I’m an atheist, thank God.”

Earlier unbelievers include some of history’s greatest minds  such as Epicurus, Baruch Spinoza, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Andrew Carnegie, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, Percy Bysshe Shelley and, more recently, Bertrand Russell and Carl Sagan.  All were profound and erudite thinkers whose opinions are worthy of scholarship and available to everyone in our communications age.

It is, of course, possible that God exists but is not omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent and merciful but, if that were the case, why would you call him ‘God’?  Even though beliefs in the supernatural cannot be falsified empirically, it seems the time will come when science gains dominion over emotion and God will be consigned to mythology alongside Zeus, whilst the prophets will become regarded as unwitting imposters.  By then, the ecclesiastical clerisy will have joined a long line of deluded holy men and the debate about God’s existence would simply be a philosophical one: “Can God exist if nobody believes in him?”  Until then, religion’s influence is likely to decrease exponentially, the decline leading to eventual oblivion.

By Burt Flannery

Extracted from the author’s book, What’s God Got To Do With It?

Author bio: Burt Flannery is a member of the BHA and a former mathematician and management consultant

By Michael Gerard

In 1985 our daughter was approaching an age where we felt she needed to relate to other young people through an organisation other than school, I cast my mind back to my time in the scouting movement. I had had a few pleasant times. But as a young sceptic I also remembered prayers, church parades and saluting the flag. I remembered finding these aspects distasteful even at that time. No way could we subject my daughter to similar religiosity. Then we started learning that the Scouting movement discriminated against people of no religion.

It was then that we learned of the Woodcraft Folk – and they were well established in Leicester where we live. There is no religion in the Woodcraft folk. If parents or young people in the Folk want to practise religion there is nothing to stop them, so long as they leave it outside the door of Woodcraft Folk meetings.

I must spell out that the Woodcraft Folk is a secular organisation – but not a Secularist one: i.e. it does not preach non-belief to parents or to young people.

The organisation does espouse co-operativism. For example at meetings of the young people the leaders attempt to play co-operative games, and not competitive ones. The problem with competitive games is that they produce one winner, but many losers. Quite often the same people win, and his is dispiriting to those who lose every time.

This equality thread is summed up in the motto of the Woodcraft Folk: “Span the World with Friendship.” Additionally the Folk have always been a “green” organisation: for instance they try never to take living or green wood for making fires at camps or meetings – generally fallen wood is used after a “wood scrounge” in the neighbourhood of the campsite.

The Folk try to take an ethical stance where this is possible: opposing war toys and seeking to promote disarmament. Many Woodcraft Folk attend anti-war and anti-nuclear demonstrations: but care has to be exercised so as not to prejdice the organisations charitable atatus.

I knew I had found the right organisation in 1985, and went along with my daughter and developed myself alongside her in this humanistic organisation. Our daughter retains the freethinking principles she gained from a dozen years in the Woodcraft Folk.

Michael Gerard -
Leicester and District Woodcraft Folk Member.

By Vir Narain

Humanists, secularists and rationalists everywhere are becoming increasingly concerned – even alarmed – at the role being played by traditional religions the world over in promoting instability and violence.  Not long ago traditional religions seemed like an anachronism that would fade away with the growth of science and rationality.  That has not happened.  Science, as knowledge of the physical world, has hardly had any effect on the mindsets of millions of ordinary people.  On the other hand technology, spawned by science, has had a profound effect on the way every individual on this planet lives. Among other things, technology has put enormous destructive power in the hands of individuals and small groups.  Now a small group of fanatics – even an individual – can cause more death and destruction than a whole army could even a hundred years ago.  With the tensions created by increasing migrations and interpenetration of cultures, such groups can pop up anywhere.  In societies which are at the receiving end of these transitions there is an understandable sense of insecurity.  Traditional religion is seen as an evil that has to be combated.

The Amsterdam Declaration of 2002, the official defining statement of World Humanism, states: “Humanism is a response to the widespread demand for an alternative to dogmatic religion.” This is more specific than the Amsterdam Declaration of 1952: “This congress is a response to the wide spread demand for an alternative to the religions which claim to be based on revelation on the one hand, and totalitarian systems on the other.” Religion was not seen as an unmitigated evil, but perhaps as a necessary stage in the evolution of human society which now had to be outgrown. It would not be correct indiscriminately to tar – or gild – all religions with the same brush.  As Narsingh Narain said:  “…an analysis is necessary for a proper understanding of  the complex phenomena which  have been grouped under the name ‘religion’, so that we can build our own organisation on solid foundations and also be able to have a sympathetic understanding of the faiths of other groups.” This sympathetic understanding must, of course, extend to all religions – even to the ones that are most antagonistic to humanist values.

Over the last few years it has become increasingly clear that the objective of providing an alternative to traditional religions has lost its salience for the Humanist Movement.  Other issues and causes, undoubtedly worthy in themselves, have caused attention to be diverted from the main aim. To the extent to which it does engage with traditional religions, Humanism has mainly adopted an attitude of rejection and ridicule.  The “sympathetic understanding” is missing.  If the vast masses of people have to be weaned off their dependence on the myths and divisive dogmas of traditional religions, this sympathetic understanding is indispensible. Humanism has to see itself as a successor to traditional religions, not as an enemy.

Freedom of thought is a prime Humanist value: dogmatism is its very opposite. Some religions are more dogmatic, and therefore more intolerant, than others. These religions, in other words, are more ‘hard’ (dogmatic and intolerant) than others. The Humanist Movement, to achieve its objectives, has to identify the religions which offer the greatest resistance to its efforts to advance Humanist values. For this it is necessary to grade religions according to their ‘hardness’.

At the bottom of the scale would be the ‘softest’ religions – perhaps Jainism and Buddhism.  Above these, there are several major religions whose numerous denominations could occupy different positions on the scale.  The top positions probably go to certain denominations of the three Abrahamic religions. Gore Vidal (who passed away recently) once wrote: “The great unmentionable evil at the centre of our culture is monotheism.”  This is in line with Ralph Peters’ comment: “All monotheist religions have been really good haters. We just take turns.” With 2.2 billion and 1.7 billion respectively, Christianity and Islam have the largest number of adherents in the world.  Certain denominations of these two religions – Catholics in Christianity and Wahhabis in Islam – can fairly be put on top of the list. The Unitarians and Sufis perhaps have a place on the soft end of the scale.

What, one might ask, is the point of this classification?

First: it helps to remind us of our original commitment to provide an alternative to dogmatic religions.

Secondly: It helps to determine our priorities when dealing with various religions.  It helps us to shed the habit of tarring all religions with same brush as typically summed up by Dawkins: “I think there’s something very evil about faith.

Thirdly: having determined our priorities when dealing with various religions, it helps us to strategise better.  One way to strategise is to treat this on the principles of geopolitics, treating the major traditional religions as nation-states. In any case, in the real world, religion (especially the Abrahamic religions on which we have to focus) and geopolitics are inextricably mixed up. Evangelical Christianity and radical Islamism (and perhaps Orthodox Judaism, demographically insignificant but politically powerful) are now in almost open confrontation.  As a recent article in the New Statesman says:  “Puritanical yet wealthy, convinced of their God-given mission to the rest of the world, sure of a divinely inspired history… Saudi Arabia and the United States are surprisingly similar in their mixture of religion, politics and interference in other countries’ affairs. Saudi Arabia has Wahhabi Islam, Middle America has evangelical Christianity. Historically, they hate each other. Yet both see themselves as exponents of the purest version of their faith. Both are suspicious of modernity. Both see no distinction between politics and religion.”

This complicates matters for the Humanist movement considerably.  Whereas one of the main protagonists in this situation, Evangelical Christianity, is an easy target for the Humanist movement, the other major – and arguably more formidable  protagonist: Radical Islam, is almost totally out of reach. (Except possibly in the United Nations, where significant work, ably led by Roy Brown, has been done).  The result is that the Humanist movement, confined to the West, keeps skirmishing with the various Christian denominations – some of them harmless – while it is almost totally absent from the Islamic world. The IHEU has 112 member organisations in 37 countries.  Currently the UN has 192 member states. Only four Islamic states, Nigeria, Egypt, Bangladesh and Pakistan have member-organisations of IHEU.  What their state of health is can only be guessed.  It is perhaps fair to say that the Humanist Movement has mostly been confined to the West.  A cynical friend once remarked that the footprint of the IHEU is more or less the same as that of NATO.  There is no evidence that there is – or indeed can be – any plan to remedy this situation.  However, inexplicably, there are hardly any efforts being made to contain the growing influence of radical Islamic diaspora even within the West.

In recent years, as the depredations of terrorists and fanatics have increased, leading humanists in the West have adopted a more and more hostile attitude towards traditional religions.  If the minds and hearts of traditional religionists have to be won, this is bound to be counterproductive.  Rejection and ridicule have to be replaced with persuasion.  The rise of hardline New Atheism, with its indiscriminate condemnation of all religions, can undermine the efforts of the Humanist movement to achieve its objectives.  According to Michael Ruse: “… there is the nigh-hysterical repudiation of religion. As with religions themselves, the implication is that those who fail to follow the New Atheist line are not just wrong, but morally challenged.”  This itself borders on dogmatism.

The conclusion seems to be that the International Humanist Movement has not made any significant progress towards achieving its basic goals.  Where it is undoubtedly needed most – in the Islamic world – it is practically absent; where it does have a strong presence – in North America and Europe – it has failed to have an impact.  Clearly, we need to rethink our aims and strategies.  We must not allow ourselves to be distracted from our original aim of providing an alternative to dogmatic religions.

As of now, one is reminded of what Matthew Arnold had to say of the atheistic poet Shelley, describing him as  “a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.”
                              

Air Marshal (retd) Vir Narain is Chairman of the Indian Humanist Union and Editor of the Humanist Outlook.

By Les Collins

You can make one of at least five responses to religion (perhaps you can think of more):

You can accept it wholeheartedly
You can grudgingly accept it half-heartedly
You can reject it completely
You can deny other people the right to practise religion; you can actively campaign against it and seek to destroy it
You can acknowledge other people’s right to believe, and give them the freedom to do so.

If you accept religion wholeheartedly you might say you have been converted, born again or saved.  You might say you believe in that religion, and accept it on a personal level.  If you have a half-hearted response to religion you might accept it, shall we say, at a “corporate” level: you feel yourself to be part of that religion, although you have not made an all-out commitment to it.  You might feel that you “belong” to the Church of England, for instance, and you might put down on official forms that your religion is “C of E”.  You might even consider yourself to be an agnostic, yet still feel a nostalgic attachment to the church.  You might feel the need to keep your options open, in case there really is a last judgement and eternal hell.

On the other hand, if you reject religion completely, you might do so because you consider yourself to be an atheist.  This may be because you were not brought up in a religious family, and have never really thought about belonging to a religion, or it might be that you have thought carefully over a long period about the existence of a deity, and you have come to a rational conclusion that there is no god, and that you can live a good moral life without religion.

If you feel so strongly about the absence of god that you actively oppose religion, and you believe that people who follow a religion are deluded, then you might well campaign against religion and seek ways of destroying it.

On the other hand, although you have lost your faith, if you ever had one, you still accept the right of other people to believe: you “tolerate” the existence of their religion, and you only “passively oppose” it.

Surely, as humanists, this last approach is the one we should be following.  It is true that we may feel that religion has done a great deal of harm over the centuries, and indeed still does.  It is true that the Christian church has sought to evangelise the whole world, to take the “gospel” on missionary expeditions to all the colonies of the empires that its European countries conquered.  It is true that the Church has dealt very cruelly with dissenters down the ages, has branded them as heretics, tortured them and burnt them at the stake.  But the Church has been somewhat “tamed” since those days, and every priest now realises that he lives in a society where not everyone believes, and that he can no longer force people to go to church or mouth their assent to the church’s doctrines and dogmas.

However, many humanists do feel that the church, in some shape or form, is still a danger to society.  We look with dismay at the power that bishops still have in Parliament, and at the way various sects are trying to win over young hearts and minds by setting up “Free Schools/Faith Schools”, and indoctrinating children with their dubious beliefs, just as the Jesuits used to.

But I urge moderation and tolerance.  Gradual, gentle persuasion has to be the way, surely, not head-on confrontation.  We humanists would not believe religion if we were forced into it: why should we expect to change other people’s beliefs overnight?  On the whole, Christianity is not the threat that it used to be.  We do have choices: we are no longer obliged to go to church every Sunday, and we can make up our own minds what we believe.  Our turn has come: we can now express our non-belief in religion without persecution.  Christianity, after many long centuries of intolerance, is at last calming its terrible, tyrannical temper.  If we were to persecute the church, we would be doing just what the church itself used to do.  Maybe religion will eventually get there.  Maybe enlightenment will come to those who try to seek a god through the medium of religion.  We just have to wait and be patient.  One of the reasons that religion was set up in the first place was to try to find an understanding of, and an explanation for, the problems of life.  For some, it works: if people are happy in their religion, and it does not upset others, fine.  Maybe people of all faiths will eventually come to accept that there is one golden rule that we all need to live our lives by: “Treat others as you would have them treat you”.  It is the conclusion that most philosophers and prophets have come to, be they Isocrates, Confucius, or Jesus.  We all have in common more than we think we do, and we must be tolerant of those who have not yet reached the point that we have.  Cooperation is better than conflict or confrontation.  The human race will only come of age when we have tolerance towards those who are seen to be different.

Author bio: Les Collins is now retired and is a member of the BHA.

By Robert Breeze

Humanism is a hard concept to define. A few months ago Andrew Brown wrote an article stating that Humanism is an impossible dream. In it, he took the British Humanist Association’s proclamation that it is “the national charity representing and supporting the non-religious and campaigning for an end to religious privilege and discrimination based on religion or belief” far too literally. In considering that “the BHA exists to support and represent people who seek to live good and responsible lives without religious or superstitious beliefs” he concluded that “the concept as defined by the BHA cannot exist even in atheist societies, as it then becomes a religion in itself”.

His comments demonstrate a complete lack of understanding as to what Humanism is and served to highlight many common misconceptions surrounding the philosophy. He states that the BHA ‘definition’ of Humanism seeks to eliminate religion when this simply forms no part of any definition. He also states that “atheism can itself become a myth by which society constitutes and understands itself” and that “there are no societies without ritual and myth”. Though ritual and myth are undoubtedly part of human behaviour there is no necessary connection to Religion. He also doesn’t seem to understand the difference between correlation and causation. Humanism isn’t the absence of religion in the same way peace isn’t the absence of war or love the absence of hate.

Andrew Brown’s article spawned over a thousand comments, most from humanists who rightly disagreed with his sentiments. My opinion is that the BHA leaves themselves open to attack in using the terms ‘good and responsible lives’ in its mission statements. The words are so ambiguous and hard to define that the second anyone seeks to define them it would leave the philosophy open to accusations of being a religion. That’s the one thing Humanism must avoid, and to that end I also don’t think humanist ceremonies are a necessary or positive development.

In short, it’s easy to attack any proposed definition but the whole debate is one that should be deemed futile when viewed with an owl-like eye. Rather than getting sidetracked by the literal definition of Humanism the vision and aims should be considered. It’s about promoting a world where everyone lives cooperatively on the basis of shared human values, respect for human rights, and concern for future generations. A world where non-religious people are confident in living ethical and fulfilling lives on the basis of reason and humanity. These are undoubtedly positive attitudes the whole world should seek to adopt, and such notions are why I’m proud to call myself a humanist.

About the Author

Robert Breeze is the author of ‘2082’, the 1^st book in The Chronicles Of Hope series, now being promoted by Amazon, eBook 99p for limited time only!

Frank Noon is also a proud humanist, if a frustrated idealist. The Chronicles of Hope is a series of books based in the late 21st century, the first book seeing Frank reluctantly leading an intergalactic government project provoked by overpopulation. He provides a political alternative in that he’s a visionary, honest, open and trustworthy politician, and one who is stoically atheist. As the series of books develops it hints at a revolution and a new society underpinned by an open atheism. He believes strongly in pushing Humanism as a way to mould and shape a society, one of his quotes in the first book being ‘that if religious people chose to love humanity and one another rather than an imaginary god, and it was all about living good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs, then it’d be such a step forward in human civilisation’.

Alas such developments currently remain an ongoing battle, and until the excellent work of the BHA yields more far reaching results, you can at least immerse yourselves into a world of humour and hope that shows a wiser way.

@robertbreeze

By George Wilson

On the 21^st November 2012, the day after it had voted against the ordination of female bishops, the then Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams addressed the Synod on the subject. His much-publicized claim that the Church would be seen as “wilfully blind” to the “trends and priorities” of modern society did the rounds in the media for a few days afterwards. As accurate a statement as it was, and brushing aside the questionable use of the word “trends,” there was a far more significant statement to be found hot on the heels of that sound bite:

“It’s perfectly true…that the ultimate credibility of the church does not depend on the goodwill of the wider public. We would not be Christians and believers in Divine Revelation if we held that.”

“This statement, (statement A) I would contend, not only distils a fundamental problem in the collective religious thought process, but also reveals a far more general problem: The blending of evidence and belief, and the mistaken acceptance that the two are similar. In order to explain this, however, we must first answer two questions: What is “Divine Revelation,” and how – if at all – does it justify the ignoring of the public at large?”

Divine Revelation is, at its most basic description, the revealing of knowledge or truth through Divine means. Whether it is perceived in Scripture, the actions of Christ/various prophets or even in the natural world the truth that is revealed by these various divine interventions is considered transcendent. It is knowledge of a higher order, above that which we human beings can discover for ourselves.

Perhaps the most recognizable example – to Westerners at any rate – is the opening sentence of the Gospel according to St. John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In John I:14-15 the author explicitly identifies Jesus as the physical representation of the Word/Logos: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (etc) We might also mention the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which claims that the Word of God is “not a written and mute word, but the Word which is incarnate and living.” – i.e. it can be found all around us.

In order to get a perspective from the Lion’s mouth, I contacted Rowan Williams on the subject. Perhaps written in haste, and certainly only meant as a starting point, it would be unfair for me to pounce upon one phrase in his characteristically good-natured response, however the first sentence of his description really does help explain the fundamental problem with this concept. Here is his (abridged) description (Statement B):

“Christian (and Jewish and Muslim) teaching takes it for granted that we can’t know all we need to know for our wellbeing just by what our own activity can uncover…So revelation implies an active God, who can in some way break into a fixed situation…this implies that revelation isn’t necessarily a matter of words or statements: events can trigger this sense of being overtaken – a sense of the world being suddenly bigger or more unmanageable than we suspected. So we can talk about the Exodus in the Old Testament or the Resurrection in the New as events of ‘revelation’… ‘Revealed’ doctrines are the things we find we have to say to make an adequate response to events such as these.  And finally, when we encounter events or people or images in the world that have something of the same quality of enlarging and unsettling, we can speak of them as having something of the same revelatory quality.”

It is of course the “take it for granted” part that presents us with the biggest elephant in the room. No one in their right mind would claim that human beings are definitely capable of finding out all there is to know about life, the universe and everything, but starting with an a priori assumption of such magnitude does present problems.

This then is the problem: the fact that you believe something does not make it so; it is not evidence for anything other than the fact that you believe it. Yet the concept of Divine Revelation – the supposed source of all higher knowledge – does not require any evidence at all, just belief. Religious people will claim that they see the evidence everywhere – the Bible, nature, the life of Christ – but these things do not constitute evidence; they are perceptions of reality made with a vast, presupposed and conveniently un-falsifiable assumption informing them. To put it bluntly: Their perception of these phenomena already has a predefined answer built into it.

As a result, literally anything that can be said to be real – Love, war, the sunset, an act of kindness, a Honda Civic – can be said to be a source of divine revelation. Now this isn’t really much of a problem at all when it’s reserved to things that any sensible person would agree with – basic common decency, the golden rule – but it is capable of being a very dangerous form of mental acrobatics when it comes to justifying things that are quite demonstrably false. The dogmatic stance on women, homosexuality, marriage, contraception, assisted suicide, faith schools and their admissions policies – all these issues are informed by that which is divinely revealed in one way or another. This is by no means saying that “all religious people are irrational” because that too is demonstrably false. Neither is it saying that all religious people, by virtue of the fact that they are religious, agree with the Dogmatic stance on these issues. It means that this aspect of dogma, this particular leap of faith, is highly susceptible to, and incredibly useful in, the defence of very bad ideas indeed. It means that denying women the right to be a bishop is possible and can be defended. If you have the creator of the universe on your side, then who can prove you wrong?

Now let us remind ourselves of Statement A and return to it. Williams is right in one respect – the fact that millions think something is the case does not in itself mean that it should be so; and it would be a mistake to do something simply because of that. Countless millions believed that the earth was flat, that it was at the centre of the Universe, and that bloodletting was an effective treatment for most ailments. They were all wrong. We can only hope, however, that the irony of that statement isn’t lost on him, especially considering the number of unjust privileges (as opposed to basic rights) enjoyed by the CofE as a result of the same sort of error (i.e., lots of people believe it, so we must accommodate them) being made routinely by Christians, the government, and crucially the public at large. If we were to remove the “Divine Revelation” part of the statement, and replace the word “church” with “an idea” Williams would be completely correct: There is no evidence. Nada. Nothing. Zilch, to say that women are incapable or should not be allowed to be in higher positions of power, just as there is no evidence to back the claim that Homosexual sex is inherently evil  – and yet, a small number of people in the church can argue away at this point by using their own version of “evidence,” mostly stemming from scripture. This is a blatant example of Divine Revelation’s inherent unsustainability.

Many of us can probably list off the top of our head the number of unspeakably discriminatory policies that many religions are free to adopt – in Britain their exemption from aspects of the 2010 Equality Act says more than any article ever could – but I seriously doubt many of us are willing to except a far more unpleasant truth: this inherent problem with Divine Revelation is a phenomenon – albeit under a different guise – that can be found in a secular setting as well.

For example, A 2007 ICM poll indicated that 32% of British people thought that LGBT parenting should not be allowed. Now they may have all been religious, but that is highly improbable. Those 32% were, according to all the available evidence so far, wrong. The Australian Psychological Society’s LGBT Parenting literature review of 2007 found no evidence of negative effects on the children of LGBT parents, nor did the Canadian Psychological Association in 2006, nor the United States Court of Appeal in 2010. The list goes on, and is of considerable length. Yet despite such overwhelming evidence to the contrary, poll after poll indicates either a sizeable minority – or in some countries a large majority – consider LGBT adoption to be a bad idea.

Whether it is Michael Gove’s overruling of expert advice and manipulation of figures in his quest for education reform, the Tory Party’s cynical assault on – and misrepresentation of – the Welfare System, or the arguments against the legalization of Gay marriage, a common thread emerges: in the part of the argument that requires, nay demands, evidence, belief has been placed in it’s stead.

Divine revelation can thus be seen as a dogmatic parallel of a larger, more wide-ranging reality: the tacit acceptance that a belief can justify an action. At the very least common knowledge that the person instigating the action believes in the said action can dilute the range of responses people make to the action itself. Just as many mainstream Christians consider the word of God to have manifested itself in Christ, Holy scripture or even nature, and view such ‘revelation’ as a reason for something to be done; so too do many secular people routinely permit a belief in an idea or method to undermine the truth.

This routine ignorance – whether innocent or not – of the knowable truth, is incredibly damaging, especially when it involves decisions that directly effect other peoples lives in the real world. As Polly Toynbee put it: “Wise atheists make no moral claims, seeing good and bad randomly spread among humanity.” This particular “bad” is everywhere. It is a humanist issue in the truest sense of the word, for it affects us all, constantly. No “wise atheist” disagrees with religion simply because they think a belief in a creator god is misguided, because that belief, in relation to it’s impact on other Humans, pales in comparison to those doctrines and beliefs that can come attached to it which do impact the rest of humanity. Divine Revelation is the mother lode in this respect, for it has the potential to defend concepts that are indefensible.

So what is to be done? Could it be possible to make it a criminal offence either to manipulate statistics for the purposes of your own argument or to misrepresent the facts if you are in a position of power? It would make it incredibly hard for politicians to push through a myriad of social legislation, and it probably would never pass through parliament anyway, but it would be a dramatic step forward. Just imagine a political – and religious – landscape in which only the facts as they stand are argued over, a landscape where ideology is shaped by the truth, and those that lie are brought to task. Consider the impact such a law would have had on the countless number of political decisions that were not backed up by facts over the last 10 years. Just think of what would have happened to Blair.

Perhaps it is I who is now working in the realm of fantasy, as this is unlikely to happen, but it is undeniable: evidence is either routinely manipulated or shunned altogether by many politicians, religious leaders and NGO’s to fit their own agenda or beliefs on a regular basis, and it is a problem that needs to be addressed far more frequently than it has been in the past. As Neil deGrasse Tyson put it: “There is no shame in not knowing, the problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance.”

by Josh Kutchinsky

In one of his famous lectures for children the musician, polymath and educator, Leonard Bernstein, played an extract from The William Tell overture by Rossini and asked his audience what they thought it was about.  They answered and he responded:

“That’s just what I thought you’d say: cowboys, bandits, horses, the wild west.”
He then told his audience that he hated to disappoint them but that it wasn’t about anything like that, “It’s about notes – E Flats and F sharps. You see, no matter how many times people tell you stories about what music means, forget them. Stories are not what the music means at all. Music is never about anything. Music just is.”

Whilst we may not be able to say what music means we can say what it is that music does? Music is a definer of rhythm and of harmony. It is a unique human exploration of memory, time, and anticipation. Sequences of sound with varying or consistent musical pitches, timbres and intensities excite the brain to expectation and when these are thwarted or gratified, we are teased, lulled or excited. The landscape of sound is changed from the familiar to the exotic, from the safe to the dangerous.

There are other performing arts such as drama and poetry which take place in the present moment and involve the manipulation of expectation but employ the currency of common conversation; words. Maybe language is just one particular sort of music.

Here is a story about the power of music.

Some time ago there was an old man. He was ill and in hospital. He had turned away, with a dumb gesture, the offers of pastoral care from strangers. They were not wanted. Then his granddaughter came to visit. She didn’t know what to say. He stared at her with watery eyes and no one was sure whether there was any recognition. She sat; a small black case beside her chair. Someone suggested she play something.

“What?” she asked

“Anything.”

And so she removed her silvern flute from its compact black case and the bright sound from the metallic tube poured into the room like sunlight through a window on a winter’s day. The grandfather smiled. He recognised the tune. Beyond the slightly open door the sound wafted down the corridor, travelling from the geriatric toward the maternity ward across the way. A mother with a babe in arms drew near and stood by the open door and the door was opened further and she smiled and the old man returned her smile. Music had brokered, in a way that only it can, a human interaction between a long dead composer, a man only a few weeks from death, his granddaughter, an unknown woman and a newborn child of less than a week.

But am I now not doing what I had just said could not be done? Am I not imposing a narrative on the music? Not at all. Stories are often imposed on music. Similarly religious meaning is often imposed on certain stories. Language is never religious. It is just sometimes used by people holding religious beliefs. They can no more rightly claim the language for themselves than can a child capture the sea in a bucket. Music in and of itself is never sacred or secular. It is just music.

Human creativity lies at the heart of Humanism. To attempt fully to apprehend the reality of our existence and thereby imbue it with meaning, music, science and the other humanities all have their part to play (science had always, until quite recently, been included as one of the humanities but under its older name of ‘natural philosophy’).

Music is not only a means of entertainment, distraction and mood enhancement. It is not just a partner to words in opera and musicals, to movement in dance and drama, to TV and films. It is not just a signature tune to momentous events in our lives; our romances, our teenage angst, our formal ceremonies which for many, but not all, help mark life’s moments of transition. It is not just a respite for the world weary. It is also a tool of exploration. Our perceptions of our world our altered by it and it has been compared with pure mathematics in terms of its symbolic power. Music has also been compared to architecture. The structure of music can match for complexity and beauty that of the greatest concert halls and cathedrals.

Music is an amazing human achievement. It requires the orchestration of unnatural sounds, sounds which only humans have manufactured. It calls for skill honed by thousands of hours of practice and endeavour. The evolution of musical instruments themselves is a fascinating story of experimental science, technology and skill. Music is a majestic collaboration often spanning centuries and in a strange way echoes the translation of genetic code into the expression of human existence. Scored music encoded on the page lies dormant, awaiting the moment of performance, of expression. Its awakening takes place against a background of silence and every performance punctuates that stillness with an affirmation of meaning and purpose wrought from a wealth of extraordinary human creativity.

About the author: Josh Kutchinsky is an organiser of  the Central London Humanist Group and founder and co-ordinator of Hummay an international humanist support egroup. He is a BHA representative to IHEU. He was a director in a publishing company and co-editor of Merely a Matter of Colour – The Ugandan Asian Anthology. He was also director of a laser show company and produced the first comprehensive exhibition of lasers and their applications at the Science Museum. He writes prose and poetry as well as about science and technology.

By Adam Knowles, Chair of Galha LGBT Humanists

Myself and several Galha LGBT Humanists members were alongside Peter Tatchell upstairs in a packed Committee Room 9 at the Houses of Commons on Tuesday (5th) evening, as MPs below voted on equal marriage. The result was an overwhelming ‘yes’, 400 to 175 in favour. This is brilliant news, though the number voting against is significant. It’s of great concern to me that here in 2013 there remain one hundred and seventy five elected members of our Parliament that disagree with basic equality for LGBT people. That includes a majority of those that voted from the Conservative party. I don’t accept that Cameron is using this issue as an attempt to eliminate ‘nasty’ from his party’s image. If he is, on the above evidence, he’s failed. No, I prefer to accept he truly believes in the basic justice and fairness of this change. So Cameron has our full support in his determination to push this through.

The debate brought out some fierce, bigoted comments ranging from the misinformed to the crazed. A particular highlight was the claim that this is an unstoppable slippery slope toward incestuous marriage and bestiality. Sir Roger Gale, the MP for North Thanet claimed, “It is not possible to redefine marriage”. Try telling that to the Church of England, brought into existence to do exactly that. “Marriage is the union between a man and a woman – has been historically, remains so”, he said. Historically marriage has often been between a man and several women (source: the bible), and all sorts of other combinations. In South Africa, it was illegal for whites to marry blacks – then it changed. So essentially all you can say is ‘marriage has always been X, until it changed’. Marriage is a social construct, and as such, we have every right to redefine it whenever we like. We should do that based on our conscience, our concept of fairness, our reason – not ancient texts from bygone civilizations. The time for LGBT inclusion is now.

There are some important amendments brought up during the debate, particularly the inclusion of Humanist celebrants being empowered to conduct ceremonies like their religious counterparts. The proposed change has yet to clear the Houses of Lords, with its unelected squad of Church of England Bishops. So some way to go, but we’re confident that with your continued support we can get there.

I know that people have a variety of views on the institution of marriage, many wanting nothing to do with it, seeing it as a disappointing desire to conform. But Galha LGBT Humanists will continue to fight for this law to pass because, for those that are LGBT and want to get married, they have every right to be treated the same as heterosexuals in the eyes of the law.

By Mike Newell

I never attended a seminary, but come to think of it, I did do time in a convent (it had become a British Airways Training School). I have attended an awful lot of churches, for an awful lot of hours, over an awful lot of years, as a choir boy at York Minster, New College Chapel, Oxford, Chapel St James Palace and St Paul’s Cathedral.  And as a young actor, I played Jesus Christ’s youngest brother in the play “Family Portrait”, with the distinguished English actress, Fay Compton playing Mary, Mother of God… so I guess that makes me something of an expert… Just kidding!

Now that I’ve reached the ripe old age of 81 I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s time to come out of the closet and confess it openly – I’m an atheist!

I’d always felt that atheism was something of a dirty word, not something you could say, not aloud… not allowed!  But so many people spend so much time and energy white-washing themselves, politicians in particular, especially here in the US, where they endeavour to outdo each other “No, I’m more religious!” “No, I’m more religious… the universe was created in six days, 6,000 years ago and men shared the planet with the dinosaurs and we’re all miserable sinners because a snake talked Eve into talking Adam into eating that apple from the tree of knowledge”  (Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the snake, and the snake didn’t have a leg to stand on!)

Rather than taking a lot of fables, myths and mantras unthinkingly on faith, how much better that we pause to think, reason, and doubt. If any of that stuff had any proof, any evidence, well then maybe OK… but as we know, there isn’t. Not a shred, not a jot, not a  tittle. So I’ve ceased to say I’m an agnostic, not sure either way.  That’s just trying to play it safe. A sort of Celestial Insurance Policy, just in case all those Baptists and Buddhists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons, Muslims, Hindus, Hasidic Jews etc, etc , are right and I’m wrong.

When Baptists brag that they believe every word of the Bible, I wonder if they’ve actually READ every word of the Bible, as I have… or are they simply “Cafeteria Christians”, who pick and choose which bits to believe, or take on faith, selecting a few choice, inspiring  verses to hang their hat on… pretending that the really horrible passages aren’t there!

The Founding Fathers of these United States of America made it perfectly clear they were NOT founding a new nation based on any particular religion, but a country of religious FREEDOM, which included the right to be non religious.  Whereas Abraham, the Founding Father of the Three Great Religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam… had no such Freedom of Thought in mind, of course!

So despite all those countless hours in Churches, Chapels, Cathedrals, Abbeys and Minsters as a choirboy, I never gave a great deal of thought to Christian dogma. It always seemed to me to be a bunch of weird stories that stretched my credulity to breaking point.  The God of the Old Testament seemed to me to be the sort of old man I wanted nothing to do with.  Far from being a kindly old gent with a long white beard,  all my religious instruction classes led me to look on Him as not at all the kind of God I would ever want to worship: Bloodthirsty, brutal, narcissistic, condemnatory, jealous, judgmental and judging by some of his instructions, very possibly psychotic. And his Son, if he did in fact exist, is said to have said some very nice, profound remarks. Trouble is of course, the men who much later on wrote their confusing, contradictory tales about Him…never met the guy!  And to be frank, I find it a bit fishy that His disciples were all fishermen, and we know how prone fishermen are to exaggeration! Especially about the one that got away!

So here I am to my surprise, living at present in the notorious Bible Belt of the American South, surrounded by ‘good ol’ boys’, whose only explanation for their unbelievable beliefs is “It says so in the Bible!” which is why I’ve just produced a controversial book NO GOD! 400 FAMOUS ATHEISTS AND AGNOSTICS PLUS 60 INFAMOUS THEISTS! AN ANTIDOTE FOR AMERICA’S RELIGIOSITY! Available at Amazon UK.

I think you’ll find it interesting, enjoyable, infuriating and fun!

By Lee Turnpenny

Those who subscribe to the cult of homeopathy tend to be afflicted with a continually confused attitude to the concept of evidence. On Weds 25 November 2009, the House of Commons Science and Technology Sub-Committee convened for an Evidence Check on Homeopathy. Amongst the ‘witnesses’ was Dr Peter Fisher, Clinical Director and Director of Research at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital (now the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine). Dr Fisher unashamedly described the process of succussion (forward to 11:06). In case you’re not familiar, this is the action of vigorously shaking/striking a vial of liquid in order to activate the memory of a substance (ie, the ‘remedy’) that has been diluted out of it, whilst simultaneously detoxifying the effects of all the other stuff the water will inevitably have come into contact with (because water is promiscuous stuff).

The Government Response to the Committee’s report concluded overall that:

‘By providing homeopathy on the NHS and allowing Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency licensing of products which subsequently appear on pharmacy shelves, the Government runs the risk of endorsing homeopathy as an efficacious system of medicine. To maintain patient trust, choice and safety, the Government should not endorse the use of placebo treatments, including homeopathy. Homeopathy should not be funded on the NHS and the MHRA should stop licensing homeopathic products.’

However, despite this concurrence, the Government then weasel-y left it to Primary Care Trusts to decide whether to continue wasting NHS funds on homeopathy, under the sopping guise of patient ‘choice.’ (Homeopathy enjoys sympathy among MPs – including from the Secretary of State for Health.)

The majority of homeopathic products licensed by the MHRA are registered under a 1992 Simplified Scheme that prohibits ‘indications’ – ie the associated description of disease/conditions, and medical/therapeutic claims thereon. These MHRA regulations on the advertising of medicinal products thus inform the Advertising Standards Authority, which on 1 March 2011 widened its scope to encapsulate marketing/advertising on UK websites. And thereafter received copious complaints about the online claims made by an array of homeopaths/homeopathy organisations (to the extent that it requested abeyance). The ASA contacted the complained-of advertisers – and those UK bodies that represent homeopaths and homeopathy. Its letter explicitly states:

‘You must remove any content from your website that claims directly or indirectly that homeopathy and homeopathic products can diagnose/treat/help health conditions.’

This letter (well worth a read, by the way) also informed addressees that their sites were under surveillance, with three months in which to comply with guidance on the marketing of health-related products and services, as stipulated by the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP).

During British Homeopathy Awareness Week back in June last year I took umbrage with various homeopathy organisations’ cheap, egregious, fallacious resort to endorsement by celebrity, including (to take just one) the British Homeopathic Association. The British Homeopathic Association’s ‘Celebrity Photography Project’ comprises quite fetching images of partaking celebs ‘… holding the source material of one of the homeopathic medicines that has helped them’ . If I’ve piqued your interest then, rather than take up word space here with quotes, I urge you to peruse for yourself this Goof’s Gallery.

I’m sure these celebrities are being ‘genuine’, in that they believe what they say. (After all, they subscribe to a belief system for people who like to feel all “Speh-shull.”) But I found this puzzling. Doesn’t that ASA letter apply to ‘… those bodies that represent homeopaths and homeopathy in the UK…’? Which must surely, I figured, encapsulate the British Homeopathic Association. Indeed, the Association’s website proudly boasts:

‘The British Homeopathic Association exists to promote homeopathy practised by doctors and other healthcare professionals.’ (My emphasis in bold.)

I therefore decided to flag this up to the ASA, because, to my eye, these celebrities are not only making/implying ‘… claims directly or indirectly that homeopathy and homeopathic products can diagnose/treat/help health conditions’; but they also imply ‘indications’ for these products, the majority of which are listed as registered under the MHRA Simplified Scheme (which prohibits indications). The ASA letter contains a paragraph I find particularly pertinent here:

‘Please note that testimonials from patients (which must be genuine) that imply efficacy for homeopathic treatment do not constitute substantiation but may give a misleading impression that efficacy is proven. Therefore it is essential that any testimonials also only make general references to an improved sense of well-being.’

Clearly, these celebrity statements constitute patient testimonials which imply efficacy for (unsubstantiated) homeopathic treatments. It appears to me that this project overall constitutes website content that (at the very least) ‘… claims directly or indirectly that homeopathy and homeopathic products can diagnose/treat/help health conditions.’ Which, to reiterate, are ‘Claims you cannot make’ under the CAP Code, as applies to advertisers, ‘… as well as those bodies that represent homeopaths and homeopathy…’.

The ASA declined to pursue this apparent anomaly. I had also written to the MHRA, whose guidelines also prohibit celebrity endorsement, but was informed (even though the remedies named by the celebrities marry with product names in its registration listing) that it only concerns itself with direct advertising of ‘specific homeopathic medicinal product.’ As the BHA is not itself selling products, its celebrity endorsement falls outside the MHRA remit, as it constitutes promotional material, and on which it suggested I contact… the ASA. However, the ASA is likewise adamant that this complaint does not come under its remit (in apparent contradiction of its own letter) because the British Homeopathic Association is not itself directly supplying or transferring goods. So much for acting in the public interest.

Why does the British Homeopathic Association (and many other homeopathy-promoting bodies) seek testimonials, or mine for quotes, by celebrities? Just when does ‘raising awareness’ become ‘promotion’ become ‘advertising’? Although NHS support for homeopathy is on the wane (as of the end of last year, only 15% of PCTs were continuing to fund it), public money on this inefficacious ‘rubbish’ continues to be wasted, as chief medical officer Professor Dame Sally Davies recently reminded the CST committee. And in order to circumvent the ASA’s imposition on the advertising of their wares, homeopaths and homeopathy organisations such as the British Homeopathic Association have resorted to the patronising logical fallacy that is the appeal to celebrity (presumed) authority. Although the British Homeopathic Association does not itself (as far as I am aware) supply products and services, it represents – and promotes indirectly on behalf of – those homeopaths/homeopathic product providers who do. As the latter are covered by the ASA remit and can no longer legitimately advertise, the British Homeopathic Association is, it seems to me, exploiting a loophole – through the under-the-radar guise of ‘awareness-raising’ celebrity testimonials, which, in my opinion, are in contravention of the CAP Code.

As if a ‘senior homeopath’ spouting aqueous nonsense without compunction to a parliament committee is not ridiculous enough. What we have here, in effect, is a situation wherein, if you sell or provide certain dubious products and/or services, but are barred from making claims as to their efficacy, you can happily watch your representative umbrella organisation, which does not itself directly supply/sell/provide those products/services, make those claims indirectly on your behalf. Hence this permitted proxy-promotion of indication-prohibited, homeopathy products through a bunch of docile celebrities. A snake-oil-lubricated loophole.

www.leeturnpenny.com
First published in The Leicester Secularist,  (Jan 2013: see: http://www.leicestersecularsociety.org.uk/newsletter/index.php).

In the ‘70s our church organist, a sweet, kindly and devout Anglican who’d been faultlessly abandoned by her husband, was flatly refused permission to remarry in church because she was divorced.  The sense of injustice I felt as a Christian teenager at this callous prioritising of doctrine over decency is still palpable. Although I wasn’t aware of it then, this was the beginning of the end my own faith.

Too often the church has resounded with the voice of the naysayer, quixotically railing against modernity and the demise of repressive Victorian sexual prurience and hypocrisy.  On swearing, nudity and sex on TV; the ‘blasphemy’ of Python, The Last Temptation and Springer The Opera; pre-marital sex and cohabitation, and on a thousand other petty prejudices it has railed and lost, and rightly lost.

The last 300 years have been pretty tough for Christianity, as science has challenged and ultimately collapsed centuries-old certainties.    Perhaps it’s defensiveness, but it seems to me too many of the faithful have clung to bronze-age certitudes in matters of gender and sexual morality, as if mere rigidity could buttress them from secularity. It can’t. Rather, it becomes all too easy to caricature Christians as irrelevant cranks, obsessed by where one should put one’s genitalia: Loud, strident voices spewing pious bigotry, condemning love itself, if it shares the same gender; or promulgating banal misogyny, as if the want of a penis under purple robes could actually offend the Almighty!

Surely women bishops and gay marriages are coming soon, leaving all those shrill, judgemental Christian critics on the wrong side of history once more.  But even as a committed humanist, I take no pleasure in this self-inflicted marginalisation.   The church is at a crossroads. To offer progressive leadership, as it once did over civil-rights and the decriminalisation of homosexuality (yes, that’s really true), over apartheid and the dehumanising effects of 1980’s industrial decline; or to retreat to the security blanket of arcane dogma?  But before it opts for the latter, a word of warning: Our sweet and kindly organist enjoyed a Register Office wedding, and never stepped foot in church again.

By: Steve Miller, The Christian Atheist
Author bio: The Christian Atheist is not only a committed non-believer, secularist and Chair of Cotswold Humanists; but also regularly attends a local High Anglican church and is interested in the Bible, theology and the history of Christianity. He believes that Christianity’s cultural legacy stills has value; more so if it is unencumbered by superstition and belief in the supernatural.

This short article was published in the Gloucestershire Echo on 31st December 2012 under the banner: The Great Debate – Is The Church Still Relevant?

By Vaughan Stone

The star dust we all knew as (Sir) Patrick Moore sadly gave up its persona on the 9th December 2012. But Patrick is still with us – his books and legacy of years of BBC broadcasting will continue to inspire.

We will remember Patrick not only for his monthly Sky at Night broadcasts (the longest lived of any BBC TV series) and his astronomy books, but also for his outings as a xylophonist, pianist, composer, children’s Gamesmaster TV program host and, as his friend Brian May (of Queen) reminded us when interviewed, also as an animal rights campaigner and simply a generous person.

This was a man who NASA had consulted to help determine the best lunar landing sites for the Apollo space missions such was the accuracy of his hand-drawn moon maps. In his youth during the Second World War he spent time training as an RAF navigator but was soon invalided out (fortunately for us all) due to a medical condition. He sadly lost his beloved fiancée during this time in a bombing raid, the tragedy of which haunted him for the rest of his life. He never married.

“We just don’t know!” was Patrick’s signature statement at the end of many a Sky At Night episode when little more than speculation could be brought to bear on certain unexplained astronomical phenomena. It seems however that as far as his own fate was concerned he was a little less uncertain.

Patrick, who was every bit the quintessential British gentleman with more than a touch of eccentricity, was by all accounts not a particularly religious man but neither was he an atheist. Recently when asked if this life was all there was, he replied in non-committal jokey fashion: “I’ll report back to you when I get there.”

Patrick had been wheelchair-bound for some years due to an aggravated spinal trauma sustained during his war time RAF training. When pressed on how he perceived his final years and failing health he showed his usual stoicism and expressed the expectation that this life was not all there is: “We go onto the next stage. I shall be interested to see what it is.” For some this attitude might be puzzling coming from a man of science, but insofar as he did not ally himself with a particular religion, nor make this pantheism (if that’s what it was) an issue worthy of publicity, we can surely allow him this.

Though he had no living relatives, Patrick spent his last hours in the company of carers, his cat Ptolemy, and “family” notably his three devoted “sons” who, it was only recently revealed, had been taken under his wing many years previously to provide the father figure they had lost with the untimely passing of their own. How very touching. With the news that doctors had allowed Patrick to return home being unable to do more for him since contracting an infection in his already weakened condition, his sons arrived at his bedside realising that this was the end. Holding his hands and administering brandy to his lips, they witnessed their dear father slide into his last slumber – star dust giving up its precious and unique persona.

We salute you Patrick. Thank you dear man for your legacy and the important role you played in so many people’s lives making it impossible to ignore the wonder of the stars and the excitement of scientific discovery.

By David Christie

Atheism is on the rise internationally: according to a global opinion poll released in August, the number of atheists in the world has risen by 9% since 2005.  The poll, carried out by Win-Gallup International, was conducted in 57 countries and involved 51,000 people.  It found that 59% of people describe themselves as religious, 23% as non-religious, and 13% describe themselves as convinced atheists.  There were also figures for specific countries, with Ireland and the US providing two of the most interesting examples.  Despite the fact that both countries are normally associated with high levels of religiosity, the survey shows that they have both experienced a drop in religious belief.  These cases invite us to pose the question of what causes people to turn away from religion, as well as the question of how this affects the ability of religious organisations to make an impact on public life.

In Ireland, the survey found that 47% of respondents are religious, 44% are non-religious, and 10% are convinced atheists.  This reduction in religious belief (from 69% in 2005 to 47% now) is dramatic, with Irish citizens abandoning religion faster than every country in the world except Vietnam.  This is surprising, as Ireland is normally seen as one the most devout Catholic countries in the world.  Irish society has in fact become increasingly liberal since the 1960s, though perhaps at a slower rate than many other countries in the western world.  Some policies based on Church dogma, such as restrictions on abortion, still remain in place.

So why are so many Irish citizens now leaving the Church?  The most obvious reason is the scandal of child sex abuse.  Since the last global survey on religious belief was conducted in 2005, the appalling crimes committed by Catholic priests have been exposed by investigations such as the Ryan report, a nine-year inquiry published in 2009 which found that the rape and abuse of children was ‘endemic’ in Church-run industrial schools.  These scandals turned large sections of Irish public opinion against the Church.  They also led to a deterioration in relations between the Irish government and the Vatican, which would previously have been unthinkable.

So is the growth in atheism, and the shift in attitudes towards the Catholic Church, finally starting to weaken the Church’s influence over Irish society?  Hopes were raised last year that the Church’s influence could be weakened in the area of education, with Irish Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn announcing that he wanted to remove more than 50 per cent of primary schools from Church control.  However, this policy seems to be running into difficulties.  According to a recent report in the Irish Examiner, only 44 of over 3,300 primary schools will be surveyed to ask parents if they wish to change the patronage of their child’s school, and ‘Ruairí Quinn is likely to leave behind a school system where change in the statistics on school patronage is modest or negligible’.

Another problem which has its roots in the Church’s dominance is the lack of abortion rights.  Abortion is only legal in Ireland if the woman’s life is in danger.  According to the Abortion Support Network (ASN), a London-based charity which helps Irish women seek abortions in Britain, the number of women who contact them for help is set to double for the third year in a row.  In April this year, the Irish government also defeated a private member’s bill to provide limited access to abortion.  An expert group set up by the government is soon expected to recommend the setting up of a panel of medical experts to consider applications for abortions, but only in cases when the mother’s life is threatened.

The recent opening of the Marie Stopes clinic in Belfast will enable some Irish women to access abortion facilities by travelling north of the border, but the Belfast clinic’s activities are still heavily restricted, because Northern Ireland (unlike the rest of the UK) is not covered by the Abortion Act.  The opening of the clinic has also led to angry protests by anti-abortion activists.  It seems that the anger over the abuse scandals, as well as the subsequent rise in atheism, have not managed to dislodge all of the Catholic Church’s influence over Irish politics and society.

The US ranked eighth in the poll’s list of the top ten countries which have experienced a decline in religiosity, experiencing a drop from 73% in 2005 to 60% in 2012.  30% of Americans now identify as non-religious, and 5% describe themselves as convinced atheists.  But in the US, the evangelical Christian right has wielded enormous political influence since Ronald Reagan courted their votes in the early 1980s.  This makes it surprising to see a decline in religious belief among Americans.  So what explains this decline?  Some argue that the rise of the ‘New Atheists’ such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens has led to more Americans feeling comfortable with identifying themselves as non-religious.  The Christian right’s socially conservative stance on a range of moral issues has been identified as another factor, as the bigoted attitudes of evangelicals seem to have put some Americans off religion altogether.

There are certainly signs of a widening gap between the moral outlook of the Christian right and that of an increasing number of Americans.  Opinion polls have shown growing support for gay marriage, and a large majority of Americans believe that gays and lesbians should be able to serve openly in the military.  Views have also shifted on abortion rights: in November last year, voters in the normally conservative state of Mississippi rejected an amendment which would have defined a fertilized human egg as a human person.  This liberal shift in opinion would appear to be confirmed by the 2012 election results, with voters in states such as Maine, Maryland and Washington choosing to legalise gay marriage, and Republican Senate candidates who took a staunch anti-abortion line being rejected at the polls.

The rise of non-belief could also have had a direct impact on Barack Obama’s re-election.  Another recent study on religious belief, conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, found that the number of Americans adults who claim to have no religious affiliation has reached one in five.  This is a lower figure than that found in the Win-Gallup survey (which found that 30% of Americans describe themselves as non-religious), but the Pew study also found that those without a religious affiliation are far more likely to vote Democrat, with 75% of them voting for Barack Obama in 2008.  Therefore it is possible that the rise in non-belief could have helped to tip the 2012 vote in Obama’s favour.  The Pew study also found that for adults under 30, as many as one in three have no religious affiliation, which suggests that the effect of non-belief on US politics is set to increase.

So with the views of many Americans moving away from those of the Christian right, why has the Christian right’s political influence not been weakened?  In fact, there is some evidence that it has.  For a start, the election results represent a big setback for religious conservatives.  But even before the election, there were already signs that the Christian right’s influence is on the wane.  Evangelicals still have a significant presence within the Republican Party, but they did not manage to obtain the Republican nomination for their favoured candidates in 2008 or in 2012: John McCain was disliked by the Christian right because he once described evangelical preachers Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as ‘forces of evil’, and some evangelicals were suspicious of Mitt Romney because they regard his religion, Mormonism, as a cult.  The Christian right also now suffers from a lack of charismatic leaders, and its support base is ageing, with a difficulty in attracting young supporters.

However, in spite of these developments, religion still casts a large shadow over American public life.  Religious leaders opened and closed each day at both recent party conventions, and there was uproar at the Democratic convention when the word ‘God’ was briefly removed from the party’s platform (the Republicans’ 2012 platform mentions God 12 times).  There has also been fierce opposition from Catholic bishops to Obama’s healthcare reforms, because they include insurance cover which provides contraception.  It is virtually unheard of for American politicians to be openly atheist, and there is currently only one politician in the US who fits this description: Pete Stark, Democrat Representative for California.

Professor Barry Kosmin offers an interesting explanation of the power of the American religious right: ‘When religion was doing well, it did not need to go into politics.  Secularity of our population and culture is obviously growing and so religion is on the defensive’.  If this is true, it means that right-wing religious organisations in the US retain a certain level of influence not because of the size of their constituency (which is in decline), but because of their political skills.  They are skilful at organising campaigns, disseminating propaganda, manipulating the media and lobbying politicians.  A parallel could perhaps be drawn here with socially conservative Christian groups in the UK, such as Christian Concern and the Christian Institute, which have a level of influence which is out of proportion to their actual size and membership (for example, look at how they have manipulated media coverage of the ‘persecuted Christian’ cases at the European Court of Human Rights).  Similarly, the Catholic Church has been known throughout history for its formidable organisational skills, and this could help to explain its continued influence in Ireland.

Atheism and non-belief have increased in the US and Ireland because the dominant religious institutions in these countries have failed to move with the liberalising trends of the modern world.  The Catholic Church, believing itself to be all-powerful, thought it could turn a blind eye to horrendous abuse committed by members of its clergy.  However, the infringement of individuals’ rights, including the rights of children, is unacceptable in modern society.  An institution which spent centuries whipping up moral outrage against other groups in society ironically found itself the subject of moral outrage, and lost the respect of many of its adherents as a result.  The American Christian right thought that it could maintain its social conservatism despite the shift in social attitudes since the 1960s, and its bigotry is now causing an increasing number of Americans to turn away from religion entirely.  The organisational skill of these religious groups enables them to maintain a certain degree of political clout.  But as the size of their flocks continues to shrink, there will surely come a point when their political influence diminishes as well.

By David Christie

Some religious groups with a socially conservative outlook have recently rediscovered the phrase ‘religious freedom’, and they frequently claim that it is under threat.  Policies which have been accused of threatening religious freedom include anti-discrimination legislation in the UK, Obama’s healthcare reforms in the US, and court judgements in European countries intended to protect the rights of children.  But do these policies really violate religious freedom, in that they conflict with the right to manifest one’s belief in ‘teaching, practice, worship and observance’, as stated in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?  Or are certain religious groups only complaining about these policies because they threaten their ability to hold on to unfair privileges?

Four Christians in the UK who claim that their right to religious freedom at work has been violated recently took their cases to the European Court of Human Rights.  However, on closer inspection, what the four claimants are asking for is not religious freedom, but religious privileges.  The first two cases involve the wearing of crosses in the workplace.  British Airways employee Nadia Eweida and Nurse Shirley Chaplin were both disciplined by their employers after refusing to remove necklaces with crosses on them.  However, the decision to forbid the wearing of necklaces with a cross, in both instances, was made purely on the basis of health and safety policies, not out of a desire to suppress the religious beliefs of Christians.  Therefore the idea that these two cases involve infringements of religious freedom is nonsense.

The next two cases involve conscientious objection, and the dilemma which ensues when an employee’s religious beliefs conflict with their duties in the workplace.  Relationship counsellor Gary McFarlane lost his job at Relate in Bristol when he told his bosses that he felt unable to give sex advice to gay couples, and Islington registrar Lilian Ladele was disciplined for refusing to conduct same-sex civil partnerships.  Should the refusal of their employers to make accommodations for them be regarded as an infringement of their religious freedom?  Certain accommodations are often made for employees of other faiths, such as Sikhs and Muslims.  Couldn’t it be argued that the failure of employers to make exceptions for Christian employees, while doing so for workers of other faiths, represents a form of anti-Christian discrimination?

However, exempting an employee from uniform rules for religious reasons, which is usually the case with Sikh and Muslim workers, does not usually have an impact on their ability to carry out their job, or on anyone who uses the good or service which their employer provides.  This cannot be said in the cases of McFarlane and Ladele, as their particular demands do conflict with key aspects of their jobs, and involve discriminating against any gays and lesbians who might want to use their services.  Religious freedom in the workplace should allow reasonable exceptions to be made for religious observance, but it should not be used as a licence to discriminate in the provision of goods and services.  If the religious beliefs of McFarlane and Ladele conflict with key aspects of their job descriptions, then they need to change jobs, not demand that their job duties be rearranged to fit with their beliefs.

By demanding that they should be exempt from anti-discrimination rules which normally apply to everyone, what McFarlane and Ladele are asking for is not religious freedom, but a form of religious privilege.  Eweida and Chaplin are also asking for a form of religious privilege, by demanding to be made exempt from health and safety rules which normally apply to everyone, simply because of their religion.  All four claimants are supported by the Christian Legal Centre, which is affiliated to the socially conservative lobby group Christian Concern, and they have also been backed by former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey.  Christian Concern and Lord Carey are using the four cases as evidence for the assertion that Christians in Britain are being persecuted.  This absurd claim is made in spite of the fact that the Anglican Church is still the official state religion in England, and the fact that Anglican bishops are still guaranteed seats in the House of Lords.  Christian Concern and Lord Carey are therefore attempting to whip up a false narrative of persecution, in order to justify their demands for religious privileges.

Catholic bishops in the US have also discovered how to use the language of religious freedom in an attempt to gain special privileges, on the issue of healthcare reform.  They have been complaining about Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which will oblige employers to provide contraception for women as part of their employee health insurance coverage.  The US Conference of Catholic Bishops, as well as many Protestant evangelicals, argue that this law will infringe religious liberty, because it will force religious employers who oppose contraception to provide it as part of their health insurance cover.  Despite concessions which Obama has introduced into the Act (which involve providing contraceptive coverage directly to employees), they continue to oppose the new law.

However, in attempting to block their employees’ access to contraception, the Catholic bishops are effectively trying to force Catholic doctrine on all employees of Catholic organisations, regardless of whether they actually belong to the Catholic faith (Catholic employers include organisations such as hospitals and charities, which employ hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom are not Catholic).  This goes beyond legitimate demands for religious freedom, because it violates the freedom of choice of others, and in a way which discriminates against female employees.

The international row over religious circumcision provides yet another example of how demands for religious privilege are being misrepresented under the banner of religious freedom.  In June this year, a court in Cologne ruled against the right of parents to impose religious circumcision on young boys.  The row quickly spread to other European countries, and has also ignited in the US.  The controversy has led to protests by Jewish and Muslim groups, with supporters of religious circumcision claiming that a ban on the procedure would constitute an infringement of their religious freedom.

But the problem with religious circumcision is that it irreversibly changes the bodies of young boys who are not in a position to give consent, and is done purely on the basis of their parents’ religious beliefs.  Any new religion which attempted to impose permanent modifications on the bodies of young children would probably be denounced as a form of child abuse.  Therefore the only reason why circumcision is tolerated in modern society is that it has thousands of years of tradition behind it.  But the fact that a religious ritual has been established for thousands of years does not give you the right to force it on others.  Allowing a religious group to force such a practice on defenceless children, which would not be permitted for any secular organisation, is a form of religious privilege, not an expression of religious freedom.  The fairest way of balancing the religious freedom of Jews and Muslims with the rights of children must be to allow non-medical circumcision only for adult men, who are old enough to make informed decisions about permanent changes to their bodies.

A ban on the non-medical circumcision of infants will undoubtedly be difficult to achieve, as well as leading to social tensions between religious communities, the state and the wider society.  However, the moral case against circumcision remains a strong one, because it violates a fundamental human right, which is the right to bodily integrity.  In the history of religion, there are also many examples of ancient practices being abandoned in order to fit with the demands of modernity (for example, most Jews and Christians no longer consider it a requirement for women to separate themselves from the community when menstruating, or to call their husbands ‘master’).  Therefore it is not far-fetched to suggest that society may eventually view religious circumcision in a similar light to our current view of the 18^th century practice of castrating choirboys.

All of these examples demonstrate that the right to religious freedom is not absolute: it has to be balanced against other rights.  An expression of religious freedom becomes a form of religious privilege when it is permitted to violate other human rights, in a way which would be viewed as unacceptable for any non-religious group in society.  The idea that different human rights must be balanced against each other is an established concept in democratic societies.  Only a few rights, such as the right not to be tortured, and the right to be free from slavery, are regarded as absolute.

However, as we have seen, some religious groups seem to believe that religious freedom is an absolute right.  They claim that religious freedom allows them to force their beliefs on others, and to discriminate against marginalised groups in society.  When attempts are made to restrict their ability to do this, they create a false narrative of persecution, in which they cast themselves as the victims.  However, the reality is that they are not victims, but aggressors, who are either trying to hold on to religious privileges, or to win back privileges which they used to enjoy before society became increasingly secularised.  False claims about infringements of religious liberty, intended to mask ambitions for power, are also an insult to religious groups around the world who are genuine victims of persecution.  Not all religious groups are in the business of dishonestly trying to gain unfair privileges.  However, for the sake of defending a free and democratic society, those religious groups who are trying to do so should be exposed, and their efforts should be firmly resisted.

By David Fairley

I recently took part in a morality study being conducted at https://ssl.bbc.co.uk/labuk/experiments/morality/. I was given the gift of feedback in which I discovered that I had

• A low sense of disgust
• A higher sense of wrongness than average
• A lower sense of anger than average
• A lower desire to avoid  than average
• A lower desire to punish than average

I also found out I have definite moral stances on issues such as Boundary breaking, Structural integrity, Storage security, Production levels, Distribution arrangements, Extrusion activity, Control criteria, Reproductive arrangements Memory usage, Communication strategy and Perception issues. Not bad for about 20 minutes work (mouse clicking).

It seemed such a pity to waste this feedback that I elected to reflect on it and see what if anything I can deduce about myself, and I thought, Why not let others in on the journey, so they can reflect on their own moral status too?. So, here goes.

A low sense of disgust

In the context given, disgust relates to my revulsion at ‘wrongdoers’ however can also be directed at something I find physically repellent. So on average, wrongdoers and repulsive people/situations seem to get a better time of it from me than they might get from others. Apparently, my score also suggests

…that [I] do not experience a strong emotional response to issues of right and wrong. [I] probably rarely feel physically sickened by the immoral actions of other people

I was also informed that there is a psychological viewpoint that disgust is mechanistic in the human avoidance of disease/parasites. I think the argument is that moral and biological cleanliness are related, yet let’s leave this alone for the moment.

To recap; I rarely feel physically sickened by the immoral actions of other people, which is different from (lower than) the average human being.

This is probably true. Since I was a child, I was never comfortable with the notion that someone who does something wrong should be treated with disgust. Disgust for me is the feeling I had when as a child I was swimming in a public pool, dove down to the pool floor to pick up a stone and discovered it to be a lump of ( I presume) human excrement. Its subsequent dissolution in my hand and surrounding water was for me, disgusting. I can honestly say I have never felt that way towards any ‘moral’ activity.

Don’t get me wrong, there are activities carried out by human beings that collapse my sense of humanity, however that sense is quickly restored – usually because I feel that when humanity towards a moral wrong collapses, greater evil is sure to follow. Disgust, for me, is not something to be fed, merely used as a sign that moral wrong is probably at work.

A higher sense of wrongness than average

The feedback given suggests that I am

…more sensitive than average to actions that go against [my] personal view of what is right, and that [I am] therefore probably less tolerant of moral wrongs

This seems a bit superfluous as I suspect we all feel more sensitive to that which is personal to us; however as is it always good to do, I will not dismiss this information out of hand. I am happy to say that being described as someone who doesn’t promote disgust of others’ moral weaknesses and intolerant to that which as I see as immoral; including the promotion of disgust, is fairly accurate.

A lower sense of anger than average

This is surprising as my immediate reaction would be to say my sense of anger is higher than average. Others have joked about me being akin to the character Michael Douglas played in Falling Down, so this feedback jars.

I think the jarring comes from the self presumed fact that I do get angry towards those who go against my personal view of what is right; however I do not get angry with them. That is, I do not want to harm them for disagreeing with me. I just get frustrated that what seems to be so clearly wrong to me is disputed by others. It creates a deep awareness of difference, that in turn breeds fear, which I suggest manifests as anger; hence the feedback.

Within the study, a clip of film was shown about the status of soldiers in combat, and a warning was issued that the fictional news story seen near the start of Test Your Morality may have influenced my responses to the moral scenarios in the test. In other words, I might have been morally corrupted up front. Aren’t we all due to the essence of our schooling? - An important point to remember.

A lower desire to avoid than average

The avoidance referred to was essentially the avoidance of those with whom I disagree. If truth be told, should I avoid everyone I disagree with; a desert would be a more likely place to find me than the City of Edinburgh.  My ‘lower’ disgust setting might be the reason I am able to live in a city, despite people hocking up globules of catarrh on the street and bus drivers not stopping for the elderly or infirm, despite the obvious distress on their faces- possibly caused by severe pain or fear of being harmed. That stirs my bile even if it does not boil my disgust.

A lower desire to punish than average

Let’s be clear, my gut reaction often conjures up wild imaginings of instant justice of the painful variety, however to date my physical violence record is low. Why? – Because punishment in my experience is morally wrong and physically ineffectual. How, in any rational model combined with human experience can we conclude that (for instance) killing a killer deters killing? That which involves an activity promotes the activity first and foremost. The hypocrisy and insanity of state sanctioned murder is astounding. Yet it happens.

Boundary breaking, Structural integrity, Storage security, Production levels,…

If the feedback is to be believed I also find:

Scenarios that affect boundaries in society, such as national borders or other thresholds, particularly ‘wrong’

Scenarios where people damage the structures within society as especially ‘wrong’

Scenarios affecting the storage of resources to be especially ‘wrong’

Scenarios that affect the production of new resources as particularly ‘wrong’

Scenarios in the test where distribution systems were affected were roughly the same as those of our sample population

Scenarios in the test where the removal of waste products was compromised was roughly the same as those of our sample population

Scenarios in the test in which people failed to maintain accepted standards was roughly the same as that of our sample population.

Scenarios in the test in which reproduction was compromised was roughly the same as that of our sample population

Scenarios that affected the storage of information to be particularly ‘wrong’

Scenarios that affected the sharing of information as ‘wrong’

Scenarios where the gathering or comparison of information was impaired as not especially ‘wrong’

To paraphrase, I value (more highly than many) moral boundaries, structures and resources. I am about average in my valuing of distribution, waste removal, social behaviour and reproductive safety; and I again value more highly than many, the freedom of information. Where there is impairment, I am lenient. Why wouldn’t I be? – Injured and ill beings are not immoral criminals; well not in my moral sphere.

I guess what I am being portrayed as; is a being (organism to hook back in to the argument that moral and biological cleanliness are related) who believes that

The (moral) body, freely informed and attentive to interpersonal integrity (no shitting on, spitting on, raping of, abusing of and defiling of others) is worth cultivating.

That sounds good to me; as a moral stance and a physical lifestyle.