Last night’s talk by Sam Harris and conversation with Richard Dawkins is available now via The Pod Delusion.

The event was co-hosted by the British Humanist Association, the Richard Dawkins Foundation, Centre for Inquiry UK, Oxford Atheists, Secularists and Humanist, Project Reason and Blackwell Books(!). A video from RDF will be available soon.

The BHA’s next event is the 2011 Voltaire Lecture. In the footsteps of Kenan Malik (2009) and Brian Cox (2010), this year classicist turned comedian, author and broadcaster Natalie Haynes will speak on what we modern folk have to learn from the ancients: “What the Romans and Greeks Did For Us”.

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

Non-Prophet Week is currently under way

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

The AHS Convention is 12th-13th March

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

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

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

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

Durham Reason Week 2011

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

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

Bristol Thought Week 2011

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

Oxford Think Week 2011

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

Southampton Atheist Society are hosting Reason Week 2011

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

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

AHS President Richy Thompson

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

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

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

Clergy are to be urged to be more vocal in countering the arguments put forward by a more hard-line group of atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, who have campaigned for a less tolerant attitude towards religion.

A report endorsed by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, warns that the Church faces a battle to prevent faith being seen as “a social problem” and says the next five years are set to be a period of “exceptional challenge”.

It expresses concern that Christians are facing hostility at work and says the Church could lose its place at the centre of public life unless it challenges attempts to marginalise religious belief.

The rallying call comes amid fears that Christians are suffering from an increasing level of discrimination following a series of cases in which they have been punished for sharing their beliefs.

Continues: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/8305803/Clergy-told-to-take-on-the-new-atheists.html

Of course there is no reflection here in the Telegraph that those “fears” are only that; that the desperate, media-friendly trickle of court cases is being brought by one pressure organisation; and that they keep losing on all substantive points because the far from these hand-picked Christians being discriminated against they are in fact the ones discriminating and that’s why they end up in court in the first place.

“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

Richard Dawkins has become the latest – and so far the most improbable – figure to contribute to the crisis over referees that has engulfed the game in Scotland.

Dawkins delivered a stinging denunciation of the Scottish Football Association’s decision to sack Hugh Dallas, their former head of referee development, along with four other employees for circulating a satirical email which referred to the recent visit of the Pope in the context of the child abuse scandal within the Roman Catholic Church.

An evolutionary biologist and the most prominent of Britain’s militant atheists – as well as being an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford – Dawkins wrote on his website: “Hugh Dallas, head of referee development for the Scottish Football Association, has been sacked because he passed on, by email, a joke about the Pope.

“His dismissal was called for by a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland. This nasty little weasel is called Peter Kearney, Director of the Scottish Catholic Media Office.

“Similarly, the chief executive of the Scottish Football Association, responsible for this craven giving-in to Catholic censorship is Stewart Regan. The address of this coward is Scottish Football Association, Hampden Park, Glasgow.”

Dawkins goes on to urge his followers to swamp both the SFA and the Scottish Catholic Media Office with copies of the email that led to the dismissals of Dallas and other employees.

Continues: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/competitions/scottish-premier/8171463/Leading-scientist-Richard-Dawkins-slams-Scottish-Football-Association-over-sacking-of-Hugh-Dallas.html

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

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

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

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

Richard Dawkins replies:

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

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

One of the arch-proponents of the view that religion is a kind of cultural “virus”  – i.e. conferring no evolutionary benefit to its hosts, or even costing it, while propagating itself to new believers – has changed her mind. Religions are adaptive from the point of view of our genes, Professor Susan Blackmore now argues, because the evidence links religious belief with fertility rates. So religious belief is more like a friendly “bacterium of the mind” than a virus, although that probably won’t catch on. (And of course, such a change of perspective doesn’t leverage the truth value of religious beliefs at all, which shouldn’t need to be said, but obviously it will need to be said.)

Are religions viruses of the mind? I would have replied with an unequivocal “yes” until a few days ago when some shocking data suggested I am wrong.

This happened at a conference in Bristol on “Explaining religion“. About a dozen speakers presented research and philosophical arguments, mostly falling into two camps: one arguing that religions are biologically adaptive, the other that they are by-products of cognitive mechanisms that evolved for other reasons. I spoke first, presenting the view from memetics that religions begin as by-products but then evolve and spread, like viruses, using humans to propagate themselves for their own benefit and to the detriment of the people they infect.

This idea began with Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene, was developed in his later article “Viruses of the mind” and taken up by others, including myself in The Meme Machine and other works. It is one version of “dual-inheritance” theory in which genes and culture are both seen as evolving systems.

The idea is that religions, like viruses, are costly to those infected with them. They demand large amounts of money and time, impose health risks and make people believe things that are demonstrably false or contradictory. Like viruses, they contain instructions to “copy me”, and they succeed by using threats, promises and nasty meme tricks that not only make people accept them but also want to pass them on.

This was all in my mind when Michael Blume got up to speak on “The reproductive advantage of religion”. With graph after convincing graph he showed that all over the world and in many different ages, religious people have had far more children than nonreligious people.

Continues: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/sep/16/why-no-longer-believe-religion-virus-mind

Tom Chivers picks his favourite five books from a scientific field, this time evolutionary biology, including Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould.

…

It’s pretty much obligatory nowadays to prefix Stephen Jay Gould’s name with the term “late, great”, but it is easy to forget how controversial he was in his lifetime. His most famous contribution to evolutionary biology was the idea of “punctuated equilibrium” – claiming that evolution was not steady, gradual progression, but long periods of stasis interspersed with periods of rapid change. It was hailed in some quarters as a threat to Darwin’s theories. But Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, among others, dismissed them as a storm in a teacup. Dennett was particularly harsh, calling Gould’s work a “self-styled revolution” and sparking an entertaining ding-dong battle between the two in The New York Review of Books.

But Gould, fairly or otherwise, will probably be best remembered for his popular works. A splendid writer (as Dennett acknowledged), he was able to make complex ideas, of genetics and biochemistry and probability, accessible to lay readers.

Continues: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8002833/Best-evolutionary-biology-books-from-Stephen-Jay-Gould-to-Richard-Dawkins.html

BHA Vice President Professor Richard Dawkins and renowned and much-loved naturalist and broadcast David Attenborough are jointly interviewed for the Guardian.

On the weirdness of modern physics, and God.

RD: There does seem to be a sense in which physics has gone beyond what human intuition can understand. We shouldn’t be too surprised about that because we’re evolved to understand things that move at a medium pace at a medium scale. We can’t cope with the very tiny scale of quantum physics or the very large scale of relativity.

DA: A physicist will tell me that this armchair is made of vibrations and that it’s not really here at all. But when Samuel Johnson was asked to prove the material existence of reality, he just went up to a big stone and kicked it. I’m with him.

RD: It’s intriguing that the chair is mostly empty space and the thing that stops you going through it is vibrations or energy fields. But it’s also fascinating that, because we’re animals that evolved to survive, what solidity is to most of us is something you can’t walk through. Also, the science of the future may be vastly different from the science of today, and you have to have the humility to admit when you don’t know. But instead of filling that vacuum with goblins or spirits, I think you should say, “Science is working on it.”

DA: Yes, there was a letter in the paper [about Stephen Hawking's comments on the nonexistence of God] saying, “It’s absolutely clear that the function of the world is to declare the glory of God.” I thought, what does that sentence mean?!

On Richard Dawkins’ upcoming children’s book:

RD: It’s about science more generally. Each chapter begins with the myths, so in the sun chapter, for instance, we have an Aztec myth, an ancient Egyptian myth, an Aboriginal myth. It is called The Magic Of Reality and one of the problems I’m facing is the distinction between the use of the word magic, as in a magic trick, and the magic of the universe, life on Earth, which one uses in a poetic way.

DA: No, I think there’s a distinction between magic and wonder. Magic, in my view, should be restricted to things that are actually not so. Rabbits don’t really live in hats. It’s magic.

RD: OK, but what if you took a top hat and all you can see inside is some little boring brown things, and then one splits and out emerges a butterfly?

DA: Yes, that’s wonderful. But it’s not magic.

RD: OK. Well, you’re rather dissing my title…

DA: The wonder of reality? But that’s rather corny.

RD: Yes, it’s a bit like “awesome”.

Full interview: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/11/science-david-attenborough-richard-dawkins

In advance of the pope’s visit, clergymen and commentators are deploying every variety of bogus argument against those who advocate the superiority of secularism. Edmund Adamus, director of pastoral affairs for the Catholic diocese of Westminster, led the way when he denounced the “wasteland” secularism produced. If he had been condemning the atheist tyrannies of communism and fascism, I would have no complaint. However, Adamus was not objecting to Cuba, China or North Korea, but to the wasteland of secular, democratic Britain “with its ever-increasing commercialisation of sex, not to mention its permissive laws advancing the ‘gay’ agenda”.

Rightwing columnists and, depressingly but predictably in these appeasing times, leftwing journalists have joined the moaning chorus. The arguments of Geoffrey Robertson QC and Professor Richard Dawkins that the cops had grounds to ask the pope to account for his church’s failure to stop the rape of children in its care drove them wild. “The hysterical and abusive nature of some of the attacks on the pope will do nothing but discredit secularism,” said Andrew Brown in theGuardian. “I accept, of course, that lots of secular humanists are tolerant and reasonable people,” says the more restrained and judicious Stephen Glover of the Mail. “But there is a hard core which embraces and promotes atheism with the blind fervour of religious zealots.”

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/sep/12/pope-benedict-atheism-secularism

Despite religious programming quotas, programmes dedicated to the propagation of religious thought, lots of planned coverage of the Pope’s state visit next week, and no explicitly humanist counter-balancing programming, Cardinal Keith O’Brien still thinks the BBC doesn’t do enough for religion.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien said the BBC’s news coverage is contaminated by “a radically secular and socially liberal mindset”.

The Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh said the corporation’s intolerance of religion is equivalent to its “massive” political bias against the Conservatives in the 1980s.

He also accused the corporation of plotting a “hatchet job” on the Vatican in a documentary aboutclerical sex abuse on the eve of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain.

Cardinal O’Brien believes that atheists like Professor Richard Dawkins are given a disproportionate amount of airtime while mainstream Christian views are marginalised.

Continues: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/7982601/Catholic-church-accuses-BBC-of-anti-Christian-bias.html

The British Humanist Association campaigns for fair representation from the BBC. The BHA wants an end to the privileged status and position of religions and religious broadcasting by the BBC.

Richard Dawkins’s documentary, Faith School Menace?, was broadcast last night on More4 (you can watch online here), and its contents have raised some serious questions about the role played by faith schools in British education. Perhaps most eye-catching of all was the discovery that some school are presenting creationism to pupils as scientific fact, albeit in RE lessons, with Dawkins meeting a 60-strong year 10 science class at a Muslim secondary school who all believed the Qur’anic creation story.

In response to this, the Guardian Comment is Free Belief desk have commissioned Erfana Bora, a science teacher at a Muslim school in Leicester, to explain why she doesn’t see a problem with children being taught scientific and religious explanations with equal weight. It’s fine, she says – the kids learn about scientific explanations in science lessons, and then head off to religion lessons to be taught the creation stories:

So, what’s the problem? In Bora’s view, it’s no different from what happens in a regular, non-religious state school:

“The funny thing is that pupils in state schools are taught the same curriculum content in science lessons – and ask the very same questions. Pupils with a faith background will learn the lesson content in a state school while holding their own viewpoints – and will then attempt to integrate two worldviews – inevitably reaching differing points of “belief equilibrium”, as it were. Pupils in faith schools do exactly the same.”

Well, in my view, that’s not entirely correct.

Continues: http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2010/08/dawkins-documentary-raises-worrying.html

The British Humanist Association campaigns against ‘faith’ schools and their various privileges in teaching, employment and admissions. They are raising money to fund and resource their ‘Faith’ Schools officer for another year of dedicated campaigning on religion and schools. See Faith Schools: Just Say No.

The Times has an interview with Richard Dawkins ahead of tonight’s documentary on ‘faith’ schools. There is sympathy for parents who piggy-back on the social selection of ‘faith’ schools, but the solution must be to equalise the system.

Richard Dawkins, the UK’s most prominent atheist, will today call on Ofsted to force faith schools to bring religious education into the national curriculum.

Professor Dawkins said that the move would be the first step in ending what he calls the “wicked” practice of inculcating children with religious belief, as he steps up his campaign against religious education with a film that calls for the abolition of faith schools.

[...]

He told The Times that his visit to Madani High School, an Islamic school in Leicester, revealed the educational dangers of faith schooling. “When I talked to a handful of girls and to their science teacher I was really shocked to discover that every single one of them rejected evolution because when in doubt they would always put the Koran ahead of science.”

Professor Dawkins said that the end of faith-based education would mean “religion would be taught in a comparative way according to a national curriculum, not indoctrination”.

Continues (behind a paywall): http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/faith/article2690948.ece

Andrew Copson from the British Humanist Association will appear in the documentary. The British Humanist Association campaigns against ‘faith’ schools and their various privileges in teaching, employment and admissions. They are raising money to fund and resource their ‘Faith’ Schools officer for another year of dedicated campaigning on religion and schools. SeeFaith Schools: Just Say No.

The number of faith schools in Britain is rising. Around 7,000 publicly-funded schools – one in three – now has a religious affiliation.

As the coalition government paves the way for more faith-based education by promoting ‘free schools’, the renowned atheist and evolutionary biologist Professor Richard Dawkins says enough is enough.

In this passionately argued film, Dawkins calls on us to reconsider the consequences of faith education, which, he argues, bamboozles parents and indoctrinates and divides children.

The film features robust exchanges with former Secretary of State for Education Charles Clarke, Head of the Church of England Education Service Reverend Janina Ainsworth, and the Chair of the Association of Muslim Schools, Dr Mohammed Mukadam.

It also features insights from child psychologists and key players in faith education as well as insights from both parents and pupils.

Continues: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/faith-school-menace/episode-guide/series-1/episode-1

Viewers without More4 can watch online after the television showing on 4oD via the link above.

Andrew Copson from the British Humanist Association will appear in the documentary. The British Humanist Association campaigns against ‘faith’ schools and their various privileges in teaching, employment and admissions. They are raising money to fund and resource their ‘Faith’ Schools officer for another year of dedicated campaigning on religion and schools. See Faith Schools: Just Say No.

The Government is ready to back the creation of atheist schools as part of its series of reforms, the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, said yesterday.

He told MPs: “It wouldn’t be my choice of school but the whole point of our education reforms is that they are, in the broad sense of the word, small ‘l’ liberal. They exist to provide that greater degree of choice.”

His comments, made to MPs on the all-party Commons Education Select Committee, come after a group of mothers urged Professor Richard Dawkins, a self-avowed atheist and author of The God Delusion, if he would help to set up an atheist “free” school. Professor Dawkins replied: “I like the idea very much – although I would prefer to call it a free-thinking school. I would never want to indoctrinate children in atheism, any more than in religion. Instead, children should be taught to ask for evidence, to be sceptical, critical, open-minded.”

The call for an atheist school comes in the wake of fears that the Government’s plans could pave the way for more religious groups to run state schools. Between 35 and 40 of the 150 expressions of interest in the scheme are faith-based.

Mr Gove, whose two children attend primary faith schools, said he “recognised that there are some people who explicitly do not want their children educated in a faith-based setting”. He added: “If Professor Dawkins wants to set up a school, we would be very interested to look at an application.”

Faith groups wanting to take advantage of the scheme must pledge that they would keep only 50 per cent of their places open to admission on grounds of faith. However, Mr Gove said he doubted whether it would work the other way round. “I don’t think we will have children saying in assembly, ‘Our Father, which art not in heaven.’”

Neither the British Humanist Association (BHA) nor the National Secular Society support the idea of an atheist school.

Continues: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/gove-welcomes-atheist-schools-2037990.html

And a little flashback…

As the British Humanist Association have been pointing out, a worrying aspect of the coalition government’s proposal to extend the role of academies in the schools system is that it is likely that many of the new schools will be faith schools, with greater freedom to set their own curricula than existing, non-academy faith schools.

That’s the downside, but new academies don’t necessarily have to be faith schools – the idea is that any ambitious and well-meaning group of people can start a school and shape its ethos. So how about a humanist school? Taking part in an online chat about faith schools on the Mumsnet website yesterday, Richard Dawkins responded enthusiastically when a participant suggested he should set up a secular, or atheist, school. Now it’s worth pointing out, given how Dawkins’s comments tend to be twisted in the news (remember how him saying he thinks the Pope should face legal action of child abuse cover-ups became him saying he wanted to personally arrest Benedict XVI?), that he isn’t at present planning to set up a school, and it’s also worth noting that he stressed he wouldn’t want it to be an “atheist” school so much as a “freethinking” school.

http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2010/06/dawkins-likes-idea-of-atheist-free.html?showComment=1278694692188

Professor Richard Dawkins is perhaps the single most prominent atheist. John Wayland introduces the evolutionary biologist and author of the best-selling The God Delusion.

Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is my Humanist Hero because without him, I would have never had the confidence to say so. Richard Dawkins is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science author. He is noted for his books, The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion. He has also made various documentaries.

Like so many young people, I was confused about the world. There seemed to be so many different conflicting attitudes and ideas. During my first year of my degree I came across Richard’s 1992 Christmas Lectures. It changed the way I looked at the world forever. Slowly and patiently, I read my way through his books, and watched his documentaries while carefully considering everything. Richard’s words and ideas fitted in with everything I knew deep down about the world. His championing of science, reason, and truth spurred me on to care as well, to encourage others to really look at the world, and consider the evidence.

Slowly, my academic self-confidence grew. Whenever I feel concerned or worried, I read one of Richard’s books. Many are quick to criticise him, but if they just listened to what he says, the honesty, integrity and truth of his words, whether in a book or video, I cannot see how anyone could fail to be moved by such words.

Richard Dawkins is my Humanist Hero because he makes me feel confident in my ability to say “I don’t believe in a God”, and has made it possible for thousands of people just like me, to declare aloud that we are not afraid, and that we will keep searching for the truth, with reason and understanding in the driving seat.

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

John Wayland is a psychology undergraduate, with a profound interest in evolutionary psychology, science, and Humanism.

The Telegraph headline says “Richard Dawkins interested in setting up ‘atheist free school’“, but his Mumsnet discussion quote is more focused on attitudes to evidence. He wrote: “I would prefer to call it a free-thinking free school. I would never want to indoctrinate children in atheism, any more than in religion. Instead, children should be taught to ask for evidence, to be sceptical, critical, open-minded.”

As the British Humanist Association have been pointing out, a worrying aspect of the coalition government’s proposal to extend the role of academies in the schools system is that it is likely that many of the new schools will be faith schools, with greater freedom to set their own curricula than existing, non-academy faith schools.

That’s the downside, but new academies don’t necessarily have to be faith schools – the idea is that any ambitious and well-meaning group of people can start a school and shape its ethos. So how about a humanist school? Taking part in an online chat about faith schools on the Mumsnet website yesterday, Richard Dawkins responded enthusiastically when a participant suggested he should set up a secular, or atheist, school. Now it’s worth pointing out, given how Dawkins’s comments tend to be twisted in the news (remember how him saying he thinks the Pope should face legal action of child abuse cover-ups became him saying he wanted to personally arrest Benedict XVI?), that he isn’t at present planning to set up a school, and it’s also worth noting that he stressed he wouldn’t want it to be an “atheist” school so much as a “freethinking” school. Here’s what he had to say…

Continues: http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2010/06/dawkins-likes-idea-of-atheist-free.html

Tim Stephenson has chosen Jacob Bronowski, mathematician, biologist and presenter of The Ascent of Man as his Humanist Hero.

Jacob Bronowski

The humanist, polymath and all round Renaissance man, Jacob Bronowski was born in Poland in 1908 to Jewish parents who moved to Germany during the first World War and then on to England in 1920. Bronowski won a scholarship to study Mathematics at Cambridge but was also involved with editing a literary periodical called “Experiment”. This was an early sign that he would be one of the extraordinary few thinkers to straddle the divide between the “two cultures” famously discussed by C.P. Snow in his 1959 lecture and paving the way to the “third culture”. This tradition is continued by our current crop of humanist grandees including Richard Dawkins and A.C. Grayling and by the British Humanist Association which is ending Humanist Week (21st – 28th June) with a conference on Humanism and the Arts, following last year’s conference on Humanism and Science. Bronowski’s interests ranged widely, from biology to poetry and from chess to Humanism, his commitment to which is evidenced in the following excerpt written in October 1968, the month of my birth:

The notion that a man shall judge for himself what he is told, sifting the evidence and weighing the conclusions, is of course implicit in the outlook of science. But it begins before that as a positive and active constituent of humanism. For evidently the notion implies not only that man is free to judge, but that he is able to judge. This is an assertion of confidence which goes back to a contemporary of Socrates, and claims (as Plato quotes him) that “man is the measure of all things”. In humanism, man is all things: he is both the expression and the master of the creation.

The Ascent of Man (DVDs)

Jacob Bronowski is best remembered for The Ascent of Man, a thirteen part TV series produced by the BBC in 1973, in which he explored the history of science and technology. It is said that it was this seminal TV series which inspired the late great American astronomer Carl Sagan to make his own documentary series, Cosmos, which also inspired a generation of humanists. Notwithstanding David Hume, Bronowski championed the idea that the ethical “ought” could be derived from the scientific exploration of what “is” . A particularly poignant and moving part of the series was filmed at the Auschwitz concentration camp and begins with the following:

It’s said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That’s false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Bronowski taught mathematics at the University College Hull from 1934 to 1942. This might not be the best known fact about his life, but it is a salient one for me as Hull is my hometown. Surely Bronowski deserves recognition in any account of our local humanist heritage. The economist Eric Roll who worked with Bronowski in Hull said of him:

He was … a warm and vibrant human being. Every encounter with him was a powerful tonic which left one feeling intellectually and emotionally stimulated and enhanced. He did not, however, suffer fools gladly and could be bitingly sardonic about human folly or about the glaring discrepancies so often to be found between public acclaim and true worth. But to his friends he was kind and affectionate, a companion whose gaiety and wit counterbalanced his serious approach to life.

Given the stature and influence of Jacob Bronowski on the public understanding of science, it is perhaps surprising that his association with the city of Hull has not been honoured. Bronowski died in New York in 1974, a year after the completion of The Ascent of Man. Given this great humanist’s legacy, I think that Jacob Bronowski deserves a commemorative plaque at the very least.

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

Tim Stephenson is the BHA Local Development Volunteer for the East Riding of Yorkshire and the Secretary of the Hull and East Riding Humanist Group which was founded in September 2008.

Tim Stephenson is in the news this week on BBC Humberside campaigning for local recognition of Bronowski’s achievements. The BBC said:

Tim Stephenson of the Hull and East Riding Humanist Group says the late mathematician and biologist deserves special recognition for his contribution to humanism and science.

“The British Humanist Association invited local groups to submit articles about the humanists that inspired them personally and for us the scientist and broadcaster, Jacob Bronowski, was the obvious choice because of his little known association with Hull and the East Riding.”

“He certainly inspired many humanists including the American, Carl Sagan, who went on to make the TV series, Cosmos, which I watched as a child.

“He was a towering figure in British intellectual life,” added Mr Stephenson.

Read more at on BBC Humberside.

Popular parenting and discussion website, Mumsent, which occasionally makes news with its high-profile group interviews with public figures, will be going head to head with Professor Richard Dawkins tomorrow, with  discussion based around his upcoming TV show on ‘faith’ schools.

We’re pleased to welcome Richard Dawkins for a webchat on Wednesday 23 June from 10am-11am. Richard is a celebrated evolutionary biologist and atheist, and author of the best-selling God Delusion.

He has presented programmes on Channel Four that range from enthusing about the Genius of Charles Darwin to arguing against religion in Root of All Evil?

His latest project is taking a long hard look at education and the role religion continues to play in it.

He wants to hear first-hand from Mumsnetters what faith and church schools are really like. How successful are they? Are they selection by another means? Are they divisive? And are they making hypocrites out of non-believing parents who go to church just to send their children to them?

http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_live_events/985509-Live-webchat-with-Richard-Dawkins-Wed-23-June-10am-11am

Plans to have the Pope arrested when he visits the UK will succeed because he is not a head of state, a solicitor has said.

Atheist authors Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens proposed the action against the Pontiff for his handling of child abuse scandals in the Catholic church.

The writers’ solicitor Mark Stephens said applications will be made to courts in the UK and the International Criminal Court for a warrant for Pope Benedict XVI’s arrest.

His likely defence would be be that he is immune from prosecution during his visit to Britain in September, according to the lawyer.

Mr Stephens said: “The courts will examine the claim of immunity. I believe that an English court would reject it. If the Pope was here on a state visit, ordinarily a head of state would have sovereign immunity. What I believe is that because he’s not a sovereign, not a head of state, he’s not entitled to the defence.”

He said that the Vatican was declared to be a state by Benito Mussolini, but this had no standing in international law.

Continues: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/feedarticle/9027087

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