Darwin Day Lecture 2016 — pics!

Here are my pics taken at this year's Darwin Day Lecture given by Professor Jerry A. Coyne, at Logan Hall, Institute of Education, University College London:



The BHA's video of the event can be found here:

https://youtu.be/sazo1J4Zsj4

"Humanism" up for grabs?

Catching up on my podcast-listening backlog I came upon this episode of BBC Radio 4's Beyond Belief, hosted by Ernie Rae. It features Stephen Law, Nick Spencer and Marilyn Mason, and a separate interview with Rory Fenton. The first half is amicable enough, but considerable disagreement surfaces as the programme proceeds. This isn't surprising, given that Nick Spencer co-wrote a Theos paper entitled "The Case for Christian Humanism" which attempted a proprietorial land-grab of the term "humanism".

What is also not surprising is that such an attempt should be made. Christianity in its many guises has survived to the present day by co-opting and subsuming other belief-systems. Humanism is simply grist to its mill. Stephen Law, however, was having none of it.

Ernie Rae, host of Beyond Belief

Here's the programme page:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05vx635

And here's a direct link to the mp3 audio (available indefinitely, as far as I can tell):

http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/redir/version/2.0/mediaset/audio-nondrm-download/proto/http/vpid/p02rwh0y.mp3

Blurb:

Can Humanism include belief in God?

Last year Pope Francis, addressing the European Parliament, pleaded for a rediscovery of the ideals of humanism centred on respect for the dignity of the human person. He said, "A Europe which is no longer open to the transcendent dimension of life is a Europe which risks losing its own soul and that "humanistic spirit" which it still loves and defends." The Pope was clearly trying to reclaim the humanist tradition from atheism. But was he waging a futile battle? Is humanism by its very nature opposed to religious belief?

Joining Ernie to discuss Humanism are Stephen Law from the Centre for Enquiry and author of "A very short Introduction to Humanism; Nick Spencer Co-author of "The Case for Christian Humanism;" and Marilyn Mason, former Education Officer for the British Humanist Association.

When the Theos paper was published it was discussed on Unbelievable? — my as-it-podcasted reactions are archived here:

http://www.evilburnee.co.uk/2015/01/does-humanism-require-god-doesnt.html

CFI-UK one-day conference: Tricks of the Mind

I'm going to this. I've been to several of the CFI-UK events organised by Stephen Law, and they've all been excellent.

Tricks of the Mind - Centre for Inquiry UK conference

Come and hear some of the world’s leading experts explain how our minds can distort and deceive, including how they often play a role in generating a wide range of paranormal experiences. Discussion will include magic, time distortion, hypnotism and past-life regression. 

Presented by the British Humanist Association, the Centre for Inquiry UK, and Conway Hall. Organised and introduced by Stephen Law.

Date: Saturday, 30th March 2013 Venue: Conway Hall (main hall), 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC1R 4RL London (nearest tube Holborn) Time: 10.30am registration (for a 11am start). Ends 4pm

Programme

11.00 Daniela Rudloff: Mental ‘Short-Cuts’ - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Can we trust our eyes? Why does a footballer’s performance usually drop right after they’ve been sold to a high-paying football club? What exactly is “anchoring”, and why are we doing it on dry land?

Daniela Rudloff will answer these and other questions by giving an introduction to the everyday mental shortcuts and biases we often employ, arguing that even though they might be misleading, they are also necessary – and almost impossible to avoid.

Daniela has always had a profound interest in critical thinking, leading her to join the German Skeptics in 1994. In 2006 she commenced a PhD in Psychology to find out what keeps Joe Bloggs from being a rational, reasonable and sceptical person.

12.00 Claudia Hammond: Time Warped 
We are obsessed with time, but why does it play so many tricks on us? Why does time slow down when you're afraid and speed up as you get older? Drawing on the latest research from the fields of psychology, neuroscience and biology, and using original research on the way memory shapes our understanding of time, the awarding-winning writer and broadcaster Claudia Hammond delves into the mysteries of time perception and how the mind creates a sense of time.

Claudia is an award-winning broadcaster, writer and psychology lecturer. She is the presenter of All in the Mind & Mind Changers on BBC Radio 4 and the Health Check on BBC World Service Radio every week and BBC World News TV every month. Claudia is a columnist for BBC.com and the author of "Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception" and "Emotional Rollercoaster - a journey through the science of feelings" which won the Aoen Transmission Prize in February 2013. 

2.00 Martin S Taylor: More Lives Than One?
Martin S Taylor became interested in hypnosis when he was studying for a PhD at Imperial College, and soon became well known on the student circuit with his science based lecture-demonstration. At first he believed in the traditional view that hypnosis is a special induced state of mind, but discussions with friends and his experience with his own hypnotic subjects led him to subscribe to the 'social-compliance' view, namely that hypnosis is best explained by normal, well-understood psychological principles.

He now makes a living as a lecturer and consultant on hypnosis, talking and demonstrating at schools, universities, and anywhere else they'll pay him. It was at one of Martin's lectures that Derren Brown was inspired to take up his career, and Martin has worked with Derren on a number of recent television shows. Recently he has been working as a hypnosis consultant for Paramount Pictures, producing promotional videos for horror films.

In today’s talk, Martin will be examining the notion that hypnosis can be used to get people to remember past lives, a phenomenon taken by many as evidence of reincarnation.

3.00 Robert Teszka: Mind and Magic
Robert Teszka is a cognitive psychologist, magician, science promoter, and massive geek. He uses the techniques of misdirection to study the psychology of attention and awareness at Goldsmiths University, and has travelled internationally to give lectures on the surprising insights of cognitive psychology.

Mind and Magic is a talk about how our own minds deceive us as readily as any magician, and how magician's tricks can help us understand our minds a bit better. Expect a curated collection of demonstrations, experiments, and original research - and perhaps a magic trick or two - as Rob attempts to convince you that sometimes, you just can't trust your own mind.

March 30th, 2013

Conway Hall
25 Red Lion Square
Holborn, WC1R 4RL
United Kingdom

Click here to buy tickets.

A Thought for the Day — any day soon, please?

Evan Davis, one of the hosts of Radio 4's morning news radio show, The Today Programme, shared his views about Thought for the Day in a brief profile article in the Independent recently, subsequently picked up by the British Humanist Association, which has long been campaigning for the daily four-minute slot to be opened up to non-religious speakers:

Today programme host: ‘Thought for the Day’ should have secular voices

This is so obvious it should have been done years ago, but the BBC have a blind spot about their religious programming. They even claim that the "faith" content of TftD is balanced by the "non-faith" of the rest of the Today Programme. It's just part of an insidious insistence that morality is the exclusive preserve of religion, which is not only false but profoundly so. An excellent case can be made that religious considerations of moral questions are inherently lacking in morality, and that the only truly "moral" approach to such questions is a secular humanist one.

Nelson Jones (aka "The Heresiarch") took up the matter in New Statesman:
New Statesman - God's Morning Monopoly
...giving a comprehensive overview and a reasoned argument that, today, thoughts don't have to be religious.

New Humanist chimed in with the following:
New Humanist Blog: Time for atheists on Thought for the Day?
Not just time. It's long overdue.

Guy Stagg

So far, so unanimous. But then Guy Stagg penned this staggering drivel in the Telegraph:
Secularists on Thought for the Day will expose the loneliness of atheism – Telegraph Blogs
(Via HumanistLife.) 

There’s so much wrong with Guy Stagg’s article one hardly knows where to start. We'll try the beginning:

Evan Davis has called for Thought for the Day to be opened up to secular contributions. The Today programme presenter thinks that the show is discriminating against the non-religious. Davis probably thinks this would strengthen the role of secularism in society, but in fact the opposite is true.

Naked assertions do not an argument make.

Thought for the Day is one of the better things about the Today programme. In comparison with some of the indulgent and irrelevant slots that fill up the three hours, Thought for the Day is consistently focused and intelligent.

Stagg obviously misses the ones I hear, which are mostly woolly and platitudinous.

What is more, as most atheists recognise, faith has plenty of lessons for religious and non-religious alike.

Secularism has plenty of lessons for people of faith (and no faith), so let's hear some of those too.

Finally, Radio 4 gives lots of space to secular contributions – a few minutes of God in the middle of the morning is hardly a victory against the Enlightenment.

But this is exactly the point — where else in the Today Programme's three hours can we hear secular views on ethics and how-we-should-live? Restricting TftD to only God-based views is clearly discrimination.

There are also practical problems with Evan Davis’s idea. Who would be invited onto the new Thought for the Day? Davis suggests “spiritually minded secularists”. I guess that would include philosophers and academics, but presumably poets and lifestyle coaches as well. The question is: who does it exclude?

Why should it exclude anyone?

There is something a bit immature about the idea, like a schoolboy trying to get off chapel. It belongs to the same category of silly proposal as Alain de Botton’s secular temples, or Dawkins's rebranding of atheists as “brights”. It shows that, although secularists have realised that they cannot simply be defined by opposition to religion, nevertheless they have little to offer in its place. Crucially the secular tradition has no successful institutions to preserve and spread its principles.

Stagg hasn't done his homework. "Brights" did not come from Richard Dawkins, though he and Dan Dennett have promoted the soubriquet, which hasn't found much favour among secularists. Secularists, however, have plenty to offer the Today Programme's listeners, if given the chance. As for replacing religion, if one has a cancerous tumour surgically removed, one does not seek to insert something in the body to replace it. And what does Stagg mean by "the secular tradition", if he's claiming secularists have no successful institutions? Is he not aware of the well-established British Humanist Association? The National Secular Society?

This is something that few secularists admit: atheism is quite lonely. Not just existentially, but socially as well. Secularism does not offer the sense of fellowship you find in religion. Watching old Christopher Hitchens debates on YouTube with a like-minded sceptic is entertaining, but I doubt it's as nourishing as Sunday Mass.

There's a reason secularists don't admit that atheism is lonely, at least not in Britain today. Because it isn't, neither existentially or socially. (On the global scale, is Stagg unaware of the Reason Rally? If so, he seems quite unqualified to write this article.) And I've no idea why Stagg thinks a secularist would find Sunday Mass in any sense "nourishing".

This doesn't make the claims of religion true.

He gets that bit right, at least.

For what it’s worth, I doubt them as much as Evan Davis. But I recognise that atheism has a long way to go to provide a complete and compelling alternative to religion. And it will take a lot more than inviting some yoga teachers onto the Today programme.

There's no reason why atheism ("lack of belief in a god or gods") should be an alternative to anything other than god-belief. Secular humanism, however, holds that it is possible to lead an ethical, fulfilling and meaningful life (the only life we have) without religion. I am without religion, and I see no need for anything in its place. And it may well take more than yoga teachers on TftD to convince people of that fact. So let's do it.

---

As mentioned above, the BHA has an ongoing campaign about Thought for the Day, and they are once again urging secularists, humanists and others to write to the BBC trustees. Here's my effort, sent on 2 April:

BBC Trust Unit
180 Great Portland Street
London
W1W 5QZ

Dear Sirs,

In today's Independent, Evan Davies, one of the presenters of Radio 4's Today Programme, is quoted thus:

===
Davis, an atheist, feels strongly about Today's "Thought for the Day" slot. A decade ago he complained that it was "discriminating against the non-religious". Now he says: "I think there's a very serious debate about whether the spot – which I would keep – might give space to what one might call 'serious and spiritually minded secularists'. I don't think "Thought for the Day" has to only be people of the cloth."
===

The BBC has over the years received many calls to restore balance to this slot but has not done so. The calls keep coming.

As a listener to the Today Programme for several decades I would like to add my own strong feelings that "Thought for the Day" should include secular views. The consideration of ethical questions is not the sole purview of the religious, and given that the slot is not called "Religious Thought for the Day" its content remains unbalanced. I urge the trustees to rectify this as soon as possible, in line with what is likely to be the majority view of the programme's audience.

Yours faithfully,

Paul S. Jenkins

---

I sent this via email, to trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk
(...and only now, on pasting this in, do I realise I spelled Evan Davis' name incorrectly.)

Beyond the Veil — this Saturday at Conway Hall

Apparently there's still time to get tickets to this whole-day event, organised by Stephen Law (who was also responsible for the Conspiracy Theory Day last year, of which the videos of the various talks are now available.)

It's a good line-up — I'm looking forward to it.

Free will and naturalism — discussions on Premier's "Unbelievable?"

Over at the Unbelievable? discussion group a thread has opened, prompted by Andrew Copson's statement about free will on last Saturday's show — that he was happy to act "as if" we have free will, even though we don't. This is being challenged on the basis of its supposed lack of integrity or coherence with a naturalistic viewpoint.

To which I would (and did) respond that we act as if we have free will because we have no choice. What would it look like to act "as if" we don't have free will? I would contend that it's simply not possible to do so. Whatever actions we take, they are taken on the basis of something we call decision-making. Even if we say that we are going to decide something on a purely random basis, that in itself is a decision (as is the choice of what means of randomisation we're going to use).

Far from being an abrogation of the naturalistic viewpoint, acting "as if" we have free will is an acceptance of the naturalist position. Here's what I posted in the discussion:

This is an interesting thread, but there seems to be a real confusion derived from the presupposition that dualism is true. One can't prove that the mind affects the brain by assuming that the brain and the mind are fundamentally different but nevertheless physically real things. As far as I'm aware this has not been shown. The mind is a manifestation of our perception of the brain's effects, and arises wholly from or through the brain. It's a one-way process — brain causes mind. Mind does not cause brain (or brain-chemistry), any more than an oil-painting causes brush-strokes on canvas, or than a tasty meal causes its ingredients. The meal may have a description (a recipe or even a menu) but the taste of it is not caused by the recipe.

What we perceive as "mind" is likely a combination of codified perceptions that manifest as patterns within the brain, but that cannot exist separate from the brain. (Fergus quotes neurologist Steve Novella, who is pretty clear on this matter.)

I would take issue with the contention that the mind can causally affect the brain. Attributing causal effects like this seems (as I said above) to be presupposing dualism. If the "mind" is simply what the "brain" does, then at bottom they are the same thing. What we call mind is no more than the product of the brain — so in this sense the brain could be said to cause the mind, but not vice versa.

Also the idea that "free will" is something humans (or indeed "moral agents") have and animals don't is problematic. It places free will as a specific attribute, like colour vision, rather than the emergent property that it most likely is. One might also say that the existence or not of free will is on a par with the existence or not of the soul, both of which I see as properties of cognition — handy short-cuts to understanding the world we live in, but not necessarily truly existing in themselves.

As for whether it's illegitimate to act "as if" we have free will if in fact we don't — we do this because we have no choice. It's not possible for anyone to act "as if" they don't have free will, because that very decision is — or appears to be — an act of free will. It is therefore quite possible that free will is an illusion, and that determinism is true. The question then becomes, determined by what?

Last Saturday's Unbelievable? was about RE in schools, and the supposedly hidden agenda claimed by Mark Roques (Justin Brierley's other guest) that there's an underlying bias towards consumerism. Andrew stated that in his visits to schools he'd not found this. His own familiarity with RE teaching comes from his personal educational experience and his involvement as Education and Outreach Officer of the British Humanist Association, before he became BHA Chief Executive.

Mark's stories seemed to me to be a little contrived, and perhaps even condescending in the faux accents with which he delivered them. Maybe they'd go down well with a particular audience, but I found them mildly irritating.

Andrew maintains that humanism should be taught in RE, as should any system of beliefs, worldview, ethics, etc., and that RE is doubly misnamed — we don't have Historical Education or Geographical Education, and RE lessons should include non-religious viewpoints.

It was a very civilised discussion, and started to liven up at about 43 minutes in, when Mark challenged Andrew's basis for making reasoned statements (a lot of theists take this tack, whether it's grounding for reason, logic, morality or truth — presuppositionalists especially love this argument). But Andrew Copson has dealt with this kind of thing before, and he answered concisely: "Reason is clearly a product of human interaction with reality." He went on to say, "Logic is the word that human beings have chosen to give to certain processes of reasoning. It has no objective existence. It's a process that we've come up with and that we apply, to discover certain truths..." And he followed this up with an excellent explanation of autonomy (which is what the thread on the discussion forum is about).

Mark Roques' general demeanour seemed to be one of I'm telling you stuff you've not heard before, and you're going to find it surprising. Andrew, of course, has heard it before. Mark also appeared to be on the back foot when he resorted to a variation of Some of my best friends are humanists....

In response to Mark's main thesis Andrew stated that he could not "see any logical connection between philosophical materialism and consumerist materialism." This is, however, what Christians and other religionists often attempt to imply, thereby claiming that the materialist position is nihilistic.

This was a good Unbelievable? — as are all that have Andrew Copson as a guest. As far as I can gather this was his sixth appearance, and all but his first are available for listening in the Unbelievable? podcast archives.

An mp3 of last Saturday's show can be downloaded here:
http://media.premier.org.uk/unbelievable/f4c368d4-27d7-4b91-8a38-e83acf7b7fb8.mp3

Vatican attempts accommodation, but is there an ulterior motive?

Via HumanistLife I became aware of this article over on BBC News:

BBC News - Vatican's space mission

I posted the following comment on the HumanistLife blog:

“If the Big Bang was the start of everything, what came before it?”

Silly question (or at least very poorly worded). If the Big Bang was the start of "everything" then obviously nothing came before it. If something came before it, it couldn't have been the start of "everything". If the purpose of the website is "greater understanding" and this is the best it can come up with, it's doomed.

"But there was a time when the Church was hostile to those who challenged orthodox teachings."

Aren't we still in that time?

"Where there are scientifically proven explanations for things, the Church says they should be accepted. Where there are not, then faith may have a role."

God of the gaps.

"The Church says it is about parallel realities, not competing ones."

NOMA nonsense.

I'm highly suspicious of any attempts to "reconcile" religious teaching with science, because religion is fundamentally at odds with what science tells us. The core tenets of religion — souls, afterlife, supernatural beings, supernatural occurrences, claims that the universe was created by a deity — are all counter to what science increasingly reveals to us as how things actually are. Such attempts may be superficially intended as an accommodation between incompatible disciplines, but at root they are simply aiming to slow the inevitable: the dwindling power of the church.

Doomed.

This is accommodationism, not by "faitheists" but by the religionists themselves, and therefore — call me cynical — not to be trusted.

Faith schools: suffer the little children — and they do

The BBC Radio 4 programme Beyond Belief is a mixed bag. Each week Ernie Rae speaks with studio guests and includes a pre-recorded report or interview. I've mentioned a few previously on this blog. Often the subject matter is of only marginal interest to me but this afternoon's edition was about faith schools, featuring the Rev Janina Ainsworth — Church of England Chief Education Officer, Ibrahim Hewitt — former head of Al-Aqsa Primary School in Leicester and now an inspector of faith schools, and Andrew Copson — Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association.

The programme is available as a podcast, and this week's edition is downloadable as mp3 audio here:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/belief/belief_20110214-1700a.mp3

Janina Ainsworth seemed convinced that faith schools were inherently a "good thing", while Ibrahim Hewitt's views were all over the place. I particularly liked Ernie Rae's question to him towards the end of the broadcast, as to how probability is taught during maths lessons in a Muslim school. Apparently the children are told that there's no such thing as chance: if you throw dice, the results are not random but willed by God.

During the entire discussion Andrew Copson had the firmest grasp on the issues, seeing through the equivocation and appeals to emotion of the other two guests. I suspect that even Ernie Rae has serious doubts about the validity of faith schools. Given his introduction at the start of the broadcast, I don't think he was merely playing devil's advocate here.

But the most telling point in the programme was a recorded interview with Peter Flack, assistant secretary of the Leicester National Union of Teachers, who believes faith schools are a danger to society. He asked:

"What is so different about children who come from families with religious beliefs, that they need to be educated separately, that they need to be segregated from everybody else?"

Later in the day we had a perfect illustration of the danger Peter Flack warns about. Channel Four's Dispatches: Lessons in Hate and Violence, presented by Tazeen Ahmad and broadcast at 8 pm (with a repeat at 2:40 am), showed precisely what can happen to children if they are left in the clutches of faith-based education. We're not talking only of incitement to violence — these children (some as young as six) were being repeatedly hit. The violence was recorded as part of Dispatches' trademark "secret filming". What's worse, the featured establishments had been inspected and passed as fit places for young children to be "instructed".

A trailer clip of the programme is available here:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/video/series-80/episode-1/lessons-in-hate-and-violence

Those in favour of faith-based education often speak of it enabling children to become part of the community. The evidence suggests, however, that the "community" of which they speak is a narrow one, deliberately segregated from the wider society into which it ought to be integrated.

Are human values moral values?

Revisiting the Unbelievable? online discussion group this weekend after a period of absence, I noted that considerable to and fro was in full swing regarding the show in which Paul Thompson ("Sinbad") debated Mark Roques on the question of "human value". This is a pretty diffuse term to begin with, and the discussion on the show didn't define it with any precision. The debate illustrated a typical clash of mindsets that could not be resolved during the limited time for the show, and although the online forum discussion allows for greater depth, it isn't any more likely to reach a resolution.

Rather than dwell on that particular discussion in isolation, I'll simply point to its similarities with the 11 September 2010 edition of Unbelievable? — a discussion between Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association, and Peter D. Williams of Catholic Voices. The show wasn't explicitly about human values, but it showed the same clash of mindsets as the more recent broadcast.

Andrew Copson is one of humanism's most articulate advocates, and the fact that he made no impression at all on Peter Williams during their discussion illustrates the futility of attacking the theist position on the metaphysics of morality. Unfortunately the show's format prevented this aspect of their disagreement being further explored. Not that such exploration would have made much difference, I suspect.

The theist position is that morality must by definition have a transcendent basis. The humanist position is that such a basis is neither proven nor necessary. While it may be too much to hope that theists such as Peter Williams will be swayed by the arguments Andrew put forward, there may have been theists (and others) listening to the show who don't necessarily buy into a fundamentally transcendent nature of morality, and who will see that Andrew's humanist viewpoint is a perfectly valid stance, and one that is based on reality rather than some disputed, unproven supernatural proposition.

Andrew's point at the end of the exchange was well made: as a result of the discussion he said he was more convinced of his own position than he had been before.

In brief, as I see it, the problem with the "moral argument for the existence of God" as espoused by some theists, is mainly one of definition. A humanist may go into some detail as to how he or she derives moral values without a belief that those values are god-given (as I have done myself), but theists are unable to accept such a line of argument because they believe that any values derived from something other than God aren't "moral" values at all. It's as if they define morality as "a system of values dictated by God". Never mind that such a definition impales itself on the horns of the Euthyphro dilemma — which, despite theistic protestations to the contrary, has never been successfully resolved.

Armand Leroi delivers the 2011 Darwin Day Lecture

Without notes and with just a few informative slides, Armand Leroi delivered his captivating 2011 Darwin Day Lecture to a packed Conway Hall on Wednesday evening. His talk, titled "Mutants, and what to do about them" covered the possibilities, practicalities and economics of screening for genetic diseases. Phrased thus, it sounds like a dry subject, but Professor Leroi spoke with commitment and deep knowledge, in clear and expressive language that allowed his succinct points to hit home. His lecture was introduced by Robert Ashby, British Humanist Association (BHA) Board of Trustees Chair, while the lecture itself and its subsequent Q&A was chaired by BHA Vice President Richard Dawkins. The evening concluded with a few announcements from BHA Chief Executive Andrew Copson.



Though he did not shy away from the eugenic implications of universal screening of human embryos, he was clear in his avoidance of making moral judgements. It's not necessary here to reiterate these or any other points in his lecture, as you can listen to the entire thing yourself — along with some intelligent questions from the floor. The audio was recorded by the Pod Delusion and is available from their website, which incidentally also allows embedding of the player, as below:

The latest regular episode of the Pod Delusion also contains brief interviews with Armand Leroi and Richard Dawkins before the lecture:


There's also a direct mp3 download link for the above episode 71 here:
http://media.ipadio.com/20110211011055.mp3

---

UPDATE 2011-02-16: Unfortunately the Pod Delusion embedding feature appears a little flaky for its special episodes, so here's a direct link to the lecture:
http://poddelusion.co.uk/blog/2011/02/09/bha-darwin-day-lecture-listen-live-at-730pm/

Claire Rayner (1931-2010)

Claire Rayner died yesterday. I heard the announcement on Radio 4 this morning, and remembered she had recently contributed (as I did) to the "Humanist Heroes" series at the British Humanist Association's Humanist Life website. (She was a former President of the BHA.)

The Today Programme had her son Jay Rayner on, and I was struck by what a superb advertisement his interview was for the humanist attitude to rites of passage and life in general. No regrets, but fond remembrances and laughter.

Here's the audio:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9083000/9083017.stm

And here's the BHA's tribute:
http://www.humanism.org.uk/news/view/672

A creationist bleats about Dawkins (again)

In the light of Richard Dawkins' latest TV programme on More4, Faith Schools Menace? the Creation Science Movement has posted an article about Dawkins and the British Humanist Association on its website: "Richard Dawkins, the BHA and a New Inquisition".

Dawkins in fact wishes to abolish faith schools, but he acknowledges that their teaching standards are often better than secular schools. So good in fact that he would be willing to lie to get his children into one. He comments that he does not blame those atheists who pretend to be religious in order to get their children into the best faith schools, and comments that as he has 'absolutely no belief at all, I wouldn't be betraying anything' by lying and pretending to be religious.

Dawkins' point was that he would be prepared to lie about his lack of religious belief in order to counteract the inequitable availability of state schools. Faith schools discriminate against children whose parents have contributed to the funding of these schools. It's wrong that such children should be arbitrarily excluded.

What Dawkins fails to understand is that the quality of the education in faith schools is to do with their ethos.

What the (anonymous) author of this article fails to mention is that the "ethos" of the school is only part of the story. Faith schools practice selection on the basis of parents' religion. As was made clear in the programme, such selection tends to filter out less able children due to their background (their parents' willingness to do what it takes to gain admission for their offspring is a major part of that background).

Dawkins own words reveal that he is willing to destroy the very thing, the inherent values, that make faith schools so good.

As outlined above, it's not the inherent values that are the cause of good league-table performance.

The BHA has lobbied the Education Secretary Michael Gove and reports suggest that the policy developed will seek to exclude 'extremist groups' from taking over schools, and furthermore there would be no creationism taught in science classes.

Quite right too.

Andrew Copson of the BHA is concerned about the 'dangers of the influences of fundamentalist groups in our school system.' Presumably he doesn't mean to imply that the BHA owns the school system by use of the word 'our', but the faux pas is evident nonetheless.

This is a telling criticism that exposes CSM's misunderstanding (or deliberate misrepresentation) of the state school system. Voluntary aided faith schools are state schools. Over 90% of funding for these schools comes from the taxpayer — they are indeed our schools.

He is perhaps too blinkered to know that true pluralism must respect those who have different religious beliefs to his own and allow them to have an equal voice in education.

Andrew Copson is not the one who is blinkered. In the matter of education funded by the taxpayer, "those who have different religious beliefs" are not entitled to "an equal voice". In the case of voluntary aided faith schools, they are entitled to — at most — 10% of a voice.

The BHA wants us to believe that secular humanism is religiously neutral, but it is not. It is instead biased in favour of atheism.

First, atheism is not a religion. Second, the author of this article clearly doesn't know the definition of "secular" (1. not religious, sacred or spiritual; 2. not subject to or bound by religious rule; Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed).

So the BHA's claim that it seeks to develop 'totally inclusive schools for children of all faiths and none' is entirely bogus. The BHA wants atheistic humanism to have a dominant position in schools and by its actions wishes to treat those who have religious and scientific convictions about creation as second-class citizens.

Not "atheistic humanism", secular humanism; there's a difference — see the definition above. It's entirely right that state-funded education should be secular in nature, without giving preference to any religious belief over another. As for scientific "convictions" — these need to be ratified by the scientific community before they are included in the school curriculum.

We wonder why the BHA should have such influence in society that greatly exceeds its popular mandate, especially when advocating such extreme views. Christians and other religious groups greatly outweigh the membership of the BHA.

Popular mandate? BHA members are not elected by the British public, but neither are Christians and other religious groups. The BHA, however, recognises that Christians and other religious groups have disproportionate influence in society, and therefore seeks to bring that influence down to more equitable levels.

Children must be given the opportunity to learn skills in the critical analysis of complex arguments and data; skills that are the hallmarks of true education.

This is precisely what the BHA is campaigning for.

We would ask that children and students be allowed to learn skills in critical thinking within the science class and be allowed to question the problems with evolution while respecting their faith. Anything less is not science, but humanistic, religious dogma of a fundamentalist nature.

Children and students should indeed be encouraged to learn critical thinking skills, but primary and secondary education science classes are not the places to discuss theories that have no evidential base. Creationism is not science, it is religious dogma of a fundamentalist nature.

Should Christianity be silent? Ann Widdecombe projects

Once again I'm reacting to a post on the New Humanist blog — this time it's about a Daily Express article by Ann Widdecombe. I responded in the comments to the Express article, but apparently their commenting system accepts plain text only, so my carefully formatted HTML appears very untidy. (I've pasted the properly formatted version below.)

Has anyone noticed that what the opponents of religion really want is that Christianity should be silent?

What I have noticed is that Christianity is definitely not silent, and that as soon as opponents of religion raise any objection to Christianity's lack of silence on matters with which it has no business to be concerned, they are labelled "strident" or "shrill" or "militant" (or in this case, "bigoted").

Those who run the zoo have established workshops which cover the national science curriculum but do not include discussion of religion and do not promote the extreme creationist view that the world was created 6,000 years ago. In other words it is a moderate, education-focused organisation that challenges children’s minds and produces evidence from fossils.

That the zoo promotes a slightly less extreme version of creationism does not make it "moderate". It may be "education-focussed", but that's because it has a religious agenda it wants to get into British science classes. Creationism and "intelligent design" are not science.

In short the British Humanist association does not believe that children should be allowed even to discuss creation or to be exposed to any evidence that might support it.

I'm a member of the BHA myself, and I'm not aware of any prohibition on children being allowed to discuss any subject at all. As for children being exposed to "evidence" for creation, there isn't any. The only authority for creationism is in scripture, but the Book of Genesis is not a science textbook.

With regard to scientific testing of the efficacy of prayer, most properly conducted tests are negative, but this is a distraction anyway because whenever negative results are obtained, the religious can explain them away (God is not susceptible to testing; it's impossible for an omniscient deity to conform to the protocols of a randomised double blind clinical trial; how do we know that other people who are not part of the trial aren't praying for opposing results. And so on.) I'm not surprised that Ann Widdecombe should cherry-pick a supposedly positive test of prayer while failing to mention the many that have shown no effect — her grasp of scientific method was exposed in her TV programme about Mosaic Law: she prefers to believe the Exodus took place (because it's in the Bible) despite there being no archeological evidence for it.

She is probably right in saying that the BHA and NSS will be vocal during the Pope's visit in September.

It is as well therefore to understand their bigoted approach from the outset.

I believe the bigotry of Ann Widdecombe's church of choice was clearly displayed in her debate with Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry in October last year.

That Ann Widdecombe accuses opponents of religion of wanting Christianity to be silent is a classic piece of projection.

My Humanist Hero: Arthur C. Clarke

A quick announcement — over at Humanist Life my contribution to the Humanist Heroes series has just been posted:

"As a teenager I was entranced by the writings of Arthur C. Clarke. While Clarke is best known for his collaboration with Stanley Kubrick on the film script for 2001: A Space Odyssey, his interests ranged from the eminently practical to the wildly speculative. He was the first to propose the use of geostationary communications satellites; he was also chairman of the British Interplanetary Society. "

Continue reading here:
http://www.humanistlife.org.uk/2010/06/humanist-hero-arthur-c-clarke-by-paul-s-jenkins/

Several others are already available, and there are more to come. Well worth perusal (and apparently there's still time to submit your own).

Richard Dawkins at Conway Hall (June 2009)

My own effort at recording a snippet of Richard Dawkins' opening talk at the BHA Darwin, Humanism and Science one-day conference at Conway Hall last June was less than successful, so I'm glad to see this at last posted on YouTube. (I imagine the delay might have been something to do with the book tour for The Greatest Show On Earth. Dawkins gave a similar talk at the AAI 2009 convention, but I'm embedding this one, which I actually attended.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_f3B45E4dw


(The day was opened by Richard Dawkins and closed by A. C. Grayling, and I'll be hearing them both in person again at the Wellington Squared debate in Crowthorne on Sunday.)

Evolutionary Theory: Is This All There Is?

Yesterday I received my ticket for a one-day event on Saturday 31 October at Conway Hall put on by the Humanist Philosophers, supported by the South Place Ethical Society and the British Humanist Association, entitled Evolutionary Theory: Is this all there is?

Here's the blurb from the BHA website:

Evolutionary Theory has a lot going for it, but how far does it go? Can it provide adequate explanations of human psychology - emotions, imagination - of our moral sense and aesthetic appreciation? Does Evoluntary Theory have anything valuable to say about our free choices and the meaning of life?

These questions will be explored in three discussions, chaired by Peter Cave (chair of Humanist Philosophers and author of 'Humanism: a beginner's guide'), with opportunities for questions and contributions from the floor.

Human psychology: 'Are human minds made by memes?' with Susan Blackmore, Visiting Professor of Psychology at the University of Plymouth and Simon Blackburn, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cambridge

Ethics: 'Can there be genuine value and virtue in a godless universe?' with Emeritus Professor John Cottingham, University of Reading; Professor David Papineau, King's College, London; Professor Janet Radcliffe Richards, Director of the Centre for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine at University College London.

Meaning and purposes of life: 'What does evolutionary biology have to say about the meaning of life?' by Michael Reiss, Professor of Science Education and Assistant Director of the Institute of Education and Emeritus Professor Richard Norman, University of Kent.

It should be an interesting day. Michael Reiss resigned his post as education director of the Royal Society after his controversial statements about how creationism should be treated in school classrooms.

(As of today, tickets to the event are still available.)

There's probably no God, so learn to dance like a zombie

http://www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/krypto



As part of Antony Gormley's living art "One & Other" on the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, lots of people are getting their chance to become a piece of artwork for 60 minutes. One such is Andrew West, a "plinther" who used his hour on Sunday afternoon to teach onlookers the dance moves to Michael Jackson's "Thriller", while displaying the BHA's atheist bus advertisement. If you watch the video (click on the image above) you'll see that Ariane Sherine, creator of the Atheist Bus Campaign, is amongst those on the ground learning the dance.

Seems like a good time was had by all. You can see what's going on right now by watching the live feed.

Dr. Michael Schmidt-Salomon at Conway Hall

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl9AI0f8jk8


The BHA continues to make available videos of the talks given at the July June 6 one-day conference at Conway Hall, "Darwin, Humanism and Science". Here, Dr. Michael Schmidt-Salomon of Germany's Giordano-Bruno Foundation addresses the moral objections to evolution.

James Williams at Conway Hall

Here's another of the talks given at the BHA's Darwin, Humanism & Science one-day conference I attended at Conway Hall on 6th June:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7EzHqwCDaE


James Williams is doing essential work. Check out this recent Mail Online article, then read the comments the editors selected. There are obviously some out-and-out creationists in that group, but most of them appear to be from the United States.

A. C. Grayling at Conway Hall - Darwin, Humanism & Science

While I get around to posting my thoughts on the Darwin, Humanism & Science event held at Conway Hall two weeks ago, the BHA has posted this recording of A. C. Grayling's talk with which he wound up the day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbeY9_NErCs


I'm not sure why the first thing they've posted is the last thing on the schedule (unless it's the only thing they're going to post), but be that as it may, Grayling's talk was relaxed and informal, without slides, focussing on C. P. Snow's idea of "The Two Cultures".