News and Opinion

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...