Looking in Looking Out is an innovative series of screenings, workshops and talks, in which modern and classic cinema is examined and enjoyed in a philosophical context which is being held at Conway Hall from the 27 June – 5 July 2012.

The BHA is hosting a screening of the 2010 film ‘Into Eternity’, a documentary by director and presenter Michael Madsden on the safety of nuclear storage.

Along with Liam Young,  designer, futurist, critic and curator from the thinktank Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today, we will be taking a humanist and philosophical look at our responsibility to future generations far into the future.

The full programme for the festival can be found here.

Film synopsis:

Every day, the world over, large amounts of high-level radioactive waste created by nuclear power plants is placed in interim storage, which is vulnerable to natural disasters, man-made disasters, and to societal changes.

In Finland the world’s first permanent repository is being hewn out of solid rock – a huge system of underground tunnels – that must last 100,000 years as this is how long the waste remains hazardous.

Watch the trailer here:

About Liam Young

Liam Young currently lives and works in London as an independent designer, futurist, critic and curator. 

Liam was recently named by Blueprint magazine as one of 25 people who will change architecture and design in 2010. He is a founder of the think tank Tomorrows Thoughts Today, a group whose work explores the consequences of fantastic, perverse, and underrated urbanisms and teaches award winning design studios around the world. 

His projects deploy fictional near-future scenarios as critical instruments for instigating debate about the social, architectural and political consequences of emerging biological and technological futures.

A new campaign is launched to reform the Public Order Act:

• Campaigners say Public Order Act is unclear and has resulted in string of controversial arrests
• Groups join forces to have ‘insulting words or behaviour’ phrase removed from legislation
• Former shadow home secretary David Davis: ‘Nobody likes to be insulted, but nor does anyone have a right not to be insulted’

Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2145009/Public-Order-Act-Free-speech-strangled-law-bans-insults.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/may/09/ofcom-close-tv-station-condoning-murder-blasphemy

A British TV channel that aired a lecture saying it is acceptable to murder someone who has shown disrespect to the prophet Muhammad is facing a significant fine or potentially even closure by Ofcom.

Ofcom has taken the unprecedented step of ruling that DM Digital, which targets the Asian market with programming in languages including English, Punjabi, Urdu, Kashmiri and Hindi, is the first UK broadcaster to break the broadcasting code for airing material “likely to encourage or incite the commission of a crime or lead to disorder.

Natalie Haynes writes in the Independent:

Every now and then, a news story appears which seems to me to be earth-shattering or, at the very least, quite serious, and yet no one seems to give it the attention it merits. This week, the Welsh Blood Service issued an urgent plea for donors, as supplies are running low. They have only two days’ supply of the rarest blood group, AB negative, in stock.Now, I do realise that not everyone lives in Wales, and that not everyone in Wales is planning to sustain a major injury over the next week, but this still seems shocking to me. A few days’ worth of blood is clearly not enough. And as the bank holidays stack up, the shortage is likely to get worse: donor numbers went down over Easter, and they are likely to dip again over the Jubilee weekend.

BoingBoing has posted a story about Justin Griffith, an atheist in the US military, who tells the story of how he ended up with ATHEIST/FSM on his dogtags. Read the full story here.

It all started when he enlisted as an atheist, only to have his recruiter record his religion as “Baptist.” Even switching recruiters didn’t end up with the error corrected. At boot camp, recruits were only allowed one “holy book” from their stated religion, so he brought The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which became the most-loved book in camp, much-borrowed and re-read by the other recruits. Even his drill sergeant liked it. Kinda.

A study at the University of California finds that atheists are more generous than the religious:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/atheists-generous-religious-helping-study-article-1.1072386?localLinksEnabled=false

Matthew Cresswell in The Guardian states:

It may be Star Wars day (May the fourth be with you), but how seriously should we take the growing church of Jediism?

In this comment is free piece, he writes:

This week, Chi-Pa Amshe from the Church of Jediism in Anglesey, Wales, emailed me with some responses to questions. He said Jediism was growing and that they were gaining hundreds of members each month. The church made the news three years ago, after its founder, Daniel Jones, had a widely reported run-in with Tesco.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/may/04/jedi-religion-star-wars-george-lucas

BBC Democracy Live have a report about the debate in the Lords which took place on 30 April.  Among the Lords themselves, there appears to be no consensus on reforming the upper house:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/house_of_lords/newsid_9718000/9718324.stm

By David Pavett

Are humanists god-obsessed? Should we worry about belief in god(s)? Is it effective, from a non-believers viewpoint, to spend much time criticising belief in God?

My answers to these question are “Yes, in many cases”, “No” and “No”.

I don’t believe in a god or gods. I am therefore not bothered in any way by such entities. I have neighbours and friends who believe in a variety of gods, or variants of the same god. That doesn’t interfere with our relationships.

Belief in gods have persisted for thousands of years and are not going to go away any time soon. There are a variety of reasons for that but perhaps we can all take that fact as a starting point. Most people do not believe in gods because they have been convinced by arguments to do so and they will not therefore be convinced by any arguments to cease doing so.

The different religious beliefs of different groups of people only become an issue when they appear as a threat to each other. They only appear as a threat when religious beliefs become matters of public policy.

We know from conflicts around the world from Northern Ireland to Lebanon, from the partition of India to the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq that religious differences that take a political form can be socially destructive and even murderous.

How could my good relations with friends and neighbours be threatened by religion? There are many ways this could happen but they all depend on religion becoming a political issue. A good example of how this could happen is the move towards more faith schools.

As it happens most of my neighbours and friends, including Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, are strongly opposed to faith schools and want children of different backgrounds all to attend the same schools. However, if the movement towards faith schools got to the point of more faith schools being set up in my area then some of them would inevitably feel pressures to send their children to schools based on their religion. Many would do so reluctantly but in a situation in which the local state schools increasingly become a place for kids with nowhere else to go choosing a faith school could become the better option.

I am strongly opposed to faith schools, indeed to any schools that are based on the idea that adults have the right to indoctrinate children with an ideology they are in no position to receive critically and which, in general is not presented to them critically. The seeds of a substantial practical difference would therefore be created by the existence of more faith schools.

Most people forced by circumstances into a course of action end up by justifying it as the best course of action. Only a few will say “this is a bad course of action but one which I was forced into”. This plants a seed of hostility between people.

Then, and far more seriously, there is the problem of the children who become a captive audience of religious groups. Those children will not be taught that religion is a matter of choice and that they may well reject it. They will be taught “their” religion as truth and that they are special because of the superior nature of their religion.

Children in different religious schools will lose the daily experience of rubbing shoulders and getting along with those of different faith backgrounds and none.

What should be the central point of concern for humanists in all this? I think that we should spend less time opposing religion as such, and even less to trying to topple the gods from their heavenly seats. Those beliefs have a long historical time to run and the gods will keep their seats further than we can see into the future. Our problem with religion is here and now and it is with religion transformed into public policy. That should be our central concern.

I am unable, for the most part, to convince religious friends and neighbours that their beliefs in supernatural entities is mistaken. I can and do find agreement with them on the dangers of religious schools. I conclude from this that humanists should concentrate their efforts where they are most likely to make a difference. We should spend less time trying to debunk religion, leave that to scholars of religion, and focus virtually entirely on getting religion out of public policy. Let people believe whatever they want to believe but let them do so without public subsidies.

Some of you may have noticed that last week was World Homeopathy Awareness Week. According to the organisation’s website the week was created to promote homeopathic awareness all around the world. In acknowledgement of the week’s aims, scientists, medical organisations, journalists, and many others, stepped up to make sure that the public are aware of the reality behind some of these ‘remedies’.

The BHA is campaigning to stop the funding of homeopathy on the NHS. Beyond the placebo effect, various reviews of homeopathy have found that it doesn’t work, with homeopathic ‘remedies’ often diluted to the point where the solution has less than a 60% probability of containing one molecule of the original material.

Tim Minchin in his poem Storm, articulated his view of alternative medicine:

‘By definition’, I begin
‘Alternative Medicine’, I continue
‘Has either not been proved to work,
Or been proved not to work.
You know what they call ‘alternative medicine’
That’s been proved to work?
Medicine.’

Last week science writer for the Guardian Martin Robins handed his blog over to leading homeopaths, posting some of their own statements explaining how homeopathy works. From reading some of the comments from organisations and people that advocate homeopathy, awareness of this practice is vital. It is disproven, misleading, and can be very dangerous if used in as an alternative to conventional medicine – and it certainly shouldn’t be funded through the NHS.

Detective Constable Gary Heseltine and  Professor Chris French discussing the Rendlesham case on iTV’s This Morning.

This video is worth watching:

http://www.itv.com/thismorning/life/do-aliens-really-exist/

Martin Robbin’s in The Guardian writes:

In celebration of World Homeopathy Awareness Week, I’ve decided to hand my blog over to leading homeopaths and allow them to have their say. After all, the more people know about homeopathy, the better; and who better to tell them than homeopaths, in their own words

Some examples below:

ABC Homeopathy: ”Like cures like. For example, if the symptoms of your cold are similar to poisoning by mercury, then mercury would be your homeopathic remedy.”

 

Robert Mathie, British Homeopathic Association: ”Four out of five comprehensive systematic reviews of RCTs in homeopathy have reached the qualified conclusion that homeopathy differs from placebo.”

Jean-Pierre Boissel (author of two of the reviews, responding to the above via e-mail): “Refs 2 and 3 reported the same meta-analysis. My review did not reach the conclusion ‘that homeopathy differs from placebo’!”
Martin Robbins: ”Do you feel homeopaths should be telling the public that your paper supports homeopathy?”
Boissel: “Definitively NO!”

BoingBoing.net posted a link to Mur Lafferty, who wrote an open letter to her daughter:

decrying all the ways in which the deck is stacked against girls and women in our world. 

Dear daughter-

You should know that you are hated.

I’m not sure why they hate you. You didn’t do anything to them. You don your princess crown, take up your sword, and pretend at Pokemon. You read your books and you learn how to draw comics and dragons and you play piano and practice kung fu. You delight in pretty dresses and weaponry. You love me when I nurture you as a mom, train with you as a warrior, and play video games and card games with you.

Which pointed to this great TED.com lecture presented by Tony Porter, an educator and activist who is internationally recognized for his effort to end violence against women.

Today the phrase #creepingsharia is trending on Twitter.

This follows the English Defense League leader Tommy Robinson inadvertently starting the comedy twitter has tag in an attempt to whip up anti-Islamic sentiment. Read the article on Huffingdon Post here.

When the Knights of St Columba handed a 1000 name petition to Nicola Sturgeon (Deputy First Minister of Scotland) recently, they made what is arguably a declaration of conflict. Although Knights can be named so as a result of political service; generally a Knight is a military officer. So it is fair to say St Columba’s ideological (if nothing else) ‘military’ officers are defending his realm, which is fair enough.

In an enlightened democratic nation, even St Columba; he of the Clan O’Donnell and of royal descendency, has the posthumous right to have his officers express their opinion in a conflict; even if it is of values and lifestyles rather than of land and property and overt power.

It is less clear that they have the right to imply that there isn’t “any reason for a change in the law” relating to ‘gay’ marriage. Or more civilly put, same-sex marriage. Changes in the law are for our judicial process to attend to; separation of state and church and all that. The Knights do of course have the right to opine, however as Ms Sturgeon has made it clear,

“Decisions will be taken in due course and, as the government has always made clear, if the decision is to legislate for same-sex marriage then there will be protections to ensure that no religious group is compelled to take part in same-sex marriage.”

So what is their defence of their realm based on if they will be “protected” and not be “compelled to take part”? You don’t often see protected and non-compelled groups getting active in this way. Yet here they are, doing so. Is there a deeper motivation at work? Possibly; yet as was pointed out by enlightenment-time moral philosophers; pin-pointing a motive is no easy matter.

Those of us who can only see a group of men, and presumably women in this day and age, who have protection and non-compulsion guarantees in place before any judicial process has taken place, can only wonder if it is the judicial process itself that is the problem. Perhaps it has different views on values and lifestyles? One would hope so. If everyone had the same views on values and lifestyles things would be, at best, boring.

There is no particular leaning of mine towards Catholic or Government institution; their fallibility is about equal, and my acknowledged fallibility would only add to theirs. So I make it clear; I am not on either of their sides, nor for or against both. I am however a fallible ‘Knight’ of Justice, Fair-Play, Humanity, Decency, Love, Compassion and Truth (or at least Honesty).

For this reason I wonder what conflict there actually is between an institution purportedly built on love and an institution seeking to facilitate the celebration of love. Is it possible there is no conflict; except perhaps in the misconceptions of fallible, human, maculate minds? I think this is closer to truth than might at first be clear.

About the author: David has had a lifelong passion for writing. As well as authoring this website he is a contributor to the on-line forums for the HSS and the BHA and has published low cost books for general consumption. He also writes specially commissioned articles for magazines and various professional blogs.

David can be contacted at: davidf598@gmail.com

Following the BHA’s launch of legal action the Catholic Herald has picked up on the challenge to Richmond upon Thames Council: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2012/04/12/humanists-to-mount-legal-challenge-against-new-schools/

Round-up of the press/blog coverage:

http://www.richmondandtwickenhamtimes.co.uk/news/9647290.Humanists_and_Risc_taking_Richmond_Council_to_court_over_Catholic_school/

http://www.politics.co.uk/opinion-formers/bha-british-humanist-association/article/bha-legal-action-against-state-funded-religious-schools-open

http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/local/richmondnews/9647290.Humanists_and_Risc_taking_Richmond_Council_to_court_over_Catholic_school/

http://twickerati.wordpress.com/

Richmond Humanists also have a good coverage round-up:

http://www.richmondinclusiveschools.org.uk/files/index?folder_id=5927655

Core Issues Trust homophobic response to StoneWall’s ‘Some people are gay, get over it’ ads pulled by Boris:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/12/anti-gay-adverts-boris-johnson

Tom Chivers at the Telegraph argues ‘Dont ban the “ex-gay” ads, but do ban their exclamation marks’

The Guardian is following similar lines – David Shariatmadari on the free publicity granted to conservative Christian groups. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/13/anti-gay-christian-adverstising

The Daily Mail’s take: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2128936/Gay-cure-advert-banned-London-buses-Boris-Johnson-TfL.html

The Guardian explains why the studies underpinning Core Issues’ campaign are methodologically flawed: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/12/scientific-support-anti-gay-campaigners

By Chris Theobold

Like many others interested in belief, including non-religious beliefs, I was intrigued by this weekend’s articles proclaiming religious people in the UK  to be, in general, more left-wing and politically progressive than the non-religious, as well as giving more in time and money to charity.

Fhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2126802/Christians-likely-left-wing-liberal-views-immigration-equality.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/08/religious-people-more-likely-leftwing-demos

At first glance

My first instincts were that religion isn’t a particularly useful or helpful indicator of party political affiliation, and the evidence on volunteering isn’t clear cut. Moreover, I had doubts about the desirability of political parties

Starting with politics, at the national level it is fairly clear that there is a healthy variety of beliefs across the parties. Labour’s have gone from being led by someone who now directs a faith foundation he named after himself, to the admittedly agnostic Miliband the Younger. Ditto the LibDems, who have a mix on their ranks from the very religious Tim Farron, to the not-so-religious Dr Evan Harris. The Conservative party cannot be easily stereotyped either: For every Nadine Dorries, you have a dozen lukewarm MPs, and a contingent  of prominent conservatives such as Iain Dale, Matthew Parris and Simon Heffer who are openly agnostic or simply self declared atheists.

On a supporter level, there are humanist and/or secularist groups within all the main parties, and arguably outside of Northern Ireland, no party has the religious vote, or that of specific denominations at least, in the bag.

Outside of politics, it easy to see that the two most recent senior members of the cloth in the UK, George Carey and Rowan Williams, are cut from very different political cloth (to stick with a metaphor unsuccessfully).

Anecdote is supported by serious studies, such as the work of the British Social Attitudes Survey, who in their 26^th report look at how religious (or non-religious) belief is a weak measure of party affiliation, and religious respondents to questions of gay rights look markedly less progressive than their non-religious counterpart. (You can buy individual chapters of the report, but some of the headline stats are summarised here).

Much like other bloggers, such as Heresy Corner I was not so sure about what I found.

Taking a further look…

Looking at the full report, it reads like strategy document on how Labour can re-engage with the religious rather than a general statement on society. The project is being steered by a committee consisting of two Labour MPs, a Labour Peer, the head of the Labour affiliated Christian Socialist Movement, and a Labour councillor.

The next observation is that we’ve seen this information before.

This is not original research, but “original analysis” of data already in the public sphere, namely the Citizenship Survey issued by the Department for Communities and Local Government. as well as international comparisons by looking at data from a European study.

And as Heresy Corner pointed out about the data on political affiliation, the actual data they work from has a different result to the headline: “[A]  close reading of the report shows that religious believers were considerably more likely than the non-religious to call themselves right-wing”

Religious (“exclusivist” and “pluralist”):

Right-of-centre: 44%
Left-of-centre: 56%
Non-Religious (“secular”):
Right-of-centre: 35%
Left-of-centre: 65%”

Taking on their other point about differences in levels of volunteering and charitable giving, the British Humanist Association has previously taken a look at the data from a number of sources, including previous Citizenship Survey’s, and it is worth checking their website for other perspectives.

A particularly important point picked up on by the BHA – and effectively ignored by Demos in their conclusions – is the huge range of volunteering between different religious groups the statistics show.  As the BHA say “The Citizenship Survey 2009-10 measures levels of civic engagement and formal volunteering in England. The Survey finds that 40% of the non-religious formally volunteer, compared to 41% of Christians and 26% of Muslims.”  Again, same data, very different conclusions.

Then we come to their international comparisons, but again, I’m not so sure about the data here. They say: “we constructed a sample of western European countries with broadly similar social, cultural and religious contexts, including: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany (West), Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. We excluded northern European and eastern European countries because they have well-known social and religious differences (eg Scandinavian countries have higher levels of civic engagement on average, which would have skewed the results).

We also excluded Switzerland as a non-EU member. Italy was originally included but removed because it threw up anomalous results.”

Are the backgrounds of Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the UK so similar?  The omission of Scandinavian countries on the basis they volunteer more strikes me as odd as if you’re genuinely looking into people’s motivation for greater civic participation.

What if Demos are right?

Let’s assume for a moment Demos are completely right on this one though, they fail to engage with the underlying reasoning of their proposition.  Crudely, if Christianity=liberal politics, wouldn’t that suggest 1950s a golden age of liberal and progressive politics?

Assuming they respond by saying we live with a gentler, fluffier, cuddlier species of Christianity then the fire and brimstone days of yore, on an international level, wouldn’t heavily Christian cultures be markedly more progressive and liberal than neighbouring less religious societies?  I’m not sure that is the case.

How do you ‘measure’ belief?

I have strong doubts about nearly anystatistics on religion and belief. The idea of quantifying and measuring the belief of large groups of people is extraordinarily difficult to achieve in anything but the most general and vague categories, and as a result, the findings are general and vague to the point of near uselessness.

Even if there is a pattern, no causal relationship is established.  Obviously I’ve mentioned contrary statistics, like those of the British Social Attitudes Survey, but I well as being impressive in its depth of coverage (in-depth interviews with thousands of respondents rather than simple polls of a few hundred), the BSA is also refreshingly honest about the limitations on statistics to do with religion and belief.

Why should we care?

Religious and non-religious groups can trade headline-grabbing stats all they like when they just aim to demonstrate their success or wallow in the schadenfreude of their competing denominations failure. That’s fine, but when questionable statistics are used to argue for the extension or protection of religious privilege they need to be challenged.

When one of our (generally retired) cassock wearing friends say that 70%+ of the population are Christian and therefore the government should advocate public policies that Torquemada would be proud of, firstly it is right to say they are probably wrong, and secondly even if 99% of the population were fundamentalist Christians, we need to firmly assert that this is still not a legitimate basis for offering any one group privilege in the eyes of the law, and the right to strip basic human rights from groups they scorn.

It is a pity that a report supported by a progressive think-tank with some respected and well regarded figures may well be footnoted every time one of the less congenial religious ‘leaders’ pleads for special treatment and state resources. Like most people, I vote on the basis of what candidates do and say – not if they pray, and if so, who they pray to – and to encourage otherwise is not a desirable objective.

Buzzfeed has a post of 17 nerdy examples of taxonomy humor.

If you’re going to be responsible for determining scientific classification, you may as well have fun with it. Here are some of the strangest and most amusing binomial names (Genus species) in all of taxonomy.

For example:

Ytu brutus is a Brazilian water beetle. The name derives from what is popularly attributed as Julius Caesar’s last words (see Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as an example): “Et tu, Brute?” Literally, this translates as “And you, Brutus?” In Spanish “Y tu” means “and you.” Hence, Ytu brutus.

A very informative finger puppet show.