News and Opinion

This item is by Wilf Gaunt. In Lone Frank's book 'Mindfield ,' she describes how, in conversation with the (superstar) neuroeconomists Colin Camerer and George Loewenstein, they reformulated Plato's old metaphore: comparing the human mind to a chariot drawn by two horses, one representing reason, the other emotion. This is true enough they said, with the important difference that reason should be represented by a pony, and emotion by an elephant. The book then goes on to point out that reason cannot be put into practice without the involvement of emotion: emotion being the primary driving force of our system, inherited through evolutionary time, and reason being a more recent, subordinate application. Autism can be defined as a malfunction of the connection between the reasoning part of the brain and the origins of our emotions. No matter how high the IQ of an autistic person, their attempts to apply the results of their reasoning fall apart because of the non-invo...

My letter to the Leicester Mercury (published 30/8/10) was edited so I thought I would publish the full text here: *********** Dear Sir, Michael Myers (Mailbox, August 19) disputes my assertion that “Hitler came to power helped by a deal with the Vatican” and puts the blame on other parties. While I agree he is quite correct in pointing out that others were involved, I still believe it is reasonable to say that the Vatican, through its agent Baron von Papen, was one of the parties that “helped” Hitler take power in Germany. Von Papen, a papal chamberlain , was  a leading member of the Catholic Centre Party. It was largely von Papen, who persuaded President Hindenburg to put aside his scruples and approve Hitler as Chancellor. The political manoeuvring included the negotiation of  a “Reichskonkordat”  between the Vatican and Germany, guaranteeing the rights of the Catholic Church in Germany. As to Michael's remarks on the La...

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), charged to determine whether drugs are good value for money for the NHS, has decided that the anti-bowel cancer drug avastin, also known as bevacizumab , is not worth the average cost of £21,000 per patient for an average extension of life expectancy of only six weeks. It is used only in advanced cases. The campaign group Bowel Cancer UK has protested against the decision, arguing that the 6,500 sufferers each year have a right to any medication that might extend their lives. However, I have to agree with NICE: £21,000 for six weeks extra life is not good value for money for the taxpayer. On the figures quoted it appears the extra cost to the taxpayer would be £136m per year. I certainly would not expect that sort of public expenditure to keep me alive for an extra six weeks and if ever I am in the unfortunate position of suffering from bowel cancer I will refuse the drug if offered on the NHS. I or my re...

The National Secular Society weekly Newsline has asked subscribers for opinions on banning the burka. This was my response: The Burka Wearing the veil is regrettable. It cuts the wearer off from normal human interactions through which communication, understanding and friendship can grow. But our commitment to the freedom of the individual to do as they wish, as long as it harms nobody else, means we cannot support legislation to bar certain types of clothing. However, there are circumstances where freedom may be circumscribed owing to the need for the individual to undertake particular roles in employment or to satisfy reasonable security requirements for identification and openness. These limitations are best defined by employers, agencies and trading organisations in their particular circumstances. The courts must be careful to ensure the veil is not recognised as a religious requirement (which could make it unchallengeable) and that the rights of others to withhold job...

The decision of Leicester's Lord Mayor, Councillor Colin Hall, to dispense with prayers at the start of council meetings is eminently sensible. Bearing in mind the vast range of religions to be found in Leicester, any prayers said will be irrelevant to the majority of councillors and in any case should not form part of the meeting of what must be a secular body. For more on story click here .

It is entirely at the discretion of Local Education Authorities whether they pay for ‘home to faith school transport’ by providing a special subsidy to help children with parents of certain religions get to a school that inculcates their religion rather than attend their local school. Currently, 40% of all English Local Education Authorities (including Leicestershire) pay for such transport incurring a cost of more than £20M (2008/09) met by the Council Tax payer. Ninety out of one hundred and fifty-two Local Education Authorities (i.e. 60%) do not provide such transport. The subsidy isn’t available for all children from a religious background travelling to ‘faith’ schools, nor to those of no faith, but only to a select few, whose parents follow a privileged religion and have “chosen” to send their children to a school other than their nearest allocated one. The scheme defies logic. How can it be right to provide transport to sectarian ‘faith schools’ but not to other scho...

It is entirely at the discretion of Local Education Authorities whether they pay for ‘home to faith school transport’. That is provide a special subsidy to help children with parents of certain religions get to a school that inculcates their religion rather than attend their local school. Currently, 40% of all English Local Education Authorities (including Leicestershire) pay for such transport. This is at a total cost of £20.5M (2008/09) to the Council Tax payer. Ninety out of one hundred and fifty-two Local Education Authorities (i.e. 60%) do not provide such transport. The subsidy isn’t available for all children from a religious background travelling to ‘faith’ schools, nor to those of no faith, but only to a select few, whose parents follow a privileged religion and have “chosen” to send their children to a school other than their nearest allocated one. The scheme defies logic. How can it be right to provide transport to sectarian ‘faith schools’ but not to other sch...

Last night’s lecture at Secular Hall was given by Prof. Andrew Tobin of Leicester University. He’s a practising micro-biologist and also a believer in Christianity. It seems an earlier talk had prompted him to want to explain how being a scientist and being a Christian believer were entirely compatible. As far as I’m concerned he failed in his mission – and what is more it seems he only succeeds in it in terms of his personal life by separating off his science and his religious beliefs into completely separate compartments in his psyche. Thus he seemed unable to deal with a simple question by one of the audience – ‘how, as a scientist, can you marry up your scientific method with your belief in the magic reported in the Bible – the miracles, the resurrection and ascension, the water into wine, etc?’ I’m sure that problem will be dealt with by others but something else he said got me thinking on a different tack. This was his emphasis on Christianity as a source of values an...

A great deal is now being said about tactical voting in Thursday’s general election. Labour ministers have dropped several hints and even made overt calls on Labour supporters to vote tactically for the Lib-Dem candidate (in Tory/Lib-Dem marginals) in order to prevent Tory gains. So far nobody on the Lib-Dem side has reciprocated. This is a result of their determination to appear confident they can displace Labour for second place in the popular vote and thereby establish a legitimacy for their primary goal of electoral reform. Think of the coming upswell of opinion against first-past-the-post if more people vote Lib-Dem than Labour and yet they come out with only one-third of Labour’s tally of seats. This is not at all unlikely. Because of the way the three parties votes are unevenly spread through the country the Lib-Dems would not win a majority of seats even if their popular vote was significantly greater than those of the other two parties. It also indicates the Lib-...

Sunday night’s debate at Secular Hall was highly entertaining if a little narrow in its range. About 25 people attended. Ross Longhurst proposed the motion “This House Believes We Should Not Vote” and Richard Johnson opposed. Ross took the unreconstructed Marxist-Leninist view of the socio-economic system in which we live – it is capitalism with a ruling class that calls the tune whichever party is elected to ‘govern’ and however sincere its leaders might seem to be in seeking to advance the interests of the common people. The usual litany of facts was called upon to justify the claims: the common (private) schooling of the wealthy; nepotism; interlocking directorships of companies; a media that is owned by capitalists and promotes the capitalist system; extra-parliamentary pressure being applied by bankers, industrialists, landowners, etc; concessions to working class demands only made when it benefits the long-term interests of the ruling class; etc. Thus, voting only leg...

This follows from the end-point of the thread on the ‘morality of war’, picking up on Sam Harris’s views about ‘morality’ having a scientifically factual grounding in ‘the maximization of human flourishing’. A few paraphrased quotes from Harris: “That science can’t tell us about human values is an illusion. Values are a certain type of fact. Separation between science and human values is a dangerous illusion. Science can tell us how the world ought to be. Why no ethical obligations to rocks? – because they cannot suffer. We have concerns about other living things because they can suffer. All versions of human morality are reducible to a concern with conscious experience. Even religion that focuses on the life-after-death experience is similarly concerned. Failed states can be improved. We know there are right and wrong answers to how to move along the continuum – would adding cholera to the water help things? No. Would blaming things on the ‘evil eye’ help? ...

Last week the Leicester Mercury carried a letter from a parent about the difficulty of getting a Hindu child into a Roman Catholic state school. See Faith-school failings . Today the Mercury publishes an edited version of my response. I don't of course dispute the editorial prerogative, and the gist is little changed, but the mood is somewhat emasculated. Here's what I sent in under the title Good Schools for Everyone It is a very sorry state of affairs when parents like Sabhash Varambhia (Mailbox, 20 March) cannot find a good local school for their children. Mr Varambhia thought the ethos of any so-called ‘faith school’ would be better than a secular one – but found the ethos of English Martyrs (RC) school to be ‘we look after our own – Hindus need not apply’. How starkly does the point need to be made that religious schools are by their very nature sectarian and divisive? Isn’t it time that we did away with the concept of ‘bad schools’? We’re told of the importance of choice...

Yes, well, you may or may not know already that I don’t have much time for the word ‘morality’ on account of it being an all-things-to-all-men (and women) concept that is just wheeled out in an attempt to reinforce an argument that lacks any other grounds of persuasion. I’ve even done it myself at times - under pressure! But because of its ubiquity it has become fairly meaningless. There isn’t even enough agreement as to whether it refers to consensual codes of rules or just individual innate gut feelings to make it worthwhile using in debate. Last night at Secular Hall a member of the audience (in responding to the talk about artificial intelligence [AI]) referenced drone weaponry – unmanned aircraft, tanks, machine gun posts, etc. and asked whether the developers of AI ever concerned themselves with the morality of such applications. I pointed out that there was no step change involved here – these weapons were actually controlled by humans but they were based many miles from the...

While not being a pacifist I generally support anti-war movements and scrutinise very carefully any plans emerging from our government to go to war over this or that issue. I was on the million plus march against the invasion of Iraq - and I think we made our point over the Taliban's accommodation of Al Quaida in Afghanistan some years ago. It's time to withdraw. While dragging Afghan society into the 20th century (sic) might be a laudable objective the fact is that we won't succeed in doing it. The baggage is too great and the very presence of foreign troops is almost the only reason why the Taliban continues to thrive. As in Iran, the domestic struggle for progress is far more likely to succeed than is foreign occupation. The long-planned invasion of Iran will simply make the forces of religious conservatism and intolerance stronger than ever. But one aspect of the anti-war campaign strikes me as more than a little odd. This is the concentration on the level of British ca...

The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Keir Starmer, has done what he was instructed to do by the House of Lords – he has issued guidance to clarify the circumstances under which the DPP will seek to prosecute anyone who chooses to assist in the suicide of another. While both sides in the debate have criticised the statement it is, in my view, a big step forward toward a law that will legalise assisting in the suicide of a loved one who no longer wishes to live but who is incapable of taking their own life. While not changing the law – it is still illegal to assist – the clarification recognises the change in public mood that makes it unlikely to secure convictions in certain circumstances – and thus a waste of public money to prosecute. It is now only a matter of time before Parliament accepts the inevitable and legislates accordingly, possibly along the lines of the tribunals advocated by Terry Pratchett. The guidance makes it unlikely that someone will be prosecuted if the fol...

The current vogue for apologies for historic ‘wrongs’ is carried another step forward today with the Prime Minister’s apology for the policy of former governments and local authorities, right up to the 1960s, to ship certain babies and children off to Australia. Hitherto I had believed they had committed some sin like allowing themselves to be born out of wedlock or being so careless as to be orphaned, but ‘Bill’, interviewed on Today this morning, seemed to be saying they were just picked randomly. This can’t be so, can it? Someone would have said something, wouldn’t they? Anyway, many of the thousands of kids transported in this way ended up as farm labourers in the Auzzie outback or, even worse, suffering the tender care of religious institutions like the Christian Brothers. Christianity, as we all know, is founded on the principle of an all encompassing love, on compassion and care, on forgiveness of those who trespass against you and of turning the other cheek when struck. O...

Taking part in the 10:23 "Homeopathy: There's nothing in it" campaign on 30th January was an interesting experience. The publicity stunt certainly generated debate and several people I've talked to since had no idea that homeopathy was not a herbal remedy. If the event did nothing more than inform people of that, then it was useful - and I am sure many homeopaths would applaud the spreading of accurate information. After all, they wouldn't want their customers to be misled, would they? However, the vast majority of homeopathy supporters seem happy for these "medicines" to be marketed because, they say, they can work, even if only as a placebo, and they do no direct harm. Homeopathy used by practitioners who believe they are able to treat serious psychological/behavioural problems that require professional intervention or those who think they can prevent or treat malaria, AIDS or other deadly diseases are often overlooked by these proponents - ...

Today's headlines focus on the matter noted in yesterday's post - that the government has watered down its own bill on future personal sex and relationship education by caving in to pressure from the religious schools lobby. The bill does advance the cause of good sex and relationship education by establishing for the first time certain requirements on all state schools to address issues of sex and relationships. However, the requirement to give sex education in a way that encourages the acceptance of sexual diversity and with information about abortion and contraception has now been qualified by an amendment that allows religious (faith) schools to teach such matters in accordance with their own religious ethos. A discussion between John Humphries and Ed Balls, Schools Secretary, on his amendment this morning brought out the problems. For example, a Catholic school (which already separates out and identifies its pupils as different from others, as believers in the 'one ...

Last night’s talk at Secular Hall was an unusual one – all about sexual pleasure. Well, not exactly, but about how one city’s health authority, Sheffield’s, pioneered work on promoting health education about the benefits of sexual pleasure for young people, amongst all the other dire warnings about the dangers of sex. Steve Slack talked about the pamphlet that led to a furore last summer (I must have been out of the country), with headlines in the papers like ‘an orgasm a day on the NHS’, or similar. He was right about one thing, that outside of explicitly pornographic material very few people are comfortable talking about sexual pleasure – despite it being the main reason most of us take part in sex and without which one has to wonder whether there would be a human race at all. Even in the world of humour, where comedians make frequent references to issues around sex, to much laughter, the humour always seems to rely on either straightforward smut or daring allusions to what we all kn...

Last night's final episode in the History of Christianity series on BBC2 was entitled 'God in the Dock' and focussed on scepticism - i.e. doubts about God and the Bible as a historical document. Unfortunately, however, Diarmaid MacCulloch, the narrator, looked no further back in time than Baruch de Spinoza, the notionally Jewish philosopher who wrote in 17th century Amsterdam. Spinoza's scepticism concluded with the notion that Nature itself was God. MacCulloch then reported on the rise of scepticism since that time, incuding the whole Enlightenment and the growth of atheism through the achievements of science and the industrial revolution up to our own time when, under the impact of atheism and rationalism, the Christian church is riven with factions taking different positions on the nature of their god and the status of biblical writings. Like all religions it must be prone to factionalism because its fundamental ideas are built on sand and one interpretation is a...

Frederick J Gould was Secretary and Organiser at Leicester Secular Hall from 1899 until 1908. He was a prolific writer of books, newspaper, magazine and journal articles for children and adults. The following snippet is from his Stepping-Stones to Agnosticism (no date): We do not wantonly doubt. We make no boast of the failure of our vision to penetrate the secrets of infinity. Forced by the imperious necessities of reason to renounce the popular faith, we regret our severance from time-honoured churches and their hallowed associations. We would fain enter and join the assembly. But the price of entrance is one that intellectual honour and moral dignity forbid us to pay.

I just happened to catch that part of the programme last night where Ray Gosling confesses that he suffocated his lover in his hospital bed many years ago because they had an understanding on this matter and the chap was in pain and suffering from terminal AIDS. The doctor either didn't suspect anything or turned a blind eye out of a similar kind of compassion. I was in a similar situation some 15 or 20 years ago when my aged favourite aunt was bedridden in a nursing home, profoundly deaf and blind and suffering from dementia. She called out continuously for her mum (long since dead) and also shouted frequently that she wanted to die. She was a prisoner in her own now useless body and the sensory deprivation had literally driven her mad. I considered seriously the option of suffocation when other visitors were out of the room but did not do it. At the time I was a single parent with two young children to care for and this responsibility stayed my hand - a spell of imprisonmen...

Wasn't it good to see everyone getting active on Valentines this year? I've not known so much fuss made of it before. Radio Leicester and East Mids BBC TV had features and Leicester Secular Society had a love poetry evening hosted by the 'Book Doctor', Alison Dunne, and member Bobba Cass. St Catherine's Church in Burbage had thirty couples renewing their vows 'with the help of God'. Atheists don't have God's support for their loving so they have to muddle through alone, but apparently none the worse for it. My atheist better half and I stayed in for a romantic meal before watching a rather unsettling film, 'The Comfort of Strangers', about a couple who went to Venice to revive their flagging relationship. It looked as though the plan was doomed to failure until they were befriended by a couple with very dark ulterior motives. The experience did bring them closer together, however, but only one return ticket was needed by the end of th...