Dr. Johnson's House in Gough Square (London EC4)

In his article "Atheistic Fundamentalism and its Contradictions" (EHA Bulletin 52) Derek Hill refers to ‘Ealing Humanist Association’s militant atheism’. I have not encountered any militant atheists in our group, as far as I know none of us harass or insult theists or demonstrate in front of churches or knock on doors trying to convert believers or try to obtain unfair privileges. But when atheists are attacked they have a right to defend themselves, which is hardly a sign of militancy. Does Derek expect us to just sheepishly accept the frequent insults and disadvantages atheists are subjected to at the hands of those who think they are so much better?

He also incorrectly states that ‘EHA atheism’ (by that I suppose he means the opinions of EHA members) believes ‘that science can prove that God does not exist’. This does not correspond with my experience: the majority of EHA members say that God’s existence can neither be proven nor disproved. However many EHA members do believe that ‘a belief in the existence in deities’ does sometimes cause harm (we talked about many such examples over the past few years).

Atheists are not, nor claim to be, better people than ‘practising Christians’ (or any other theists), but neither are they worse. But so many Christians and other theists, possibly the majority, do say that atheists are wicked people (who lack morality), the hijacking of morality is just one example of theist arrogance. The often heard example of Stalin is irrelevant to Humanism: he was one of the most evil rulers of the 20th century, but definitely not a Humanist; he was a dogmatic Marxist atheist who detested Humanism as much as he detested Christianity.

But the most unfair of Derek’s criticisms of EHA members is his comparison of EHA’s attack on religion with the fundamentalist religious attacks on homosexuals. If Humanists attack ‘religionists’ it is due to the privileges enjoyed by religious organisations and the numerous religious malpractices, while homophobic religious fanatics attack homosexuals out of sheer prejudice for what is purely a matter of taste (heterosexual or homosexual) and has nothing to do with ethical behaviour.

Derek is however right to point out that there are other ideologies (apart from religion) which are a threat to Humanism (I am thinking primarily of Marxism, fascism, relativism, anti-scientific/pseudo-scientific theories including the many ‘new age’ creeds) and it is important that we oppose those and any other dogmatic ideologies as well.

I have no knowledge of the sounds of Turkish, but in your transcription of English it looks as if you are using /ö/ to represent the central vowel or shwa (the "a" of English "above") while Alex (June 2003) is using a small square*. I think both your transcriptions of English are unduly explicit. A good example is the prepositions where the vowels in normal fluent speech are not given their full value since they occur in unstressed syllables, but weakened to a shwa: hence not [ov] but [öv] (to use your transcription). Bernard Levin once inveighed against politicians who say "thee" instead of "the". Nevertheless one sometimes hears it from a speaker who is "groping" for the next word and losing fluency, and in any case it occurs in a very short form before a following vowel as in "the orange". The IPA uses the term "approximants", for the "wurly" sounds /w/,/r/,/j/ and /l/, since the articulators are in close approximation but (unlike fricatives) with no audible turbulence. I too have no set of IPA symbols on my equipment, but Alex might add /3/ to his list of vowels, to represent the long central vowel of Southern British English (as in "bird" [b3d]), a most unusual sound in the world's languages and difficult to describe.

Before our regional human culture becomes too fully integrated and absorbed globally let us Europeans take stock.. . . .
Next we could ask what can those humanists who are European do - not for God but - for a new global culture? What about favouring a language which sounds identical to modern English but, for practical simplicity's sake, is written like Latin with slight modern Turkish and Greek additions?. . . .
In 1928 Kemal Ataturk's new government adopted the(ir) present alphabet which is widely understandable for Europeans. With simplicity most in mind here is my own suggestion for Europe, which should at the most I trust need but minor adaptation.
Etc, etc.

* Alex did not use the small square, but used the shwa
symbol 'ə' for the website. The Bulletin editor changed
that to a small square for the printed version. (See
Bulletin 50 of June 2003, article on phonetic spelling).
However not every computer has that shwa symbol in its
character set and may therefore show a small square or
other symbol instead.                            A.H.  

We Ealing Humanists presently find ourselves in a learning situation. This makes our explanations inadequate when restricted by the view of one person, such as myself. However the divisive terms 'atheist' and 'agnostic' could it seems only apply if we wanted to advertise our illusions.

Certain of us do appear to retain an objective illusion. By thinking unscientifically (of 'instincts') in mere animal terms we miss out an essential humanity from our view of nature/science* and from our view of humanism.

Certain of us appear to retain a subjective illusion and we allow others' personal pet fantasies - from 20th century religion and philosophies in particular - to interfere in our own acceptance of nature/science.

None of us, I trust, are blind to the difference between subjective and objective to the point of seeing God in nature; as do all genuine theists, whether militant or otherwise.

The contribution¹ of Jan Olof Jörnryd - the first Ealing Humanist invitee to a projected 50plus club - was when he invoked the known facts surrounding the Toba eruption of just over 70,000 years ago with its consequent human population 'bottleneck'.

Since then two other major theories have been become well known and are, Jan Olof agrees, of comparable significance for the origin of humanity; the earlier date, 160,000 years ago² more from the physique standpoint and the more recent one of 50,000 years ago³ from the mental and linguistic.

Subjective humanism has as yet few points of contact with recent anthropological objectivity but has even less with unscientific materialist belief in the revelation of a real world via animal sense organs. Surely human culture, rather, is to be regarded as the present source of all the 'revelation' we do have. The Real World would seem to be a necessary postulate. But a coherent real world that can construct itself in exact copy within the mind of any sentient animal amounts to a full theory. Whatever its appealing simplifications the theory is clearly nonsense. The lesson that Dr Johnson learned (according to Boswell) when he kicked a stone has to be unlearned.

After a pleasant 'Talking Lunch' (see Bulletin 52) at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, just off Fleet Street, we walked up a narrow footway through a maze of narrow streets until we reached Gough Square, the location of Dr Johnson's House. It is a quiet square away from the noise and bustle of Fleet Street, although on this afternoon a fete for the families of members of a nearby legal chambers was in progress.

Although the area still has narrow streets that open out into squares, the unrelieved hideousness of the buildings thrown up in the 1970s and 1980s has made nonsense of any talk of legacies and explorations. However there is one fine building in Gough Square, only Johnson's fame protecting No.17 from the developers.

Once inside, everything is a delight. The house has two rooms on each landing and we mount by a handsome staircase, still in its original condition. Each room has its portraits of people important in Johnson's life - Boswell, Mrs Thrale, Reynolds, Goldsmith, all the way down to fringe characters like his Italian friend Giuseppe Baretti - together with display cases showing letters and other interesting artifacts. Johnson enjoyed the long friendship with Sir Joshua Reynolds, who painted numerous portraits of him, copies of many to be seen here in the various rooms.

After three floors and six rooms, one arrives at the top floor and beholds the attic - with reverence, when one knows the stupendous nature of what was achieved here. The space where the eight years labour was performed that made its author 'Dictionary Johnson' runs the width of the house with plenty of light from ample windows. This labour-of-love dictionary steadied the English language for a hundred years, settling definitions and usage at a time use of the language was just becoming worldwide. Here at stand-up desks his six assistants, five Scotsmen and one Englishman toiled; not all at the same time, some coming and going during the long haul of the enterprise. They were transcribing, cutting and pasting, copying out the words Johnson had underlined and the definitions he had arrived at, preparing the vast work to go to the printer sheet by sheet.

A price was to be paid however. Assistance expected, especially from the wealthy Earl of Chesterfield, was not forthcoming and Johnson went through a long period of fatigue, ill health, many disappointments and bereavement. But he completed his task in spite of all the adversity and at last, after more than ten years in the house, in the spring of 1759 the writer had decided to move on. No.17 Gough Square had served its purpose.

John Bennett

Contributed by Maggie Adams, with acknowledgement to Gay Lights Books, San Francisco. Her appreciation of its writer, Malcolm Lowry (1909-57) will follow in the next issue of EHA Bulletin. He lived only to accomplish his masterpiece, the novel Under the Volcano, and when he had success ended his own life.

"Mixed mode messages" from our objective/subjective confusion.
Alex Hill implied, with general agreement, that only a small fraction of the ideas as described by Raymond Carlisle were understood within the Association. Raymond suggested that the reason was at least partly the fact that they had been presented, mainly in editorials, in dribs and drabs throughout the 50 odd issues of the Bulletin. Raymond promised to add the gist of these presentations to those of others in the booklet "Combined Humanism in Ealing". Two or three of those present said they would be ordering copies although the price could have been more honestly stated as £2 rather than £1.99 they thought.

Contradictions
Correspondence between Arthur Atkinson, Raymond and Derek Hill (see Bulletin 52) was next discussed. John Bennett agreed, first of all - as did most present - with Arthur's statement that the matter was trivial and Maggie Adams agreed, again with most participants' support, that the conversation needed 'closing down'. Arthur however asked what else but our senses reveal to us the real world and Raymond replied, in a word, science. He went on to say that the bookcase at the end of the room seemed to appear to his senses. In acted rhetoric each member present was asked if they agreed with that impression. If, Raymond continued, the answers had all been 'no' - and he did not suspect any collusion - then he would seriously regard himself as suffering hallucination. This was to illustrate the dominant role of human culture in the interpretation of all our senses.

Next Derek's article (see Bulletin 52) was considered and Alex was supported in his saying that the editor's footnotes did not constitute an adequate defence of Ealing Humanism because atheism was at stake (see 'Letter to the Editor' in this Bulletin). Within humanism as a whole, however, atheistic humanism was at most only one of two main types and within the British Humanist Association the two types were represented under the designations 'atheist' and 'agnostic'.

Atheism dated back, according to dictionaries - Derek's favoured authority - to Ancient Greece when Socrates was accused of atheism in respect of the gods of Athens. Our modern use of the word seems to go back to the 18 hundreds. The renaissance humanists anyway, such as Thomas Moore and Erasmus, saw themselves as Christian Humanists. Raymond inclined to opposing religious belief in general rather than just theism although he had come to this view only after attending Coffee Mornings. Initially he had inclined to the view of Julian Huxley (who had introduced the word 'agnostic') in promoting Religious Humanism. At their year 2000 annual conference at Brunel University the British Humanist Association audience had voted by only a narrow margin that the adjective religious was not appropriate to humanism. J.D. Stewart, president before the name change to BHA, also advocated inclusion of Humanism along with religious beliefs. (According to Raymond it is science - better 150 years late than never - which by now should be replacing post-Darwin religious belief.)

Latinus resurgens
Reporting a conversation in Latin on the tube, John Bennett observed that the language was making a comeback at sixth-form levels although others maintained the traditional 3 main modern languages - French, German, Spanish - remained as a preferred first addition to English for GCSE purposes. Classical Latin and Greek had been two of the three Oxford Greats. Charles Rudd confirmed their continued significance there alongside Philosophy; he however had studied the Classics Tripos at Cambridge and not Greats at Oxford.
The phrase ad hominem had been used, and explained to Raymond, earlier in the day by Derek . . . in defending him from what he considered was an unjustified criticism.