News and Opinion

In chapter 7 of The God Delusion Richard Dawkins considers "the changing moral Zeitgeist ". He maintains: "...there is a consensus about what we do as a matter of fact consider right and wrong: a consensus that prevails surprisingly widely. ... With notable exceptions ... most people pay lip service to the same broad liberal consensus of ethical principles." He calls this "somewhat mysterious consensus" the Zeitgeist . However, after considering examples of changes in the Zeitgeist , such as attitudes to racism, sexual mores, votes for women, and so on, he says: "Where, then, have these concerted and steady changes in social consciousness come from? The onus is not on me to answer. For my purposes it is sufficient that they certainly have not come from religion." He then conjectures briefly about "changing meme frequencies" and "the driving role of individual leaders", but concludes: "It is beyond my amateur psychology ...

The following is an account of a Christmas Address at the Gilroes Memorial Service given by our member Eleanor Davidson who is a Humanist Celebrant. The Memorial Service happens each year, in memory of those who have died. It's in the form of a carol concert with addresses and bible readings by clergy. This year there were five Christian clergy taking part plus Eleanor as Humanist Celebrant. Eleanor's address was totally different to the other messages! Mince pies and refreshments were available. There were Christmas trees on which to hang a message for a deceased loved one, and donations were to Rainbow's Children's Hospice. Moving On It was deep in December. The blue-black sky hung low, laden with silent, twinkling diamonds and the far-off slither of moon shone coldly down upon the young family’s exhausted footsteps as they trudged despairingly through that crisp and even blanket of frosted ground. The man pulled up the grubby collar of his inadequate jacket and his y...

It seems that the Darwinian language of the theory of evolution is beginning to percolate into the thinking of religious leaders. The Archbishop of Canterbury (21 November) gave a speech about 'Benedict [the original Saint, not the present Pope] and the Future of Europe' in which he said: "... there is undoubtedly a spectrum of understanding from the ideologically secular liberal through to the most inflexible Muslim primitivist ..." and he refers to "these diversities". Further: "To pursue the metaphor of an ecology for a moment, we are speaking of commitment to human and cultural ‘biodiversity’." And: "A modern or postmodern society is unlikely, for good or ill, to be overtly committed to a single ideology; ..." In his 'Thought for the Day' on BBC Radio 4 this morning (4 December) Clifford Longley picked up on this in terms of the Pope's visit to Turkey, saying, of the Archbishop: "The variety of religious faith in hu...

Our member Frank Friedmann was impressed by the Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4 for 1st November, given by John Bell of the Iona Community. The 'Thought' was about the inequity of green taxes, though it did not spell out how 'rationing' or 'limits' on consumption of petrol and alcohol might be implemented in practice. This led Frank to write to the Iona Community , which is an ecumenical group, for their views on humanism. Frank wrote: The substance of John Bell's 'Thought for the day' (BBC Radio4 1/11/06) made a lot of sense to me, an atheist, and I suspect that most fellow members of Leicester Secular Society (not all of whom are atheists) would agree with much of it. I also respect that John, unlike other TFTD speakers, does not 'have a go' at secularism which is denied a platform on the programme. In fact I was so impressed with the humanity of John's talk that I would like to understand better what you are about. I wonder if you ...

No, I'm not writing to God, just to those who consider themselves his representatives on Earth, namely the organisers of the new "think-tank" Theos . According to their FAQs they represent both protestants and catholics, both evangelicals and liberals, which seems to me to be an impossible task. Their formation has apparently been stimulated in response to the recent upsurge of anti-theist books, in particular those by Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. At any rate their first Debate is about "The God Delusion". I wrote to them as follows: Dear Theos organisers, You don't seem to have given any indication of what subjects you will be debating in future after the current one on "The God Delusion". Nor do you seem to make clear anywhere what line you will take on many controversial issues. May I ask you pencil in somewhere the following important issues for debate: 1. creationism and evolution; 2. the rights of women; 3. homosexual lov...

Some of our members have been arguing about the political implications of Secularism. Specifically, whether it leans more towards socialist ideals than capitalist free competition. There's a highly optimistic piece in the latest New Scientist (18 November issue) which may help to resolve the argument. The article, by Geoffrey Miller, is one of a number of short articles by scientists who have been asked to forecast the next 50 years. Some of the other articles also relate to evolutionary psychology. Applied evolutionary psychology should revolutionise life in three ways by 2056. First, Darwinian critiques of runaway consumer capitalism should undermine the social and sexual appeal of conspicuous consumption. Absurdly wasteful display will become less popular once people comprehend its origins in sexual selection, and its pathetic unreliability as a signal of individual merit or virtue. Second, studies of human happiness informed by evolution will reveal ever more clearly the impo...

I've been thinking, along with the daylight atheist what would replace religion if atheists ever manage to get rid of it? These thoughts came to me after watching (on television) the remembrance day ceremonies at the cenotaph this morning and in the Albert Hall yesterday evening. It occurred to me that these ceremonies are essentially secular. It is only when the bishops come out to say their little piece, and in the wording of some of the hymns and verses, that the supernatural or theological comes into the picture. The remembrance day ceremonies essentially provide encouragement for people whose lives are bound up in service to the state, as represented by the monarchy, or to society. That is service to all of us in providing protection, safety, security so that we can carry on our peaceful secular activities. The ceremonies provide assurance that lives lost in this dangerous work are appreciated by society as a whole, and also that the authorities deserve continued service. It...

This post was stimulated by an email from Ollie Killngback : I'm away on holiday in Texas at the moment ... From my privileged position on the buckle of the Bible Belt (Irving Texas, where I am in order to watch a crucial game for the Cowboys on Monday night) I found the following item in the Dallas Morning News which I thought might be of interest to students of Christian ethics ... It's from the 2006 Josephson Institute Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth. 94% of teens surveyed said "trust and honesty are essential" in the workplace. 89% said "being a good person is more important than getting rich." However, 59% overall and almost 66.67% of boys said that, in business, successful people have to do whatever they can to get ahead, even if that means cheating. Somehow I can't make the sums add up. My response to this was: Surely the explanation is obvious. When they answered the first two questions they were practising the ethics they advocate ...

There is a rule on internet discussion boards, sometimes called Godwin's Law , that the argument has irretrievably broken down once an analogy with the second world war is brought in, as signalled usually by the name of Hitler. This has now happened in the arguments against creationism and religion. The philosopher Michael Ruse seems to have been the one to first bring in the analogy, but it has been amplified by Richard Dawkins in his new book The God Delusion , where he accuses those evolutionists who wish to concentrate their attack on the creationists as being of the "Chamberlain School", whereas those who think that this is only a battle and the real war is the much wider one between reason and superstition constitute the "Churchill School". He doesn't actually use the name of Churchill in this way in his book but he does do so in his blog on the huffington post . I fear this is a strategic mistake. Analogy is a dangerous method of reasoning. It is favo...

Our member Ollie Killngback sends the following great contribution: This link is to a photograph taken recently by the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn. It's amazingly lit, as the Sun is hidden by the giant planet but it's rings catch the light. Just above the main rings to the left there is a single light dot, just a pixel or two on your screen. Everything that has ever happened to the human race happened on that dot. It's Earth. This perspective is the kind of thing that makes it impossible for me both to do anything but marvel at the wonder of the Universe, and also to be incredulous that anyone can think that anything that happens on that dot matters. From this view of our planet the idea that what we wear (as some religions think) or what we eat (as some others do) or how we copulate (as some others do) is of any importance to anyone except the persons involved is patently ridiculous. That we have ostracised, imprisoned, tortured and even killed people (i...

Two recent news items have triggered off some slight thoughts on psychology. First there was Dr Bruce Hood, of the University of Bristol, speaking at the British Association festival in Norwich, who challenged the assumption that belief in the supernatural was spread by religions in gullible minds. "Rather, religions may simply capitalise on a natural bias to assume the existence of supernatural forces" he said. "It is pointless trying to get people to abandon their belief systems because they operate at such a fundamental level that no amount of rational evidence or counter evidence is going to be taken on board to get people to abandon these ideas." The story was reported as "religion will never die" in both the Telegraph and the Times . On his claim that people "recoil from artefacts linked to evil as if they are pervaded by a physical essence", it seems to me that this is a projection of his own received religious thinking. I say that the ol...

A common theme can be detected in a number of recent headline stories. The willingness of people to lie to protect or promote the causes with which they are identified, disregarding the over-riding categorical imperative of the objective truth. There is also a welcome trend, exemplified by the Office of National Statistics, the Royal Society, and Richard Dawkins, for the guardians of truth to begin biting back at the purveyors of untruth and unreason. Let us hope that this is not just a few isolated instances but the start of a sustained campaign. We are familiar with the spin put on things by politicians. Tony Blair (known to many as Bliar for his far worse past porkies) jumped the gun on the employment statistics. He forecast that the figures would show a 'very welcome' fall in the number of people claiming unemployment benefit. The figures, showed that unemployment rose to 1.7 million in three months. He was properly slapped down by his own statisticians. His counterpart in...

The day after our Open Day, 11th September, was of course the fifth anniversary of the hijacking of the planes that were flown into the World Trade Center 'twin towers'. This anniversary was marked in Leicester, rather oddly, by a cricket match played between the local Clergy and Imams. As reported in the Leicester Mercury , the Imams won. The Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Rev Tim Stevens, who was seventh into bat for the clergy said: "The great thing is that this game of cricket is building friendships. It's so important to understanding between the faiths." From which it would seem that the secular pursuit of cricket has a unifying ability that helps to counter the divisiveness of religions. There are some indeed, like Mohammad Ali Syed who see cricket as a form of religion. Another writer who has faith in cricket says: "To my mind, the beauty of cricket was that it was its own religion." Another commentator, in troutmag sagely observes: "It is ...

Allan Hayes has had the following article about Secular Hall published in the Leicester Mercury on 5th September. This year is the 155th anniversary of a Leicester organisation that has done perhaps more than any other in the city to create a society in which all can live together as full members without discrimination by race, belief or social status. Without its work and that of similar groups across the country, we would today be a less tolerant society, less welcoming of newcomers and less able to live together as equals. When Leicester Secular Society was founded in 1851, few men - and no women - had the vote. Those who did not belong to the established church suffered serious discrimination, people were sent to prison for criticising Christianity, elected MPs could not take their seats without swearing a religious oath, tithes still had to be paid to the church and contraception was not openly available. The society fought to address these inequities, and, on the whole, succeede...

Ken Ham of "Answers in Genesis" is in Leicester again on 1st September, at the Students Union building on Leicester University campus. While the creationists should be allowed free speech, they could easily hire a church hall or leisure centre (as they did last year). By allowing such an anti-science event on the University site it seems to me the LUSU is undermining the University's educational and scientific reputation. At the same time it allows the creationists and IDers to use the University's name to add weight to their claims to be scientific. Some members of Leicester Secular Society, I should add, don't agree with me on this, but say we are committed to freedom of religious worship and to free speech, so long as we get to put the other side of the story. And we are getting to put the other side in a constructive way, as in conjunction with Leicester University, we will be welcoming the geneticist Professor Steve Jones , on 7th November. The title of his t...

The absence of activity on this blog is partly due to the traditional inactivity at this time of the year, but mainly because I've been busy with redesigning the Leicester Secular Society website. This was partly prompted by a half-day course I was persuaded to attend about accessibility of websites to disabled users, run by something called the ICT Hub . This led me to think about using "cascading style sheets" (CSS), well one style sheet anyway, and to avoid using the html "tables" facility to structure the layout. The result is a more consistent appearance of the pages, and I hope a better colour scheme that is easier on the eyes, and more readable. The site is now, apart from the section on Islam which needs updating, completely in the new style. The main changes that will be noticed are that there is no longer a single "sitemap", instead access to the pages is via the green buttons on the left of the home page which lead to partial sitemaps coveri...

On Thursday 20th we had a Vicar come to Secular Hall to speak on Faith, Fear and Fundamentalism . Tony Windross, Vicar of St Peter's Sheringham and author of The Thoughtful Guide to Faith . The following is a summary of some responses by people present at the meeting. George Jelliss (editor of this blog) tried to make a few notes, but found it increasingly frustrating to understand anything the speaker was saying! Mr Windross suggested that our LSS should stand for "Lifelong Seeking Significance". He spoke much about "religion" without defining what this meant, although it was in some way like art and literature and music and dealt with the most profound questions, though he didn't say what those were. According to him "truth" is the slippiest of all philosophical concepts. He seemed to distinguish between scientific and religious truth. He seemed to think that religious truth was to be found in "christian stories", though when I asked h...

While the sun beams down benevolently on my very small, rather neglected and overgrown, garden I've been spending an idyllic time watching the Bees and the Butterflies on the Buddleia. So far I've observed five different varieties of butterfly: small white, small tortoiseshell, red admiral, peacock and comma. I don't think I'd seen a comma before, though apparently they are common in the midlands. When closed up it looks just like a dead leaf. All things are bright and beautiful in Darwin's domain. Meanwhile in the civised world of men of faith we find nature red in tooth and claw. The centre of God's world, according to the Mappa Mundi , has erupted in its worst exchanges of violence for some time. Massimo Pigliucci offers a trite solution: the US should threaten to withdraw its financial support from Israel. But didn't this little spat of trouble all begin just when the US (and Europe) withdrew their financial support from the newly democratically electe...

More pointless bombings killing ordinary people going about their everyday business. This time in Mumbai. How do the people who do this think their actions are going to promote their cause, whatever it is? Can it just be mindless nihilism? Certainly there can be no justification of such acts in moral terms. Nor in any sensible religious terms. Nor even in purely pragmatic terms. A report in Progressive.Org magazine leads: Mumbai bomb blasts sickening. A basic rule for any insurgent movement worth its name: Do not kill civilians by the dozen with bombs set to maximize pain and destruction. ... Not only does this violate every norm of human decency, it also takes you much further away from your political goals. ... What do the perpetrators hope to achieve by this? (Here, one has to assume that the bomb manufacturers had goals other than a nihilistic orgy of violence or to set off religious rioting.) The same article suggests that there is "alienation" of the Muslims in Kashmni...

Three stories in the Leicester Mercury over the last two days highlight the rise of rickets among people of South Asian origin. Dr Peter Swift, consultant paediatrician at Leicester Royal Infirmary said they are seeing one or two cases a month of children with severe bone deformities, and that "substantial numbers" of children have infantile and adolescent rickets. "I think there's still tremendous ignorance in Leicester about this very serious problem," he says. The disorder, largely eradicated in the 1970s but prevalent in Victorian times, is largely caused by vitamin D deficiency, mainly because of a lack of sunlight. 90% of vitamin D is made in the body from sunlight and 10% comes from food, such as oily fish, fortified margarine, evaporated milk, eggs and fortified cereal. The same problem has been recognised in Bradford, where every child under two will be offered free vitamin D to tackle the problem at a cost of £50,000. "The evidence is that someth...

The Times Higher Education Supplement reports that it is becoming necessary for Universities to teach counter-creationism in their biology courses. http://tinyurl.com/ewznq Creationism - the belief that the biblical story of creation is scientific fact - is beginning to make inroads into the science curricula of UK universities, The Times Higher can reveal. Leeds University plans to incorporate one or two compulsory lectures on creationism and intelligent design into its second-year course for zoology and genetics undergraduates next Christmas. At Leicester University, academics already devote part of a lecture for third-year genetics undergraduates to creationism and intelligent design. In both cases, lecturers intend to present the controversial theories as fallacies irreconcilable with scientific evidence. But that these alternatives to evolution have been proposed for formal discussion has sparked concern among the UK science community. We at LSS have heard from a contact at Leices...

In this lovely summer weather it's nice to take a break to get away from serious matters and enjoy the weather, but meanwhile the world carries on its chaotic way. This week I have a miscellany of loosely connected topics. ====== On Sunday 11th I will be holding a discussion at Secular Hall on Countering Creationism. This wil take the form of a display of creationist literature (often very well printed in full colour) and point out the misrepresentations and even lies in it, and how it is often difficult to counter their claims without having specialised knowledge. In this connection Judge Jones , from the Dover 'Intelligent Design' trial, has been speaking about how he has needed police protection. ===== On another local note, the Leicester Muslim Academy is now under way. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, having been disgracefully forced out of the Netherlands to the US has a new book out The Virgin Cage. In the Preface she speaks of the need for an Islamic Reformation. She writes: ...

The bookshop that occupies part of the frontage of Secular Hall, now trading as Frontline Books, is one of fifteen Independent bookshops featured in The Guardian (G2 section) on Monday this week (22nd May). The online text is here . There has been a bookshop associated with Secular Hall since it was opened in 1881, and even before that the bookseller who operated it at that time, William Henry Holyoak, (born: Sileby Jan 27, 1818, died: 1907) sold radical books at several other addresses in Leicester as far back as 1846. Ned Newitt, local Labour historian, recently sent me the following poem by WHH that he found in The Leicester Reasoner dated 1876. Let us lift up our voices in song And rejoice in the freedom we’ve won From the maze and the story Of God and his glory As taught by the priest to the young The mists of life’s morning have faded And we see with a vision more clear That a man need not wait For a blessed estate If he works with a will whilst he’s here There’s no help in a H...

Yet another prominent religionist has decided that his god wants to dictate our rights and freedoms. The Bishop of Leicester's letter to the Mercury is available here . This is my response: Due to his misguided beliefs the Bishop of Leicester has come out against a Bill that would finally grant people the right to die with dignity at a time and in a manner of their choosing. In doing so he has helped condemn large numbers of people to years of avoidable physical and psychological pain. Whilst he is justifiably concerned that some people may be pressured into hastening their own demise, he conveniently ignores the evidence from places such as Oregon and Switzerland , which shows that allowing assisted suicide does not lead to people choosing to die early because they feel they’ve become burdens. Why is a 27 year old atheist supporting assisted suicide when to atheists this life is the only one we’ve got? Let me explain. In my family we have a history of late onset mental disord...

Below is an email our member Frank Friedmann sent to the BBC, concerning Ann Atkins' latest "Thought for the Day", and their response. ====== -- To BBC -- Dear Sir, Ann Atkins used the programme on 9 May 2006 today to launch an attack on Rationalists. That she can do so shows up the lack of natural justice in the policy of denying atheists access to the programme - they can be collectively slandered and misrepresented but have no right of reply. I notice that speakers on the programme do not use it as a platform from which to condemn the adherents of other religions - I don’t know if this is out of respect or because they are constrained by editorial rules, but it does emphasise the injustice in the censorship of atheism. Were you to change the policy, might I put forward my wife, Eleanor Davidson, as a candidate? She has just become the country’s first Humanist member of a hospital chaplaincy team (See First Person article in Leicester Mercury 29 April 2006). [See also ...

A few months ago we published a welcome to the new Derby Secular Society. Mike Lake's latest initiative is to try to get local schools to adopt his wording of a statement for their parents' prospectus as here: http://www.secularderby.org/local.htm He writes that he wants it to look as reasonable and unobjectionable as possible to any thinking person. "However, it is obvious that it is a major threat to the religious because it spells out very clearly what parents rights are and it clearly divorces moral and civic education from religion." This proposal will be discussed at the next meeting in Derby at the MultiFaith Centre at 7.00pm on Wednesday 17th May. Perhaps we at Leicester, and secularists elsewhere, should join in this initiative.

Secularists and Atheists are often accused of being 'merely' negative, as if the reduction of church power, or the removal of religious superstition would not in themselves be positive advances. Secularism is about the negation of negatives . Secularism is about the sweeping away of the cobwebs of medieval mysticism to allow the light of reason to glow with its full radiance of enlightenment. A common argument is that atheism, the removal of belief in supernatural guidance, must mean the loss of any sense of moral judgement. But this overlooks the fact that ethics, the science that asks: What is it best for us to do? -- to solve any one of a series of problems -- is not dependent on any supernatural belief. In fact it requires us to have detailed knowledge of the way the world works, including ourselves. It is a difficult science, probably the most difficult, because it asks us to take account of everything, a super-ecology. People of all sorts have had ethical beliefs and hav...

Since Easter messages have been put out from the Vatican and from Lambeth Palace it occurred to me that we also ought to put forward a message from Secular Hall appropriate for this time of year, the Spring Equinox. It seems the common element in the messages has been the relationship between science and religion. In the Pope's message he invokes science to understand the 'resurrection': "If we may borrow the language of the theory of evolution, it is the greatest 'mutation,' absolutely the most crucial leap into a totally new dimension that there has ever been in the long history of life and its development: a leap into a completely new order which does concern us, and concerns the whole of history." It struck me that this idea harks back to those of Teilhard de Chardin who, in the 1950s, tried to combine catholicism and evolution. At the time his ideas were criticised by the church authorities, but perhaps he is coming back into favour. 'Bobsie'...

I've been collecting news stories over the past week or two all relating to the sort of behaviour encouraged, and indeed laid down as law, by various forms of religious belief. (Thanks to secular newsline, the Brights, and other sources.) First there was the appearance of Dr Wafa Sultan in webcasts on Memri TV: http://tinyurl.com/ze772 Times on line reported more about this under the heading 'Women at War with the Mullahs' http://tinyurl.com/mjfam Dr Wafa Sultan is a psychologist who lives in Los Angeles. She appeared on Al-Jazeera, the Arabic television network, last summer and has been receiving death threats. During that and a second broadcast in February Dr Sultan, who was brought up as a Muslim in Syria, denounced the teachings and practice of Islam as “barbaric” and “medieval”. Here is comment in the form of a Wafa Sultan Cartoon http://www.coxandforkum.com/archives/000800.html Other Muslim women under threat include: Ayaan Hirsi Ali , the Somali-born Dutch politicia...

Eleanor Davidson, a member of Leicester Secular Society, believes she is the country's first humanist to become a recognised member of a hospital chaplaincy team---she certainly is a first for Leicestershire. On the LSS website Eleanor, an accredited humanist celebrant, explains the need for such a service, how she came to be appointed, how she views the role, and what still remains to be done: http://www.leicestersecularsociety.org.uk/news-chaplaincy.htm As an example of the prejudice against which she has had to struggle, when she joined the team, one member even asked 'do you have any morals---seeing as you're an atheist?'! Eleanor comments that the chaplaincy project is her attempt to bring secularism into the mainstream of community life---in a practical way---and to promote equality for secularism, in an area where faith representatives have an unjustifiable monopoly. She also asks people to send suggestions for items for inclusion in an anthology of secular works...