Illustration from the Scientific American

On behalf of Ealing Humanist Association the writer and a colleague attended the above conference, which was held a few doors away from our monthly meeting venue. The aim of the Network is to 'empower' the local voluntary and community sector, and to be an open and democratic organisation in which every group has an equal voice and an equal vote. ECN is open to all voluntary and community groups in Ealing (including Southall) and during the last year membership increased from 230 to 307 groups. Priorities include partnership and network development, neighbourhood renewal and community skills training.

During the next year ECN, in line with other community networks, will be introducing a new single Community Programme which partly involves bringing together three existing funding schemes, namely, the Community Empowerment Fund, Neighbourhood Renewal Community Chest and Community Learning Chest. The main point is that ECN will be given much more freedom to decide how much to spend in different areas. It will also work more directly with residents and community groups to increase their involvement in local decisions which affect their neighbourhood.

What does all this mean for Ealing Humanist Association? Well, by being a member and appearing in the printed ECN literature, we increase our profile. We have also submitted an application for funding and although we have a lot of competition from larger organisations I note that ECN has Community Chest monies of £236,231 for the year 2004/2005 (annual report 2003/4).

As regards the network conference, it was well organised and there was a friendly atmosphere. In a room separate from the main conference hall there were table displays from about fifteen local community organisations ranging from Friends of the Earth and Relate, to Ealing Community Transport and Ethnic Community Advisors Service. Ealing Humanist Association had a table in the display. We had various publications and leaflets on Humanism together with a sheet explaining the aims of our Association, and copies of our latest Bulletin. At various times during the conference there was an opportunity for networking and visiting the different stands in the display room. We had many interesting enquiries from other delegates and information was exchanged. This writer had a friendly sparring match with the local vicar: result JB 2, vicar 1!

All in all, a useful and interesting day - by association in any of the publicity our profile would be raised and that is of course to be welcomed.

John Bennett

An interesting summary (above) to an article appearing in the May issue of Scientific American asks whether the big bang really was the beginning, or whether the universe existed before then. It is certainly about time that physicists and philosophers recognised that the concept of "a beginning" involves a mystery which is never likely to be solved. It was no problem for our ancestors who were satisfied with the biblical notion of "a beginning", and now we have to try to sort out the assumptions on which it is based. Clearly, if we conceive of "a beginning" as the work of God, we have descended into the realm of magic, and anything goes. The mystery remains. The writer of the article does not help us by speaking of the "amorphous energy deposited in space". When philosophers debate these matters they should be careful to examine their basic assumptions.

Arthur Atkinson

The May/June issue of Coventry and Warwickshire Humanist carries the article by John Gray¹ on which my comment - with the above title - was first made in the April issue of this Bulletin. Brian Nicol will talk about the ideas presented and we look forward to a report from their meeting in the next issue of C & W Humanist.

At a future meeting of the EHA Coffee Morning we might do well to re-address the topic ourselves. The challenging book by Tom Regan, or at least its review in the New Scientist referred to on page 9, could be the start-off point.

Charles Rudd in a letter 'To the Editor' of the May issue, EHA Bulletin, gave his impression that I subscribe to a belief that animals exist solely to serve humans, when I actually wrote - perhaps obscurely (EHA Bulletin issue 60 of April 2004) - only to dispute the counter-claim by John Gray. What I had in mind was that man himself has brought about animals who solely exist to serve humans, by his domestication of some score of (plant and) animal species. For humanists there is no reason to think this is true of the other animal species which, as Charles directly states, were not created for anyone's mystical worth, but evolved.

Further he asks whether I would support (similar, painless) experiments on mentally handicapped humans in order to advance medical research. Is it likely? My point over discussion of the rights of the sufferer, is the drawing of a distinction - in matters of a generalised stewardship - between man and, pets excepted, other animals.

Some defence, for not having been more explicit, would be my extended attempt at dramatic impression. Maybe though I could have kept it down to one sentence only. How about the following? John Gray wrote¹ "In a truly civilised society all such experiments would be prohibited." My version has it "In a truly mixed society of animals, including subjective humans with an identity problem, all such experiments would be prohibited."

Where the law comes in
(with acknowledgements to Private Eye)

Arthur Atkinson

This issue's 'Thought for the month' (number 15) is what many humanists would regard as an attack on the private world of religious people who hold on to their God perception. Perceptions are subjective and normally unsusceptible to logic. Logic - collective human experience - can only be used in an objective situation. Religious people though are maintaining their subjective option and this in itself appears valuable, whatever the conclusions. It seems probable that it is only by exercising such options that we avoid losing them altogether. There are even objective grounds for saying the make-beliefs may be good, not bad, for them. Being bad for society depends on how confidential they remain. See below for proposals on the latter aspect.

Our government has recently been urged to provide more publicly-funded Muslim schools and to make non-Muslim schools adapt to the needs of Muslim pupils. These quaint folk want single sex classes, prayer rooms, compulsory religious education for 14-16 year-olds and suggest there should be “religious awareness” training for school staff and governors.

This initiative on the part of Muslims should surely prompt our legislators, once and for all, to deny public funding for any form of religions education. Furthermore, it should prompt them to remove any trace of religion from the national curriculum. Surely they now realise the intrinsic dangers of the sort of education that perpetuates religious faith. Alas, in reality our wise, noble yet blinkered legislators appear to be ignorant of the way in which religious education acts as a detonator for social unrest. So, as usual, we will not be expecting any real progress in this matter.

Religious education in school can have a profound controlling effect on an innocent captive audience; the minds of poor unsuspecting pupils are distorted by proselytisers of all sorts as they expound a theology culled from ancient writings claimed to have a supernatural origin. Nowadays, the Anglican Church has fallen into a pleasantly moribund condition, which is easily recognised by young people as pretty meaningless. Those pupils who encounter religion in our state schools are generally indifferent to the material doled out to them by teachers who, in many cases, are equally indifferent. However, while school religion of this sort is recognisably meaningless, it is not necessarily harmless to the formative process of the young mind. Moreover, perhaps things are changing imperceptibly as we detect the rumblings of a renewed emphasis on biblical fundamentalism even in the bastion of a genteel Anglican Church.

Other Christian religions are far more assertive in their teachings and continue to catechize children with mediaeval theological notions as if the enlightenment had never occurred. We are also only too aware that Muslims take their curious religious beliefs very seriously indeed. Subjecting youngsters to these quaint ways of thinking is a form of mental constraint which destroys the freethinking beauty of the child’s mind, so full of innocent hows and whys. We owe it to our children to allow them to ‘free-think’ their way through life, not to constrain them at an early stage, and not to answer their hows and whys with meaningless quotations from ‘holy’ books. The time is ripe for religious education to be declared as a serious form of child abuse.

While heartily disagreeing with the priests of all persuasions who preach their widely differing divinely inspired “truths”, it is easy to tolerate their presence among us - in direct proportion to the degree to which they keep their curious beliefs to themselves! It remains almost impossible to be tolerant of their insistence upon taking the indoctrination process from the confines of their own set minds into the schoolroom. Even when indoctrination remains a discreet family affair it may still be considered an extremely harmful influence in the nurturing of that delicate entity, the growing human mind.

School is where children learn about matters which, by and large, we can agree to accept as representing the broad base of real human knowledge. The ancient books from which religious belief is derived teach profoundly different “truths” despite their separate claims to be the word of God. By including these beliefs in our school curriculum, we would be perpetuating one of the fundamental causes of conflict in the world. Surely, it must now be evident that religion has no place in the school at all.

Anthony Grayling, writing in The Times on 12th June 2004, spoke about this subject with his characteristic charm, erudition and profound common sense. He said, “The different faiths teach different “truths” which are, if one is honest about it, in conflict with one another. It is irresponsible to think that they all represent alternative routes to the same end, when as history painfully shows they inevitably lead to conflict. Society should not be funding potential future difficulties, but constructing a free, open, social space where differences are tolerated because each faith is obliged to be tolerant of others”. He observed that, “..faith is a private matter. If parents wish their children to be trained into their own beliefs from an early age, they should either do it themselves, or be prepared to pay for it. State-funded education should be rational, factual and neutral with respect to competing dogmas”. Grayling is right, faith is a private matter. But we might go a stage further and claim it to be so private that it should not be taught to children at all - not even in private schools. Of course, the faiths of the world are part of the history of the world and may legitimately be taught as such - just as we teach the Greek myths. But to teach religion at school as something to be believed in would be to declare that, “we have a truth that others reject”. Therein lies the problem. No viable system of morality can be derived from such an exclusive standpoint.

There is not a shred of evidence to support any of the quaint beliefs which are described as “religion”. Furthermore, there is ample evidence that such beliefs all too frequently act as catalysts for social unrest and, owing to the force of their sectarian divisiveness, rarely bring the faithful into an understanding of true moral and ethical values.

ARC

Under this title David Thomas writes in NewScientist 2004 May 22 to review the book "Empty Cages: Facing the challenge of animal rights" by Tom Regan. His statements include:

Discussion ranged over a number of topics, and was not marked by much dissension.

• Voluntary euthanasia cropped up quite early, with news in this morning's papers of the Mental Incapacity Bill [see e.g. the Independent, and the excellent editorial on p.36].

• The Government should make it clear that religion is not on the curriculum².

• Reciprocity, or rather the lack of it, e.g. when one attempts to buy property in certain countries [or unequal visa requirements].

• The trend towards coeducation in Oman: the girls work harder too at their studies - sounds familiar.

• Sharia law as an optional alternative in [parts of?] Canada - not the chopping off of hands for theft but less drastic matters. I hadn't heard of this.

• The EU constitution, much debated in Brussels this weekend: unsuccessful proposal to get the word "Christian" into it [exact wording?].

• The eruv: Jewish practice of marking off an area with poles and wires and natural boundaries (where they exist) to create a zone in which orthodox Jews are relieved of their strict obligation to observe the Sabbath. Not all of us knew about the one in Barnet.

We also managed some "business" items at the beginning - leave the idealistic young Japanese (we hope not a front for one of the new religions) to contact us if they wish to; EHA library with its discordant catalogues; the EHA statement published in the last bulletin.

Again, thanks to Maggie for her genial hospitality.

Charles Rudd [with afterthoughts in square brackets]