Humanism, atheism and other freedoms

It seems there’s a belief among certain extremist factions in the UK’s Christian community that they are being discriminated against.

According to the people behind the new (and hilariously titled) ‘Not Ashamed’ campaign, their views and needs are being ignored in public life and elsewhere.

It is, of course, baseless paranoia. Actually, it’s probably not even that: it’s a cynical and mendacious attempt to portray Christians as an oppressed group. After all, such groups tend to garner sympathy and special treatment.

As if 2,000 years of power and special treatment weren’t enough.

In the UK, Christianity already enjoys privileges and benefits out of all proportion to its importance or worth to society. Just to give one example: we have unelected bishops able to wield votes in the House of Lords purely by dint of their pointy hats.

It may be that some of those behind this campaign – such as Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury – genuinely believe themselves to be marginalised. Clearly, they haven’t stopped to consider whether they should be marginalised.

Religion is a personal matter. No faith – whether it’s Christianity, Islam or Jedi-ism – should form the basis of any kind of public policy. Nor should people be given special privileges purely on the basis of their superstititions.

It’s not discrimination these people are experiencing – merely an end to their unwarranted privilege. They are not accustomed to being a marginal group. They are not used to being treated like everyone else.

After two millennia of grasping on to power – of being able to control and manipulate – they suddenly find themselves a dwindling minority, unable to make themselves heard because no-one is interested in the silly things they want to say. If they feel powerless it’s because there is no reason for them to have power.

This is not discrimination – it’s simply a genuine reflection of their irrelevance.

It’s time for these Christians to engage in some deep reflection and face up to a future in which their faith assumes its proper place in society – as a sometimes quaint, mostly weird and always irrelevant fringe activity.

The UK Government is looking to amend the law to allow organisations to discriminate against their workers on grounds such as sexual orientation and marital status. But these organisations will be allowed to act in this bullying and prejudicial way only if they are founded on arcane, unverifiable, supernatural beliefs.

The ability to harrass and oppress workers, or discriminate against potential new hires, will continued to be denied to any organisation whose attitudes are founded on rational, modern principles.

As the British Humanist Association points out, the UK’s Equality Bill already provides some scope for religious organisations to behave in an unreasonable and unfair manner. However, there is a possibility that they will be given even more leeway in applying their prejudices in the workplace if proposed amendments to the Bill go through.

Some commentators have seen this as just another piece of fallout from New Labour’s multiculturalism. It’s certainly an example of how religion enjoys a privileged place in society. Attitudes and actions that would be seen as immoral and unconscionable in any reasonable society are automatically excused when they are given the cloak of protection by religion. Identical behaviour would be criticised or banned if it stemmed instead from political or philosophical beliefs.

For example, a religious organisation may be allowed to fire someone who turns out to be gay, if homosexuality offends their religious sensitivities. But would we tolerate the firing of a gay person by, say, a far-right political group?

This comes at the same time that the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) has appointed a bunch of ‘faith advisers’ to advise on “the big issues facing society such as the economy, parenting, achieving social justice and tackling climate change.” No-one has explained how being religious has any bearing on these issues, or why these people are better qualified than those whose knowledge is based on, say, facts and research rather than superstition and mythology.

And while the current Government has affirmed its support for the right of humanists to have equal status with religious believers in the Equality Bill, the Conservatives (who will probably form the next government later this year) are trying to weaken the status of non-believers. They want to change the meaning of the term ‘religion or belief’ by removing the words ‘and philosophical’ in the definition of belief, which, in the current Bill, reads: ‘”belief” means any religious or philosophical belief’.

Given the state support for faith schools and its appointment of faith-based organisations to carry out work that has nothing to do with religion, this all points to a worrying trend. Not only is religious prejudice granted a free ride in society, it is also getting special treatment in the halls of power.

Far from religion providing an answer to society’s ills, it might be a significant part of the problem. These are conclusions you could draw from a new report.

The report, by Gregory Paul, is summarised by Sue Blackmore in the Guardian. Blackmore is justly cautious about many of Paul’s more contentious conclusions. But they are nonetheless based on some very strong correlations that will make troubling reading for those who believe morals and a virtuous society can stem only from religion.

And they are even more worrying for those who live in the US. Here’s a little montage of what Blackmore says:

I have often quoted his earlier, 2005, research which showed strong positive correlations between nations’ religious belief and levels of murder, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse and other indicators of dysfunction. It seemed to show, at the very least, that being religious does not necessarily make for a better society. … In this latest research Paul measures “popular religiosity” for developed nations, and then compares it against the “successful societies scale” (SSS) which includes such things such as homicides, the proportion of people incarcerated, infant mortality, sexually transmitted diseases, teenage births and abortions, corruption, income inequality, and many others. In other words it is a way of summing up a society’s health. The outlier again and again is the US with a stunning catalogue of failures. On almost every measure the US comes out worse than any other 1st world developed nation, and it is also the most religious … he argues that religion is not a deep-seated or inherited tendency. It is a crutch to which people turn when they are under extreme stress, “a natural invention of human minds in response to a defective habitat”. Americans, he says, suffer appalling stress and anxiety due to the lack of universal health care, the competitive economic environment, and huge income inequalities, and under these conditions belief in a supernatural creator and reliance on religious observance provides relief.

The report itself is here (PDF).

A Guardian article about how marriage rates are plummeting contained one minor but, for me, highly significant detail. Even among those people who do say ‘I do’, an ever-reducing proportion of them are doing so in church.

According to the article:

…perhaps understandably, given the number of empty pews across the nation’s churches each Sunday, far fewer weddings include a religious ceremony nowadays. The number of couples saying their vows before God has halved since 1991.

Now, an apologist for religion might claim this as evidence of increasing godlessness. They will say that it’s evidence of moral decline. That is, of course, nonsense.

What it shows is that many of those people who did get married in church, both prior to and after 1991, did so for reasons that have nothing to do with religion or faith. Many of them, in fact, were almost certainly functional atheists.

I’ve known many people with no real faith – people who can’t be bothered to think about god from one year to the next and, if pushed, would confess that they are at most vaguely deistic or agnostic – who insisted on getting married in church.

Why? Because it’s traditional. Churches provide a picturesque and appropriately serious setting for the couple’s most important day. A wedding is an event and requires a suitable stage. Many people get married in a specific church because it’s part of the local community’s infrastructure, or because their parents got married there. I’ve known non-believing people to get their children baptised for similar reasons.

So why are people now turning away from the church? Well, the date of 1991 is significant. A new law was introduced around that time that allowed weddings to take place in approved locations other than registry offices and churches. Hotels, castles, stately homes – all manner of beautiful and impressive locations applied for and received licences that allowed marriage ceremonies to be carried out there. The only main provisos were that the location had to be a permanent structure (so still no weddings in hot air balloons) and must be accessible to the public.

Suddenly, couples discovered that they could have all the benefits of a church wedding (beautiful surroundings, etc) without any of that religious nonsense.

I’m sure that, even among those people still getting married in church, there are many who are not really believers but are doing so for the reasons already explained. Many churches, after all, still provide an attractive atmosphere. And there are plenty of people who are, at heart, deeply traditional, without being genuinely religious.

I’ve said before, and will say again, that the apparent religiosity of a society is, in many important ways, an illusion. People will continue to hang on to the rites and ceremonies of religion long after true belief has vanished. This is a cultural phenomenon, not a spiritual one.

There’s an excellent article – My Christmas message? There’s probably no God – by the reliably feisty Polly Toynbee over at the Guardian website. Aside from being a leading journalist, Ms Toynbee is the president of the inestimable British Humanist Association (BHA – of which I am a proud member).

The piece is largely about the disestablishment of the church in the UK – a fine ambition but one not likely to be realised any time soon. For those who live in more enlightened countries with regard to religion, one might need to explain that the ‘establishment’ of the Church of England refers to the fact that it is the official state faith. And this has greater implications than the choice of carols sung at the House of Commons Xmas party.

For example, although there has been some slight reform of Parliament’s upper house, the Lords, there are still 26 unelected bishops who sit – and vote – in the house purely by dint of their cassocks. And the very existence of an established church provides ammunition for those who would perpetuate the myth of Britain being a ‘Christian’ country.

And yet, though I (and, as it happens, many church leaders) would like to see disestablishment, the fact that the UK has a state religion bothers me less than the more surreptitious ways in which religion is creeping into government business.

Given that ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair was so cosy with soon to be ex-President George W Bush, one might not be surprised to find that – following the American model – faith-based organisations are playing an ever greater role in government programmes in the UK.

Such faith-based initiatives have been a disaster for the US. For instance, there are countless examples of evangelists with no training or experience running such things as drug counselling programmes. Usually, the hapless victims who attend them do so under duress – usually at the order of a court. And the so-called ‘counselling’ often consists of no more than religious indoctrination.

In the UK, both Blair and his successor, the equally god-bothering Gordon Brown, have seen to it that organisations with religious agenda have been given preferential treatment in winning contracts to carry on what should be government work. There are more details at the BHA site, which explains:

Faith communities already have privileged access to Government. But the Government also wants to involve them in policy making, and to expand their role in the provision of services in the community. And why doesn’t Human Rights Law apply when public services are contracted out to charities?

Depressingly, President-Elect Barack Obama has stated that he wants to increase the use of faith-based initiatives. And there is no sign that this trend is abating in the UK.

The BHA is highly active in campaigning against this. It has the respect of politicians and the more progressive and intelligent members of the clergy. And I would recommend that anyone who lives in or cares about the UK should become a member.

What the UK needs isn’t just disestablishment but a genuine separation of church and state – along the lines of that in France, rather than the somewhat poor impementation of the principle in the US. The state should and must represent all citizens. Faiths are, by their very nature, exclusionary and discriminatory and they have no place in government business.

Deciding what constitutes ‘discrimination’ isn’t always an easy matter.But an employment tribunal in London has just made a very wise decision.

Lillian Ladele was a registrar with Islington Council, in North London. One of her duties was conducting marriages – and, with recent changes to the law, this now extends to civil unions for gay and lesbian couples.

But there was a problem. Ladele is a Christian, and she decided that her beliefs did not allow her to carry out such unions. She refused to perform gay weddings. Islington Council fired her.

She took the council to an employment tribunal, which sided with her. They found that she had been discriminated against on religious grounds. But the case went to appeal, and the employment appeal tribunal rightly concluded that it was not the council but Ladele herself who was guilty of discrimination.

The duties of a registrar are defined by law. Ladele’s religious beliefs are her own, personal choice. If these prevent her from carrying out the duties of a registrar then, clearly, she is not competent to fulfill that role. When the law – and therefore the duties of a registrar – changed, Ladele should have asked herself whether she should continue in that role. It was a matter for her personal conscience. What she decided to do was to attempt to remain in her job and force her views on others by saying that she would not carry out that job properly. This was a selfish and unreasonable decision by her.

She claims that she never intended to deny the rights of gay people. But that was precisely what she was doing. They do, indeed, have a right to a civil union. She has no right to deprive them of this merely because of her personal beliefs. This is not a religious issue – religion has no place in such government business. This is a civil liberties issue and Ladele is clearly guilty of eroding the civil liberties in Islington.

The council is not guiltless in all this. The tribunal found that they had handled the situation badly. Nevertheless, the key issue has been successfully resolved: it is now clear that a government functionary does not have the right to discriminate against people purely of the basis of that functionary’s private and irrelevant beliefs. A victory for common sense.

Watford Area Humanists are attempting to have Darwin Day – 12th February – made a Bank Holiday in the UK (that’s a national holiday for you foreigners).

The day marks Darwin’s birthday. But in addition to celebrating the man, the Humanists feel we should also celebrate his achievement – arguably the greatest advance in knowledge that humans have achieved. (Okay, so physicists might have a different take on this, but it’s certainly up there with the greats like relatively and quantum theory.)

The group has created a petition on the UK Government’s ‘No.10′ website. So add your voice to this call for reason. Go to: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Darwins-day/

No doubt some crusty old businessmen (and religious nutjobs dishonestly disguising their agenda under the mask of business concerns) will moan that the last thing the UK economy needs is another ‘wasted’ day when no work is done. But there’s a simple solution to this: get rid of one of the many religion-based Bank Holidays. Hardly anyone can remember what they’re about anyway. And why is modern society still celebrating, en masse, the fanciful notions of a minority? If we’re all going the celebrate together, let’s celebrate something that really means something and affects us all.

Just how much are fundamentalist and bigoted religious views driving Sarah Palin’s bid for the VP slot?

And given that Palin has now been found, by an enquiry, to have acted unethically, can she be trusted in such a powerful position?

The National Union of Journalists has released an important new film about police harrassment of photojournalists. It’s required viewing for anyone who cares about freedom of the press or civil liberties in general.

A number of organisations have come together to create Accord – a campaigning coalition dedicated to making school a place of learning and discovery, not an excuse for religious indoctrination.

As I outlined in ‘Faith schools: the wrong issue‘, there really should be no place for religious practices in education. Yet, under current government plans, the schoolroom is set to become a place of ever greater faith-based discrimination.

Accord has been established to counter this. According to the press release from the British Humanist Association (BHA), one of its key members, it will campaign for:

• non-discriminatory admissions and employment policies in all state-funded schools
• an objective, fair and balanced syllabus for education about religious and non-religious beliefs to be pursued in all state-funded schools
• all state-funded schools to be made accountable under a single inspection regime for RE, Personal, Social and Health Education and Citizenship
• the provision of inclusive and inspiring assemblies in the place of compulsory acts of worship in all state funded schools

The current members of the coalition are: The Association of Teachers and Lecturers, The British Humanist Association, Ekklesia, Hindu Academy, The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, The Socialist Education Association, and Women Against Fundamentalism.

You can find full information about the group here: http://www.accordcoalition.org.uk/