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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His Discworld books have been read in her household for years, she tells us, but now that Terry Pratchett disagrees with her own view on assisted dying, Cristina Odone “loathes” the author. Quite personally.

Of course,  that would sound churlish. So she tries to blame the disagreement specifically on him attributing the no-to-assisted-dying position to the “far right”.

But ever since I heard Pratchett claim that only the “far Right” had any objections to assisted suicide [link in the original], I have loathed him. For a man blessed with such talent and success, who wields an influence on so many young people, to rubbish life so publicly is disgraceful. For him to misrepresent as “far Right” those who oppose legalising assisted suicide is downright dishonest.

Did you know Pratchett had said that? No? You’re not alone.

The article Odone links doesn’t contain this phrase, nor does the video embedded in the page, though Pratchett seems to have made the comment in an interview with Jon Snow on Channel 4 News. At the time when it was filmed and shown (early last year) this comment seems to have been taken as a fairly light-hearted accusation from a man who, as a sufferer of Alzheimers, has a very personal stake in the debate, and the comment was largely ignored, including during the interview by Jon Snow. A search does turn up one response to the “far right” comment by Dominic Lawson. Lawson is able to turn it into the basis of an entire article in which we learn about how those “fanatical” pro-assisted-dying lot are always painting the antis as far right extremists. There are no other examples given.

So Odone’s “loathing” is supposedly based on one comment from over a year ago, inflated originally by one commentator, and now picked over again by herself. “It is of course a favourite trick of the media-savvy Liberal Left,” she tells us, “painting their opponents on any issue as Right-wing extremists.” Again, no other examples are on offer.

Meanwhile, while loudly protesting about Pratchett’s single comic ad hominem and ostensibly writing about the rhetorical ploy of offering false attacks on those you disagree with, Odone goes on to offer several for Pratchett. She describes his position on assisted dying as being to “rubbish life”, says he suffers from an “emotional autism”, and finally decides that “For him, men (and women) are autonomous beings devoid of the connections that make life worth living.”

Anyone who’s heard Pratchett talking about why life, and the right for those suffering to end it, are important, would surely find it hard to support Odone’s interpretation of his position and motivation.

Moreover, it must be like waking up for a dream for Cristina Odone! Presumably she now regrets that her family wasted all that time reading all those life-denying, cold and un-funny, emotionally dead books full of disconnected characters in Pratchett’s meaningless world?

Link: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/cristinaodone/100084004/sir-terry-pratchett-poster-boy-of-assisted-suicide-has-the-bbc-doing-his-bidding/

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/

Professor Sir Harry Kroto laments that his friend Martin Rees has accepted the Templeton Prize money. From behind the Times paywall he explains why – and makes a novel recommendation about what Rees should do with the money!

Martin Rees is a brilliant astrophysicist and a personal friend of mine, but I believe he has made a mistake in deciding to accept £1 million from the Templeton Foundation.

In doing so, he supports its primary aim, which is to undermine the most precious tenet of science: that it is the only philosophical construct we have to determine truth with any reliability.

… The Templeton Foundation awards its prize to the most prominent scientist it can find who is prepared to say that he or she sees no conflict between science and religion.

… I regret that my friend has accepted this award. Perhaps he could make amends by donating his million to the British Humanist Association, to support the sensible humanitarian secular attitudes that our society today so desperately needs.

Link: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/article2975757.ece

“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.

AHS President Richy Thompson checks in to explain what’s going on with the students over the next two months – Non-Prophet Week, the AHS Convention and five Reason Weeks!

Non-Prophet Week is currently under way

At the moment, there’s a crazy amount going on with the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies (AHS). This week (7th-13th February) is Non-Prophet Week, where our member societies are raising money for charity. About 20 are taking part, putting on over 50 events, and after the first three days we’ve raised about £1,400. We hope this will go some small way to breaking the narrative that the non-religious do less for charity – because the evidence is that it simply isn’t true. And at the same time, we’re doing something good and having a lot of fun

The AHS Convention is 12th-13th March

Then, on 12th-13th March, we’re holding our third annual convention, in central London. Saturday 12th is hosted jointly with South Place Ethical Society and is open to everybody – students and non-students – and features talks from A C Grayling, Johann Hari, BHA Chief Executive Andrew Copson, Keith Porteous Wood and All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group Chair Lord Warner. There are also performances from Robin Ince and the BHA Choir. And the day will start with the non-religious organisations fair, featuring stands from the national organisations that campaign for atheist, Humanist, secular and skeptical causes. The fair is a chance to find out more about these organisations.

Sunday 13th is focussed on student committees, and those interested in getting a student society going. We’ve got training workshops, speeches from members, society prizes, and are launching our own campaigns initiative. All in all, a busy two days then! You can find out more about the whole weekend on the AHS website, and buy tickets (just £3 for students, BHA members and others, £6 for everyone else) from the BHA website.

But today I’m mainly going to talk about something happening in between these two events. Every year, many of our societies hold Reason Weeks. This February, four of them are doing so – and a fifth is doing likewise in March.

To explain the concept: A Reason Week, as they are generally (but far from always) called, is an intense week of events which seeks to expose the type of discussion and debate that atheist, Humanist and secular student societies offer to a wider audience than usual, and raise the profile of the issues involved. The week-long series of events tend to involve a combination of talks, debates, panel discussions, workshops, performances and film showings. Events are typically free of charge and open to the public – students and non-students alike. A bit like Christian Union Mission Weeks, only without the proselytising!

Durham Reason Week 2011

The AHS has a guide on how to run a successful Reason Week.

Durham Reason Week runs from the 12th to the 18th February and is Durham University Humanist and Secularist Society’s second Reason Week. It features speakers like A C Grayling, Mike Lake and Gerard Phillips, and a debate held jointly with Durham Union Society. The dates fit nicely such that the week features a Darwin Day event on the 12th and a Non-Prophet Week event in the 13th!

Bristol Thought Week 2011

Bristol Thought Week is the first Reason Week to be held by University of Bristol Atheist, Agnostic and Secular Society, and runs from the 14th to the 18th. Speakers include Peter Atkins, Andrew Pyle and Dennis Penaluna. Bristol also have a number of pub discussions, a screening and a slightly late Non-Prophet Week tie-in.

Oxford Think Week 2011

Oxford Think Week, organised by Oxford Atheists, Secularists and Humanists, together with a number of town groups, is taking place for the second year, from 21st to 27th February. The list of speakers is enormous – Richard Dawkins and A C Grayling are doing a joint event, as are Peter Atkins and Stephen Law, Raymond Tallis and David Papineau, and Evan Harris and BHA Head of Public Affairs Naomi Phillips. The first event will be a panel discussion, featuring Ronan McCrae a number of Parliamentarians – details to be announced. There’s also Mary Warnock, Paula Kirby, Colin Blakemore, Keith Porteous Wood, Samantha Stein and of course, the BHA Choir.

Southampton Atheist Society are hosting Reason Week 2011

Then there’s Southampton Reason Week, Southampton Atheist Society’s third Reason Week, which also looks amazing. Simon Singh and Eric Kaufmann are on the Friday, and the Pod Delusion are doing a live show on the Saturday. There’s also Anne Marie Waters, David Bothwell, Andrew Pyle, and Robert Stovold debating Keith Fox.

Finally, Leeds Reason Week – Leeds Atheist Society’s fifth – is taking place from 8th to 11th March. As the week is a bit further away, details are yet to be announced, but Leeds are the pioneers of the format, one year holding a staggering 33 events! – so it’s bound to be amazing.

AHS President Richy Thompson

On a personal note, I’m looking forward to travelling to all these weeks. I’m doing talks as part of Durham and Bristol’s weeks. I’m taking part in the Pod Delusion live recording at Southampton. And Oxford is where I went to Uni – I coordinated the first Think Week last year – so I’m planning to spend most of the week there again this year.

But if you’re reading this, and are within reasonable distance of one of these five cities (or even at University there!), be sure to come on down and check out what’s going on – you’ll definitely find some very enjoyable events!

Richy Thompson is the third and current President of the AHS.

Musical comedy act and all-round good guy Tim Minchin is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association, as he proudly name-drops in his latest show.

Praise for his musicianship seems to please him more than compliments about his wit. He goes on at length about the hi-tech nature of the show: the dynamic range and levels of amplification. The fact that each musician wears an “in-ear foldback monitor”. Throw in on-stage asides about his honorary membership of the British Humanist Society [Association!]; the fact that he quotes Mark Twain (and calls him by his real name, Samuel Langhorne Clemens); and his predilection for books by atheist intellectuals including Richard Dawkins — oh, and his love of the Beatles, the Kinks and the Rolling Stones — and there we have it. A real-life rock ‘n’ roll nerd.

“I am a rationalist-empiricist-humanist-atheist-sceptic,” he says of this art-life crossover. “And a lover of rock,” he adds with a sniff.

…

The laughter of the crowd at the O2 ripples around the stadium in waves. It is only when Minchin stops and places a copy of the Koran on top of his baby grand piano that things turn uncomfortably tense. “Why are 10,000 people nervous?” he inquires impishly. “Why is that book any different to Harry Potter?” he continues, fishing out a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to pin-drop silence. It’s a nail-biting moment, and one that encapsulates Minchin’s need to provoke thought. To set the rational against the reactionary.

“What makes something sacred is the cumulative belief it is sacred,” he says after more musing, defusing the tension (“Star Wars!” yells a fan). “That is your right — but don’t tell us what we can’t criticise, or what language to use, or what cartoons we’re allowed to draw.”

It isn’t a hugely funny sequence, but it is a big and clever one. When I tell Minchin what a punch it packed, his pale forehead furrows. “Do you think it’s too much?” he frets. “I don’t want some idiot seeing it on YouTube and you know . . .” He pauses, his marmalade hair, dry from constant teasing, sticking out at right angles. “I treat the Koran with respect but I want people to be thinking . . . about the nature of what we hold sacred before I go straight into the Pope Song. There is nothing more empowering than holding an audience before a joke breaks,” he says. “This is why comedians do what they do.”

If you missed Tim Minchin at the O2 this year you may have to be be in Melbourne to catch his next gig!

Full interview and review: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/tim-minchin-on-a-roll/story-e6frg8n6-1225994154054

Last Monday, I delivered an atheist “sermon” from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey. It was surprising enough that the chaplain of Westminster School had invited me to give a “thought for the day” to the assembled students, even more so when he suggested I talked about why I was an atheist.

The fact that this sounds strange, shocking even, tells us something important about how atheism is now perceived, and its relationship to faith. The problem is that while the word atheist itself means nothing more than “not-theist”, it seems that for many, “a” stands for anti.

Of course, in one sense, anyone who believes anything can be described as being anti what they don’t believe. But, for instance, we would not usually call a Christian an anti-Jew, or a Muslim an anti-Hindu. Why not? Because being anti suggests more than just disagreement; it suggests hostility, active dislike, the desire to eliminate the thing one is against. That’s why anti-capitalists are rightly called, because they don’t just disagree with capitalism, they want to destroy it.

If being an atheist meant being anti-theist, then I would not be one. I am an anti-dogmatist, an anti-fundamentalist, yes. But I have no hostility to theism as such, and have no desire to strip all theists of their faith. Of course I think theists are mistaken, but no one should be automatically hostile to everyone they disagree with. Hostility should be reserved for the pernicious, the wicked and the harmful.

Continues: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/17/atheist-sermon-westminster-abbey

Sue Blackmore on a recent experience at a christening service.

A charming elderly gentleman, whom my parents had long known, proceeded to the lectern to lead us in prayer. I wish I’d paid more attention, for I cannot now remember how he led up to the fateful words asking God to help us in the fight against “the rise of secularism and the aggressive atheists”.

“He’s talking about me,” I thought. I don’t mean to be aggressive, and I don’t believe aggression is called for, but I have certainly been dubbed one of those aggressive atheists before now. So it’s to be a fight, is it? With us secularists as the “forces of evil”, the “wiles of the devil”. Are we to be countered with armour, breastplates, shields and swords?

This seemed to be the gist of the service. Coffee and tea being served in the smart new kitchen corner, I took my chance to ask him what he meant. And he meant it as a fight all right. But the really scary thing was what he thought we wicked secularists were up to – we apparently want to prevent him worshipping, destroy his faith and banish Christianity from the face of the earth. I explained that I don’t want to stop him worshipping or destroy his faith. As a secularist, I am quite happy if people carry on with their religious practices as long as these do not give them special privileges in the affairs of state. As a humanist, I think we should rely on ourselves, not on an invented god. As an atheist, I would be delighted if people stopped believing in their various gods, and stopped believing their religion was right and everyone else’s wrong. But I do not want to fight them over it unless they try to impose it upon the rest of us.

All this left me wondering just what I would fight over. I think faith schools are an abuse of children’s precious minds and the last thing we need is more of them; I don’t think bishops should have seats in the House of Lords. Unlike some humanists, I think we should follow the French and ban the burqa.

But really fight?

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/oct/14/atheism-fighting-talk-in-church

Brian Cox, a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association who delivered this year’s Voltaire Lecture, presents a tribute to science popularizer and eminent physicist Richard Feynman.

Widely regarded as the finest physicist of his generation and the most influential since Einstein, Feynman did much to popularise science, through lectures, books and television, not least his revelation at a press conference in which he demonstrated the exact cause of the Challenger Shuttle explosion in 1986.

Described as the ‘Mozart of physics’, Feynman’s amazing life and career seemingly had no end of highlights.

A student at MIT and then Princeton (where he obtained an unprecedented perfect score on the entrance exam for maths and physics), he was drafted onto the Manhattan Project as a junior scientist.

There his energy and talents made a significant mark on two of the project’s leaders, Robert Oppenheimer and Hans Bethe.

The latter would become Feynman’s lifelong mentor and friend.

Bethe called his student “a magician”, setting him apart from other scientists as ‘no ordinary genius’.

Listen at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00b6djp (via RDF)

Fresh from Monday’s Relief-o-matic benefit, BHA Distinguished Supporter Ed Byrne is back on the case, raising money for the Sick Children’s Trust.

Just on sale this morning and rather hot off the press, is news of another Ed Byrne performance in London. But this is no ordinary event – this is a benefit concert in aid of the Sick Children’s Trust (www.sickchildrenstrust.org), a non-profit charity which temporarily houses families in homes close to hospitals, whilst a child member undergoes long-term treatment or operation. Rather than families spend time apart during difficult terminal illness, they can be closer to the young patient.

Ed Byrne has been nominated to support the Trust’s inaugural comedy night at London’s Leicester Square Theatre on 21st October, in the hope of raising over £5,000. Tickets for this worthy event (called The Big Gig) cost just £15 and tickets are already selling fast.

Irishman Byrne is no stranger to ethical and moral standing – he was declared as a key supporter of the British Humanist Association in 2008, an organization that promotes an inclusive society through mutual respect (other members include Stephen Fry and Anish Kapoor). To most, he is famous for appearances on “Mock The Week” and several festivals this summer, including the recent Greenwich Comedy Festival.

Dig deep for the Big Gig and keep this charity alive for your children’s sake.

http://www.allgigs.co.uk/view/article/3349/Go_For_The_Byrne_Childrens_Charity_Set_To_Benefit_From_Ed_Byrnes_Trusty_London_Date.html

Tickets are available.

BHA Distinguished Supporter Brian Cox and world renowned physicist Stephen Hawking are interviewed together for the Guardian.

On the (non-) need for a creator:

Stephen Hawking: Science can explain the universe without the need for a Creator.

Brian Cox: That’s a wonderfully provocative sentence, actually. A beautiful answer. It’s interesting, because you have previously used the word God in a similar way, in my view, to Einstein. I am thinking of phrases like “knowing the mind of God”, which you used in A Brief History Of Time. In my opinion, Einstein was using the word God as a shorthand to convey the majesty and beauty of the laws of physics, and did not intend this to be taken as a sign that he subscribed to a particular religious doctrine. Is this the sense in which you have used the term before, and are you trying to clear up any misunderstandings caused by your previous use of the word “God”, or have I read too much into your answer?

SH: In A Brief History Of Time I used the word “God” like Einstein did as a shorthand for the laws of physics. However, this is not what most people mean by God, so I have decided not to use the term. The laws of physics can explain the universe without the need for a God.

BC: As for my answer, I think everyone should know a few basic facts about the universe. It began 13.7 billion years ago; our sun and solar system formed just under five billion years ago; there are 200 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, and 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. These are wonderful discoveries, and it’s quite astonishing we’ve been able to find these things out from our vantage point on our tiny Earth.

On what the greatest ethical dilemma in science might be today:

SH: It is over genetic engineering. It should soon be possible dramatically to increase the intelligence and life span of a few individuals. They and their offspring could become a master race. Evolution pays no regard to social justice. It was not fair on the Neanderthals they were replaced by modern humans.

BC: I think one of the great challenges for the scientific community is how to deal with arguments from people with genuinely held views that are demonstrably wrong and potentially damaging. I’m thinking of issues like the vaccination of children or the imperative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The science is very clear on these issues, and science really is the best guide we have to facing global challenges. The dilemma is how to convince quite vocal minorities that a rational and scientific approach is no threat to their political or religious beliefs – it’s just the best approach. You see the problem immediately, of course, because this sounds rather arrogant and nobody thinks they are irrational! But we have to achieve the right outcomes in certain important areas.

Another dilemma we face at the moment is how to lobby against possible dramatic funding cuts for science in the autumn.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/11/science-stephen-hawking-brian-cox

Ernie Rea hosts a discussion on value without God, introducing it thus: “Is it possible to live a fulfilled, meaningful life, without the consolations of religious faith? Well, the 26th British Social Attitudes Survey published earlier this year suggests that as many as 43% of the population of this country describe themselves as “non-religious”, and,” – a note of surprise in his voice – “most of them seem to live perfectly happy lives. Without belief in God what shapes the meaning and purpose in our lives?”

BHA Distinguished Supporter Susan Blackmore joins the discussion to answer these questions.

Listen via http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00td8hl

When Andrew Brown first posed this week’s question to me he asked “Can science describe everything?”. My instant, unreflective reply was “No”. He implied that this might be a less restrictive question than “Can science explain everything” and yet my instant reaction to this one was “Yes”. I’d like to explore this curious difference.

Science can (potentially at least) explain everything because its ways of trying to understand the universe by asking questions of it should not leave any areas off-limits. The methods of openness, inquiry, curiosity, theory building, hypothesis testing and so on can be adapted and developed to explore and try to explain anything.

But what is “everything”? I look out of my window and see green trees and grass and grazing cows, a river, a pond, birds, sky, clouds …. but everything? This is where description becomes so hard. There is just so much stuff in the universe and it’s all so complicated. Let me give two examples, a simpler one and a really tough one.

Continues: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jul/12/science-religion-philosophy

Susan Blackmore is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association.

Sir David Blatherwick OBE discusses the poetic good life espoused by Titus Lucretius Carus.

Lucretius

The Roman poet Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus) was a Roman contemporary of Julius Caesar who wrote a long poem which he called De Rerum Natura (“On the Nature of Things”). Little is known of him apart from his name and his poem, which nevertheless reveals much about his beliefs and his character.

His poem expounds the atomic theory of Democritus and the moral philosophy of Epicurus – the latter a rather stern code which involves not the pursuit of pleasure (a modern corruption of Epicurus’ meaning) but what we would call living a good secular life. His purpose is a moral one: to demonstrate that religion, superstition and other irrational beliefs have no place in a scientifically explicable universe; and in this universe gods (if they exist – and we have no way of knowing whether they do) have no part in human affairs. He argues that the soul does not exist and that there can be no life after death. Fears of an afterlife or divine displeasure are, he maintains, illusory and to live in dread of them is unnecessary and harmful. In the original Latin hexameter, ”Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum” (“So potent was religion in impelling to evil”).

Given such a theme, one might expect his poem to be dry and joyless. But it is not. He puts the case for a humane rationalism, and against religious or ideological dogma, with immense logical skill and passion. His poem displays a love of life, knowledge of the natural world and an awareness of man’s place in the universe as a whole. The world about us, whether it be the stars or the animals in the fields, is to him the real miracle.

In many ways Lucretius is one of the very first Enlightenment Men. He would have loathed Christian bigotry, al-Qaida or any other contemporary religious nut, but would have advocated arguing with them rather than shooting them. We need more like him today.

This post is part of a series written by members, friends and Distinguished Supporters of the British Humanist Association about their own “humanist heroes”.

You can find out more at www.humanism.org.uk/humanism/humanist-tradition/heroes

The diplomat Sir David Blatherwick OBE was ambassador to the United Nations (1986-9), Ireland (1991-5) and Egypt (1995-9). He was the joint-Chair of Anglo-Irish Encounter from 1992-8, and has been Chair of the Egyptian British Chamber of Commerce since 1999 and a trustee of the British University in Egypt since 2005. He is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association.

If we destroy the Christian churches, then who will undertake the burden of acute social care that they provide for the nation? These organisations still strive to seek out and provide for those who are weary and overburdened; if they ceased to do so the cost to the state would be in billions. Thousands of young Christians, funded by church-goers, carry Britain’s compassion to the world’s most wretched territories.

Dawkins, Hitchens, Pratchett and their acolytes will protest the visit of this pope and they will denounce his faith and all its works. Perhaps, however, they may pause for a moment and consider this: that it was insidious Christianity that enshrined their right to do so and which endowed the universities that fed and watered their gifts.

Of course, the long history of humanist arguments for open, democratic society, secularism and freedom of speech, often against the explicit protest and criticism of established churches, is ignored.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/13/kevin-mckenna-benedict-visit-scotland

The British Humanist Association is a founding member of the Protest the Pope campaign.

A lawyer for British author and atheist campaigner Richard Dawkins said in London at the weekend he would try to have Pope Benedict arrested to face questions over accusations the Church covered up cases of sexual abuse of children by priests.

Asked about this at a briefing on the pope’s trip to Malta this weekend, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi scoffed.

“This is a bizarre idea to say the least. It looks like the intent is to make a public opinion splash. I think they should look for something more serious and concrete before we can respond to it,” he said.

“The pope’s visit (to Britain) is a visit of state, and so it would be very strange if during a state visit the person who is invited to make a state visit is arrested,” he said.

Dawkins, a scientist and outspoken critic of religion, has asked human rights lawyers to examine whether charges could be brought against the pope during the September 16-19 trip.

The Vatican has rejected accusations the pope helped to cover up abuse by priests in jobs he held before his election in 2005 and has accused the media of waging a “despicable campaign of defamation” against him.

In Washington, the American Humanist Association, which advocates the rights of non-believers, backed Dawkins’ view that the pope should not have diplomatic immunity as a head of state and called for a “criminal investigation” of the church.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100413/tts-uk-pope-abuse-ca02f96.html

From Brian Cox:

Over the last few years, I have definitely noticed a shift in the public’s attitude towards science: from viewing it as a useful sideline in society – a valuable pursuit for the boffinous few, that ultimately looks after itself – to a cause worth fighting for, which has the power to change society for the better.

No sensible person or politician has ever argued that science is not useful, but many take its contribution for granted. Did you know, for example, that Britain’s entire science budget was £3.3bn last year, out of a total government spend of £621bn? And that physics-based industry alone contributes 6.4% of our GDP – comparable to the much vaunted and rather more costly financial services sector – yet no party is committed to protecting it after the next election?

A growing appreciation of the low-cost, high-value and good old-fashioned solidity of science and engineering relative to finance has, I believe, contributed to the new public mood, but as with all paradigmatic cultural shifts, there is more to it. Simon Singh’s libel tussle with the British Chiropractic Association has brought together an unusual alliance of comedians and scientists in support of a broad, rationalist agenda. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been a rollercoaster ride of success and engineering difficulty, but the sheer ambition and scale of the project has fired the imagination of many. The dramatic pictures of the Martian surface from the Opportunity and Spirit rovers, and the unparallelled beauty of Saturn and its moons as seen by the ongoing Cassini mission, grace a million computer screensavers.

This confluence of factors has seeded a fragile but strengthening movement.

Continues at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/apr/13/science-cool

Dear Prof Cox

I recently read your profile in New Scientist. It was apparent from this article that you have enjoyed a successful career as a musician, including the No 1 hit “Things can only get better”. Unfortunately you did not have the good grace to do as many young rock stars do and embark on a downwards spiral of drugs, sex and general destructive hedonism. No, you had to go on and have an even more successful career as a physicist.

Having attained a professorship at one of our most distinguished physics research groups you then embarked on a third successful career presenting TV and radio shows, including the interesting and surprisingly informative Wonders of the Solar System.

I would just like you to know that I find this kind of talent and energy utterly deplorable. Those of us who struggle to get any kind of a recognisable tune from a musical instrument are happy to tolerate artistic achievement provided it is accompanied by a suitably balanced lack of ability elsewhere.

Continues: http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php?entry=entry100411-134123

Brian Cox is the newest Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association.

Philip Pullman delivers a concise riposte to an audience member concerned about the “offensive” title of his new novel, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ and receives prolonged applause.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ3VcbAfd4w