The God Delusion Decade

I wonder how many reading this have maintained their own blog for a time only to suddenly find that they no longer have anything pressing to throw out in to the blogosphere, resulting in a never updated ghost blog. Well, it has been a while since I posted. I have been busy this year promoting the Humanist cause. I spoke at a couple of debates at Hull Guildhall, one on Faith Schools (I was against them) and another on Free Will (I was all for it). I questioned the false trichotomy of the Alpha Course at the Rowntree Park Birthday Party in the Summer (see photo). I gave a talk on Bad Science in York and took part in a Humanist/Muslim dialogue at York mosque as part of the exclusively named Interfaith Week. I even gave a Humanist Thought for the Day on BBC Radio Humberside for the week before Christmas. But did any of it help to increase the number of free thinking religion sceptics in our region? We read in the press how the number of people in our country committed to a religion is in constant free fall, especially the number of Anglicans. Apparently there is a half-life decay in religiosity. If one or both of your parents were religious, then there is only a 50-50 chance that you will follow in their footsteps. At this rate, it is hard to see how the official religion of our country will survive in the coming decades. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s misguided criticisms of the American Episcopal church’s appointment of a lesbian as a Bishop, in the same week as the Anglican Bishop of Uganda expressed support for the death penalty for homosexuals (which the said prelate was remarkably silent about), will surely hasten the exodus of liberal thinking men and women from the CofE. The Pope has been wooing the Anglo-Catholic wing from the Anglican fold, though the never ending child abuse scandals rocking the Catholic ecclesia should make the faithful question taking that path. I suppose this will leave the happy-clappys dominating the Anglican pews. Has all this decline in religious observance led to a corresponding increase in support for the nations Humanist Societies? Though the level of support for organised Humanism has shown a moderate increase, I am disappointed that the God Delusion decade did not win more converts to the naturalistic, scientific and rational world view.

Respect People or their Beliefs?

I attended another Interfaith meeting this week. Many Humanists feel uneasy about Interfaith forums because they feel that engaging with members of the religious communities lends a level of credibility to religious beliefs that they don‘t think they deserve. The situation is paralleled with some eminent evolutionary biologists not being willing to engage creationists in debate with a “that would look great on his cv but not so good on mine” attitude. My view is to approach interfaith dialogue the way I approach politics and some might see that this is rather more than a comparison. Supporting the Interfaith network is a bit like encouraging participation in the political process which does not in itself suggest promotion of all political beliefs. Political beliefs are often mutually incompatible and contradictory since they recognise different goods and seek divergent goals. The point is that the democratic political process is itself neutral to the mainstream politics being promoted, though this changes as the politics diverges left and right. I would argue that the political left - right spectrum is better envisioned as a circle with unhealthy at the top and healthy at the bottom - an idea I first encountered in the book “Life and How to Survive It” by Robin Skynner which I read during my psychobabble phase (this is one of the better books of that genre). The idea is that the more that views diverge from the liberal consensus in either direction, the less healthy they become and that as we move from the major democratic parties, through UKIP and hard-left socialist, we cross the healthy/unhealthy dividing line in to the territory of the BNP or Stalinism. One of the speakers at the Interfaith meeting was running a campaign to stop the BNP being elected to the European parliament. The worry is that voter apathy will allow the election of people with “unhealthy” political ideas. Is this seeking to curtail freedom of speech ? I don’t think that it is because nobody is trying to prevent the BNP from being able to stand in elections. How does any of this relate to religious beliefs? Just as in politics, religious believers can be assembled on a spectrum or circle with the “healthy” beliefs clustering around the liberal middle (for example, the chief Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks, the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, the late Islamic scholar Sir Zaki Badawi, or the chief executive of the British Humanist Association, Hanne Stinson). As we move further along the circle we find people who are still relatively healthy but who are less likely to find common ground with each other (for example, the Roman Catholic Archbishop Cormac Murphy O’Connor or Richard Dawkins). The more divergent the views, the more paranoid they become until we cross the line in to what can genuinely be recognised as “extremist views” which will include violent rhetoric. The theory is that interfaith forums allow the moderate “healthy” parties to come together to oppose the “unhealthy” ideas. It is still possible to do that even if you think the beliefs or the other members of the forum are objectively false and harmful - so long as nobody is promoting genuinely hateful rhetoric. When David Cameron says that the Labour government have messed up the economy, nobody accuses him of hate speech againt socialists. On the contrary, this banter is a necessary part of the peaceful political dialogue. Using the kind of language that is acceptable in political debate should be acceptable in interfaith dialogue. The alternative is that in seeking an overweening respect for each others views we will merely debase ourselves and the seriousness of our beliefs as suggested in the above painting by Paul Klee, “Two Men Meet, Each Believing the Other to be in a Higher Position”.

BHA Vice-President Sir Bernard Crick Dies

One of the Vice-Presidents of the British Humanist Association, Professor Sir Bernard Crick died on Friday aged 79. He will be remembered as the philosopher and constitutional expert who invented citizenship education and devised the 'Britishness' test for immigrants to the UK. The thing that I will remember him for is his articles in the Guardian and the New Humanist magazine where he insisted that Humanists need to be less fussy about working with the religious who share our commitment to social justice, saying that this age of fanaticism is no time for non-believers to make enemies of moderate, liberal religious people. He was of course referencing the probably apocryphal story of François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, on his deathbed, when a priest bursts in on him crying, "Renounce the devil and all his works!", to which Voltaire replies, "This is no time to make enemies." I would agree with Crick that Humanists should build good relations with moderate believers of all persuasions in order to unite against the enemies of enlightenment, democracy and freedom. I am a member of the Hull and East Riding Interfaith (www.heri.org.uk) and recently gave a talk about my own beliefs and how they contrast with the beliefs of religious members of the community. I would prefer this kind of dialogue to be called a "Religion and Belief Network" rather than "Interfaith" because I don't consider Humanism to be a Faith, but by any name, these meetings can help to create mutual respect between diverse believers, even if they do not increase respect for the diverse beliefs themselves. We can still maintain our intellectual honesty and criticism of religious belief and our commitment to rationalism, science, scepticism, freethought and the open society.