News and Opinion

The success of the “Atheist Bus” Campaign prompted the Bishop of Leicester to ask in his column in the Leicester Mercury “do we really want to live in a world that is Godless?” (presumably his particular C. of E. brand of god) and “leave society at the mercy of human values and decisions”. This provided an opportunity for LSS members and others to suggest that “God's law” isn't quite as beneficent as the Bishop indicated. Harry Perry responded: Bishop Tim Stevens (Mercury, November 1) asks a good question: “Does society truly want to be Godless?” He says society must choose between living under God's law or "at the mercy of human values and decisions". I couldn't have put it better myself. God's law tells the Jews of Israel that they can steal Palestine from the Palestinians, by force. The-Bible-obsessed Christians of America show their agreement by providing the finance and weaponry to carry it out. It is God's law that tells Muslims they must ston...

The Society for some years has had a blog on the internet. George Jelliss retired from running it some time ago and since then it has sunk into disuse. Nonetheless secularism remains a live issue, and secular points of view on many issues don't reach the media enough. If you are sufficiently opinionated to write regular provocative pieces for it, please get in touch via blog @ leicestersecularsociety . org . uk (close spaces) to discuss how you might become a contributor (we could do with several) - or take up the role of Blogmeister.

A group of members of the Society turned out to leaflet Ken Ham 's creationist lecture at Parklands, Oadby. Here is Pennie's report : Well folks, Ken Ham has been to Leicester and is now on his way to pollute the minds of the faithful in London. When we first arrived at the Parklands Leisure Centre, we went to check out the room to find it was set up for about five hundred people (I would say about 250 to 300 actually attended). I had printed 120 leaflets, plus 20 each of additional “pages” of the booklet I am working on, printed as individual flyers (I was very, very sorry I hadn’t printed more to go inside the leaflets) and George had printed a few more. There were eight or nine of us handing out the leaflets and most people took them. In fact it appears that we gave out all but five! Most people were friendly, a couple were a little hostile, some were genuinely interested. The handing-out-of-the-leaflets and the discussions which took place went without incident and only...

The following is the text of an email I sent to The World at One following the broadcast of their interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury: === We have struggled for centuries to achieve the freedoms we have in this country, and internationally. Any recognition of Sharia law, even in a small way, would be a retrograde step, based as it is on unreformed mediaevalism. On PM [or on their website] it was later reported that the Leicester Imam, Ibrahim Mogra, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "We're looking at a very small aspect of Sharia for Muslim families when they choose to be governed with regards to their marriage, divorce, inheritance, custody of children and so forth." That doesn't sound "very small" to me! It sounds like the whole swathe of family law. Sharia family law is very much formulated to the benefit of men, and it would be very difficult for a Muslim woman to go against the wishes of her family and freely choose to be judged under Engl...

Having just signed out, I am now signing in again, since I have found I have something to say in response to this article by Sam Harris: Mother Nature is not our Friend I posted this as a response on the Richard Dawkins . net site, but think it bears repetition here: There are so many points in this article where I find myself disagreeing with Sam Harris. His first and prime error of logic is that he doesn't define "Nature" and in fact uses the term in two senses, inclusive and exclusive of humans. I take the view that humans are part of nature. In his first paragraph he talks about "the wisdom of nature" and about "real boundaries between the natural and the artificial", but the artificial, that which is made by humans, is itself part of nature. He cites destructive events like asteroid strikes as being acts of nature, which they are, but so would be attempts by humans to deflect them. He says that we are tempted to think that "we, as homo sapien...