Boost for Legal Humanist marriages - BHA campaign.

MP Lorely Burt, Equalities spokeswoman for the Lib. Dems. tabled a Commons motion calling on the Government to change the law to make humanist weddings legal, as in Scotland. Read the motion and check here if your MP has signed it!
If they haven't you can e.mail them here.

More about the BHA campaign here.

Government E.petition, click here to go to the page to sign.

Correspondance with MP Mr. Peter Kilfoyle regarding Humanist Ceremonies - click here.

Update: BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day

The BBC does not allow humanist or other non-religious reflections on Radio 4's Thought for the Day and is committed to keeping the slot religious.

Both BHA member Lord Harrison of Chester and Jonathan Bartley of Ekklesia (the Christian think tank with which the BHA has worked on issues like creationism), himself a contributor to Thought for The Day, made the case on the Today programme for including humanist contributors.
NEW!
The Humanist Society of Scotland have once again decided to record their own “Thought for the World” podcasts.

Faith Schools

See our dedicated page on Humanism for Schools

Anti-discrimination Regulations

Welcome news as both Houses approve the Sexual Orientation Regs.

The church continued to fight against the new regs. banning discrimination against gays and lesbians in the provision of goods & services.

Which means that the Catholic church will be required to consider gay couples in adoption.

Guardian article.

PRESS RELEASE
Children of Merseyside non-believers excluded from fair secondary school selection
27 th March 2007
by Cath Bore

Liverpool Humanist Group has discovered that children whose parents have no religious faith are excluded from secondary school selection. This is despite all schools – whether faith schools, or not – being paid for by the tax payer – whether they have a religious belief or not.

While many churches are closing and attendance diminishing, the city's schooling is dominated by religious organisations. The selection process is biased against those of no faith.

Liverpool parent and Liverpool Humanist Group member Peter McKenna finds he and other humanists are refused access to the majority of secondary schools in the city. Peter says, “With Church of England schools, places are first offered to non-Christian faiths before those of no religious faith. The Catholic schools have long lists, with children of no faith at the bottom if they are mentioned at all.”  

In addition, Liverpool Humanist Group has also uncovered evidence that those of no faith are also discriminated against in regular community schools. Peter has seen prejudice in the 'secular' system as well. ”Children who are seen to require a single-sex school because it is a requirement of their religion are given priority over children living near the school, and even children with an older sibling at the school. It is every bit as important to me that my children are able to stay with siblings and local community, as any religious "requirement"; my secular values have been institutionally deemed to be of less value than religious one,” he reports.

Liverpool Humanist Group views the biased selection and admission process as a basic human rights issue and a glaring injustice. Those of no faith have no choice, are explicitly excluded from schools that all of society, whatever their beliefs, contribute towards financially.

Liverpool Humanist Group was established in October 2005.
Website: www.liverpoolhumanists.co.uk

'Humanism is the belief that we can live good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs. Humanists make sense of the world using reason, experience and shared human values. We seek to make the best of the one life we have by creating meaning and purpose for ourselves. We take responsibility for our actions and work with others for the common good.' British Humanist Association 2003  

BHA Report Launch: Quality and Equality: Human Rights, Public Services and Religious Organisations - Nov. 2008.

Summary: Proposed public service reforms risk discrimination against employees and service users and negative effects on social cohesion.

The British Humanist Association (BHA) has announced the launch of a major new report into the contracting out of public services to religious organisations. The launch of the report is being supported by the TUC and its conclusions endorsed by public figures including Lord Warner, former minister at the Department of Health.

The report's findings demonstrate that there is no evidence that religious organisations offer any distinctive benefits to the supply and provision of public services and actually that the Government's clear policy objective of expanding the role of religious organisations within the public services runs the risk of lowering standards, increasing inequalities, introducing 'parallel services' and damaging social cohesion.

The research warns of the dangers of discrimination against staff not protected by Employment Equality Regulations pertaining to religion or belief or sexual orientation because of the exemptions that religious organisations have from equality legislation, and of potential barriers to accessing public services for the general public.

Hanne Stinson, BHA Chief Executive, said 'We are publishing Quality and Equality to draw attention to our concerns about the current policy to make religion a central feature in the provision and delivery of a wide range of public services. Through the report, we want to make clear our position that the most fair and most inclusive services - for service users of all faiths and none - are secular services. The report sets out the problems for employees and service users, the risks of discrimination and inequality, the damage to social cohesion and the infringements on human rights, which will arise from the Government's policy of contracting out public services to religious organisations. We are calling on the Government to address these concerns.'

Polly Toynbee, President of the BHA, said 'It cannot be right that any provider of public services is permitted by law to discriminate in employment policies or in the manner in which it provides statutory, state funded public services.'

Quality and Equality calls for secular and inclusive services and recommends a more transparent tendering process for religious organisations contracted into public service supply and delivery. In addition, it highlights the need for legislative change to ensure that organisations providing public services:

a. could not discriminate between service users on grounds of 'religion or belief', or on any other grounds;
b. must respect the human rights of service users;
c. have equality-based employment policies, so that no one is privileged for a position because of her/his religion or belief, her/his sexual orientation, or on any other irrelevant ground.

Quality and Equality: Human Rights, Public Services and Religious Organisations can be downloaded from the BHA website at http://tinyurl.com/25w2hb

An executive summary can be downloaded at http://tinyurl.com/3a4497

Review
Ken Ham visit to Liverpool, March 2008

Mr Ham invoked the Garden of Eden, Noah's Flood and the universe being only 6000 years old without providing a shred of evidence for his claims, aside from the Bible. He stated that scientists start with the presupposition that there is no God whereas creationists start from the position that there is a God and view the evidence through their respective lenses.

There was quite an amusing video clip showing the different approaches taken by a creationist and an atheist scientist to the same dinosaur fossil: "Bob says that this fossil was formed after the corpse was covered in sediment from a rising river hundreds of millions of years ago. I on the other hand say it was covered by Noah's Flood 4,300 years ago, like it says in the Bible. You see, we have different perspectives on exactly the same evidence." Right.

There were also the predictable ad-hominem attacks against Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins. He portrayed Darwin's "Descent of Man" as a racist manifesto that divides humans into different species according to their colour, with Aborigines as the closest human descendants of apes.

Atheists generally were denounced as having no morals, and abortion and gay marriage were repeatedly flagged up as representing what is wrong with our culture.

There were two points in the talk where I was genuinely offended. The first was his dissection of young people's rejection of religion. According to his graphs, most teenagers walk away from religion by the end of high school because they are "asking too many questions"(!?) This, of course, is the fault of the non-literal interpretation of the Bible by school teachers and needs to be changed right now.

The second shock came as he addressed the contradiction of a loving God with the existence of evil. No, God does not allow evil for it's eventual good to the human race. No, we shouldn't all have faith and hope for a better future. Instead, we are all paying for the original sin of Adam eating that damn apple.

Whilst I visibly winced in my seat, I had to admire the guy for dispensing with the mental gymnastics of theodicy and his sheer balls to blame the Holocaust on every member of the human race whether they were involved or not.

The new pro-creationism film "Expelled" was mentioned and highly recommended. I haven't seen it myself, but there's been a great deal of web blogging as well as a discussion between Richard Dawkins and P Z Myers with regard to the latters, erm... expulsion from the premiere:

Link to Dawkins web site: Discussion between Dawkins & PZ Myers on his expulsion from premier.

All in all, a very edifying experience and one which I could rant on about for hours. I couldn't bring myself to speak to Mr Ham on the way out. There would be no point. His views are too entrenched that it would have been like banging my (already throbbing) head against a brick wall. I understand now why Richard Dawkins and other prominent evolutionary scientists have a policy of not debating with or giving interviews to creationists.

I maintain my original view that secularists have to keep an eye on these kinds of characters to avoid creation "theory" entering the classrooms. Mr Ham's views would be comical if they weren't such a sinister cover for anti-abortion, anti-gay rights and general conservative bigotry.
Well, I think that's me done, although my spleen is still very much under strain.

Edward Turner

As expected the Ken Ham lecture was well worth attending... for all the wrong reasons! I have rarely felt so depressed and sapped of the will to live.

There was a pretty high attendance with the main theatre full up. Word had gone out to all the evangelical churches in the region, and there was a mix of gender and age with people turning up with their families to "get educated" as I heard the person next to me say.

There were two lectures, lasting roughly an hour and a quarter and 45 minutes respectively with a 20 minute break where you could buy ‘Answers In Genesis’ literature. The first lecture, "Biblical Relevance" was on the importance of interpreting Genesis 1 - 11 literally. I can only describe the second lecture as a crash course on manipulating scientific evidence to fit the Bible.

To his credit, Mr Ham is clearly an experienced and engaging public speaker. Rather like Joseph Goebbels. His arguments will surely strengthen the opinions and resolve of believing Christians who are suggestible to his message, but anyone with a hint of scepticism would find it utterly absurd.

He repeated the same points (and PowerPoint slides!) over and over, set up arguments (straw men) without answering them, delivered ad hominem attacks on evolutionary scientists, manipulated scientific evidence to show that Noah's flood was half plausible and engaged the audience to repeat single words like "J-e-s-u-s" at regular intervals. If you agree with his views, no doubt you'd lap it up.

Essentially Mr Ham's approach is that the Bible is the infallible, unalterable word of God full stop. There is no such thing as neutrality. If you're not pro-Jesus, you're anti-Jesus. As a Christian you cannot argue with a scientist from a zero starting point; you have to argue from the Bible. "If the Big Bang and evolution is right, then there would have been millions of years of death without sin and redemption". Errr... yeah.

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