Martin Robbins writes:

We were stood in front of a small bookcase filled with hundreds of little vials, each identical in shape but with myriad different labels, like “Arsenic” and “Belladonna”. Each vial contained perhaps a thimbleful of tiny, white sugar pills, identical to those you’d find in the homeopathy section of Boots.

“It looks a bit like my mum’s spice rack,” I ventured.

“That’s pretty stupid,” Didi Ananda Ruchira, homeopath and Yogic nun, replied.

Homeopathy is a bogus system of medicine that relies on the assumption that “like cures like”. In the words ofBritain’s Society of Homeopaths, “drinking too much coffee can cause sleeplessness and agitation, so when made into a homeopathic medicine, it could be used to treat people with these symptoms”. It sounds a bit like the logic behind vaccines, if that logic had been concocted at a time when we knew nothing about germs or the immune system.

Read more here: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/homeopathy-didi

Via www.economist.com:

I RECENTLY watched an impassioned 18-minute film on the subject of religion and freedom, made as a kind of personal statement by Jacob Mchangama, a Danish human-rights lawyer. Copies of the film were given out to all participants in last week’s Oslo Freedom Forum, an annual human-rights festival, and it was also posted on the website of the “Free to Choose” network, a lobby group which advocates free markets and free speech. In part because of his unusual background, Mr Mchangama feels personally affected by some of the recent global furores over religion, blasphemy and free expression. He grew up in liberal Denmark but his forebears on one side came from the Comoros Islands; so he has close kin who practise Islam, albeit not of the harsh, intolerant variety which seems to be gaining ground in the Middle East.

Read more here: http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2013/05/religion-freedom-and-social-peace#comments

Jamie Bartlett, Head of the Violence and Extremism Programme and the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos, writes:

All the evidence now strongly suggests that yesterday’s knife attack in Woolwich was a terrorist incident, and the two culprits were al-Qaeda inspired, or motivated by similar violent ideas. Beyond that, caution is required. There is still much we do not know (although Twitter, predictably, has already named one suspect, and I won’t repeat it here). It is being reported as a new departure, a new style, of terrorist activity. Assuming it is an al-Qaeda inspired attack, that is wrong on three counts.

Read more here: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/jamie-bartlett/woolwich-attacks-are-not-new_b_3323858.html

Via BoingBoing.net:

Via Dangerous Minds, a rare clip from a 1994 television program warning of the dangers that lurk within local neighborhood parks throughout America: namely, homosexuals and Satanists. More background on the series here. One word, people: mullet.

Humanist wedding plan fails but may return to gay marriage bill (BHA mentioned):
http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/humanist-wedding-plan-fails-may-return-gay-marriage-bill210513

Heresy Corner – The Problem with Humanist Weddings (BHA and Andrew mentioned):
http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-problem-with-humanist-weddings.html

Senior Tory warns over pagan weddings:
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/senior-tory-warns-over-pagan-weddings-8625934.html

Wolf Blitzer put his foot in his mouth for a moment on Tuesday while interviewing a survivor of the devastating tornado in Moore, Okla.

“We’re happy you’re here. You guys did a great job,” Blitzer said to Rebecca Vitsmun, who escaped from her house with her 19-month-old son right before the twister tore through it. “You’ve gotta thank the Lord, right? Do you thank the Lord for that split-second decision?”

Vitsmun hesitates for a moment and smiles. “I — I’m actually an atheist,” she said, laughing off the awkward moment.

Watch here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/wolf-blitzer-atheist-tornado-survivor_n_3316312.html

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/george-takei-responds-to-traditional-marriage-fans

That’s pretty much a summary of the arguments against marriage equality. Now, suppose I were to knock on your door and ask for your birth-control pills or whatever (assuming that you use some kind of birth control)? Would you hand it over to me without questioning? I don’t think so; at least I would not have done so when I was in that situation.

http://www.examiner.com/article/you-can-t-do-that-because-it-is-against-my-religion

Does free speech threaten social peace and religious groups? And if so should we limit expressions that insult deeply held religious feelings?

Those questions are crucial in a globalized world where technology allows expressions to flow instantly between countries and regions with very different cultural norms and legal standards for acceptable speech. Those who favour restrictions on speech, either through self-censorship or outright bans, point to increasing instances of violent reactions to “insults” against Islam that began with the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, culminated during the Danish cartoon crisis, and flared up again during the controversy of the crude film “The innocence of Muslims”.

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3558/free_speech_isn_t_a_threat_to_religion_it_s_a_safeguard

Modern day brides ditch tradition and opt for brightly coloured wedding dresses for special day.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/real-life/modern-day-brides-ditch-tradition-1897139

The Smiths, Deadbeats and the big cheeses – all part of our big day…
http://www.lep.co.uk/your-weddings/the-smiths-deadbeats-and-the-big-cheeses-all-part-of-our-big-day-1-5686458

Non-Catholic children may be rejected from their sibling’s school after governors agreed to give Catholic families top priority.

Sacred Heart Primary School, in St Mark’s Road, Teddington, told non-Catholic parents their younger children may not be accepted in the future because of an obligation to prioritise by faith when it is oversubscribed.
http://www.wimbledonguardian.co.uk/education/educationnews/10425551.Admissions_warning_as_Catholic_school_puts_faith_before_family/

Mehdi Hasan – As a Muslim, I struggle with the idea of homosexuality – but I oppose homophobia:
http://www.newstatesman.com/mehdi-hasan/2013/05/muslim-i-struggle-idea-homosexuality-i-oppose-homophobia

Assisted dying supported by UK public, survey indicates:
http://www.pjonline.com/news/assisted_dying_supported_by_uk_public_survey_indicates

The Onion writers:

KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held “theory of gravity” is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

“Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, ‘God’ if you will, is pushing them down,” said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.

Read more here: http://www.theonion.com/articles/evangelical-scientists-refute-gravity-with-new-int,1778/

Alom Shaha writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Emanuel de Kadt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inside the Psychologist’s Studio with Brenda Milner from Psych Science on Vimeo.

Fabulous video interview with the very spry 93 year-old Brenda Milner, a grande dame of the science of memory – Pithy, funny and great insight into her own amazing life in psychology and how she moved from Cambridge to Montreal. Her recipe for career success: home schooling, early bilingual education, good genes, perseverance and good luck. Fantastic!

Several decades ago, political activists on the religious right began to put together an “ideology machine”. Home schooling was a big part of the plan. The idea was to breed and “train up” an army of culture warriors. We now are faced with the consequences of their actions, some of which are quite disturbing.

According to the Department of Education, the home schooling student population doubled in between 1999 and 2007, to 1.5 million students, and there is reason to think the growth has continued. Though families opt to home school for many different reasons, a large part of the growth has come from Christian fundamentalist sects. Children in that first wave are now old enough to talk about their experiences. In many cases, what they have to say is quite alarming.

Read more here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/08/christian-home-schooling-dark-side

What makes for a good death? How can health care policy and provision support us at the end? What do we need to do as individual and within families? How do you write a ‘living will’? Should patients be able to request an ‘assisted’ death?

These are just some of the questions that will be posed to members of the public in an upcoming Cardiff-based festival devoted to confronting end-of-life issues.

http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/articles/festival-of-death-to-confront-end-of-life-taboos-10916.html

The number of people pledging their support has almost doubled since a petition was delivered to the health board last month.

Almost 8600 people have now backed the campaign, which is calling on NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) to give a guarantee it will continue to fund the hospital.

Now known as Glasgow’s Centre for Integrated Care, it is one of the few homeopathic hospitals in Europe with overnight beds.

Read more here: http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/glasgow-homeopathic-unit-faces-funding-fight-123793n.21027242