News and Opinion

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...