By Marilyn Mason

A recent meeting with the nice people at Anti-Slavery International set cogs moving in my brain – hadn’t I read somewhere that on the famous voyage of the Beagle Charles Darwin had encountered and been horrified by slavery? A Google search reminded me of the source of this vague memory: reviews of Darwin’s Sacred Cause by Adrian Desmond and James Moore (Allen Lane, 2009), such as the one in New Scientist with the headline “Hatred of slavery drove Darwin to emancipate all life“. Arguments justifying slavery were often based on the pseudo-scientific notion that the different races of humans were different species;Darwin’s liberal-minded empathy with his fellow human beings and his belief in a common human nature, contradicted that, and was a precursor of his later theories and writings about evolution and human origins.

Further Googling turned up the relevant extract from Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle (1839):

“I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernamabuco, I heard the most pitiful moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate. I suspected that these moans were from a tortured slave, for I was told that this was a case in another instance. NearRio de JaneiroI lived opposite an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have staid in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal. I have seen a boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could interfere) on his naked head, for having handed me a glass that was not quite clean; I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from his master’s eye…

It is claimed that self-interest will prevent excessive cruelty; as if self-interest protected our domestic animals, which are far less likely than degraded slaves, to stir up the rage of their savage masters… It is often attempted to palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves to our poorer countrymen: If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin…

Those who look tenderly at the slave-owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter; – what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope for change! Picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children – those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own – being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray His will be done on earth! It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendents, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty: but it is a consolation to reflect, that we at least have made a greater sacrifice, than ever made by any other nation to expiate our sin.”

The final sentence refers to the British outlawing of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1807, the British navy’s efforts to intercept and capture slave-runners, and the abolition of slavery in theBritish Empirein 1833. However, asDarwinfound on his travels, slavery was legal in other parts of the world, and remained so until 1981 whenMauritaniabecame the last country to abolish it. But as Anti-Slavery International points out, slavery, or practices horribly similar to it, continues today in many countries: in child labour, forced labour, bonded labour and people-trafficking, people are sold like objects, forced to work for little or no pay, and are at the complete mercy of their “employers”.

Both the British Humanist Association and Humanists for a Better World have had friendly contacts with Anti-Slavery International, as slavery is very alien to the humanist ideal, shared with Darwin, of our common humanity, as well as to our support for universal human rights, and so anti-slavery would seem a cause that most humanists could champion. If you’d like to avoid buying the products of modern-day slave labour, please see http://www.productsofslavery.org, and for other ways to help see  http://www.antislavery.org/english/what_you_can_do/default.aspx.

Marilyn Mason, Co-ordinator, Humanists for a Better World 

by Josh Kutchinsky

David Cameron, the  British prime-minister,  said last month:

“We are a Christian Country”

His speech was fairly  vague in line with what he said of his commitment to the  Church of England, the established Church, “I am a committed – but I have to say vaguely practicing – Church of England Christian, who will stand up for the values and principles of my faith…”

So where does this leave me, a UK citizen, born in England

My parents were Jewish. After they were married they set up home in Antwerp, Belgium. World War Two began less than a year later. My mother, a pessimist, feared for their safety. My father, an optimist, thought the Germans would not repeat the mistakes of World War One and invade again. As we know my father was wrong. Fortunately and with only moments to spare they escaped and crossed the Channel to England, the land of my father’s birth.

I was born a few years later. The older I get the more I realise that certain events, just before my birth, have had an enormous influence. I think of these events as historical black holes. They are so massive in their significance that they distort the very fabric of all our  lives, whether we realise it or not. In astronomy black holes are events that distort space and time and anything that gets close to them cannot escape. Even light is pulled into the vortex of a black hole. It is as if the black hole were the enemy of light. Mechanised warfare and the industrialised concentration death camps extinguished many millions of lives and blighted countless millions of  families and friends. Some of those people considered themselves Jewish, some as assimilated, Christian or non-religious, some were too young to have religious or belief convictions, others were political enemies, or belonged to one of the other target groups; homosexuals, gypsies, people with physical or learning disabilities or mental illness or simply those who resisted or were unlucky. They were chosen for extermination and for elimination from the family of humanity. The seeds for this were developed within a civilised continent, within a country of culture, of democracy, of the rule of law. All qualities possessed by this country.

The realisation of the horror of these events provided the impetus, even before the end of the war, for the creation of the United Nations and for discussions about the necessity for a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By the way next year will be the 65th anniversary of that Declaration. In my opinion every home should have a copy somewhere, particularly homes with young children. The Holocaust and other genocides are open wounds in the body of humanity. This Declaration and the Covenants and Conventions that followed are part of an ongoing attempt to resist infection and where it occurs to treat it and prevent its spread.
Who can know exactly why my life in this country, and those of so many others of my generation, have been so charmed, so fortunate.
We have never been required to hold a gun.
That is a remarkable fact

This narrow window of comparative tranquility is an unnatural state of affairs. Many of the factors which have contributed to this peace and stability are now taken for granted. I am disturbed by the complacency of so many; their lack of interest or even outright hostility to internationally agreed principles of human rights; their disillusionment with politics. Cynicism may have some excuse when we see these agreed principles of international law ignored or over-ruled by states and individuals. But this is all the more reason to demand that they be taken seriously. Human rights are not set in stone. They are a part of a developing code of conduct based on many sources of values and principles. We must both improve them and defend them. We need to talk. We need to talk about our future. We need to take our responsibilities seriously.

So,  “who owns Britain?”

Well what do I mean by ownership?

I would like to consider three qualities of ownership; access, entitlement and responsibility.

Ownership allows enjoyment of the thing owned. However, if you are like me then for example many of the features of your mobile phone and other gadgetry are mysteries indeed. To have the full benefits of ownership we may have to spend some time exploring their features, possibly with an instruction booklet, or preferably with a young expert.

You need also for the enjoyment of your property confidence that it won’t be taken away from you. This is critical. So a system has been developed over many years whereby ownership is established and the rights of ownership and the entitlements that flow from it are acknowledged and if necessary defended. In this country we take this system of legal entitlement for granted.

However, often the enjoyment and usefulness of private goods requires more than just public acceptance of this right. It also usually depends on the use of shared property to realise the private pleasure. The person sitting in a car has nowhere to go without public roads. We all depend to some considerable extent on shared public amenities and services in order to enjoy our private possessions. Roads, or rights of way, can, I believe, provide some further valuable insights into the qualities of ownership. Where roads go is determined by many different factors. The reasons why they go straight to one place and avoid another may be lost in the mists of time, but there will have been reasons.

For a moment let’s imagine a time before established tracks and rights of way, many thousands of years ago. We find ourselves surrounded by trees. There are rivers, valleys, mountains and there are other animals. So how much of this territory can we call our own? Well, in the imagination, we can own it all, but in practice where can we actually go? How much does it cost us in terms of time and risk and effort?

These questions were probably answered not by sitting and thinking, but by acting in response to need and circumstance. Once we have established access to important places – safe places to eat and sleep, we may have spare time to explore. Again theoretically we can go anywhere in the land; we can climb some trees, we can visit some caves, but we are best served by carefully extending our access; venturing from the known to the unknown with considerable caution. These explorations will inevitably influence our children and future generations in their travels; for the opening up of roads and other means of transportation enable certain paths to be travelled more easily and with greater safety. Some will become well chosen paths.

There are more than just physical pathways there are also mental ones. These mental routes, these neural pathways, must also have been explored for many thousands of years and for most of this time these ways of thinking, were communicated to the following generations through stories and deeds. The stories made the deeds possible and gave confidence to action. How else could one learn which animals to hunt, which fruits to eat, which paths to travel, which people to trust and so on.

In one sense we all own all these paths. They are the legacy left to us by our ancestors. This mental geography is handed down through the generations in stories, in songs, in pictures, in poems, in dramas, in artefacts, in rites and rituals. More recently, in the last few hundred years, they have been stored in a new way;  the printed word.

The knowledge contained in all the books, and all the artefacts in all the great libraries, museums and universities of the world are also part of our shared inheritance. We are also owners of these treasures. The stories from Egyptian, Greek and Roman times, the writings of philosophers, the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Koran, the Bhagavagita, the works of the Enlightenment, the discoveries and theories of science, the formulas for technology, for potions and lotions, the writings of Confucius, of Lao Tse, of the Buddha and all the rest from Shakespeare to the living writers and artists of our time. They belong to us all.

And there is too much, and we need to select and we need help, we need more than just instruction booklets. We need education. For without knowledge a citizen, or someone with a right of residence or even a tourist who only has a temporary entitlement to stay in this country, may, in theory, have an entitlement to its many treasures, but how will they access them if they don’t know where they are? How will they choose the journeys to make? Keys are of no value if you don’t know which locks they fit. So in principle you may have equal entitlement but do you have equal access?

Entitlement to access  must depend on some qualities of identity. You may acquire one form of ownership, that is to say citizenship, by accident of birth, which in this country  makes you also a citizen of the European Union. You may also acquire citizenship by meeting certain other conditions. If access with entitlement is part, as I suggest, of a definition of ownership, then there are those whose main qualification is that they are wealthy. Sufficient wealth will provide you with considerable access and entitlement, more access, in fact, than the majority of citizens possess, although it is still true that you may have your entitlement and therefore your access refused or restricted depending on other factors, nationality, criminal record and so on.

So access isn’t equal.

Ownership presupposes an entitlement, and with that entitlement comes access, and with access, use and with use comes interest and responsibility; an interest in conservation, in upkeep, in  development. And also an interest in the agreements that protect and provide the rights of access; and an interest in who else has access.

So what is the agreed entitlement? Is there one? Being British is one identity from which flows a sense of ownership, but do we agree on what that means?

My father was British. He thought of himself as British but was not totally confident about it. After all he had been quite prepared to live, married to a Belgian, in Belgium until the Germans invaded. After the war he recognised the need for a Jewish Homeland, a place to which he could take his family, if this place also became unsafe. But he thought of himself as British.

He was a successful businessman in a business started by his father. We had a comfortable middle class life. How much did he think he owned of this country? Well churches had some uncomfortable connotations for him. The freedoms that he exercised, the protection of the rule of law that he enjoyed, the ability to belong to a community of other people who were Jewish, had in other places not only, not been defended by organised churches but these same churches had been key players in fomenting some of the pogroms which, a generation earlier,  had caused his father to flee for his life from Poland. My father wasn’t comfortable in churches.

I mean no offence to good people who might be Christian, might be members of the Church of England might even  be only ‘vaguely practising’. I just want you to know that my father, an Englishman by birth, did not feel  comfortable in churches. The Established Church belonged to others. He didn’t think for a moment that his right to travel the streets of the country depended on the Church of England’s largesse. He thought he was entitled to that by reason of his place of birth but he knew enough, having been taught English history, to know that the Church was a key player in the division of power that is at the core of Britain’s unwritten constitution. He knew that where the roads led to in this country had been determined by others and that there was not open and equal access for all.

He appreciated and valued the innate conservatism of such a long lived series of accommodations and adjustments. Like many other English people he was wary of strident socialism,  nationalism and of idealism and the revolutions that they sometimes encouraged. For they often seemed to challenge the rights of the individual to live as they please, within the law and with a minimum of state interference.

So, who do I think does own Britain?

Well, my answer is simple: we all do, everyone who is legally entitled to be in this country. More importantly it is only we as individuals who own this country. We the people may have invested governments, churches, companies and corporations, communities and other bodies (some of which are religious and many of which are not) with the status of a quasi-individual but their entitlement is second hand. It derives from us as individuals. It is because we give them, actively or passively, our assent.

So if we are the owners then what further questions do I think we need to consider?

Firstly, but not I think necessarily in order of importance, can non-Anglicans and particularly non-Christians and non-theists have full entitlement when there is an Establish Church?
Can an established Church of England avoid creating a host and guest relationship? The host with full rights of ownership and the guest with somewhat restricted ones.It may be that there are ways of solving the problem without necessarily engaging in full disestablishment. This needs to be explored. However I am not convinced that this is the most urgent of questions.

Article 1 of the UN Declaration states: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” – but, as George Orwell noted, some are more equal than others. Equal in entitlement but not in the exercise of that entitlement. If there were to be considered a new British Bill of Rights, as some are calling for, how would all citizens of all religions and beliefs be guaranteed their rights?
If it began with a preamble along the lines of “We the people” who is it that would be included in that ‘we’?

There has been considerable discussion in the last few years about British Values and the underlying meaning beyond the legal status of British identity. These are I suggest irrelevant issues to the question of ownership. Our rights as citizens, residents and visitors are determined simply by our legal status and I think it is worth pointing out that citizenship is a human right guaranteed within the UN Declaration.

Words matter. They are, as I have already argued, the creators of mental pathways.

Does a woman, a British Citizen herself, and grandmother of someone born in this country have less of an entitlement because her command of the English language is poor or non existent?

No. Her entitlement is the same but quite possibly her ability to access her entitlement is severely reduced. All rights automatically imply duties and responsibilities. If you have a right to life then I have a duty not to kill you. But more than this the right to life is not just to any sort of life, but to the opportunity, and I stress, the opportunity, to live a full and fulfilled life. For those in power to ensure that you can live, but have only the means to do so, unemployed or on poverty wages,  in poor substandard housing without proper access to medical or other services is not to honour the duty to your right to life.

Meeting these and all the other obligations as individuals and through governments, state agencies, churches and the myriad other organisations requires a balance of rights against rights, and duties against duties, and it is often  complicated. We need to talk about these issues.

So here we arrive at some possibly even more challenging questions.

• Do you recognise the duty that you have to ensure the rights of others, others who are not members of your immediate family, of your local community, of your religious or belief community, of your sex , of your age, of your sexual orientation ?
• Do you accept that it is only by owning, by taking ownership of the whole of our human inheritance and then selecting and arguing and persuading as to how to proceed in the best way possible that we can move towards fulfilling our obligations to the human rights of others?
• Do you agree that to leave the decision making to others because you have not been here long, or because you are from a different culture or from a non-Christian religious background, or a religious perspective which is suspicious of engagement with others is to not fulfil your obligations to yourself, your family, your own community or to others?

Of course not everyone is motivated to be politically active but here we come to the difference between, for instance, voting for one party or another, abstaining for whatever reason and simply not bothering to vote. Only you can know whether your abstention from political involvement on any particular occasion is for good reason.

Do you intend to honour the most important, the most sacred of your obligations; the one to your children. And to all the other children of this country?

You can not do the one without doing the other.

To honour this obligation means to enable them to develop into independent individuals and to help them to realise their full potential. I want here to give a somewhat contentious example. If you, for whatever reason, exercise your right, to send your children to schools of a religious character, whether independent or state funded, then you must ensure that, in addition to a wide and varied general curriculum, they learn about other religions and also about non-religious and non-theistic beliefs. I am told that there are quite a few schools of a religious character that have begun to include Humanism in their programs of study. I hope this is the case, for there are many in this country who hold these beliefs. If you are non-religious and your children know nothing about Christian beliefs or the beliefs of other religions and worldviews then they too are being deprived of part of their heritage, being denied part of their entitlement to full development.

Children have a right to education. They have a right, and here I quote a UN convention, to the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice. This right is not unqualified. It is a duty imposed on us adults that we restrict what the child can access or impart if it is in the child’s best interest and this will no doubt vary depending on their stage of development. The analysis of the question of how we ensure the human rights of all the children of Britain is the most important conversation that I feel we should be having.

Prime-ministers  must stand up for something larger than just the values and principles of their own faith but should be among the principle defenders of the rights of all.

The inauguration of Michael D. Higgins as President of Ireland on Friday, November 11 2011, broke new ground by including a ‘reflection’ by a humanist, at the request of the new President of Ireland. President Michael Higgins also spoke of his intent to end religious privilege in other areas.

Read more : http://www.iheu.org/new-president-ireland-includes-humanist-%E2%80%98reflection%E2%80%99-inauguration

The Right to Object? An area of debate.  The Humanist Philosophers looks to philosophy and ethics to explore matters including liberty, equality, rights and religious conviction, and applies those to contemporary examples of religious, moral and conscientious objections, such as the case of Christian hotel-owners Peter and Hazelmary Bull currently before the Court of Appeal.

Read More : http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/nelson-jones/2011/11/gay-sex-hotel-rights-law

Read More on The Right to Object? http://www.humanism.org.uk/news/view/923

The world’s greatest playwright never wrote directly about his personal beliefs, but his plays display scepticism about religion, and many of his characters have a deeply humanist view of life and man’s place in it, showing a consistent belief that this world is the only one that we can know.

Superstition was rife in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, and religion was a potent force. If you followed the wrong faith you could be disembowelled. Witches are still burnt at the stake and many people believed in fairies, miracles, and ghosts. But there were a few declared atheists such as Christopher Marlowe, taking advantage of the English reformation and the emancipation from the religious and social structures of the middle ages it represented.

It is acknowledged that Shakespeare took many of his story lines from existing plays and books, some of which had strong religious themes, but he usually omitted the religious element when adapting these works to the hand of his genius.

In considering the influence of religion it is valid to discount the history plays, where Kings and their usurpers dispute their divine right to pillage, rape, and murder from the age of King John to Henry the Eighth, and ‘god’ is a valuable tool in their armoury. Of course there are Friars and priests scattered across the plays, but with the exception of Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet these are cardboard cut-outs with no development of character.

The happy characters not religious

Few of his other characters show evidence of religious belief. Not one happy character shows any interest in religion, and whilst we doubt that Shakespeare himself believed, there is no doubt whatever that he could weave the concept of god and heaven into a beautiful romantic couplet:

And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
make heaven drowsy with the harmony.

Berowne in Love’s Labours Lost: 4.iii.

All scholars agree that the evidence points to Shakespeare being careful, responsible, and sober as an individual. Looking at his characters that exhibit these qualities could be taken as a guide to his own thoughts. Polonius, is a measured and responsible adviser to the court (even if sometimes rambling), and is always trying to give the best advice. When he speaks to his son Laertes, who is about to sail away, it could be Shakespeare’s own voice springing from the page as advice he would give his own son. Hamlet 1.iii.

The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
My blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.
Beware of entrance to a quarrel.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgement.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
This above all, – to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

“To thine own self be true”, make up your own mind, you do not need gods or ancient books to tell you what is right or wrong.

Shakespeare on grief

The character that must be most closely tied to Shakespeare’s own experience is Constance in King John. His only son, Hamnet, died aged eleven in 1596, when he was writing King John, and he poured all the agony he must have felt at this time into Constance who loses her son Arthur. This is expressed in these heart- rending words: 3 .iv.

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form.

This surely expresses Shakespeare’s own grief – and in secular terms. Constance (Shakespeare?) has also considered the Christian view of death and has these rather bitter words to say:

And so he’ll die, and, rising so again,
When I shall meet him in the court of heaven,
I shall not know him: therefore never, never
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.

This passage hardly shows a belief or comfort in any meeting in a next world. Shakespeare’s own voice also seems to speak to us in straight-forward style, when from As you Like It :2 :vii. Jacques gives us the seven ages of man:

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. As, first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad.
Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut.
The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

 But at what age, man or boy, would you commend yourself to a god or worry about your place in heaven or hell? If you were religious in the sixteenth century, these thoughts would have been very relevant. They are not present in Shakespeare’s life cycle of man.

Shakespeare mocks astrology

Scepticism about superstition is a constant theme throughout the plays:- Astrology is mocked: King Lear :1 .ii. tells us:

This is the excellent foppery of the world,
that, when we are sick in fortune,
often the surfeit of our own behavior,
we make guilty of our disasters
the sun, the moon, and the stars.

And from All’s Well That Ends Well :1 .i  we learn:

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven.

And from Henry IV ^th Part 1,  Glendower says: 3 .i.

I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

To which Hotspur replies:

Check out who has signed up to the Early Day Motion stating:

That this House celebrates the values of Humanists for their beliefs in love, commitment and humanity; recognises that in accordance with British equality and human rights law, Humanists should be treated equally with those of religious beliefs; believes that Humanists should be allowed to have wedding ceremonies outside a registry office like those given to persons of religious beliefs; and encourages hon. Members to support the right of their Humanist constituents to an independent wedding ceremony which recognises their own beliefs.

Humanist Marriage EDM 667 curerently has 71 signatories. Get in touch with your MP and ask them to support the EDM.

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

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.

The 70th anniversary conference of the American Humanist Association has been held in the last few days. More that 450 people attended included representatives from the International Humanist and Ethical Union and the British Humanist Association.

IHEU speakers at the conference included: president Sonja Eggerickx, vice presidents Andrew Copson, Mel Lipman and Roar Johnson, and international representative Matt Cherry. There was a great deal of enthusiasm for the work of IHEU and several groups expressed interest in joining IHEU, including new groups in the Philippines and Colombia.

Sonja Eggerick’s conference presentation on IHEU and its current activities and goals is available here:http://www.iheu.org/president-explains-international-humanist-work

The AHA conference featured awards to many distinguished Humanists. Writer and professor of philosophy Rebecca Goldstein was named the 2011 Humanist of the Year. Goldstein, a recipient of the Montague Prize for Excellence in Philosophy, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur “Genius” Award, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005. She has written many books, ranging from novels to philosophical biographies, including, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, and most recently, Thirty-Six Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction.

Several other distinguished Humanists also received awards. Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computers, received the Isaac Asimov Science Award. Judy Norsigan, executive director and founder of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, received the Humanist Heroine Award. Candace Gingrich-Jones, the Youth and Campus Outreach Associate Director at the Human Rights Campaign, was given the LGBT Humanist Pride Award. And Bart Ehrman, Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will be receiving the Religious Liberty Award.

Link: http://www.iheu.org/american-humanist-conference-success

Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape

Sam Harris is in the UK this week talking about his new book, The Moral Landscape, about how the fact-value distinction has led us astray. Harris argues that far from being outside the purview of science, moral questions are properly scientific questions. Moral questions are, Harris argues, questions about our personal and social welfare, the avoidance of suffering and the promotion of flourishing, happy, productive lives. These questions have real answers which can in the broad sense be determined by science: will this policy solve social problems? will this act cause distress to that person? will this drug cause me long term harm? These are moral and scientific questions and the line is not as distinct as many like to think.

He is interviewed this week by Humanist Philosopher and British Humanist Association Distinguished Supporter Julian Baggini in The Independent and the book is reviewed by Simon Blackburn, another Humanist Philosophers member and also a Vice President of the BHA.

Baggini uses his interview opportunity to put some criticisms to Harris. The Moral Landscape is unusual in that arguably it pits scientists directly against moral philosophers, arguing that much of what philosophers have done for morality is only to cause confusion, whereas science can now come along and clean up the mess. But are things really so clear cut?

[Baggini] But it’s puzzling how science could tell us, for example, how to prioritise between rights of free speech and privacy?

[Harris] There are probably some trade-offs where there isn’t an important difference. So privileging free speech to some degree and privileging privacy to another degree leads you to different circumstances, but perhaps they are not importantly different. If you and I and everyone affected by those changes could live out both lives, and have our brains scanned all the while, and have every marker of our inner lives analysed, we would come out saying they were a little different, but we don’t know which we like better. That is an intelligible prospect and that is why the moral landscape has many peaks and valleys that are different but equivalent in terms of well-being.

Isn’t well-being too ill-defined to be scientifically tractable? Take the classic thought experiment of whether a person who lives a normal life with ups and downs is better or worse off than someone who takes a happiness pill. There doesn’t seem to be a factual answer as to what’s better, discoverable by examining fMRI scans, for instance.

I think we can have a rational discussion about how much we want our states of consciousness, our emotional lives, to track the reality of our lives. We definitely want it to track it for the most part because otherwise, if we’re just taking this perfect narcotic each day, it’s not a sustainable situation. You’re just lying on the couch in bliss, but your relationships have dissolved, you’ve lost your job, and your children have starved to death. It’s materially unsustainable if nothing else. But your love for the people in your life, which you value and which is major component of well-being – your connections to others, your ability to function in the world – all of this is predicated on your states of consciousness tracking the actual reality of your life in the world.

Full interview: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-moral-formula-how-facts-inform-our-ethics-2265991.html

Simon Blackburn’s review of the book’s argument, reflecting the view taken of Harris’s argument by many philosophers, insists that there are questions of principle and priority and value which are not reducible to empirical facts.

[Harris's] idea is that with sufficient knowledge, and generous help from neuroscience, we can learn to gauge “wellbeing” and then it is just a technical question of how to maximise it. Not only religion, but moral philosophy with its dilemmas and conflicts, is unnecessary, now that we can observe and calculate. On the dust-jacket, Richard Dawkins enthusiastically endorses the same triumphalist line.

It is one thing to say that behaving well requires knowledge. It clearly does, and the more we know about the world the better (and worse) we can behave in it. But it is quite another thing to think of “science” as taking over the entire domain of morality, and that there is a reason that it cannot do so. While it is one thing to know the empirical facts, it is another to select and prioritise and campaign and sacrifice to promote some and diminish others.

… Striving to maximise the sum of human wellbeing is making oneself a servant of the world, and it cannot be science that tells me to do that, nor how to solve the conflict, which was central, for instance, to the utilitarian thinking of Henry Sidgwick. Harris considers none of all this, and thereby joins the prodigious ranks of those whose claim to have transcended philosophy is just an instance of their doing it very badly.

Full article: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2011/03/blackburn-ethics-without-god-secularism-religion-sam-harris/

“The Bible is the best-selling book of all time. So why not copy the way it’s written to sell your own agenda, even if that’s nothing to with religion or even God?” So begins CNN’s interview with AC Grayling on his new book, The Good Book. Video at religion.blogs.cnn.

What if the book that billions have turned to for ethical guidance wasn’t tied to commandments from God or any one particular tradition but instead included the writings of Aristotle, the reflections of Confucius, the poetry of Baudelaire? What would that book look like, and what would it mean?

Decades after he started asking such questions, what Grayling calls “a lifetime’s work” has hit bookshelves. “The Good Book: A Humanist Bible,” subtitled “A Secular Bible” in the United Kingdom, was published this month. Grayling crafted it by using more than a thousand texts representing several hundred authors, collections and traditions.

… In other contexts, Grayling – who will soon take over as president of the British Humanist Association – admits he’s written critically about religion. But not in “The Good Book.”

“It’s not part of a quarrel,” he says of his latest work. “It’s a modest offering… another contribution to the conversation that mankind must have with itself,” and one he says he wrote for everyone, Bible lovers included.

Link: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/11/leading-atheist-publishes-secular-bible/

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 light of the BHA’s new annual Shelley Lecture, the first of which was held last week, Andrew Copson writing in the Guardian at the weekend explains why we should remember Percy Shelley and his controversial atheism.

As an Oxford undergraduate in the early 19th century, Percy Bysshe Shelley developed an argument for the non-existence of God. He entitled it The Necessity of Atheism, and 2011 is the bicentenary of his being expelled from the university for printing it.

… Atheists today are too often castigated as materialistic calculators whose lack of spirituality sucks their universe empty of all beauty. Remembering Shelley’s atheism gives us an opportunity to counter this stereotype and to reflect on the aesthetic of enchantment with which a non-theistic world-view can be associated. The works of Shelley join the novels, poems, songs, sculptures, paintings, architecture and plays of generations of godless artists in exposing the straw man of the desiccated rationalist for what it is, and showcasing a humanist vision of life.

More timely is a remembrance of the social and political consequences of Shelley’s argument. In The Necessity of Atheism he reminds us of the mistake that people make when they think that “belief is an act of volition, in consequence of which it may be regulated by the mind” and the way that “continuing this mistake they have attached a degree of criminality to disbelief of which in its nature it is incapable”. We cannot pillory someone for their disbelief – it is not an area in which choice operates.

Today in Britain, non-religious people are not thrown out of universities because they don’t believe in God, but in other parts of the world many suffer this fate – and worse. There are still places where it is illegal to declare yourself as non-religious on your identity papers or official records.

Continues: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/apr/02/shelley-the-necessity-of-atheism

Update: Also see a not entirely sympathetic Channel 4 News report.

Concerned primarily with questions of ethics and the good live, learned, “extravagantly erudite”, dog-loving and not at all vain. The philosopher AC Grayling, announced this morning as new President of the British Humanist Association, speaks to the Guardian about this new book, The Good Book : A Secular Bible. Is it his own God Delusion or God is Not Great, the Guardian asks?

“No, because it’s not against religion. There’s not one occurrence of the word God, or afterlife, or anything like that. It doesn’t attack religion, it’s a positive book, there’s nothing negative in it. People may think it’s against religion – but it isn’t.” But then he says, with a mischievous twinkle: “Of course, what would really help the book a lot in America is if somebody tries to shoot me.”

With any luck it shouldn’t come to that, but Grayling is almost certainly going to upset a lot of Christians, for what he has written is a secular bible. The Good Book mirrors the Bible in both form and language, and is, as its author says, “ambitious and hubristic – a distillation of the best that has been thought and said by people who’ve really experienced life, and thought about it”. Drawing on classical secular texts from east and west, Grayling has “done just what the Bible makers did with the sacred texts”, reworking them into a “great treasury of insight and consolation and inspiration and uplift and understanding in the great non-religious traditions of the world”. He has been working on his opus for several decades, and the result is an extravagantly erudite manifesto for rational thought.

In fact everything about Grayling is extravagantly erudite. We meet at his south London home, where he sits surrounded by teetering piles of books, great leaning towers of learning, and the conversation frequently detours into donnish tutorial mode. Spotting me glance at one of the volumes, which bears the title Epiphenomenalism, he launches at once into a detailed explanation of the concept – but then breaks off in delight as his dog trots in and rolls at his feet.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/03/grayling-good-book-atheism-philosophy

Some responses to the latest “atheism in RE” story are unintentionally hilarious. Chris Theobald has a laugh.

The Sun's big shiny headline on an old story

The news that Humanism will be included in the new RE syllabus in a local authority in Lancashire from September has elicited a number of reactions in the media this week.

The Daily Express warns us of ‘Lessons in Atheism’ for young children. The move is  opposed by Councillor Salim Mulla, chairman of the Lancashire Council of Mosques, who is concerned not to ‘confuse’ children. Only religious people have values so it’s better to force chidlren to adopt whatever belief their parents first give them, apparently:

I don’t think it is right. People are born into faiths and are brought up in that faith and that’s how it should stay. The non-faith beliefs send a wrong message to the children and confuse them. Values are very, very important. I don’t think the non-God aspect should be introduced into the curriculum.

However, those campaigning for inclusive RE lessons find an unlikely ally in Rev Kevin Logan of the Christian People’s Alliance quoted in the Daily Mail:

It is quite a change but it is completely right to recognise atheism and humanism.

I am certainly not worried about Christianity. It can stand against any belief and come out in a good light.

But perhaps our favourite perspective comes in the Sun from a Catholic priest from the Blackburn area, Father Michael Lavin, who stated with no apparent sense of irony:

I think that four years old is too young to be learning about atheism, at that age they hardly know what Christianity is.

It is difficult to get youngsters to understand theology and spiritual concepts. Children tend to struggle when you are making the first Holy Communion.

Father Lavin and others seem to fail to understand that for many parents and indeed current pupils, this news story will appear wholly curious. The study of Humanism has been a feature of school RE for at least four decades and first appeared in a local syllabus in the early 1970s. The Sun refers this week to “Double Atheism”, as if Atheism was going to be studied as a full, timetabled subject in and of itself, like Geography or Physics. In reality of course, it’s just about including secular views as some minimal balance against an overwhelming religious RE. Today, most of the 152 local syllabuses in this country include the study of the humanist view of life. True, that doesn’t always mean it’s taught, or taught well. But far from being an anomaly, consensus is building that any RE which fails to teach about non-religious perspectives, is missing something pretty big.

A recent poll carried out by the British Humanist Association found that when asked the leading question: ‘what is your religion’, a question designed to measure weak cultural affiliation, 38% of people in England and Wales say they have ‘no religion’. According to 2004 DfES Research Report 564, some 65% of 12-19 year olds do not describe themselves as belonging to a religion.

Learning about the non-religious answers to big philosophical questions alongside religious ones contributes to the development of pupils’ own views and educates them about the beliefs of millions of their fellow citizens. It ensures that students that are from non-religious families or who are not religious themselves are able to feel fully included in discussions around ethics and morality.

Chris Theobald is a campaigns volunteer for the British Humanist Association.

The British Humanist Association supports local SACRE representatives, for example in local authority areas where non-religious views are still excluded from religion or belief education.

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.

“I will be shown, I will be inspired, I will be led, but I won’t be told!”  Stephen Fry accepts the 2011 lifetime achievement award from the Humanists at Harvard University, on what it means to be educated and distinguishing between “revealed” knowledge (whether religious or even secular) and discovered knowledge.

Stephen Fry is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association.

Sonja Eggerickx, president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), was honoured by the Belgian government yesterday as part of the hundredth anniversary of International Women’s Day.

Sonja Eggerickx was honored for her outstanding service as a Humanist leader. Her volunteer activities include serving as president of Unie Vrijzinnige Verenigingen (UVV), the Flemish umbrella organization for Humanism in Belgium, as well as president of IHEU.

Sonja took part in a conference and ceremony in the Belgian Senate along with the other exceptional women. The honorees were each given a statuette in recognition of their pioneering work.

“They are pioneers who took their part in achieving more equality in Belgian society, who cleared the way for others or fought against discrimination” said Joelle Milquet, vice prime minister of Belgium and also minister for labour and equal opportunities.

Link: www.iheu.org/belgium-honours-iheu-president

The British Humanist Association is a member of IHEU.

Students’ lack of interest in Christian Union events is not evidence of apathy, but of an appetite for reasoned argument, argues Paul Taylor.

It was the fifth week of Durham University’s Epiphany term and, with an inevitability that would make Sisyphus wince, the Christian Union were out in force to promote their annual ‘main event week’. This year the snappy title was “Rescued?” It was hard to venture out of your door without encountering a sea of red and yellow hoodies complete with a very professional looking graphic of a helicopter swooping over a stormy sea. Passing students were invited to talks held at the student union building where the CU do their best to demonstrate the divinity of Jesus and, perhaps more outrageously, the possibility of a free lunch: the hospitality and culinary talent of CU members remains an undisputed fixture. The talks and arguments were also largely unchanged from last year, right down to the analogies (one rambling story has had its somewhat dated reference to the Big Brother House replaced with a more generic locked room but is otherwise identical to its predecessor).

There is only one major deviation from the sequence of events in previous years: for the first time there is an organised sceptical alternative.

In the wake of the CU’s ‘Life Week’ last year, the newly founded Durham University Humanist and Secularist Society met in one of the quieter student bars for a discussion evening (imaginatively titled ‘Lol, that’s weak!’; puns aren’t really our strong point…) About a dozen people attended. The company was convivial and the arguments engaging, but even after a few too many drinks nobody was fooled into thinking that our event was in any way comparable to the large-scale presentations and blanket publicity achieved by our friendly rivals.

Things couldn’t be more different this year. With some much appreciated funding coming in from the AHS and our Newcastle-based neighbours, the North East Humanists, an entire week of events took place stretching from a Darwin Day bar crawl on Saturday the 12th of February to a debate in association with the Durham Union Society on the Friday entitled “This house believes the Church has failed Christianity”.

As far as we know this was the first time any Reason Week type event has been scheduled to go head-to-head with a Christian event week on any UK campus and the results have been astonishing. In stark contrast to the intimate pub gathering from a year ago we had nearly two-hundred students and staff crowding into one of Durham’s largest lecture theatres to hear A C Grayling speak on the theme of reason.

Publicity for our events also reached a new level, with posters and leaflets distributed around the city, and a feature article on Reason Week and the society appearing on BBC Wear’s website.

Most gratifying of all has been the feedback: non-believers and liberal Christians alike seem to have welcomed our challenge to the hegemony of the Christian Union. In the run up to the “Rescued?”, an article appeared in the student newspaper publicising the CU’s events and charmingly suggesting that non-Christians were being wilfully ignorant, “[sticking our heads] in the sand”. The success of Durham’s Reason Week showed that, far from being ignorant or uninformed, there is a strong contingent in the University whose doubt is founded on reasoned argument rather than apathy. After such a show of force they can no longer be swept under the carpet (a manoeuvre that comes naturally to students of all creeds…) but must be engaged with seriously.

Paul Taylor is a member and former President of Durham University Humanist and Secularist Society.