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.

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.

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

Having invited a comedian famous for his clever, awkward and sometimes too-close-to-the-bone humour to present the Golden Globes this year, the ceremony organisers, guests and the world were apparently amazed that Ricky Gervais chose to go with cheeky bawdy British humour, after he delivered a series of ego-puncturing gags which Hollywood seems to have taken to heart. But his relatively innocuous closing joke, “Thank God I’m an atheist”, has also prompted ridiculous questions in the western world’s most religious country.

In the video Piers Morgan uses his CNN show to ask Gervais whether “Thank God” was meant to be offensive, whether Gervais knew it would offend Americans, and – apparently incapable of understanding atheism – whether there’s an afterlife. Gervais responds in the manner of a grouchy, rather more salt of the earth Bertrand Russell.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1XGTrrZjlI (via The Perplexed Observer)

A COLOURFUL parade up Edinburgh’s Royal Mile is to be held to mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of one of Scotland’s greatest thinkers.

Hundreds of people are expected to take part in The March to Enlightenment, from the Scottish Parliament building at Holyrood to the striking statue of David Hume opposite St Giles’ Cathedral.

It is the first major public event to be announced in recognition of the tercentenary of Hume’s birth and his legacy as a groundbreaking philosopher, famous for questioning everything and seeking to explain the world without a God.

Organisers hoped it will raise awareness of the man reputed to be Edinburgh’s “founding father of the Enlightenment” – and a hugely influential thinker in politics, history, religion and literary and aesthetic theory.

…

The event on Saturday, 23 April, three days before Hume’s birthday, is being organised by the Humanist Society of Scotland, which led the campaign to have the Hume statue, created by sculptor Sandy Stoddart on the Royal Mile, outside the High Court, in 1997. The university is organising a number of Hume tercentenary events, including lectures, a conference and a party on his actual birthday.

Full article: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/news/David-Hume-Striding-out-for.6683643.jp

• More on David Hume at Humanist Heritage
• Humanist Society of Scotland

Independent columnist John Walsh on the “Not ashamed” campaign.

One thinks back a century before that, to when Dickens was inventing Christmas as an almost entirely humanist phenomenon, as “a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely…” And, if we’re talking about “our country’s tradition and history”, one might point out that Christmas gradually evolved as a Christian gig after years of being a pagan Saturnalia, designed to cheer up the drear nights of the medieval winter.

Not even Lord Carey’s own people believe in his awful warnings about anti-Christian discrimination, the censorship, the undermining. The heads of the Christian think-tank Ekklesia say they can find no evidence to back up the “Not Ashamed” campaign, although “we have found consistent evidence, however, of Christians misleading people and exaggerating what is really going on, as well as treating other Christians, those of other faith and those of no faith in discriminatory ways”.

The sad truth, Lord Carey, is that people aren’t hostile to religion or passionately devout about it; just increasingly indifferent. They may send religious cards, sing carols, attend Mass, inspect the crib, as they’ve always done – but more as a style choice than an expression of devotion. They haven’t been nobbled by Christianophobes. They just don’t feel any atavistic twitch of veneration any more.

When the philosopher AC Grayling was introduced on a recent radio show as “a devout atheist”, he corrected his host: “That’s like calling me a devout non-stamp collector.” What bothers Christian Concern, and the like, is that many people just aren’t disposed to collect the stamps any more.

Full article: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/john-walsh/john-walsh-festive-mice-are-not-a-pagan-plot-2148665.html

GEORGE Ball told pals they should put a mobile phone in his coffin when he died – and when he failed to answer at his funeral yesterday they knew it was time to say goodbye.

Hundreds of mourners packed into Bradwell Crematorium to remember the life of the local character they knew as George the Hat.

A floral tribute reading “Never kid a kidder”, Mr Ball’s favourite catchphrase, lay next to his coffin.

… Helen Kara, who conducted yesterday’s humanist service, told the congregation: “One of George’s friends had said to him ‘What are we going to do with you when you’re gone?’.

“George replied, ‘You can put my mobile phone in the coffin with me and ring it and I’ll pop up and say hello and it will all be a joke’.”

A member of the congregation then rang George’s phone and the ring tone came from the direction of his coffin.

But Ms Kara said: “Unfortunately there’s no answer, so we’ll have to continue with the service.”

Mr Ball was found dead after a fire in his flat above the Baa Humbugs sweet shop in Wolstanton High Street.

It started less than an hour after he returned home from the Village Tavern on November 12.

Ms Kara yesterday described Mr Ball as a “happy man” who was known for wearing his trademark red woolly hat and who enjoyed the simple pleasures in life.

She said: “He enjoyed going to the pub to meet people and have a drink and a laugh. He regularly got barred from the pubs for his singing.[" ...]

Mr Ball’s daughter Jayne Harris told the congregation that she hadn’t realised the “little man with grey hair, in sandals and a woolly hat” had been so popular.

She said in a letter to him: “I remember when you came back from Saudi Arabia and I came out of the school gates to see you waiting for me. You’d brought me back many gifts but the best one was finding you standing there.”

The congregation sang Danny Boy and Mr Ball’s coffin was carried out to the sound of Twilight Time by The Platters.

Keith Melbourne, who runs the Village Tavern, said: “I’d known George for 14 years and he was a true character.

“He was a genuine, hardworking, a very clever man.

“I’d only known him to take his hat off once – and that was to put his bed cap on.

“His table is still here in the pub with drinks on it. Nobody will ever forget him. He is a legend of Wolstanton.”

Full article: http://www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk/news/don-t-answer-let-funeral-continue/article-2935115-detail/article.html

Helen Kara is an accredited humanist celebrant on the BHA  Humanist Ceremonies network. Humanist funerals are well-known and well-respected for speaking to the real life and character of the person who has died, for being unafraid of idiosyncrasy, and for celebrating as much as mourning.

People of faith do not have a monopoly on virtue as British society was now “more diverse and secular”, the Queen told the Church of England today in an address to its governing body.

Speaking at Church House, central London, she told members of General Synod that believers and atheists were equally able to contribute to the prosperity and wellbeing of the country.

The Queen, who is supreme governor of the Church of England, said: “In our more diverse and secular society, the place of religion has come to be a matter of lively discussion. It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue and that the wellbeing and prosperity of the nation depend on the contribution of individuals and groups of all faiths and none.”

Don’t get too excited, though.

But, recalling the words of Pope Benedict XVI from his UK visit last September, she said churches “and the other great faith traditions” retained the potential to inspire “great enthusiasm, loyalty and a concern for the common good”.

Elizabeth Windsor went on to briefly refer to the debates within the Church on women bishops and homosexuality, without picking a side of course, and optimistically noting that trial and debate often coincide with “growth and spiritual vigour”.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/23/queen-synod-virtue

A non-religious service to remember road crash victims will take place in Bath on Sunday.

The campaign group RoadPeace will stage the humanist event at 4pm on what is the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims.

The service takes place at the Chapel Arts Centre in Lower Borough Walls, close to a recently-unveiled memorial to crash victims at Pigeon Park.

Group members – many of whom have lost relatives in crashes, will join emergency services and council representatives and bereavement support organisations in the act of public remembrance.

The campaign day was introduced by RoadPeace in 1993 and adopted by the UN 12 years later.

Continues: http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/Service-victims-road-crashes-Bath/article-2904280-detail/article.html

[Australian] EDUCATION Minister Bronwyn Pike has ducked a potential backlash from the powerful Christian lobby by rejecting a proposal to allow humanism to be taught in primary schools during time allocated for religious education.

The Humanist Society of Victoria, which wants to teach an ethics-based curriculum [alongside religious education], is planning a legal challenge, saying that the current system indirectly discriminates against non-religious children, causing ”hurt, humiliation and pain and suffering” to them when they opt out of religious education classes.

Children in two-thirds of Victorian state primary schools are taught Christian scripture by volunteers, even though the Education Act says state schools must be secular and ”not promote any particular religious practice, denomination or sect”.

Parents must sign forms if they want their children to be excluded from ”special religious instruction” classes, 96 per cent of which teach Christianity, with the remaining 4 per cent covered by the Jewish, Buddhist and Baha’i faiths.

Children who do not attend these sessions are not allowed to be taught anything their classmates might miss out on during this time, so they are often put in another room where they read or play on computers.

The Education Act has a special exemption from its secular roots to allow religious education.

Continues: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/thou-shall-not-teach-humanism-alp-20101106-17i8t.html

The Times Higher Education supplement reviews Mary Warnock’s Dishonest to God: On Keeping Religion out of Politics.

We humanists are materialists, egoists, relativists, nihilists, amoralists, libertines, and no doubt in the privacy of our own homes cannibals and child molesters. For only God stands between humanity and these things.

In reply, the militant wing of secularism talks freely of superstition, ignorance, bigotry, self-deception, stupidity, tribalism and rank hypocrisy. It is not an edifying debate, although sometimes rather fun.

How splendid, then, to find a totally respectful, firm, committed and experienced voice guiding us through the way this issue should be addressed.

… [Mary Warnock's] book is the fruit of long years at the front line.

It is powerful partly because of this, but also because of her great sympathy with the religious spirit, coupled, however, with her iron conviction that it issues no knowledge, no special authority and no particular right to be heard in issues of morals and legislation.

Full review: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=414085&c=2

Monica Shores laments a lack of women’s participation and representation in the growing public face of atheism. Jen McCreight responds that the problem may be more about perception and the media than enthusiastic women atheists per se.

Given the immense harm many organized religions inflict on women through outright violence and institutional oppression, it seems women may have more to gain than men from exiting their faith. Yet no women are currently recognized as leaders or even mentioned as a force within the movement. The lack of lady presence is so visible that Conservapedia commented on it by noting that Dawkins’ website overwhelmingly attracts male visitors.

One study-supported theory is that there simply aren’t as many female atheists as there are male, while another is that new atheism is “off-putting” to women. Earlier this year, journalist Sarah McKenzie suggested that women aren’t socialized to defend their beliefs with the same vigorous and “militant” zeal expected of atheists, and proposed that the movement make space for traditionally feminine characteristics like “story-telling [and] empathy.”

http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2010/11/01/will-new-atheism-make-room-for-women/

Atheists are well aware of this gender disparity and have been actively trying to close the gap. Local organizations are creating more family friendly events to encourage mothers to participate. Popular blogs like Pharyngula (written by a man) and Friendly Atheist (written by a, gasp!, young non-white man) frequently address women’s issues and ask how to make the movement more welcoming. Conference organizers have been recruiting more women as speakers and, thanks to that, women have become better represented as conference attendees. Just looking at my own schedule for the next couple months, I’ve been invited to speak about women and atheism by five different groups so far.

So why the gap?

People like to speculate that women are more inclined to supernatural thinking, hate to be aggressive or are more afraid of leaving community behind. These nonsensical ideas illustrate the true problem: We live in a society where everything is affected by sexism, and the atheist movement is downstream from those effects. So when atheists draw many members from academic and scientific circles, which have their own gender bias issues, we end up being a victim of statistics. What’s more, people in leadership positions tend to be older because they have more experience, so there’s always a bit of a time lag in diverse representation. (Given time, I think we’ll see more and more atheist women in positions of greater visibility, and I’d hazard a guess that one will have a best seller soon enough). This problem is compounded when the media fails to mention deserving women atheists–even in articles in feminist publications asking where all the atheist women are. Screaming “Right here!” only does so much.

It’s irritating when the media makes it seem like the atheist movement has a “woman problem.” For one thing, my experience in the movement has shown atheists to be far less sexist than the general population. It’s not surprising–humanism is explicitly supportive of gender equality, while many mainstream religions are extraordinarily anti-women. There’s always room to improve, mainly because we’re human, too, but we’re actively working towards those improvements.

http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2010/11/03/where-are-all-the-atheist-women-right-here/

New Humanist editor Caspar Melville on the benefits of a rather restrained optimism as opposed to an uncritical faith, religious or otherwise.

In the past few years, “faith” has become a synonym for religious belief. Where once you were a Christian or Jewish or believed in God or had religion, now you are a “person of faith”, dragging with you a whole “faith” agenda of inter-faith dialogue and faith initiatives and, of course, faith schools. And unlike some of the words to indicate a lack of belief, which used to be insults but have been turned into label of pride – heathen, Godless, blasphemer, atheist – the obverse of faith is hard to turn into anything positive sounding – you are simply faithless or perhaps unfaithful; in any event, you lack faith, which implies a deep cynicism, a problem with commitment or a dearth of go-getter-ness. Whichever way it’s said, it sounds like you are letting the team down.

Does it matter? The question implies that it does. It infers that great social progress has and can be achieved through the unified purpose, shared moral certainties with their attendant “simple prohibitions” and the dangling carrot of later rewards offered by religious belief, and without it, well, rampant individualism and regress. The two previous respondents, Peter Thompson and Mary Warnock, have both in their own ways made the case that hope and moral cohesion leading to faith in the future can be achieved without reference to religious belief. And very well made their cases are. But I’m not so sure we should rush so quickly to talk up a secular version of faith, at least not as it is practiced by religion and its shadow ideologies. Undoubtedly faith is a powerful force, but so is greed and so are hurricanes, and we would think twice before basing our hopes for social progress on either of them. What I’m trying to say is I am wary of faith.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/oct/08/wary-faith-synonym-religious-belief

[E]ntertainment value aside it is surely false, as well as politically unwise and, well, pretty impolite, to say that “all theology” is irrelevant (some of it is moral reasoning, isn’t it?), still worse to say that “religion poisons everything”, or that without religion there would be no war, or that bringing a child up within a faith is tantamount to child abuse, or that moderate religious believers are worse than fundamentalists because they prepare the ground for extremism, or that “all” religion is this, or that, or “all” faith is misguided, or to suggest that those who believe in God are basically stupid, or that science, and only science, can answer our questions.

The picture of religion that emerges from New Atheism is a caricature and both misrepresents and underestimates its real character. “Religion,” Richard Norman writes “is a human creation … a mirror which humanity holds up to itself and in which it sees itself reflected. Human beings attribute to their gods all their own human qualities – cruelty revenge and hatred, but also love and compassion and mercy. That’s why you can find a justification for anything, good or bad, in religion.”

This may be less fun than denouncing the pope and all his works, but it’s closer to reality. For Norman, as a humanist, the requirement is to be less strident so as to create alliances with moderate religionists on specific topics – faith schools, fundamentalism, terrorism – of concern to all. I second that, but I have a more base reason for wanting to move beyond New Atheism. I’m bored, and I fear my readers are becoming so too.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/sep/21/beyond-new-atheism

Richard Dawkins replies:

What is encouraging about this article is the dusty response it is getting from commenters on the Guardian website. Great numbers of them, it seems, are as bored with “I’m an atheist buttery” as I am. I think we are starting to see a genuine change. A year ago, a piece like Caspar’s would have been followed by a baying chorus of but-heads in full cry. I think a tide is turning and significant numbers of people are seeing through the ill-informed “New atheists are shrill meanies” mantra.

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/523158-beyond-new-atheism/comments?page=1#comment_523162

Bob Bury

“Anything I say about religion is aggressive because it’s wrong, and nothing they say about their belief is aggressive, because it’s right.  It’s very difficult to argue with that sort of arrogant certainty.” Bob Bury takes his gloves off.

We’ve heard a lot about “aggressive atheism” one way or the other in the last week. I’ve been accused of it myself, and what it seems to mean is any atheism which dares to speak its name. Religious believers are so accustomed to the protection historically afforded by the reluctance of the media, or anyone else, to criticize religious belief that they see any dissent at all as ‘aggressive’.

But then, why wouldn’t we be “aggressive” (if that’s what it must be called)?

For centuries, religious evangelists have promoted their beliefs using everything from threats of eternal damnation to incarceration and torture. Now that dissenters have at last found a voice, it’s perhaps not surprising that our comments sometimes get a bit edgy. OK, the inquisition doesn’t operate any more, but the threats are still there. I was threatened myself, ever so nicely, online, only this week. I was posting in a medical discussion forum which had strayed onto dangerous hallowed ground. I described how a creationist had threatened me (and he really meant it) with eternal damnation in the fires of hell because I couldn’t accept that the earth was only 6000 years old, and yet if I even mention the fact that belief in the centuries-old writings of scientifically unsophisticated peasants might be inappropriate in the 21st century, I’m the one that’s being ‘aggressive’. One of the other medics on the forum replied that the creationist wasn’t being aggressive because he was simply ‘stating the facts’. In other words, anything I say about religion is aggressive because it’s wrong, and nothing they say about their belief is aggressive, because it’s right.  It’s very difficult to argue with that sort of arrogant certainty and self-righteousness.

And that’s the trouble with religion, isn’t it? It’s not the beliefs themselves; if someone insists on believing that the bread really turns into the body of Christ, and it makes them happy, that’s fine by me. I can even accept that a person could hold that belief and still be an entirely competent doctor (or airline pilot or chartered accountant or plumber) because it does seem that otherwise sensible people are able to compartmentalize religious belief, selectively suspending the rules of evidence and common sense which govern their behaviour in every other aspect of their life and work. After all, I did it myself for forty years before seeing the light. The problems arise from that absolute certainty that they are right. In extreme cases it can lead to young Muslims going happily to their deaths if they can take the ‘infidel with them, and to redneck Christian evangelists deciding that publicly burning the Quran is a really neat idea. Very Christian.

Humanists, on the other hand (and I hope I’m not speaking only for myself here) thrive on doubt. Doubt and uncertainty is good – it’s how we have progressed from believing that the sun is dragged into the sky by the sun-god every morning to a point where we can send space probes to Jupiter and beyond. It’s how we expand our knowledge. We have examined religious belief, and applied the same criteria of evidence and common-sense which we use in every other aspect of our lives, and have decided on the balance of probabilities that the concept of a god that concerns himself with our lives is so unlikely as to be insupportable. Of course, if a hand appeared from the clouds tomorrow and gave me a cosmic clip around the ear, I would absolutely be prepared to revise that opinion. Equally, if I died and found myself at the pearly gates with St Peter smirking superiorly, I’d greet it with a shrug. It’s that sense of unlimited possibilities and openness to the unexpected that makes rationalism such an exciting and inspiring philosophy, and which imparts to scientific discovery a glorious sense of excitement  which far exceeds anything inspired by the Bible’s catalogue of magic tricks.

It is instructive that the online discussion thread I mentioned above was deleted by the website’s owners shortly after the exchange in question, and this is the fate of most threads which stray on to holy turf. The discussion groups on this site include a large number that are non-medical, and there used to be a religion forum, which generated some really enjoyable and instructive debates between believers and non-believers. There isn’t one any more – the owners had to take it down after due to threats of legal action. Threats which didn’t, if I recall correctly, come from the atheists. It’s that aggression thing again, you see – if you don’t share my beliefs, you need to keep quiet about it; only the religious are allowed to evangelize. It’s difficult to avoid the suspicion that religious sensitivity to criticism is an unacknowledged admission of the fact that their faith is such a tender flower; it must be sheltered from the chill wind of agnosticism, lest it wither and die. Mine did, thank God.

Bob Bury is a consultant radiologist in Leeds. He is approaching retirement, and looks forward to more time for hill-walking, fishing and writing.