News and Opinion

Lord May takes a parting shot at fundamentalism Tomorrow sees the retirement of Lord May of Oxford from his post as President of the Royal Society, but his valedictory speech contains a few choice words for those who think their beliefs carry more weight than scientific evidence and opinion. The speech, entitled 'Threats to Tomorrow's World' contains the lines, "Fundamentalism doesn't necessarily derive from sacred texts. It's where a belief trumps a fact and refuses to confront the facts. All ideas should be open to questioning, and the merit of ideas should be assessed on the strength of evidence that supports them and not on the credentials or affiliations of the individuals proposing them. It is not a recipe for a comfortable life, but it is demonstrably a powerful engine for understanding how the world actually works and for applying this understanding." Now there are some who would argue that even engaging in debate with fundamentalist cla...

Blatherer of the Week I've just been listening to Robert Winston on Start The Week (BBC Radio 4) blathering on about 'spirituality' and 'soul' and 'the transcendental' (as if these are meaningful terms) in advertising his new series The Story of God on BBC1 TV beginning on 4th December. At one point he seems to take a Sea of Faith type of position, that 'God' means very different things to different people, and its all in the mind, and that polytheism is just as good as monotheism. Then he mentions that some people are more susceptible to religiosity than others due to the actions of the serotonin 'reward' system in their brains, which is a materalist position. Then he cites the 'dark matter' problem as being a reason for physicists to get religion, when it's either just a form of matter that we cannot detect or an error in our understanding of gravitation. It seems to me that an explanation for a lot of religion is that it is m...

Most annoying article of the month This article by a certain Nicholas Buxton in The Guardian, Face to Faith column, Saturday November 19, 2005, I found so totally annoying that I just had to respond to it line by line: It is a secularist article of faith to maintain that religion will soon be eliminated as a by-product of "progress". * We can live in hope, and a report by the Church of England itself suggests it may not be long for this world, but there is no sign of religions in general succumbing. Since there is no reason to suppose that life has some overarching meaning, the notion of a benevolent God who intervenes in history on our behalf is basically nonsense and should be abandoned. * A greed Atheists complain that religion proposes unprovable accounts of life and death. But this is uninteresting. * I would say they weave fantasies around life and death, such as tales of life after death, reincarnation, karma, ghosts, resurrection and judgemnt, etc, etc. Death is obvio...

Sunday's (20th November) lecture at Secular Hall, about Climate Change, was given by Bettina Atkinson and colleagues from Leicester Friends of the Earth and attracted a good attendance. Their main purpose was to publicise a 'BigAsk' campaign, which involves asking your MP to support the law on control of CO2 emissions. http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/big_ask/faqs/index.html The FoE is in favour of wind and wave power and other renewables. Today however the government chief scientist Dr King is saying Britain should consider a new generation of nuclear power stations. On Monday evening I went to the local Interfaith Fellowship, only to find that the talk was beng given by LSS member Allan Hayes. He talked about the last novel The Island written by Aldous Huxley shortly before his death. The story is about a utopian community on a tropical island, involving various experiments in social engineering, and a hybrid religion based on Hinduism, Buddhism and drug use. The p...

Another assortment of web links today. First, a welcome to another new secular group, the Balcombe Freethinkers in West Sussex: http://www.balcombefreethinkers.org.uk/ Next, a marvellously satirical blog from 'Dark Syde', who explains 'What it's like to be an Atheist', among the Santaists! http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/11/15/12016/649 One of the main news stories is the split in the worldwide Anglican Church over homosexuality. The main movers are the Nigerian archbishop, Peter Akinola, and the Archbishop of the West Indies, Drexel Gomez. Perhaps they should rejoin the Roman Catholic church. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1876059,00.html http://www.kstatecollegian.com/article.php?a=8018 http://tinyurl.com/doz68 Another news item is the OLPC proposal to provide 'one laptop per child' for $100 each. The batteries can be recharged by hand-winding. However, one report I've seen claims that religious organisation has offered to sponsor it and,...

Sunday's meeting (13th November) was the Annual General Meeting of the Society and was well attended. Plans for refurbishment of the Secular Hall over the next few years, with help from the Heritage Lottery Fund, seem to be on track. This also fits into plans for the general redevelopment of the 'cultural area' around the Hall. Our member Allan Hayes reported on these developments on behalf of the Building Committee. The President Lyn Hurst and Vice-President Michael Gerard were re-elected, and most of the existing committee re-appointed, but I decided to retire from it (though I will be carrying on maintaining the website), and Chris Williams, who used to be active with the Leicester Radical Alliance, has agreed to join the committee. It was agreed after a good presentation by Eleanor Davidson, and a debate to which most members present contributed, that our literature (i.e. the programme of lectures) will add details about secular weddings, affirmations and naming ceremon...

I sent the following message to committee members of Leicester Secular Society. The same invitation is open to any members: Now that I've, more or less. got the hang of it I'm proposing to open up the "Leicester Secularist" Blog to allow other members of the Society to post messages or links to interesting sites, etc. Would those interested in being part of the "Team" please let me know and I will put you on the list and send you instructions for posting messages. You can post something once a month, or weekly, or more often - you will just need to check that someone else hasn't posted it already. At the moment I will be the only one able to edit the posts, but this could probably be widened once we see how it goes. I've just posted a message (date 11 November), the previous one being 31 October. However I often find that it doesn't appear on the blog until the next day, or else it appears in the "archive" section but not on the main pa...

Sorry for the break in communications. My telephone line was out of order for several days. Also I've been a bit 'down' myself. Our meeting last Sunday was a general discussion, since the advertised lecturer was unable to come. The talk on Palestine is postponed to next season. Here are some links to items I've found of interest recently: * About that courageous lady Ayaan Hirsi Ali: http://tinyurl.com/bazq8 * "The Suicide Bombers Among Us" by Theodore Dalrymple. "The two forms of jihad, the inner and the outer, the greater and the lesser, thus coalesce in one apocalyptic action. By means of suicide bombing, the bombers overcome moral impurities and religious doubts within themselves and, supposedly, strike an external blow for the propagation of the faith." http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_4_suicide_bombers.html * The furore over the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. One of the cartoonists is auctioning his picture in aid of the earthquake appeal. I w...