by Naomi Phillips, Head of Public Affairs, British Humanist Association

Following a thorough and independent inquiry, the Commission on Assisted Dying’s principal finding is that the law on assisted dying is ‘inadequate and incoherent’ and that ‘there is a strong case for providing the choice of assisted dying for terminally ill people’. The Commission has made a number of recommendations in its report necessary to facilitate a change in the law to legalise assisted dying while at the same time protecting vulnerable people.

Commenting on the report, the British Humanist Association’s (BHA) Chief Executive, Andrew Copson, stated, ‘The law as it stands is not compassionate. It gives no option to those who wish to end their lives without suffering and distress but are unable to do so themselves. The majority of the public support a reform in the law, and we do not believe there are any credible arguments to keep the law as it is. Rational and compassionate people will surely find nothing to disapprove of in the recommendations of the Commission today.’

Certainly, a change in the law is long overdue and urgent to prevent any more unnecessary suffering for those few people who have made a clear and resolute wish to end their lives but are unable to do so themselves – and the Commission’s considered, detailed, sensitive, and academic report makes a strong case for legal reform.

Case for wider reform

However, when we were called to give oral evidence to the inquiry (watch here) and in our written evidencewe made the case for a wider reform of the law. From an ethical perspective, we maintain that there is no strong moral case to limit assistance to terminally ill people alone and ultimately we wish to see reform of the law that would be responsive to the needs of other people who are permanently and incurably suffering. We also think that there are good arguments from compassion and from autonomy to legalise assisted dying and voluntary euthanasia, where the latter would allow someone other than the patient to administer medication needed to end her life, if she were unable to do so herself and had clearly stated that was her wish.

In light of that position, Mr Copson continued, ‘If anything, we would have liked to have seen the Commission go further and recommend a greater change in the law to allow both assisted dying and voluntary euthanasia. There is no rational moral distinction between allowing someone to die and actively assisting them to die in these circumstances: the intention and the outcome (the death of the patient) are the same in both cases. The only difference is that the more active means is probably the more compassionate one.

‘Recommending only a limited reform in the law to allow assisted dying but not voluntary euthanasia, and only to encompass terminally ill people rather than also including people who are unable to end their own lives but who are incurably suffering, permanently incapacitated and have made a clear, informed and resolute decision that they wish to do so, is ethically inconsistent.’

What can be done – and who opposes reform?

However, this is not to downplay the enormous and positive impact that a reform in the law would make for terminally ill people, and for their families who, at the moment, are being faced with the immensely difficult choices of whether, knowing that it is unlawful, to assist a loved one who is begging for help to put an end to their suffering or not to act and hence prolong their suffering.

But as the report makes clear, this is an issue that parliament needs to legislate on for change to happen. And despite the fact that survey after survey shows that a majority of people – whether religious or non-religious – support a reform in the law to legalise assisted dying (see figures ‘On Assisted Dying’), many MPs and Peers are resistant to speak out or to support change. When there are so many good, ethical reasons to support a reform in the law, why is there such reluctance amongst our elected representatives to act?

From our experience of working for reform in the area of assisted dying for many years, we can attest to the level of misinformation and emotionally charged campaigning conducted by those who oppose reform. It is clear that well-funded, organised, but disproportionate and unrepresentative lobbying and protestations from religious and other oppositional organisations, and the organised and influential opposition to reform by the 26 Church of England Lord Bishops in parliament, have a distorting, negative impact on the debate, severely retarding progress to take the law in a more ethical direction.

Of course it is not only religious people who form the minority opposition to reform on assisted dying (as above, most religious people support legal reform) – but it is the unrepresentative, often socially conservative religious lobby which is most vociferous in opposing a change in the law, just as it is in campaigning against issues such as the right to abortion and stem cell research (both issues that also command wide public support). The majority of members of the Care Not Killing alliance – the group which has been most vocal in opposing the Commission on Assisted Dying – are religious organisations, most are Christian. And most other prominent opponents come from a similar, conservative, religious perspective.

We will continue to campaign hard against the small but vocal lobby who oppose changing the law to allow, with strict safeguards, those who are suffering to die with dignity at a time of their own choosing. It would be a great shame if their largely unshared beliefs continued to have undue influence over our elected representatives, to come above the needs and rights of terminally ill patients, and to stand in the way of real reform. We urgently need a law on assisted dying that is sensible, ethical, humane, forward-thinking and that upholds people’s fundamental human right to die with dignity and in a manner of their choosing.

Richard Wilson’s New Humanist article on the African humanists campaigning against witchcraft accusations, arrests and abuse of children and other vulnerable people, deserves reading in full. Here’s a short bit from near the beginning after a few examples of outrageous police conduct in Malawi.

These are just three of over 80 case-files compiled by the Association for Secular Humanism (ASH) in Malawi, where dozens of people have been jailed on imaginary evidence for the imaginary crime of “witchcraft”. Most are poor, elderly and from rural communities. ASH has campaigned successfully against efforts to recognise “witchcraft” as a crime. But some magistrates have been pursuing cases regardless, prosecuting people for an offence that isn’t even on the statute book. Others have been imprisoned for “pretending witchcraft”, or the catch-all crime of “disorderly conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace”. This despite the fact that Malawian law actually makes it a crime to accuse another person of being a witch.

The stories make heartbreaking reading. But when I speak by phone with George Thindwa, the ASH Executive Director, he sounds upbeat. He’s just received a letter from the office of the State President. “In fact I have it in my hand – I’m just coming from the scanning machine.”

The President’s office has agreed to review the case-files that the ASH had sent, and is “committed to ensuring that Women and the Elderly are not victimised in the manner highlighted”. Thindwa is hopeful that those listed could be free within weeks.

Wilson goes on to cover how “witchcraft” abuses are spread  by Pentecostal and Revivalist churches, how lack of proper healthcare drives people to “healers” who blame ailments on witchcraft, and how a “supernaturally” obsessed film industry exacerbate superstition into outright paranoia. The witchcraft films are exported from Nigeria and the article moves there, covering the similar campaigns of Leo Igwe. Whereas Thindwa’s campaigns in Malawi tend to focus on the elderly imprisoned as witches under abused laws, Igwe’s campaigns focus on children tormented and exiled as witches, often by those closest to them.

Link: http://newhumanist.org.uk/2548/witch-hunt-saboteurs

The sometimes prudish, sometimes lascivious folk over at the Daily Mail routinely react in horror to some people getting naked, getting all huffy and conservative, then react rather more excitedly, getting all celebratory and dribbling, often in the space of a few pages pages, or sentences. There’s no apparent mechanism for choosing between the two responses other than the toss of a coin, but they always manage to feature the pictures, either way.

Anyway, they were remarkably quick to spot actress Sila Sahin posing nude in the latest German issue of Playboy magazine, and essentially recycle the interview as a news story. The big media spin on the story is that she is a well-known German-Turkish soap actress, hence she becomes apparently “the first Turkish woman” to appear nude in Playboy. And therefore presumed a Muslim. A naked, Muslim woman.

Dum dum dummmm.

Posing provocatively on the cover of German Playboy magazine with one breast exposed, Sila Sahin seems to be sending a clear and deliberate message to her conservative Turkish family.

‘I did it because I wanted to be free at last,’ she said. ‘These photographs are a liberation from the restrictions of my childhood.’

Her family have, unsurprisingly, reacted with horror, and her mother has cut off all contact with the actress.

‘My mother is still angry. It will be even more difficult with my grandparents, my aunts and my uncles,’ she said on the website devoted to her television soap.

She has, however, managed to talk to her actor father, who expressed concern over the pressure she will inevitably face from those not only within the Turkish community in Germany, but from the wider Muslim community as a whole.

… ‘My upbringing was conservative,’ she told Playboy. ‘I was always told, you must not go out, you must not make yourself look so attractive, you mustn’t have male friends.

‘I have always abided by what men say. As a result I developed an extreme desire for freedom. I feel like Che Guevara. I have to do everything I want, otherwise I feel like I may as well be dead.’

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1378455/Sila-Sahin-poses-Playboy-Muslim-model-upsets-family-nude-cover.html

The lengthy photo feature (shown here) did the media rounds in Germany. Obviously there’s a “boo” from some of her family and various Muslim sources,(Sahin says she’s “not sure” about her own religious beliefs). There’s another “boo” from those worried that if avoiding doing “what men say” is your main aim, then stripping off for the male gaze may not be the best way to go about it. But there’s also a “boo” from commentators worried that the shoot is such a “cheap cliché” based on exoticism, all too conveniently playing on Europe’s current angst about race, immigration and integration.

“When you look at the pictures you can see how cheap these people at the magazine think about Turkish, Muslim, Islamic, Oriental people,” said Hatic Akyün, who writes a column for the Berlin daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel and was born in Turkey but grew up in Germany. “It’s such a cheap cliché they’re using.”

Akyün said she and her Turkish friends were all exasperated to see that a Playboy cover was putting the issue of integration back into the headlines. She accused Playboy, Sahin and her handlers of stirring up controversy for publicity’s sake.

“That’s how it works in Germany. The integration debate works just like that,” she said. “They know exactly which buttons they need to push to get the media to jump all over it.”

Gökce Yurdakul, an expert on race, gender and Islam and a professor at Berlin’s Humboldt University, was equally disappointed with the way the German media have approached the topic. For too long women have been seen as representations of their nations, she said.

“She’s not a daughter of Turkish immigrants; she shouldn’t be represented this way in the newspapers,” she said. “This is an individual woman who is acting on her own behalf, not as a daughter, not as a part of a community.”

Yurdakul said Sahin is just tapping into what Germans expect to read about Turkish and Muslim women, that German society can liberate them.

Link: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15021188,00.html

The Gather : Celebs channel is a bit more forgiving.

Good for her. This message is one that most people can certainly embrace, and hopefully, her family will get over their dismay at her decision to pose nude. Who would have thought that Sila Sahin’s nude pictures could end up helping advance the cause of world peace?

Who indeed.

Link: http://celebs.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474979263193

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

Nearly two-thirds of people do not regard themselves as “religious”, a new survey carried out to coincide with the 2011 Census suggests.

The British Humanist Association (BHA), which commissioned the poll, said people often identified themselves as religious for cultural reasons.

The online poll asked 1,900 adults in England and Wales a question which is on this month’s census form.

The Office for National Statistics has defended the wording of the census.

While 61% of the poll’s respondents said they did belong to a religion, 65% of those surveyed answered “no” to the further question: “Are you religious?”

…

Among respondents who identified themselves as Christian, fewer than half said they believed Jesus Christ was a real person who died, came back to life and was the son of God.

…

The chief executive of the BHA, Andrew Copson, is running a national campaign encouraging non-religious people to state their unbelief clearly on their census forms.

He said: “This poll is further evidence for a key message of the Census Campaign – that the data produced by the census, used by local and national government as if it indicates religious belief and belonging, is in fact highly misleading.["]

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12799801

Penman of Penman and Sommerlad investigates a “victory for religious lobbyists, a defeat for freedom of speech”.

I have written here and here about how I’m not a fan of state faith schools because they devide society and I don’t want children indoctrinated – especially not at the taxpayer’s expense.

You may have heard that this year’s census will include a question asking about your religion. Rather than just ignoring this question, should you be in the vast majority who are not “of faith”, the British Humanist Association is urging you to tick the “no religion” box, otherwise the skewed data will be used to justify more taxpayer’s money being spent on faith schools.

Trouble is, posters by the Association carrying the slogan “If you’re not religious, for God’s sake say so” have been banned from appearing at train stations. Apparently the phrase “for God’s sake” could cause offence, according to the companies that own the advertising space.

“This censorship of a legitimate advert is frustrating and ridiculous,” says the Association’s chief executive Andrew Copson.

The Christian Institute, as you might expect, is delighted by this “major setback” for the Humanists.

This is from its online report: “In its attempt to have British citizens declare themselves non-religious, the BHA has a mountain to climb.

“According to the last census, for every one atheist/humanist in England and Wales there were 2,037 people who identified themselves as Christian.”

If Britain really is as Christian as the Institute suggests, it does make you wonder why churches are so empty (expect ones next to successful state faith schools which can use their control over admissions to get non-believers through their doors).

Continues, with an update from the Humanist Society of Scotland: http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/investigations/2011/03/religious-attack-on-british-hu.html

The Freethinker isn’t impressed with the ban, but isn’t entirely disheartened either…

AN idiotic decision by companies owning advertising space in railway stations to ban British Humanist Association census campaign posters has caused puzzlement and outrage among secularists.

… Personally, I am rather pleased about the ban, because it has served to further publicise the very real importance of getting the figures right this time around.

The BHA points out here that there are real, practical problems with the use of skewed data.

Both central and local government use such data in resource allocation and for targeting equality initiatives. And the figure stating that around 72 percent of the population are ‘Christian’ has been used in a variety of ways, such as to justify the continuing presence of Bishops in the House of Lords, to justify the state-funding of faith schools (and their expansion), to justify and increase religious broadcasting and to exclude the voices of humanists in Parliament and elsewhere. The question is not fit for the purposes for which it was included, for the first time, in 2001.

Link: http://freethinker.co.uk/2011/03/06/atheists-must-stand-up-and-be-counted/

And BHA Chief Exec Andrew Copson appeared on Five Live in an excellent discussion on Saturday night. Listen again at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00z62yz/Stephen_Nolan_05_03_2011/

Those who take the time to investigate the census results see clearly that they are ridiculous. If we believed them, we would believe that there are more Jedis in England and Wales than Jews, Buddhists or Sikhs. We would believe – contrary to government research that showed 65% of 12- to 18-year-olds were not religious – that in fact 62% of them (along with 58% of under-4-year-olds) were Christian.

The reasons why the data from the 2001 census was so aberrant are simple and well known. They mostly have to do with the fact that the question is a closed and leading one: “What is your religion?” This question is demonstrated to produce a much higher number of “religious” responses than non-presumptuous questions such as: “Do you have a religion?” and much higher than questions that ask about belief or practice. Faced with the closed and leading census question, people who do not believe in God, and who, if asked: “Are you religious?” would say “No”, nonetheless tick “Christian” or “Sikh” or whatever.

Perhaps this would be tolerable if the census data on religion was accepted as measuring nothing more than a weak form of cultural affiliation rather than as a proxy for strong religious belief, and only used with this in mind. But the results from the forthcoming census will not just give us an interesting overview of the demographic of England and Wales for academics to critique when the results are released and for our descendants to pick over in future centuries. They will constitute a basis for policymaking over the coming years.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/feb/28/census-religion-question

Andrew Copson is Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association which is running The Census Campaign, raising awareness on the misuses of census data and encouraging non-religious people to answer simply: “No religion”.

Family Radio - telling you and your family that Judgment is imminent

Family Radio? Sounds friendly, doesn’t it.

Let’s gather round and listen, children. What does Family Radio have to say today?

This spring, you’re probably going to Hell !

Cheers, Family Radio.

Family Radio are advertising via London Tube posters, that as of 21 May, in the year of our Lord 2011, God Himself will judge you and your family and the world will end. “Cry mightily”, the poster instructs “unto GOD for HIS mercy”.

Presumably after 21 May, Family Radio will offer an apology to all its listeners, especially those with recently terrified children in their families.

Or they’ll make excuses about the ambiguity of biblical prophecy and push the date back another few years.

Family Radio helpfully explains the proof of their infallible prediction:

In 2 Peter 3:8, which is quoted above, Holy God reminds us that one day is as 1,000 years. Therefore, with the correct understanding that the seven days referred to in Genesis 7:4 can be understood as 7,000 years, we learn that when God told Noah there were seven days to escape worldwide destruction, He was also telling the world there would be exactly 7,000 years (one day is as 1,000 years) to escape the wrath of God that would come when He destroys the world on Judgment Day. Because Holy Infinite God is all-knowing, He knows the end from the beginning. He knew how sinful the world would become.

Seven thousand years after 4990 B.C. (the year of the Flood) is the year 2011 A.D. (our calendar).

4990 + 2011 – 1 = 7,000

[One year must be subtracted in going from an Old Testament B.C. calendar date to a New Testament A.D. calendar date because the calendar does not have a year zero.]

Thus Holy God is showing us by the words of 2 Peter 3:8 that He wants us to know that exactly 7,000 years after He destroyed the world with water in Noah’s day, He plans to destroy the entire world forever. Because the year 2011 A.D. is exactly 7,000 years after 4990 B.C. when the flood began, the Bible has given us absolute proof that the year 2011 is the end of the world during the Day of Judgment, which will come on the last day of the Day of Judgment.

Amazingly, May 21, 2011 is the 17th day of the 2nd month of the Biblical calendar of our day. Remember, the flood waters also began on the 17th day of the 2nd month, in the year 4990 B.C.

The Holy Bible gives several additional astounding proofs that May 21, 2011 is very accurate as the time for the Day of Judgment. For more information on this subject, you may request a copy of We Are Almost There, available free of charge from Family Radio.

Link: http://www.familyradio.com/graphical/literature/judgment/judgment.html

Thanks, Family Radio. We’re all convinced.

The BBC News magazine website is running a story comparing the upcoming census with its 1911 counterpart. Most of the discussion in the comments is about the question on religion, with several links and supportive mentions for the British Humanist Association’s Census Campaign.

The 1911 census also offers an insight into one of the great political movements of 20th Century Britain, the efforts by suffragettes to get the vote for women.

The activists tried to get women to refuse to fill out the census, organising a mass avoidance session near London’s Trafalgar Square, prompting a heartfelt plea from the registrar in the Times.

…

[A]fterwards, the Times was delighted to report that the suffragettes had failed to avoid being counted. It puts the recent international Jedi census stunt – where people listed their religion as Jedi in tribute to Star Wars – into perspective.

Looking at the 2011 census, [a family filling in the 1911 census] might have been surprised to see questions on type of heating, ethnicity and religion. Or the baffling question 17: “This question is intentionally left blank go to 18.”

Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12324970

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair and Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad, special adviser to the King of Jordan, announce that the UN has  solved the problem of inter-religious tension and violence. Hurrah!

All over the world there is a struggle taking place within and about religion. Sometimes it results merely in harsh or prejudicial words. Too often it erupts in violence and acts of shocking extremism. The essence of the struggle is this: are people of religious faith prepared to regard those of a different faith with respect and dignity, and yes, even love; or do they rather regard them as enemies? Are they “open” to the other or “closed”? Do they want to live in harmony with those different from themselves?

… On 20 October 2010, largely unnoticed by the world, the UN general assembly unanimously passed a resolution declaring the first full week of each February the World Interfaith Harmony Week. The resolution, first proposed by King Abdullah II of Jordan, is unique in the annals of the UN because of its explicit mention of God (albeit in a way that does not exclude those who don’t ascribe to a religion) and because it promotes harmonious interfaith relations in a way that specifically draws attention to the scriptural and theological basis for such relations.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/13/love-god-world-interfaith-harmony-week

Leo Igwe speaks up once again for the universality of reason.

Whenever I try to apply logic, critical reasoning and scientific temper to issues during public debates, I am often accused of not thinking like an African. I am always told that I think like a white man or that I have a western mentality. As if critical thinking or the scientific outlook is for westerners alone or that critical thinking can only be exercised by people from a particular race or region. No, this is not the case.

Even in this 21st Century, reason and science are still perceived as western, and not African values. I have yet to understand how we came about this mistaken idea. Hence, it is often portrayed as if the African does not reason and dare not reason or that the African does not think or cannot think critically. It seems thinking like an African means suspension of thought, logic or common sense. Thinking like an African means not thinking at all- thoughtlessness or thinking in spiritual, occultic or magical ways.

For instance, whenever I try to challenge or question the irrational and absurd claims of witchcraft, juju and charms, and other ritualistic and religious nonsense that dominate the mental space of Africans, I am often reminded that my mentality is western. … Whenever I try to fault or expose the absurdity of witchcraft accusations or the persecution of alleged witches or wizards, many people often urge me to set aside this my oyibo (white man’s) mentality, as if critical thinking is the exclusive cultural preserve of white people while mystical thinking is for blacks and for Africans.

Full letter: http://thenationonlineng.net/web3/editorial/letters/23078.html

Meanwhile, in case there is any doubt as to the severity and pervasion of superstition in parts of Africa, Ghana awaits the verdict on six alleged killers in a “witch hunting” case.

Six people are currently appearing before a magistrate at Tema, near Accra, for allegedly burning a 72-year-old woman to death, in the belief that she was a witch. Earlier, the media had made fun of an elderly woman who, it was claimed, was “arrested” by villagers who claimed that she had “fallen out of the sky” after running out of “witches’ gas” on a flying expedition with her coven, and fallen under a tree.

In both cases, anyone with the slightest knowledge of dementia would recognise symptoms of the disease from the accounts given of the behaviour of the women. They were where they were not supposed to be, and when they were asked what they were doing there, they could not explain themselves. This is because dementia sometimes robs its victims of the ability to speak coherently.

The woman who was burnt to death, Madam Ama Ahima, hailed from Ajumako Assasan in the Central Region. She was found in a bedroom of a house in which she knew no one. She had alighted from a lorry at the wrong place and got lost. But she could not explain this and a mob soon gathered around her and subjected her to angry questioning. One of the questioners happened to be an “evangelist”, and the suggestion soon gained ground that she was a witch.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/dec/31/ghana-witches-burned-alive-women

Edward Stourton wants only very serious limericks

A Radio 4 competition asks for limericks on religion. But contrary to the tradition of the limerick, your blasphemy, criticism or lewdness are not required.

Edward Stourton on BBC Radio 4′s Sunday programme yesterday invited listeners to compose limericks on the subject of religion, to welcome in the New Year… for some reason. (You can listen again for the rest of the week, about 32 minutes in.)

“Now sometimes limericks can be coarse and offensive,” Stourton warned. But, “we’re asking for clean limericks in these responses”.

You can submit your own limericks on a religious theme to sunday@bbc.co.uk. Winning poems will be broadcast on the Sunday programme on Sunday 2nd January.

If you submit a limerick do copy it into the comments below! And remember, the BBC wants “clean” limericks. None of your blasphemous humanist values or secularist criticisms please; just good, clean, po-faced limericks…

“I believe in God and I’m perfectly intelligent and rational,” says Victoria Coren. Elsewhere in the column, which broadly complains that not enough “cool, brainy people” are on God’s side in public debate, Coren:

• relates that she gabbled when she met the Archbishop of Canterbury
• compares belief in an inexplicable God favourably to belief in the inexplicable iPad
• insinuates that the rule of law is a useless replacement for divine law because of the Twitter Joke Trial
• notes that faith in altruism is only as daft as faith in religion anyway
• atheists offer “nothing” by way of solace or comfort and without religion human life is “no longer sacred” in such a way as to invalidate all sense of value, apparently

Well, if the point was to demonstrate that not enough “cool, brainy people” argue for God, this might be an excellent article.

There is a new [read any Enlightenment history, Victoria?], false distinction between “believers” and “rationalists”. The trickle-down Dawkins effect has got millions of people thinking that faith is ignorant and childish, with atheism the smart and logical position. [No one thought this before Dawkins, obviously.]

I interviewed the comedian Miranda Hart recently. She told me she believes in God but was nervous of being quoted on it.

“It’s scary to say you’re pro-God,” she said. “Those clever atheists are terrifying.”

“Oh, nonsense,” I said. “Let them tell you it’s stupid to believe in something you can’t explain. Then ask them how an iPad works.” [Because electronic engineering is exactly as impenetrable as Divine Mystery.]

… So why do the proselytisers fight so hard to be right? In place of the comfort which faith can provide in the face of death, grief or loneliness, they offer… nothing. They are suspiciously eager to snatch away the consolations of their fellow men. [This being atheism's only possible motivation.]

Why? Because they think religion causes violence? Human nature contains a streak of fear, greed, selfishness and territorialism that must result in a mean level of dissent and bloodshed, with or without the excuse of religious difference. Without religion, human life is no longer sacred – nothing is – so it’s not “logical” to believe we’d be gentler if it disappeared. All we’d have to replace it is a trust in altruism, which is certainly no less naive than believing in God.

So what would that leave, as a moral framework? The law? Do google “Twitter joke trial” before you throw our future behind that. [Oh wow, zing!]

Or is it because some religious arguments are misogynistic or homophobic? Believers can still argue back. [Well, that's fine then, if you can argue back then misogyny and homophobia hardly matter.]

It is not “logical” to imagine that faith could disappear anyway. It is natural to seek hope beyond the trials and finity of existence. If the big religions were destroyed, humanity would simply invent new, smaller, madder ones. Thousands of them. The man who attempts to argue both that religious difference causes violent bloodshed and that the big faiths should be dismantled is therefore being short-sighted, obtuse and not very clever.

Not very clever.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/dec/05/victoria-coren-belief-in-god

From initial votes which showed the audience were on Hitchens’ side, this weekend’s Munk debate on the proposition “religion is a force for good in the world” between Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens has been called a victory for the latter after slightly more of the audience swung still further against the motion.

From Hitchens’ opening:

Therefore, we might begin by asking, and I’m asking my opponent as well as you when you consider your voting, is it good for the world to appeal to our credulity and not to our scepticism? Is it good for the world to worship a deity that takes sides in wars and human affairs? To appeal to our fear and to our guilt, is it good for the world? To our terror, our terror of death, is it good to appeal? To preach guilt and shame about the sexual act and the sexual relationship, is this good for the world? And asking yourself all the while, are these really religious responsibilities, as I maintain they are? To terrify children with the image of hell and eternal punishment, not just of themselves, but their parents and those they love. Perhaps worst of all, to consider women an inferior creation, is that good for the world, and can you name me a religion that has not done that? To insist that we are created and not evolved in the face of all the evidence. To say that certain books of legend and myth, man-made and primitive, are revealed not man-made code.

Religion forces nice people to do unkind things, and also makes intelligent people say stupid things.

From Blair’s opening:

So I do not deny for a moment that religion can be a force for evil, but I claim that where it is, it is based essentially on a perversion of faith, and I assert that at least religion can also be a force for good, and where it is, that it’s true to what I believe is the essence of faith, and I say that a world without religious faith would be spiritually, morally and emotionally diminished.

Full transcript: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/11/christopher-hitchens-tony-blair

The debate is recorded in a series of Youtube videos, then speakers enter on the second video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoKlXqDIR_A

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

…Dr Thomas Dixon delves into the BBC‘s archives to explore the troubled relationship between religion and science. From the creationists of America to the physicists of the Large Hadron Collider, he traces the expansion of scientific knowledge and asks whether there is still room for God in the modern world.

The relationship between science and religion has been long and troubled: from the condemnation of Galileo by the Catholic Church in 17th century Italy, through the clashes between creationism and evolution in 20th century America, right up to recent claims that the universe does not need God.

Delving through the rich archives of material from BBC’s “Horizon” programme and BBC Science, Thomas Dixon looks at what lies behind this difficult relationship. Using original footage from 1925, he tells the story of John Scopes, a Tennessee teacher who was tried for teaching evolution. He sees the connections between religion and American politics in the story of a more recent court case — the trial of Intelligent Design. He looks at what happens when new scientific discoveries start to explain events that were once seen as the workings of God, and CLAIMS that some of our most famous scientists have seen God in the grandest laws of the universe. Finally, he finds intriguing evidence from brain science which hints that belief in God is here to stay.

Full article with videos: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/punctuated-equilibrium/2010/oct/31/1

Caspar Melville of New Humanist magazine lets a school speak for itself in “the most heart-warming argument against faith schools you’re likely to read this year”.

Haverstock is an entirely non-denominational state school (a Business and Enterprise College to be exact) with a hugely diverse student body – there are pupils from 70 ethnic backgrounds, 25 per cent of them coming from families of refugees or asylum seekers. I won’t bother you with my scene setting much more – I will leave you to read the piece itself – except to say that in my view, this is the most heart-warming argument against faith schools you’re likely to read this year. These 16 teenagers from a north London school beautifully illustrate why young people from different background should grow up and be educated alongside each other, and not be separated on the basis of their parents’ religious beliefs.

Full article: http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2010/10/why-young-people-should-be-educated.html

In his writings about his diagnosis, Hitchens has asserted: “To the dumb question, why me? The cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: ‘Why not.’ ” Hitchens concedes that the dumb question “is bound to occur” — but not for long. He says he decided on his beliefs a long time ago, well before he became ill.

“I’m here as a product of process of evolution, which doesn’t make very many exceptions. And which rates life relatively cheaply,” he says. “I mean, most human beings who’ve ever been born would have been dead long before they reached my age. And I would think in most of the rest of the world — well, I know it — is still true. So to be relatively healthy at 62 is to be dealt a pretty good hand by the cosmos, which doesn’t know I’m here — and won’t notice when I’m gone. So that seemed the only properly stoic attitude to take.”

Since Hitchens got sick, there has been a whole movement of prayer around him, including “Everybody pray for Hitchens day.” When asked what he makes of it, he said there are three reasons why people do it “apart from affection for me, which of course I shouldn’t be churlish about.”

He says his readers are responding and reaching out. And that “has meant quite a deal to me, made me feel I haven’t wasted the years I have had,” he says. Or, he says, it’s a simple wish he gets better, “which again, I don’t want to quarrel with.” Or, finally, it’s a wish that he reconcile himself with the supernatural or divine, something that he calls “a large counterfeit.”

“I wrote back to some of the people — some of them in holy orders who are running registered organizations: ‘When you say, “Oh pray for me,” do you mind if I ask, “What for?” ‘ A lot of them said, quite honestly, ‘Not really for your recovery, but that you see the error of your ways.’ Now I find that not as easy to be graceful about, because though it’s put in a nice way, it’s part of a phenomenon that I’ve always thought of as very disgusting, which is the belief of the religious — which they keep expressing — that surely now you’re dying, your fears will overcome your reason. I hope I don’t have to underline what’s horrible about that…”

Full interview: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130917506

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