The BBC writes:

The president of a London university atheist society has resigned over a row about an image of the Prophet Muhammad.

The society at University College London (UCL) published an image on its Facebook page showing “Jesus and Mo” having a drink at a bar.

The atheist group was asked by the UCL union to remove it, but refused and started a petition defending its freedom of expression.

A student Muslim group began a counter-petition asking for its removal.

UCL’s Atheist, Secularist and Humanist society said its president Robbie Yellon was stepping down to be replaced by former vice president Michael Thor.

The slaughter of conscious animals was widely abandoned in the 20th Century and is now practised mainly in the Jewish and Muslim communities. Consumers increasingly expect animals to be stunned before death – but would banning other slaughter methods be an unacceptable violation of religious rights?

Read full article here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14779271

Malik’s opinions on Pakistan’s problems are being drowned out by a furore over whether or not she posed naked for photos

Read full article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/06/veena-malik-nude-fhm-cover-pakistan

Sheffield Christian Free School are hoping to set up a creationist Free School in 2013, as are the previously rejected Everyday Champions Church. And yet, the Government was clear in its rejection of the latter. Richy Thompson asks, why do these groups keep applying?

Fairy DNA by kyz

Richy Thompson is the BHA’s Education Campaigner. The BHA’s e-petition, Teach evolution, not creationism!, is now approaching 15,000 signatures. If you’re a UK resident, please sign, and urge all your friends, family and colleagues to do likewise.

Last week we broke the news that a group applying to open a Free School, Sheffield Christian Free School, intends to teach creationism throughout the curriculum. The group behind the bid, Sheffield Christian Family Schools Ltd, already runs two private schools in Sheffield, including the Bethany School. The group has said that it is ‘unashamedly creationist’.

We have been leading the way in countering creationism in the UK. For example, in September we coordinated the new campaign, Teach evolution, not creationism! This garnered support from big names such as Sir David Attenborough, BHA Vice President Richard Dawkins and Revd Prof Michael Reiss. It was also supported by a number of other organisations, such as the British Science Association, Association for Science Education, Campaign for Science & Engineering and Ekklesia.

The story about the Sheffield school has been picked up by a number of places. It was in Friday’s TES, will be in the Guardian next week, and also led to me debating Ken Walze, head of Bethany School, on BBC Radio Sheffield. You can listen to the full debate, or read a transcript, on the BHA’s website.

Although the government has told us that it does not support creationist schools and even recently rejected Everyday Champions Church’s bid solely for that reason, it has failed to take action on any of the recommendations of the Teach evolution, not creationism! campaign which would prevent many future problems. In fact, Everyday Champions Church has said it intends to bid again. Representatives are meeting with civil servants at the Department for Education today in an attempt to get the decision overturned, and their local MP, Patrick Mercer, is meeting with Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove next Monday to attempt the same thing.

Sheffield Christian Free School are also undeterred. In the interview, referring to the government’s opposition to creationist Free Schools, I asked, ‘I wonder if Ken can explain how he hopes to get past this barrier?’ Ken explained that,

‘We’re just offering the model that we’ve got. As I said, we do tick a lot of the boxes about how Free Schools can be set up. We do, obviously, very clearly have creation as part of our curriculum… We’re hoping that Michael Gove, as he begins to investigate this a little bit further, will start to see that we’re providing very good schools… There’s nothing to fear from creationism, it’s a valid part of our society. Millions have a faith, and believe the Christian story and way of life. It’s something I’m hoping Michael Gove – as he gets more and more applications from schools like ours – will begin to investigate a bit further.’

In other words, they’re hoping that Gove will change his mind.

The only way Gove can send the right message to these groups, and stop these and others, like Creation Ministries International, from teaching creationism as science in schools, is to make statutory and enforceable the government guidance that its portrayal as science is unacceptable.

Anti-capitalist protesters at St Pauls face imminent eviction as the City of London Corporation attaches eviction notices to tents. Protestors vow to stay and fight the corporation.

Read more : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8894202/Eviction-notices-tied-to-tents-at-St-Pauls-protest-site.html

The Guardian reports that fantasy writer Terry Pratchett says he has received consent forms requesting assisted suicide but has not yet signed them. He states:

“The only thing stopping me [signing them] is that I have made this film and I have a bloody book to finish.”

Read the full report here.

Based on the idea of ‘if it’s in the Bible, it must be true’, The Unicorn Museum promotes belief in the Biblical Truth of unicorns, a creature mentioned nine times in the King James V Bible.

The Unicorn Museum website was created in response to the Creation Museum, a $US27 Million facility designed to teach the ‘truth’ of Creationism and the Christian Bible.

Aside from advertising a petting zoo and and a new exhibit, The Gnome Experience, the website is also calling out for donations to place a Unicorn Museum billboard near the site of the Creation Museum.  You can vote for your prefered billboard here.

Richy Thompson describes a typical day in the office

Richy Thompson

Richy is the British Humanist Association’s Campaigns Officer (Faith Schools and Education) and the UK’s only dedicated campaigner against ‘faith’ schools. The BHA is currently fundraising to support the post for 2012. Please donate today at http://www.justgiving.com/nofaithschools

It’s been a while since I’ve written an article for HumanistLife. The previous two were both written when I was President of the AHS, before I started working as the BHA’s ‘faith’ schools campaigner. I’ve been in this job for slightly over four months now, and I thought it’d be interesting to talk about some of the things I get up to by exploring a typical day – yesterday.

I started the day doing our internal media review, replying to some queries from parents about collective worship, worked in support of local campaigns against ‘faith’ schools, and navigating creationist attack mail. The first big thing I looked at was an email I had received from a member of Milton Keynes Humanists, who I had arranged last week to attend a public meeting being held by anti-choice group, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), in association with a number of local Muslim groups. SPUC’s “Safe at School” campaign works against good Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) in state-funded schools, particularly focussing on the primary level. Our local member took extensive notes, which should prove very helpful in understanding their tactics. We had another member at their Wakefield meeting last night, who I’m looking forward to hearing more from shortly.

After that, I spent a while investigating a tip-off I had received about a bid from some creationists for a Free School. The bid, on the surface, appears to be from an evangelical Christian group that has nothing to do with creationism, but someone who had met them found that the leadership privately holds creationist beliefs, and intends to ‘teach creation and evolution, but not creationism’ – whatever that means. A number of evangelical groups have bid for Free Schools – more evangelical than any group already providing state-funded education – and serious questions need to be asked about what these groups actually believe, and what they intend to teach, about all sorts of things, not just creationism. I imagine many will have seen the negative publicity that Everyday Champions Church’s bid has attracted, and decided to mask their true colours, perhaps even from the Department for Education. With regards to this particular bid, we’re considering appropriate further steps.

The Education Bill finished its Committee Stage in the House of Lords yesterday, and we’re busy preparing for the Report Stage. Our aim for the law to be changed to put an end to discrimination against teachers and pupils and, really importantly, to stop the huge proliferation of new ‘faith’ schools of all different denominations that we are seeing. We worked with peers in the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group to get a wide range of amendments tabled during Committee Stage, and during Report Stage we’ll be looking to take a number of these forward for further debate, though perhaps tightening the focus on some in response to what was said during Committee Stage. So yesterday I prepared an internal document where for each of the amendments debated, I looked at what we wanted, what was said, what the Government’s response was, and what I would recommend for further action at the next stage.

Finally, I’ve been doing a lot of work lately around Standing Advisory Councils for Religious Education (SACREs). About half of the 151 SACREs in England and the 22 in Wales have a humanist as a member, but ideally we’d like to see that expanded to all of them. Yesterday we gained three new humanist reps. One of them, Zelda Bailey, I arranged to observe a meeting of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets’ SACRE  last week, and she attended that first meeting this week. At the meeting they happened to be putting the finishing touches on the RE Syllabus for the borough, and she found that it didn’t mention the non-religious in any way. Thanks to her last minute interventions, she was able to add “secular worldviews” to the religions and beliefs to be studied each year in Tower Hamlets’ community, voluntary controlled and foundation schools, and most of the Academies – therefore meaning that thousands of children should now learn about non-religious beliefs such as atheism, agnosticism and humanism, when they otherwise wouldn’t have done. New RE syllabuses are only agreed once every five years, so Zelda’s appearance at the meeting was particularly well-timed! And the meeting finished with her being unanimously voted onto the SACRE as a co-opted member.

I finished the day looking at the Humanist SACRE Reps handbook, and how we can improve it to help further instruct all reps in how they can best carry out their role on their SACREs, and doing some preparation for a talk I’m giving to King’s College London Atheist, Humanist and Secular Society I’m giving next week.

All in all, I think this is a really great, tremendously interesting job, but also a hugely important and highly unique one – there’s no-one else in the country (perhaps the world?) working full time to abolish ‘faith’ schools, and yet many non-religious people in the UK would agree that education is the single biggest area in which we are disadvantaged due to our lack of belief.

I would very much like to continue this job, and I think it’s really vital that the British Humanist Association continues to employ a ‘faith’ schools campaigner. So please donate to our JustGiving appeal at http://www.justgiving.com/nofaithschools so that this work can continue.

A current affairs programme called Flash Talk is being made for Current TV. The show features a live public lecture by comedian and committed humanist Jon Holmes on his concerns about the role religion plays in government.

Jon is looking for people to join in at his Speaker’s Corner-style public lecture this coming Saturday 1st October in London.

Check out the Facebook page here and the YouTube channel here.

And anyone willing to get more involved should contact samgregory@live.co.uk ASAP with their contact details.

The Mustard Seed Secular School in Uganda needs to raise £22,000 for a new school building

There are currently three humanist schools in Uganda: Mustard Seed School, Busota, Isaac Newton School, Masaka, and Fair View School, Kamengo. Each offers a broad non-dogmatic education to secondary pupils, where students are encouraged to develop their own views about religion and the world. Each has received significant financial support from humanists and rationalists in the UK. New Humanist and the Rationalist Association have taken a central role in supporting the Mustard Seed School, Busota.

The Muslim School next door to Mustard Seed has closed down, and the land come up for sale. It includes a block of four classrooms, offices and a kitchen, and would enable Mustard Seed to become a local exam centre, meaning students would not need to travel long distances to do exams, and bring the school additional revenue. The land and school have been offered at a very competitive price, but the offer is time-limited. The school needs to raise £22,000 as quickly as possible.

Visit here for more details

Catherine Bennett in the Observer says it’s time to kick the clerics off the moral high ground. She states that:

We should drop our assumption that churchmen have an automatic right to be heard in this secular age

This in Comment is Free piece, Bennett criticises the hypocrisy of Bishops in the Lords, the idea that only they are qualified to speak on moral issues, and the Bishop’s social views, including on assisted dying

Billboards promoting safe sex have been targeted by Australian Christian Lobby. One complainant wrote: “Firstly, one of the men is wearing a wedding band. This suggest that either (A) they are a married gay couple (which is illegal in Australia), or (B) that at least one of them is married and is cheating on his wife.” Thankfully, the morality police are being kept in check by reasonable argument that physical health is more important than ‘spiritual health’.

One commentor pointed out:

So, this is the same nutbag group that was allowed to put up posters telling us the world was going to end last week??? Fer Chrisssake!!!
Let me tell you, I had to explain the ‘End is Nigh’ ads to my scared 8 year old who goes to a catholic school and beleves everything the church says. He honestly thought he was going to die last week until I calmed him down. If ever there was an add that was offensive it was that religous claptrap.
Some democracy we live in.

Richard Wilson’s New Humanist article on the African humanists campaigning against witchcraft accusations, arrests and abuse of children and other vulnerable people, deserves reading in full. Here’s a short bit from near the beginning after a few examples of outrageous police conduct in Malawi.

These are just three of over 80 case-files compiled by the Association for Secular Humanism (ASH) in Malawi, where dozens of people have been jailed on imaginary evidence for the imaginary crime of “witchcraft”. Most are poor, elderly and from rural communities. ASH has campaigned successfully against efforts to recognise “witchcraft” as a crime. But some magistrates have been pursuing cases regardless, prosecuting people for an offence that isn’t even on the statute book. Others have been imprisoned for “pretending witchcraft”, or the catch-all crime of “disorderly conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace”. This despite the fact that Malawian law actually makes it a crime to accuse another person of being a witch.

The stories make heartbreaking reading. But when I speak by phone with George Thindwa, the ASH Executive Director, he sounds upbeat. He’s just received a letter from the office of the State President. “In fact I have it in my hand – I’m just coming from the scanning machine.”

The President’s office has agreed to review the case-files that the ASH had sent, and is “committed to ensuring that Women and the Elderly are not victimised in the manner highlighted”. Thindwa is hopeful that those listed could be free within weeks.

Wilson goes on to cover how “witchcraft” abuses are spread  by Pentecostal and Revivalist churches, how lack of proper healthcare drives people to “healers” who blame ailments on witchcraft, and how a “supernaturally” obsessed film industry exacerbate superstition into outright paranoia. The witchcraft films are exported from Nigeria and the article moves there, covering the similar campaigns of Leo Igwe. Whereas Thindwa’s campaigns in Malawi tend to focus on the elderly imprisoned as witches under abused laws, Igwe’s campaigns focus on children tormented and exiled as witches, often by those closest to them.

Link: http://newhumanist.org.uk/2548/witch-hunt-saboteurs

What must ‘Humanism’ mean? Richard Norman thinks outside the tribe.

Richard Norman, speaking at the BHA Philosophy and the Arts day conference, 2010

If ‘humanism’ means anything at all, it must surely embrace respect and concern for all human beings, whether they are members of our own family or group or society or are people on the other side of the world whom we do not know and will never meet.  It means a responsiveness to the needs of all with whom we share a common humanity.  As humanists we often invoke the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reflects and translates into political imperatives those shared human needs, and which includes these items:

Article 25:  Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Article 26:  Everyone has the right to education…

Article 28:  Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

But the sad truth is that we have a long way to go before we have an international order in which these rights are fully realized for everyone.  Here are some facts about the world in which we live.

• Around 1.4 billion people still subsist on less than $1.25 a day, the international poverty line defined by the World Bank.
• Around one billion people suffer from hunger.
• Almost nine million children die each year before they reach their fifth birthday.
• Hundreds of thousands of women die due to complications of pregnancy or childbirth every year.
• About 69 million school-age children are not in school. Almost half of them (31 million) are in sub-Saharan Africa, and more than a quarter (18 million) are in Southern Asia. (Data)

Humanists have always been actively involved in organisations dedicated to tackling the challenges of global poverty and injustice. The BHA encourages its members to continue that tradition of involvement, but has rightly avoided duplicating the organisations which are already active in the field.  For this reason there is no specifically humanist movement dedicated to combating poverty and promoting international development.  There are also good reasons, parallel to the ones which Marilyn Mason mentions in the case of climate change, why humanists have not organised as humanists:  we may legitimately disagree about the best way to deal with poverty and global injustice, and we are resistant to being told what causes to support.

But without creating unnecessary new organisations, it’s important that humanists are visible in their support for global justice.  Actions do speak louder than words, and if we’re serious in what we say about shared human values and about living a good life without religion, then we need to put those values into action.  The role of the new interest group ‘Humanists for a Better World’ should be to add a distinctive humanist presence and voice to existing organisations and campaigns.  It should act as a forum for humanists to pool news and information, and to alert one another to important events and campaigns.

Here are some of the issues which I think are currently important.

In the last few years, concern for international development and concern about climate change have become increasingly linked.  The problem of climate change caused by CO2 emissions has been created by the industrialised countries, but it is above all the countries of the global south which are already feeling the effects, with more extreme and unpredictable weather patterns, increased flooding in some areas, and changes in rainfall leading to crop failures and the drying up of pastureland in others.  Action on climate change has to take the form of ‘climate justice’ – enabling the poorer countries of the world to follow a low-carbon route to development and not being forced to pay the price for our failures.  Oxfam and the World Development Movement among others are campaigning for a global Climate Fund which is fair and effective.  See:

• http://www.oxfam.org.uk/get_involved/campaign/climate_change/
• http://www.wdm.org.uk/climatedebt

World poverty is being fuelled by the spike in food commodity prices, which have been artificially inflated by the irresponsible behaviour of commodity speculators.  We need international regulations to curb food speculation – see:

• http://www.wdm.org.uk/food-speculation

Development organisations have increasingly come to recognise that trade is the route out of poverty.  But this requires more than the free-marketers’ mantra of ‘free trade’.  It needs trade justice.  At the level of our daily lives and our own purchases, this is something which we can promote by buying Fairtrade products and raising awareness of the value of Fairtrade.  I’d like to see more Humanist groups committing themselves to using Fairtrade refreshments at their meetings and events.  But it also requires political action, because the scope for trade to benefit developing countries is severely limited by the unfair tariffs and subsidies maintained by the US and Europe.  The Fairtrade Foundation is currently running a campaign against American and European subsidies for their own cotton farmers, which lower world prices and hit cotton-producing countries such as Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali.  See:

• http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/products/cotton/default.aspx

If you share these or related concerns, do please make use of the ‘Humanists for a Better World’ web site at www.h4bw.org.uk to communicate news, ideas and actions, and to work with other humanists for global justice and a better world.

Richard Norman is Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy, founder-member of the Humanist Philosophers’ Group, and Vice-President of the BHA. His book On Humanism was released in 2004.

An upcoming BBC documentary, Choosing to Die, featuring Sir Terry Pratchett is due out later this year. Pratchett will discuss attitudes and the legal position across Europe and talk to terminally ill patients who want to end their lives at a time of their choosing, possibly with assistance from others.

There is huge support for legalising assisted dying in the UK (ComRes) (also see Times poll and YouGov and Angus Reid for figures in Scotland, where Margo MacDonald’s pro-reform bill was recently defeated anyway). If nothing else surely this level of support for reform mandates the license-payer funded BBC to do a bit of coverage on it. But Care Not Killing said: “The BBC is acting like a cheerleader for legalising assisted suicide.”

However, Sarah Wootton, chief executive of campaign group Dignity in Dying, warned: “I believe it is irresponsible not to be discussing this issue. People are taking desperate decisions at the end of their lives; travelling abroad to die or attempting to end their lives at home, often alone for fear of their loved ones facing prosecution.”

Link: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/uk/Row-over-39righttodie39-film.6752687.jp

The BBC‘s commissioning editor for documentaries, Charlotte Moore, said: “Assisted death is an important topic of debate in the UK, and this is a chance for the BBC2 audience to follow Sir Terry as he wrestles with the difficult issues that many across Britain are also faced with. I hope this sparks a constructive debate that people across the spectrum of opinion can engage in.”

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/apr/15/terry-pratchett-documentary-assisted-suicide

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail is alarmed (for a change) that “Britons are travelling in record numbers to kill themselves at the Dignitas suicide clinic in Switzerland”. These “record figures” are based on a tiny sample – rates at which it only takes a few people to add a significant percentage – and compares the last three years’ average with the previous six years’ average, indicating that right or wrong the change probably isn’t so fast.

The number of British suicides at the Zurich clinic has risen from an average of 14 a year between 2002 and 2007 to a total of 76 – about 25 a year – from 2008-2010.

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1377924/Britons-die-Dignitas-suicide-clinic-record-numbers.html

Sir Patrick Stewart is the latest celebrity to back reform, becoming a patron of Dignity in Dying, alongside humanist Ian McEwan. Stewart said that choosing to die should be a human right:

Speaking publicly for the first time about his membership of Dignity in Dying, Stewart referred to a recent tragedy involving a friend, as well as his own diagnosis of having coronary heart disease five years ago. “I am reluctant to go into details. Enough to say this person was driven to an extreme situation of ending their own life in the most ghastly way,” he said of the friend. “There’s got to be an alternative when someone is suffering so badly and is ready to go.”

Asked if he believed that the choice of ending one’s life should be a human right, he replied: “yes”, adding: “Everything that medicine can do to keep somebody alive doesn’t automatically follow as the best option.”

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/apr/17/star-trek-actor-backs-euthanasia

Marilyn Mason explains why humanists should act together on climate change – and why we need another humanist interest group.

Global Warming

The ground at night - a detail from the H4BW website

“Global warming” might not sound too bad right now, as we come out of one of the coldest winters in recent years to an delightful April sunny spell. But, counter-intuitively perhaps, global warming and the melting of the polar ice-caps, which cause changes to ocean and air currents, appear as likely to cause freezing winters in Britain as they are to intensify desertification in hotter parts of the world and to bring other unpredictable extremes of weather. Globally, we seem to be seeing more of these extremes: not just our unusually snowy winter, but more floods, more droughts, more forest fires.

“Climate chaos” is in fact a more apt description of our future, and the chaos is unlikely to stop at climate. We can expect increasing conflicts over diminishing resources such as oil, land and water, escalating extinctions of wildlife, more frequent humanitarian disasters, and mass migrations of refugees from areas where food crops no longer grow.

The end of this century, when most of us will be safely dead, is often given as the time when a 2 or 4 degree rise in the Earth’s temperature will cause this chaos, but of course it won’t suddenly start then – it will be a gradual process and may already have begun in Africa and Australia and even closer to home. If future humanity and the planet’s ecosystems are to survive in anything like good shape, radical action is needed now.

Acting together and personal choice

Organised Humanism in the UK has been surprisingly slow to take on the ethical challenges of reducing carbon emissions and mitigating climate change. Individual humanists are doubtless doing their bit, convinced by the scientific consensus that things will go very ill for our children and grandchildren, perhaps even for some of us, if we do not change our wasteful life-styles. I’m sure many of us switch off our lights and computers, eat less or no meat, avoid unnecessary travel, cycle, recycle, buy less stuff and local stuff, go on climate change marches, join environmental groups and campaigns, write to our MPs… but we have done little collectively. Why is this?

I can think of several reasons. Firstly, existing humanist organisations have their hands more than full with the day-to-day concerns of their members and the wider non-religious public: the provision of advice and ceremonies for the non-religious, campaigns for recognition and equality, and other domestic issues. The BHA can campaign against faith schools securely supported by its membership, but is there less consensus about human responsibility for climate chaos? the best ways to tackle it? whether it is really happening?

Perhaps it stems from our lack of (or freedom from) individual leadership. Humanism brings together freethinkers, and has no system, democratic, autocratic or sacred, for choosing, or following, personal leaders. Pronouncements from religious leaders on the environment and what their followers should do about it have been coming thick and fast recently (on the coat-tails of science, of course), but humanists have no equivalent figureheads. Many of us would resent being told what to think or do, even about something on which there is overwhelming agreement, including, remarkably, not just scientists but  the world’s politicians. Despite their failure to achieve fair and legally binding agreements at Copenhagen in December 2009 and at Cancun in December 2010, disagreements between world leaders seem to be about how best to mitigate climate change and who should bear the financial burden, not about whether to bother.

For humanists, whether or not to bother about climate change remains a personal choice. Some may in fact prefer the line of “skeptical environmentalist” Bjørn Lomborg that we should focus first on the problems that we can overcome, problems such as poverty, education and hunger, and that the resulting growth in prosperity will then produce environmental solutions; for example, less deforestation, stable populations, and technological advances. But the new humanist interest group Humanists for a Better World (H4BW) recognises that these global problems are indeed interrelated: for example, poverty can exacerbate deforestation and thus increase carbon emissions; education, particularly of girls, can help to stabilise population and thus reduce demands on land and water. Working and campaigning on these issues does not preclude working and campaigning on environmental sustainability, and the environment cannot necessarily wait while we solve these other problems: forests may not recover from the damage we inflict while, say, extending agriculture or growing bio-fuels; extinctions tend to be irreversible; and as developing nations develop out of poverty they pump yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, thus accelerating climate chaos. We need to act on all fronts, though not necessarily all of us on all fronts all the time.  H4BW intends to enable and encourage collective and individual humanist action on many of them.

The unique humanist position

Being a humanist should not involve ignoring the fate of people who live far away or who will exist in the future, or indeed the fate of other species; neither should it entail the Pollyanna-ish belief in human perfectibility and inevitable progress that some accuse us of. Progess is certainly not inevitable on most of the issues that H4BW is concerned about, and there are far too many vested interests and too much short-termism around to feel great confidence about solutions emerging in time without considerable pressure for change . Human beings can choose to act for the common good or not, but I hope that enough humanists are concerned enough to be a real presence in environmental campaigns and to add a strong collective voice to the pressure for change.

Humanists can offer something distinctive and constructive to the debates about sustainability, climate change, renewable energy and peak oil. We may well be more rational and far-sighted than most politicians about the economic and human costs of global warming and the investment and actions necessary to mitigate and perhaps ultimately adapt to it. Unlike some “deep greens”, we will not dismiss out of hand the technological solutions that are probably our best hope if we are to have enough food, clean energy and water. Unlike some commentators, we will tend to accept the scientific consensus rather than denying that there is a problem or hoping that it is just part of a natural cycle that will sort itself out or about which we can do nothing. Unlike a few of the more misanthropic environmentalists, we are unlikely to gloat over the mess that humanity has got itself into and rejoice that at least the planet and cockroaches and rats will survive even if we don’t. Unlike some religious believers, we will not oppose family planning or look forward to “end times” and eternal paradise or anticipate rescue by a deity if this life fails.

We know it’s up to us, we surely hope that our children and grandchildren and people in the most vulnerable parts of the world are not going to have lives immeasurably worse than ours, and we know that humanist ethics require us to consider the consequences of our actions – or inaction.

“Four out of five people think that the number of cars in use is having a serious effect on climate and two thirds agree that everyone should reduce their car journeys. These figures apply as much to car drivers as to anyone else. However, the figures suddenly drop when people are asked whether they are willing and able to match words with actions. Less than half said yes to reducing car journeys. Another 12 per cent admitted that they could use the car less, but did not seem willing to. And 23 per cent say that people should be allowed to use their cars as much as they like.” (British Social Attitudes, published January 2008)

I believe that committed humanists are more willing than most to match words with actions, and that together we can help to bring about much needed change and counter any perception that humanists believe the Earth exists just for us to exploit, that there is a “great gap at the heart of …liberal secular humanism”. To do so, humanists need to be more vocal and more visible, and I hope that the new website H4BW.org.uk (still in development) will enable many more of us to be so, and to work together on climate chaos and the other linked global issues. Though Humanists for a Better World will be mainly a virtual community sharing news, ideas and actions, we hope it will occasionally have a physical presence too, as there is always considerable positive interest when humanists appear at demonstrations and meetings, and support from the British Humanist Association will tie us in to existing structures and networks. Do please have a look at the website and take action as and when you can.

Marilyn Mason was a teacher for 20 years before working as Education Officer of the British Humanist Association (BHA) from 1998 to 2006. She is a campaigning member of South West London Humanist group, affiliated to the BHA and co-founder of H4BW.

In an article accusing humanists of missing the point of the census religion question, the Christian Institute takes the time to explain that:

The BHA is missing the point. The census question does not seek to measure religious devotion or practice, it simply measures affiliation.

Funnily enough this point is far from “missed” by the BHA’s Census Campaign. Under the heading “What does the Census really measure?” the Census Campaign website says:

However, the high percentage of people who ticked the ‘Christian’ box, coupled with falling Church attendance and evidence from other surveys on belief and practice, suggests that the question actually measures a vague cultural affiliation…

It’s the immediately subsequent point that is actually the point of the Census Campaign, and the beef with the religion question, namely that vague cultural affiliation is:

– something that does not affect people’s needs with regard to policy.

And the problem is that sometimes the census data is used exactly as if the ‘religion’ answers were meaningful.

So we all agree that cultural affiliation is (at best) what the Census can be said to measure. Can we now all agree that obviously this will mean that Census religion findings and vague nominal affiliations won’t be used when it comes to defending social attitudes or informing policy formation or allocating funding? That’s the point.

Whenever an organisation gets a tiny bit more attention than in the average few weeks, one of the most predictable consequences is that media commentators will gather round and hit it with a few sticks for a while. This is true even of commentators who largely agree with the aims and objectives. But agreeing would be a boring story, and there’s plenty to pick over if you paraphrase your target hard enough.

Deborah Orr, writing in the Guardian, seemingly intended to write a piece about the Census Campaign, the title being “Should we tick ‘No Religion’ on the census?”. It quickly becomes a fuzzily-aimed pot shot at the British Humanist Association. This is despite agreeing with the Census Campaign, with secularism, and at one point half-heartedly even with the description of humanism given by the BHA.

Orr first falls into the hoary old trap of assuming that any vaguely collective action on passingly philosophical terrain must be a “religious” operation. Is it really so impossible to imagine that some non-religious people can use a descriptive term for the bits of their views they share, without immediately descending into dogma and group-think?

She agrees with the Census campaign, though not the tone, Orr’s tastes compel her to share. But actually she disagrees with the tone only after she paraphrases it, and finds her own paraphrasing too commanding; first she quotes the Campaign, ”We urge people who do not want to give continuing or even greater importance to unshared religions in our public life to tick ‘No Religion’ in the census“, then she translates for your convenience:

Actually, I had ticked “No Religion”. But I still don’t like the tenor of this instruction. I don’t want to stand against “believers”.

“Stand against believers!” – hardly BHA house style.

At times the criticism is incoherent. The move from the personality of Julian Assange to humanism seems rather sudden:

Despite great effort to find them, human saints are hard to come by. Julian Assange, for example. Good guy? Bad guy? Perfect guy? Flawed guy? How about a mass of contradictions? That’s where I really become uncomfortable with humanism.

Did humanism ever claim that everyone was good and consistent?

A statement of best intentions is hardly a description of how everyone is.

If Orr has a problem with humanism it’s not actually easy to lay the finger on what it is. On the one hand the BHA’s description of humanism, Orr seems disappointed to report, offers “nothing much to complain about” (apart from the “tone”), but later the very same ideas are “irreligious mumbo-jumbo”.

Ironically, when it comes down to it, her own conclusion seems a rather tribal point:

there are plenty of reasons to be relaxed about the attractions of plain secularism, as opposed to humanism.

Never mind that the scope is different, that the former concept per se need only be one principle re the state and religion, while the latter is always a term for a whole range of views about a positive, secular moral outlook. One might as well say that it’s easy to be relaxed about the attractions of a plain ol’ principle like one-person-one-vote, but the precise details of a full-blown working democracy are a bit scary and might make us sound like we’re “religious” if we bang on about it, so let’s not think about that.

Nearly two-thirds of people do not regard themselves as “religious”, a new survey carried out to coincide with the 2011 Census suggests.

The British Humanist Association (BHA), which commissioned the poll, said people often identified themselves as religious for cultural reasons.

The online poll asked 1,900 adults in England and Wales a question which is on this month’s census form.

The Office for National Statistics has defended the wording of the census.

While 61% of the poll’s respondents said they did belong to a religion, 65% of those surveyed answered “no” to the further question: “Are you religious?”

…

Among respondents who identified themselves as Christian, fewer than half said they believed Jesus Christ was a real person who died, came back to life and was the son of God.

…

The chief executive of the BHA, Andrew Copson, is running a national campaign encouraging non-religious people to state their unbelief clearly on their census forms.

He said: “This poll is further evidence for a key message of the Census Campaign – that the data produced by the census, used by local and national government as if it indicates religious belief and belonging, is in fact highly misleading.["]

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12799801