Humanist philosophers reviewing each other! BHA Vice President (soon to be President) AC Grayling reviews Julian Baggini’s new book, The Ego Trick.  If humanist morality is based on the self-initiated actions of human moral agents, then “What is a self?” seems like a pretty important question.

The problem of self-understanding is a perennial one. But even before you tackle it there is a prior problem: making sense of selfhood itself. What is a “self”? Given that we change physically and psychologically throughout life, what is it that somehow makes us remain the same person in spite of those changes? If I borrowed money from you 20 years ago, and in the interval much happened that drastically altered me, surely I still owe you that money nonetheless?

In this entertaining, educative and gracefully written book, Julian Baggini explores the question of the nature of the self and in what sense it persists through time. Ever since the philosopher John Locke devoted a chapter to the problem in the second edition of his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1692, these questions have been central to much philosophical enquiry.

But, as Baggini shows, they are not “merely” philosophical questions. Psychology, neurology, gender issues, brain tumours, head injuries and dementia, multiple personality, memory, social construction of personae, ideas about souls, reincarnation and the afterlife – all these are in some way relevant to the debate and Baggini considers them in pursuit of clarification, arguing that there are, indeed, answers to be found.

Continues: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/84eb910a-6165-11e0-a315-00144feab49a.html

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/

Astronomer Martin Rees has accepted the controversial Templeton Prize, accused in the past of insidiously blurring the lines between science and religion. Rees’ acceptance speech offers little that is controversial, however, and he could almost have been chosen as a way for Templeton to go a year without being subjected to wide criticism. In his speech Rees gives a big picture overview of our place in the universe, argues for a more long-term approach to scientific and technological thinking, and states that while reductionism is true it’s “seldom true in a useful sense. Problems in biology, and in environmental and human sciences, remain unsolved because it’s hard to elucidate their complexities – not because we don’t understand subatomic physics well enough.” That view that reductionism is basically correct but different scientific disciplines work on different levels hardly seems equivalent to “affirming life’s spiritual dimension” which the Prize is meant to honour. (Maybe Templeton has run out of genuinely quasi-religious high profile scientists and philosophers to honour?)

To our ancestors, the Earth seemed vast, with open frontiers. Today, no new continents remain to be discovered, and our planet seems constricted, and overcrowded – a fragile “pale blue dot” in a vast cosmos.

Our sun is one of a hundred billion stars in our galaxy; billions of those stars are orbited by planets (many perhaps with biospheres). Our galaxy is itself just one of many billion galaxies in range of our telescopes. And there is compelling evidence that this entire panorama emerged from a hot, dense “beginning” nearly 14bn years ago.

But, as always in science, each advance brings into focus new questions that couldn’t previously have even been posed and which enlarge our horizons still further. The vast domain that astronomers can observe could be an infinitesimal part of the totality. Our big bang may not be the only one: we may be living in a “multiverse” – an archipelago of cosmoses, perhaps governed by an array of different physical laws.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/apr/06/templeton-prize-2011-martin-rees-speech

In a Guardian interview Ian Sample seemingly struggles to elicit some kind of controversial statement on religion and science from Rees. After a shaky start (Sample enquires about Rees’ finances off the bat, receiving “No comment”,) the transcript seems to indicate that Rees provides often short and dismissive answers evading questions about religion, God, and the Templeton controversy as far as is humanly possible without actually getting up and leaving the interview.

IS: And what about theological issues?

MR: Well, I’ve got no religious beliefs at all. Of course some of the winners have, but I think not all of them.

IS: What do you think the Templeton prize achieves? What is the value of it?

MR: That’s not for me to say to be honest.

IS: You must have a view?

MR: No.

IS: But you think it achieves something?

MR: Well, I mean as much as other prizes, certainly, but I wouldn’t want to be more specific than that.

IS: That’s a shame. Might you at some time in the future?

MR: They are very nice people who are doing things which are within their agenda, but their agenda is really very broad. I should say that I was reassured by the rather good piece in Nature a few weeks ago, which talked about the Foundation and I found that reassuring. Certainly Cambridge University, I know, has received grants from Templeton for editing Darwin’s correspondence, which is a big Cambridge project, and also for some mathematical conferences. They support a range of purely scientific issues.

IS: Have you considered what to do with the money?

MR: I haven’t, no.

IS: You have been described as a churchgoer who doesn’t believe in God. Is that an accurate description?

MR: I suppose so. What I’ve said is I’m happy to attend my college chapel and things like that, because I see this as part of my culture, just like many Jews light candles on Friday night even though they don’t believe anything, and my culture is the Church of England, as it were.

IS: Are you a regular churchgoer?

MR: Not very regular, no. In my college, I go once a week during term as the Master of the College. And in Trinity College, we’re lucky enough to have a wonderful choir rated number five in the world by Gramophone magazine, so it’s worth hearing.

IS: Why don’t you believe in God?

MR: Um. Which God?

IS: A God.

MR: I don’t think I can answer that.

IS: Really?

MR: Mm.

Rees does go on to call concerns about Templeton “excessive” and states that science and religion do not “have much scope for constructive interaction, but they have in common perhaps an awareness of mystery.”

Full interview: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/apr/06/astronomer-royal-martin-rees-interview

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

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

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

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

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

“If the Big Bang was the start of everything, what came before it?”

That is one of the questions being posed by a new website being set up by the Vatican and Italy’s scientific community.

After centuries of mistrust between religion and science, the intention is to give the public a greater understanding of both sides.

The website, which will be available in Italian and English, has information on everything from astronomy to theology, from space missions to philosophy and art.

… The venture is being run jointly by the Vatican and the Italian Space Agency, ASI.

Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, the dean of the Pontifical Lateran University’s philosophy department, will be the Vatican’s point man on the scheme.

He says: “From the Church’s point of view, this is about getting religious people to see that scientists are not the enemy and getting scientists to see that religious people are not the enemy.

“The aim is for both sides to come together for the good of humanity.”

This BBC article does go on to point out that the Italian Space Agency and the Vatican might be “uneasy bedfellows”.

Full article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12244279

Last night’s Moral Maze on BBC Radio 4, examines the B&B gay rights case and asks:

Is the application of the Human Rights Act being turned in to a political ideology and being used to persecute a group – the religious – that is now a minority in our society? Should religious beliefs have any privileged status in a democratic society? How do we define the boundaries of liberty? Is the state, through the legal system, defending minorities or encroaching in to the very core of our personal freedoms and telling us what to believe?

Michael Buerk chairs with Michael Portillo, Claire Fox, Matthew Taylor and Clifford Longley on the panel. The guests include Richard Norman, Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Kent, Vice-President of the British Humanist Association, and a member of the BHA’s Humanist Philosophers group.

Listen again: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00xw1t9

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

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

The Economist reviews A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment, by Philipp Blom.

ATHEISM is a hot topic. In recent years writers from Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett to Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris have penned popular tracts advancing the cause of godlessness. But, as the Bible reminds us, there is nothing new under the sun. Philipp Blom’s latest book tells the story of a set of remarkable individuals on the radical fringes of the 18th-century European Enlightenment, whose determinedly atheistic and materialist philosophies denied the existence of God or the soul. Echoing ancient thinkers such as Democritus and Lucretius, they held ideas that were to prove too revolutionary even for a revolutionary age.

It is the story of the scandalous Paris salon run by Baron Paul Thierry d’Holbach, a philosophical playground for many of the greatest thinkers of the age. Its members included Denis Diderot (most famous as the editor of the original encyclopedia, but, Mr Blom argues, an important thinker in his own right), Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the father of romanticism, and the baron himself; even David Hume, a famous Scottish empiricist, paid the occasional visit.

A philosophy grew up around the baron’s generously stocked table that denied religious revelation and shunned Christian morality, embracing instead the primal passions (the fundamental motives, said the philosophes, for human behaviour) and cool reason (which could direct the passions, but never stand against them). They dreamt of a Utopia built on pleasure-seeking, rationality and empathy. Their ideal nation would leave no room for what they saw as the twisted ethical code of Christianity, which they argued prized suffering and destructive self-repression.

Continues: http://www.economist.com/node/17358838

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

Professor Patrick Haggard is controlled “like a marionette” by magnetic stimulation from outside. He is a robot, leading Tom Chivers to reconsider his sense of free will.

For a man who thinks he’s a robot, Professor Patrick Haggard is remarkably cheerful about it. “We certainly don’t have free will,” says the leading British neuroscientist. “Not in the sense we think.” It’s quite a way to start an interview.

We’re in the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, in Queen Square in London, the nerve centre – if you will – of British brain research. Prof Haggard is demonstrating “transcranial magnetic stimulation”, a technique that uses magnetic coils to affect one’s brain, and then to control the body. One of his research assistants, Christina Fuentes, is holding a loop-shaped paddle next to his head, moving it fractionally. “If we get it right, it might cause something.” She presses a switch, and the coil activates with a click. Prof Haggard’s hand twitches. “It’s not me doing that,” he assures me, “it’s her.”

The machinery can’t force Prof Haggard to do anything really complicated – “You can’t make me sign my name,” he says, almost ruefully – but at one point, Christina is able to waggle his index finger slightly, like a schoolmaster. It’s very fine control, a part of the brain specifically in command of a part of the body. “There’s quite a detailed map of the brain’s wiring to the body that you can build,” he tells me.

Continues: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8058541/Neuroscience-free-will-and-determinism-Im-just-a-machine.html

There’s a promising tagline about morality transcending religious belief. But then Lucia Hudson, former Jesuit-trained convert to Judaism, explains that in the debate between religion and atheism, it needn’t be the case that either side will win as such, and even if we can explain the universe entirely without God technically the model could still be wrong so we could still believe, and believing in God is like looking at a rainbow times a million (you definitely wouldn’t get it if you don’t believe) and if only people of all religions and beliefs could stop trying to outdo each other, because they’re all the same really, except that the Torah is better than any other book and Judaism is more alive and more timely than any other religion, and atheism might imply moral relativism which is bad.

The faultline is deepening between those who see themselves as having a faith and those who do not. And it is deepening in part because of a mistaken perception one side has of the other: that only one world view can prevail. We must challenge the assumption that one side has to be wrong for the other side to be right.

I converted to Judaism after being brought up a Catholic, educated by French Jesuits in Paris. My religion may have changed, but my faith in God has provided a fixed point, as has my faith in the power of reason and choice. I was not driven away from Roman Catholicism, but was drawn to Judaism, especially Liberal Judaism, its blend of tradition and modernity, its elegant mix of questing and questioning.

Far from seeing that it was a choice between the two, I spotted similarities, much to the surprise of my rabbinic board…

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/oct/13/dont-let-dogma-divide-us

In his new book The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris claims that science ‘reveals’ values to us. Kwame Anthony Appiah is one of the many who have pointed out that Harris makes the common mistake of seeking to derive an ‘ought’ from a series of mere ‘is’ statements, a mistake pointed out by David Hume centuries ago.

But the relationship between natural science and normative ethics does raise interesting questions. Let’s assume that Harris is correct in thinking that the right action is that which maximizes overall well-being, and assume also that well-being consists in the greatest balance of pleasure over pain. Pleasantness and painfulness are properties that scientists — psychologists in particular, but others too — can talk about, and if we assume that these properties can be measured in some way or other, then we find that the property that makes actions right is a property that can be studied by natural science.

But what is the relation between rightness and the property of maximizing well-being? In recent years, several naturalistically inclined philosophers have been inclined towards identifying them. So, just as heat turns out to be the same as molecular kinetic energy, so rightness turns out to be the same as maximizing well-being.

Full article: http://www.practicalethicsnews.com/practicalethics/2010/10/science-and-morality.html

You can find Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape in the BHA Amazon store.

On the day the Pope’s speech to a waiting Britain spoke of “extremist atheism” and belittled secularism and secular morality, we publish Leo Igwe’s speech to the Free Society Institute from last Saturday, about humanist values and secularism in Africa and the world.

Leo Igwe (pictured speaking in London last year)

Leo Igwe delivered the opening address to the 2nd Annual conference of the Free Society Institute of South Africa, co-hosted by the International Humanist and Ethical Union, on Saturday 11 September 2010. This is the full text of his speech.

Dear Friends,

I am glad to be back in South Africa and good to see you all. Thank you for inviting me to deliver the opening of this conference. Once again the FSI has demonstrated its commitment to the mission of promoting free thought and free speech in South Africa. Last year we all met in this hall for the first conference of this Institute co-hosted by the International Humanist and Ethical Union. And I must say that last year’s event remains one of the best humanist programs I have attended in Africa. I was deeply impressed by the quality of the presentations, debates, and discussions. I was inspired by the curiosity for ideas, search for truth, hunger for knowledge, the spirit of inquiry, critical thinking and openmindedness expressed by the participants. I left South Africa deeply convinced that this nation has got in the FSI a befitting humanist group. So I urge you not to relent in your efforts, commitment and support for the FSI and its mission of promoting free thought and free speech in South Africa. I hope that very soon your organisation will be reckoned with as one of the most active and vibrant humanist groups on this continent and in the world.

The emergence of humanist groups in Africa opens a new, exciting and promising chapter in the history of African emancipation and enlightenment. The struggle to promote humanism marks another phase in the struggle by Africans for independence and liberation. It opens another chapter in the quest by Africans for emancipation from mental slavery and other forms of slavery. It marks another defining moment in the struggle by African people for intellectual liberation and mental freedom, for true renaissance and enlightenment.

There are few countries on this continent where active humanist groups like this exist. There are few places in Africa where humanists and free thinkers can meet openly to discuss, interact and express themselves without fear. Even in my own country, Nigeria, there are states(in Northern Nigeria) where events like this will be met with death and destruction. Millions of Africans still live in societies or under conditions where they fear to speak their minds or to express their thoughts freely. That tells us how important this meeting is and why we should not relent in taking this message of hope and renewal beyond Cape Town, to all states in South Africa. That tells you how significant the work you are doing at the FSI is and the potentials in terms of change, transformation and civilization. I hope the FSI will continue to lead the way in terms of promoting free thought and free speech in South Africa and in Africa as a whole. I hope this Institute will continue to champion the cause of realizing a free society in this country. It is only when a society is free that it can fully realize its potentials.

This conference is taking place on a crucial day and date in the history of the world-September 11. Nine years ago some terrorists hijacked planes and caused the death of at least 3000 people in the US. Similar attacks have been planned and executed in other parts of the world.

We are meeting here at a time the forces of religious fanaticism are ravaging the globe, causing suicide bombing, death and destruction, conflicts and instability in many countries. We are gathered here at a time millions of people around the world are living in fear for their lives, safety and security- in the air, on the land and on the seas- due to threats posed by religious fanatics. We are meeting here at the time a new dark age looms around the globe; at a time theocratic governments have taken their jihads and crusades to the United Nations. This conference is taking place at a time people in most countries are confused- or are being confused -as to what constitutes the best moral guide.

The issue of what should be the best guide to moral clarity for humanity stares the world on the face. And we need an atmosphere of freethought and free speech to consider, tackle and resolve it. We need an atmosphere that is free from threats from fanatics, terrorists, suicide bombers, jihadists, religious mercenaries and other armies of God to chart out moral path and discuss, debate, dialogue and decide what is best for ourselves.

To the question that brought us here today – Is secular viewpoint our best guide to moral clarity? My answer is yes. The secular, not religious, outlook provides us a veritable framework for the expression and realization of moral excellence. Because secular viewpoint is based on evidence, on reason, science, common sense and human beneficence. The secular outlook is open to revision and improvement. Secular morality is a morality for this world and of this world, not for the next; it is a morality for our happiness and well being in the here and now, not in the hereafter. It is a morality for this temporary life not for an eternal afterlife in an imaginary paradise. Secular morality is a morality by us, from us and for us, not a moral decree of God from God and for us ‘wretched’ humans. Secular morality is informed by the quest to be good and to do good for goodness sake, not the quest to be good and to do good for God’s sake or for heaven’s sake or to avoid going to Hell.

Simply put, secular morality is a common sense morality. Secular viewpoint put human moral destiny in human hands, not in the hands of god, godmen and women. But we must note that both secular and religious outlooks are human creations. They are human viewpoints with human limitations. But advocates of religious outlook continue to cause confusion by denying this fact.They have done humanity a great disservice by refusing to tell the world the truth and by lying that the religious moral norms are decrees and commandments handed down as eternal and unchangeable guide for humanity from above ages ago. And it is this dogmatic lie and others told in the name of God, Allah… by the self acclaimed prophets and messengers of the ‘most high’that are responsible for the lack of moral clarity in the religious viewpoint. It is these sacred myths, falsehoods and misconceptions peddled by the supernatural faiths that morally disqualified religions as the best guide for humanity.

A brief analysis of the September 11 attack- what could have motivated the islamist attackers- may help us shed some light on the confusion and contradictions embedded in the religious moral outlook- the dangers religion’s lack of moral clarity poses to the future and survival of humanity, and the risks we human beings run by allowing moral norms guided by supernaturalism, blind faith, primitive superstitions and dogmas to guide the society.

No doubt those who planned and carried out the September 11 attacks must have judged their mission to be morally right- yes morally upright by their own standards –and I should say by the standards of religious morality.

I dont think the terrorists were really anomic individuals, unaware of the pain, agony, death and destruction their actions could cause. The September 11 attackers were not really bereft of conscience, compassion and fellow feeling. Instead I think the terrorists considered doing such grevious harm to their fellow human beings as consistent with their sacred sense of what is good or right; what ought to be done. The religous outlook actually thrives on sacrificing the natural or the human on the altar of the supernatural and the superhuman. Remember the story of the Biblical Abraham whose idiotic and condemnable attempt to sacrifice the son was reckoned as a demonstration of faith. So we must understand this warped sense of morality or sanctity if we are to tackle and eradicate religion and faith based terrorism in the world. We must strive to rid our minds of thess dirty and blood sucking gods that undermine the moral health of our society.

The terrorists believed that their actions were pleasing to Allah who would reward them abundantly for their deeds in the hereafter. Take note of that, reward in the hereafter –whatever that is-72 virgins (are these virgins really men or momen), a palatial home in the divine mansion in the paradise(I dont know exactly)is the driving force of religious morality.

For the Septmber 11 attackers and those who uphold religous moral viewpoint,what is deemed morally good is what is pleasing to Allah or better what is judged or considered(by who?)to be pleasing to Allah; what ought to be done is what Allah says, directs and commands – sometimes through the prophets, priests and sheikhs etc. Or what is said, directed or decreed in Allah’s, Jesus’ or God’s name. And already these commandments and norms are codified in the sacred texts- Torah, Bible, Quran- and traditions, which everyone is expected read, believe and follow without question as regards the author, source or authenticity. Thus, on hearing that hackneyed expression, In Jesus name’ ‘Thus says the Lord or Allah”, Or ‘In the name of Allah, the most gracious and most merciful’, one should be ready to swing into action without minding the consequences to oneself or to others.The religious moral viewpoint is insensitive to our feelings, to human feelings. Because the ‘words’ (or better, supposed words) of God or Allah are ‘yes’ and ‘amen’ and should be obeyed without question, hesitation or examination.

Because Allah-an entity from nowhere, somebody that is nobody- is taken to be the best moral guide for everyone including those who do not believe in him or her. So whatever s/he says or is believed to have said- no matter how stupid it is- holds or must hold everywhere and for everybody in secula seculorum (forever and ever). It is believed that Allah had charted the moral path. Even when there is no consensus among the religious as to what this moral path is. Our duty as human beings is to follow, obey and abide by this recieved moral code. That reminds me of a hymn that is sang in many christian churches. It goes this way:

Trust and obey. For there’s no other way.

To be happy in Jesus. But to trust and obey….

And the question is this – Trust and obey who? An imaginary entity?

Why should I trust and obey him or her or it? Trust and obey what? Texts from questionable sources written centuries ago by ignorant people? Should I trust and obey somebody who should not be trusted? Should I just obey orders that are stupid and harmful?

As I noted above, the religious moral viewpoint is mired in vagueness and lack of moral clarity. It has caused many people to abandon doing good, and trying to be good. Instead most people spend (I actually mean waste) much of this short life obeying God or trying to please God. Human beings will continue to wallow in moral confusion and darkness until the advocates of religious viewpoints stop peddling those ‘revealed lies and falsehoods’.

In conclusion, human beings can be good without believing in God. We can be moral without the pretensions of primitive religions. There is no doubt about it. Infact the whole idea of god came about in the attempt by primitive humans to promote and enforce what they concieved to be good-good life and good behaviour. So the religious moral outlook is largely outdated. God is actually a corruption of the good, not the author and dictator of what is good. God has no moral capacity. It does not have the capacity to judge, reward or recognize what is good or evil. Those who think otherwise are greatly mistaken. And it is this mistake that is at the root of religions’ lack of moral clarity. Human beings created God and invested it with all the human and moral attributes in their quest for some order, stability and ‘sanity’ in the primitive times. And religions have blindly adopted this primitive idea of organizing and understanding the world and society. Unfortunately many people across the world want these outdated myths and misconceptions to be the basis of our laws, policies, educational and justice systems in this 21st century. They want the world to continue to wallow in moral vagueness, obscurity and darkness. Humanity needs the best moral guide to make the best of this one life we have. And I hope that with programs like this we can initiate the much needed process of enlightening and morally reawakening people around globe to realize that the secular viewpoint presents us with the best guide to moral clarity.

I wish you all very fruitful deliberations.

Leo Igwe is the International  Humanist and Ethical Union representative in West Africa and Executive Director of the Nigerian Humanist Movement.

Did Stephen Hawking kill God? It would be easy to be too simplistic about the different “magesteria” of science and religion, argues humanist philosopher Julian Baggini. But even with a nuanced philosophical view of how religion might provide meaning, science is still tripping up even the most sophisticated theology.

Hawking’s “mind of God” was never anything more than a metaphor for an understanding of the universe which is complete and objective. Indeed, it has been evident for some time that Hawking does not believe in anything like the traditional God of religion. “You can call the laws of science ‘God’ if you like,” he told Channel 4 earlier this year, “but it wouldn’t be a personal God that you could meet, and ask questions.”

This reflects an inconvenient truth about science that religion would prefer to ignore. For although it is true that science doesn’t rule out a role for religion in providing meaning, or a God who kick-started the whole universe off in the first place, it does leave presumed dead in the water anything like the God most people over history have believed in: one who is closely involved in his creation, who intervenes in our lives, and with whom we can have a personal relationship. In short, there is no room in the universe of Hawking or most other scientists for the activist God of the Bible. That’s why so few leading scientists are religious in any traditional sense.

This point is often overlooked by apologists who grasp at any straw science will hold out for them.

Full article: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/julian-baggini-if-science-has-not-actually-killed-god-it-has-rendered-him-unrecognisable-2070125.html

Joy Lo Dico for the Independent explores the surge in popularity of pop philosophy.

This pile of paper cannot help but make one think: when did we start reading so much popular philosophy? Pop-science and “think” books of the Malcolm Gladwell or Freakonomics school, jaunty theses about social science, probability and economics, now regularly pepper the bestseller lists. The ever-popular self-help genre continues to offer an easily digestible diet of light behavioural science and psychology, with big returns for publishers. But surely philosophy – the study of unanswerable questions – cannot be packaged the same way?

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/get-your-brain-in-gear-pop-philosophy-is-taking-over-the-bookshops-2055965.html

Dabir Tehrani explains why Omar Khayyam, the Iranian poet, mathematician and philosopher, is his Humanist Hero.

Omar Khayyam

One of my humanist heroes is Omar Khayyam, the Astronomer, Mathematician, Philosopher, and Poet from Iran. He was born at Naishapur in Khorassan province of Iran in the latter half of the eleventh, and died within the first quarter of the twelfth century CE, at an age over 85, in the same town.

In a then deeply religious atmosphere of Iran, and at a time that the kingdom was under the threat of Hassan Sabbah (a fellow student of Omar Khayyam, who had turned out to be like Osama Ben Laden of today), Khayyam dared to deny the existence of the ‘next life’ and to urge all to drink wine (against the Koran’s rule), to love and enjoy this only life.

When the Malik Shah, king of Iran, determined to reform the calendar, Omar Khayyam was one of the eight learned men employed to do it; the result was the Jalali era (so called from Jalal-ud-din, one of the king’s names) –’a computation of time,’ says Gibbon, ‘which surpasses the Julian, and approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style.’ He is also the author of some astronomical tables, entitled Ziji-Malikshahi, and the French have republished and translated an Arabic Treatise of his on algebra.

Following are quoted from a preamble by Edward Fitzgerald, who has translated Khayyam’s Rubaiyat (Quatrains) into English:

Omar was too honest of Heart as well of Head for {floating luxuriously between Heaven and Earth, and this World and the Next, on the wings of a poetical expression that might serve indifferently for either}. Having failed (however mistakenly) of finding any Providence but Destiny, and any World but This, he set about making the most of it; preferring rather to soothe the Soul through the Senses into Acquiescence with Things as he saw them, than to perplex it with vain disquietude after what they might be…”

And:

Professor Cowell, to whom I owe the Particulars of Omar’s Life, concludes his Review by comparing him with Lucretius, both as to natural Temper and Genius, and as acted upon by the Circumstances in which he lived. Both indeed were men of subtle, strong, and cultivated Intellect, fine Imagination, and Hearts passionate for Truth and Justice; who justly revolted from their Country’s false Religion, and false, or foolish, Devotion to it; but who fell short of replacing what they subverted by such better Hope as others, with no better Revelation to guide them, had yet made a Law to themselves. Lucretius indeed, with such material as Epicurus furnished, satisfied himself with the theory of a vast machine fortuitously constructed, and acting by a Law that implied no Legislator; and so composing himself into a Stoical rather than Epicurean severity of Attitude… Omar, more desperate, or more careless of any so complicated System as resulted in nothing but hopeless Necessity, flung his own Genius and Learning with a bitter or humorous jest into the general Ruin which their insufficient glimpses only served to reveal; and, pretending sensual pleasure, as the serious purpose of Life, only diverted himself with speculative problems of Deity, Destiny, Matter and Spirit, Good and Evil, and other such questions, easier to start than to run down, and the pursuit of which becomes a very weary sport at last!.

And Fitzgerald ends his introduction by:

However, as there is some traditional presumption, and certainly the opinion of some learned men, in favour of Omar’s being a Sufi—and even something of a Saint–those who please may so interpret his Wine and Cup-bearer. On the other hand, as there is far more historical certainty of his being a Philosopher, of scientific Insight and Ability far beyond that of the Age and Country he lived in; of such moderate worldly Ambition as becomes a Philosopher, and such moderate wants as rarely satisfy a Debauchee; other readers may be content to believe with me that, while the Wine Omar celebrates is simply the Juice of the Grape, he bragg’d more than he drank of it, in very defiance perhaps of that Spiritual Wine which left its Votaries sunk in Hypocrisy or Disgust.

Omar Khayyam’s poetry speaks for itself (as translated by Edward Fitzgerald):

Dreaming when Dawn’s Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry,
“Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life’s Liquor in its Cup be dry.”

And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted–”Open then the Door.
You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more.”

“How sweet is mortal Sovranty!”–think some:
Others–”How blest the Paradise to come!”
Ah, take the Cash in hand and waive the Rest;
Oh, the brave Music of a distant Drum!

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust Descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer and–sans End!

Alike for those who for TO-DAY prepare,
And those that after a TO-MORROW stare,
A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries
“Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There.”

[Muezzin: The person who cries calling for prayer from a minaret tower]

Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss’d
Of the Two Worlds so learnedly, are thrust
Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn
Are scatter’d, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.

Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise
To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;
One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.

Into this Universe, and why not knowing,
Nor whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing:
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not whither, willy-nilly blowing.

Up from Earth’s Centre through the seventh Gate
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate,
And many Knots unravel’d by the Road;
But not the Knot of Human Death and Fate.

[Remember that he was an astronomer.]

There was a Door to which I found no Key:
There was a Veil past which I could not see:
Some little Talk awhile of ME and THEE
There seemed–and then no more of THEE and ME.

Then to this earthen Bowl did I adjourn
My Lip the secret Well of Life to learn:
And Lip to Lip it murmur’d–”While you live,
Drink!–for once dead you never shall return.”

Ah, fill the Cup:–what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn TO-MORROW and dead YESTERDAY,
Why fret about them if TO-DAY be sweet!

The mighty Mahmud, the victorious Lord,
That all the misbelieving and black Horde
Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul
Scatters and slays with his enchanted Sword.

For in and out, above, about, below,
‘Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
Play’d in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.

And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop’t we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to IT for help–for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

Oh Thou who didst with Pitfall and with Gin
Beset the Road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with Predestination round
Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin?

Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And who with Eden didst devise the Snake;
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blacken’d, Man’s Forgiveness give–and take!

And strange to tell, among that Earthen Lot
Some could articulate, while others not:
And suddenly one more impatient cried–
“Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?”

Ah, with the Grape my fading Life provide,
And wash my Body whence the life has died,
And in a Windingsheet of Vineleaf wrapt,
So bury me by some sweet Gardenside.

And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted–”Open then the Door!
“You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more.”

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

Dabir Tehrani is an Honorary Professor of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. He worked 50 years in oil industry, 25 years in Iran, and retired in 2007. He is a member of  the British Humanist Association, American Humanist Association, the Humanist Society of Scotland, European Humanist Federation and the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU). He is on the Management Committee of the United Nations Association – Scotland.

BHA Chief Executive Andrew Copson and Humanist Philosophers member Simon Blackburn debate Richard Harries on Encounter for ABC Radio National (Australia). The question posed by Wendy Barnaby is whether the West has lost its idea of civic virtue. It’s an interesting debate which gets to the heart of much of the tension between conservative and progressive visions of social morality today.

Andrew Copson: It’s not true that society has forgotten, that politicians have forgotten, that individual citizens have forgotten how to think about things in a moral way, how to think about things in a values-rich way. … You cannot sit through a debate, certainly in the Westminster Parliament, on any subject and not hear ethical questions being addressed-implicitly almost all the time, and explicitly more often than you think. So it isn’t true that some rampant commercialist, materialist, individualist, economy-centred secularism has shrivelled and wizened our public space down to some sort of valueless prune and that we need to pump it up with all the good juices again of old-time religion. It’s just not true. It’s not true that we need religion to revive public values, and in part one of the reasons that it’s not true is that there hasn’t been a decline in public values in the way that propagandists for a reintroduction of religion into public life like to claim.

You can listen and read a full transcript at: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/encounter/stories/2010/2951160.htm

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.