Humanism, atheism and other freedoms

We are wearily familiar with the way certain religionists attempt to impose their ideas on others. You don’t have to travel back to the days of the Inquisition to see this happening. You can find examples in most societies today – sometimes in overt forms, sometimes in more subtle ways.

It doesn’t come more overt than the terrorism of Islamic extremists. That’s the dangerous end of the spectrum – dangerous, that is, to life and limb. The same goes for loony evangelicals willing to murder doctors because they believe everyone must agree with an attitude to abortion guided by antique superstition.

But what of those subtle forms? Well, how about a pharmacist who makes it difficult for you to get the medicines you need?

The UK’s General Pharmaceutical Council (GPC) is currently drawing up new regulatory standards for the profession, covering areas such as confidentiality, education and ethics. You wouldn’t think that issues of faith would be a factor here. Alas, myths and prejudices formed thousands of years ago continue to affect our daily lives, however much we like to believe we live in a rational age.

It seems that some pharmacists like to bring their prejudices to work with them. There have been cases, for example, of pharmacists refusing to supply patients with the morning-after pill, in spite of doctors having prescribed it legally and in the best interests of the patients.

I’m not suggesting that only rationalists and humanists may become pharmacists. I’m simply saying that, when you’re a pharmacist, your duty and obligation to society must override any faith you hold, not the other way around.

The British Humanist Association (BHA) is participating in the GBC’s consultation process. The BHA’s stand is, as always, very reasonable:

If pharmacists are allowed to refuse certain services to patients because they believe it conflicts with their beliefs to supply such services, it should never be the case that those accessing services should suffer. At a minimum, it should be expected that the patient or the public be referred to someone who can meet their needs – but only if this would not cause them any distress or particular inconvenience.

It’s not just pharmacists who sometimes encounter a conflict between their social responsibilities and their mystical beliefs. In the past, we’ve seen examples of registrars employed by local councils refusing to conduct civil union (ie, marriage) ceremonies for same-sex couples. In fact, one can easily draw up a list that might also include doctors and other medical professionals, government functionaries and other posts where people perform important tasks for members of the public. These are posts where the performance of the job may have profound effects on people’s lives. And they are jobs in which religion plays no part, per se.

So, should religionists be able to decide whether to carry out their job functions based on their faith?

Of course not. That’s a clear dereliction of duty, both in the strict context of the person’s employment and in the wider context of their duty to society. It is an imposition of their own, narrow beliefs on the people they should be serving.

So, what is a religionist with deep convictions to do? If, for example, a pharmacist genuinely believes that supplying a morning-after pill to a women is tantamount to the murder of a would-be baby, what is the right course of action?

It’s simple. Get another job.

Even better, don’t become a pharmacist in the first place. If you have deep-seated beliefs that make it difficult or impossible for you to carry out certain actions, don’t take a job that involves those actions. Dispensing contraceptives is a regular part of a pharmacist’s job. If your beliefs prevent you from doing that, then you are not fit to be a pharmacist. Civil unions are legal in the UK. If your faith stops you from conducting such ceremonies, you are not competent to be a registrar.

You can be religious and still be a pharmacist or registrar or hold some other post that impinges on people’s lives. Just recognise that your spiritual beliefs are a personal choice that have nothing to do with the job. So leave your faith out of it.

As one of the world’s more famous atheists, Bertrand Russell always had the knack of combining a brilliant intellect and profound insights with a startling clear expression of his ideas. Here’s a classic example.

I have a few favourite moments. He describes how he examined religious ideas and found no good reason to believe in them. When asked by the interviewer whether religion is useful to some people to help them through their lives, Russell says:

“If you can’t find out whether it’s true or whether it isn’t, you should suspend judgment. But it seems to me a fundamental dishonesty and fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it’s useful and not because you think it’s true.”

The interviewer then asks whether faith nevertheless provides people with a solid foundation for morality, to which Russell replies:

“They could probably be able to find a rational morality that they could live by if they dropped this irrational taboo morality that comes down from savage ages.”

The interviewer suggests that many people would be unable to do this for themselves and need something imposed on them from outside. Russell dismisses this with:

“What is imposed on you from outside is of no value.”

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.

Belief is justified and our faith must be true, religionists tell us, because of the beauty it inspires.

It’s an argument we hear often – that we have religion to thank for the treasures of da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Titian; the Masses, Passions and cantatas of Bach; and the monumental architecture of the Middle Ages.

It’s true that, in the 2,000 years or so since Jesus was said to preach his apocalyptic message, most art in the western world has been religious. But not all.

Pieter Breughel : peasant wedding

In painting, and even without venturing as near as the 20th Century, without even mentioning the Impressionists, there is much secular work to admire. As far back as the 16th Century, Brueghel the Elder painted ordinary people living ordinary lives. There was a strong humanist streak in the Dutch masters. And we honour Rembrandt especially for his portraits.

Most of Bach’s output was religious – he was, after all, employed specifically to churn out church music. Yet the Goldberg Variations were written to make a man more comfortable on sleepless nights.

Religion gave us towering cathedrals, but think of the great buildings of our age and see how many are churches. (The mega-churches of American evangelicals are, without exception, vulgar and tasteless expressions of ill-gotten wealth.)

Religion gave rise to great works because it was the church that held the wealth and the opportunity to patronise artists. Whatever else the church did, in terms of pastoral care, it certainly made sure it was itself comfortably well off. The church also wielded considerable influence over affairs of state and individuals’ lives.

So it was not religion that gave us these treasures – it was power.

In attempting to stem the tide of secularism, the faithful often resort to warning us about what we might lose. The implication is that there is some innate connection between the faith itself and what it has produced.

In the current issue of The Author, the journal of the Society of Authors, Michael Arditti writes a lament to modern literature’s lack of engagement in religious themes. He says:

Cranmer’s Prayer Book has played a greater part in framing our language than any other single source, including Shakespeare. Even the most diehard secularist would find himself hard-pressed to expunge religious idioms from his speech.

To which my answer would be, And your point is…?

That faith has resulted in great works of beauty, power and elegance is an accident of history. It does not mean that there is any intrinsic validity to faith. It does not mean that we cannot have works of equal majesty from other sources of inspiration.

You could argue that the stories of the Bible and the awe, wonderment and passion invoked by faith are what give rise to these creative masterpieces. But these sources of inspiration are easily replaced. The natural world at all levels of engagement – from simply gazing at a landscape to marvelling at the mysteries of quantum mechanics – have at least an equal power to move us.

At the same time, there is much to be said for artists engaging with their world on a more realistic level. Perhaps what Arditti doesn’t understand is that writers may have abandoned religious themes because they are irrelevant. Most writers want to explore the real world, not some arcane realm of fantasy (unless it’s to invent one themselves). It’s easy to be awe-struck by stories of miracles and supernatural phenomena. It takes more skill to find truth and beauty in our quotidian existence.

And so, by rejecting faith, we are not abandoning a source of beauty. We are seeking new and more meaningful sources.

Is god the product of our brains? A new documentary film seeks the answers.

Evolutionary studies have brought some bad news for certain types of evangelical Christian. According to new research, large broods lead to low-quality offspring, who then seek out low-quality mates.

Clearly, this is bad news for the Quiverfull movement. Adherents of this conservative, evangelical lifestyle promote large families as a way of populating the world with more Christians. Alas, it seems that what they may actually achieve is an increase in the world’s supply of idiots. Whether this is a good or bad thing for the continuation of the Christian faith will depend on your point of view.

The results of the research – which involved zebra finches – surprised the researchers, too. Scientists always believed that females of any species would always seek out the best possible males with which to mate. It turns out, however, that the female finches tended to mate with males of their own level. Low-quality females went for low-quality males – birds whose songs weren’t quite up to scratch or whose plumage was maybe a tad tatty.

Large broods have a tendency to result in larger numbers of low-quality females, because of the competition between siblings.

So where does this leave Quiverfull? Given that members of extremist cults tend towards intra-sect breeding, if not actual inbreeding, can one expect an inevitable decline in IQ levels among these Christian families?

As Eric Hoffer pointed out, hate is a major unifying factor in mass movements. And religions – even those that profess peace and love – are no exception.

In his book, The True Believer: thoughts on the nature of mass movements, Hoffer described how mass movements function through the suppression of individuality and independent thought. People who are unsatisfied with the present are brought together by an ideology that promises a better future. There are many mechanisms for bonding them into an effective whole: and one of those mechanisms is hate.

I was reminded of this when I read that a preacher in Arizona is praying – and encouraging his flock to pray – for the death of President Barack Obama. According to a report by Americans United:

The Rev. Steven Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church told his Tempe, Ariz., congregation he prays that Obama “dies and goes to hell.” In an Aug. 16 sermon that recently came to public attention, Anderson said, “If you want to know how I’d like to see Obama die, I’d like him to die of natural causes. I don’t want him to be a martyr, we don’t need another holiday. I’d like to see him die, like Ted Kennedy, of brain cancer.”

The racism is overt. The hate is painfully evident. The exact political agenda may be inferred but is, perhaps deliberately, less clear.

Anderson’s hate speech has been widely condemned. But it’s wrong to see it as an aberration. We might more properly view it as the violent eruption of a force that powers many mass movements.

Hoffer’s definition of ‘mass movements’ is fairly broad. The book was published in 1951, and so the horrors of European fascism – particularly the Nazis – and Japanese imperialism were fresh in the memory. Stalin was still in power. He delves further back, too, making frequent references, for example, to the French revolution. And he places religions – especially those of an evangelical or fundamentalist flavour – firmly alongside these other totalitarian and oppressive regimes. “The hammer and sickle and the swastika,” he wrote, “are in a class with the cross.”

The reasons for joining a movement are many, but commonly involve a conviction that the world as it stands is unbearably flawed. People who feel this way are, to use Hoffer’s term, the ‘frustrated’. They have no hope for the present. By joining a mass movement, they are able to slough off their unworthy selves, rid themselves of feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing, and find a new self-worth in the ambitions of a movement that promises a brighter future.

What the movement tells them is that change is required and cannot be achieved by gradual means. It requires a coup, a revolution, a jihad, mass exterminations, mass conversions, the absorption of all others into the corporate body, or perhaps a Second Coming. The movements’ leaders promise a hopeful future, often to be achieved by violent means: Christ, after all, claimed that the Apocalypse was at hand. (As it turned out, he was wrong – it’s been ‘at hand’ for two millennia now).

For the movement to be effective, its members must be united into a single entity: individual thought and action are destructive. Hoffer says of a movement’s members:

By renouncing individual will, judgment and ambition, and dedicating all their powers to the service of an eternal cause, they are at last lifted off the endless treadmill which can never lead them to fulfillment.

Hoffer lists a number of unifying agents of which the most powerful is hatred. This, Hoffer says, “springs more from self-contempt than from a legitimate grievance … That others have a just grievance against us is a more potent reason for hating them than that we have a just grievance against them.”

This is all more subtle than it sounds. For a start, the self-contempt may be effectively disguised. A convert who rejoices in the glory of the faith – a faith that may (consciously, at least, if not truthfully) preach peace and love – may not stop to think of what is at the root of their abnegation, of their surrendering to the cause. Sin, Hoffer insists, is a key concept in all mass movements. Indeed, George Orwell pointed out that the imposition of rules so strict (and often vague) that one is bound to break some of them is a key characteristic of the totalitarian regime.

Identification with the movement is important if one is to enjoy its status and benefits – including self-approbation. Members sacrifice themselves to the cause and, says Hoffer, “The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others … the surrendering and humbling of the self breed pride and arrogance”.

Once we give ourselves up to the corporate body, we are also freed of personal responsibility. And this is how a political movement or a church is able to generate, harness and focus hatred.

Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain. It lacks the stability which can only rest in a fanatical outlook.
— Adolf Hitler

Hate may take many forms. It might be the Rev Anderson’s frothing outburst of cretinous bigotry. Or it might come wrapped in smiles and charity, but be driven nonetheless by a deep conviction that if you are not part of the movement you are in some way ‘wrong’ and must be changed, whether you like it or not.

The True Believer is available from:  Amazon.co.uk |  Amazon.com

The bizarre pseudo-religion Scientology faces being banned in France if its leaders – currently on trial – are found guilty of seizing victims’ fortunes by “exerting a psychological hold”.

Given that this is a perfect description of what Scientology is all about, it doesn’t look good for the wacky cult.

The ‘church’ itself is on trial alongside the six leaders (there was a seventh who died).

There are two cases going through the courts. In one, the plaintiff alleges that the cult preyed on her when she was in a fragile psychological condition, relieving her of a large sum of money for worthless products.

In the other case, a woman claims her boss fired her after she refused to participate in Church of Scientology courses.

Both cases demonstrate how the cult operates through a process of indoctrination and brainwashing. Two other complainants dropped out: no reasons were given, but the Church of Scientology is notorious for its harassment and intimidation of those who stand against it.

This isn’t the first time the wealthy and powerful organisation has been in trouble in France. But this time it might face a complete ban – another good reason to live in France.

Not long after the laws of England & Wales were finally cleansed of the archaic offense of blasphemy, there are forces in Ireland that want to actually introduce such a law there.

While most of us have made it into the 21st Century, there are people who would prefer to drag us back into the Middle Ages.

Dermot Ahern, Minister for Justice, is one of the main agitators for a clause in the Defamation Bill, currently before the Irish Parliament, that would make blasphemy illegal.

With fines of up to €100,000, the law would punish “A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter” which is defined as “grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion; and he or she intends, by the publication of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage”.

One might assume that the clause is intended primarily to protect the Roman Catholic faith, and that the “any religion” definition is there to make it appear more reasonable.

But let’s say I invent a new religion (and why not? All religions are invented) – perhaps a faith that sanctifies the abuse of little children (no, wait, the Catholics have done that one), or maybe a religion that claims the moon is made of cheese and that the Queen is a shape-shifting alien. Presumably I could use that law in Ireland to prevent anyone taking the piss. After all, as the only follower of the faith, I would easily represent “a substantial number of the adherents”.

I present this reductio ad absurdum scenario to make a point. Even a casual examination of most faiths reveals them to be full of bizarre, outlandish, indefensible and often dangerous claims. Religions are used all too frequently to repress and oppress, to close minds and hold back progress. Far from being protected, they must be open to criticism.

I find many of religion’s ideas and precepts outrageous and offensive: there are, for example, people who genuinely believe they regularly eat the flesh and drink the blood of a man who’s been dead for 2,000 years, and that those of us who fail to engage in this necrophiliac cannibalism must suffer eternal torture. Any law that restricts my ability to say that such beliefs are idiotic piffle is an unwarranted attack on free speech.

Ireland has made great strides in the past few years in loosening the manacles of the Catholic church. It would be a shame to see the country slide back into superstitious intolerance.

I’m watching the BBC series ‘Around the World in 80 Faiths‘ with great fascination and enjoyment. Anglican vicar Peter Owen Jones is an engaging, entertaining and (up to a point) honest guide to the world’s rich variety of spiritual wackiness.

Peter Owen Jones

Owen Jones ‘heard the call’ 15 years ago, having previously spent his time running discos and advertising campaigns. According to the BBC’s website, this rustic padre feels that the Church of England “is too much a faith of the head and not enough a faith of the soul”. This televised journey, then, is a search for the pure spirit of the divine and how it manifests itself in so many ways.

As our guide, Owen Jones is remarkably willing to immerse himself in beliefs and practices very alien to the genteel rituals of an Anglican service. Sometimes he is moved, sometimes bemused and (so far – I’m three episodes in at this point) only once really disgusted. A voodoo ceremony at which animals – including a kitten and a puppy – were bloodily sacrificed left him very disturbed. His revulsion, it seems, was not on theological grounds but simple humanitarian ones and was easily shared by atheists like me. Believe all the hocus pocus you like, but leave the kitten out of it.

Naturally he has his limits. As a believer, Owen Jones is rather too willing to see people – and feel himself – moved by the holy spirit where a more neutral observer might witness hysteria, hyperventilation or simple credulity.

On the whole, though, Owen Jones is accommodating and open. Indeed, the only note of disdain so far was reserved for atheists. He said something to the effect that we infidels would regard all these manifestations of the divine as a “form of disease”. I’m not sure if Owen Jones is aware of the variety of attitudes towards religion among atheists, or whether his generosity of spirit simply stops short of those who don’t share his belief in the divine. Either way, it’s worth noting that not all of us consider religious belief per se to be a disease or shared dementia. In fact, I believe that a predisposition to spiritual experience is a natural result of evolution – a subject to which I will return in a future blog.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the series, keen to know if Owen Jones will address the one big question that so far he has avoided. There seems to be a implication, from what he has said, that the prevalence of religion across the world means that there is a common phenomenon behind it – no less than the divine itself. This is an argument that crops up often: if so many people believe in a divine spirit, it must be there.

This, of course, is poor logic. There is an obvious counter argument which hinges on the fact that the very nature of religious belief is exclusiveness. Religions are not mutually compatible. You cannot accept more than one. You must, by that token, believe that all the others are wrong. And yet there are thousands of separate religions and, within each faith, many variations of the type. The divisions between them are so hotly debated that the supremacy of one over another is often expressed violently, at the cost of many lives and much suffering.

And it’s self-evidently true that they can’t all be right. At most, there could be only one true faith. Therefore, even if you are a believer, you must believe that the vast majority of faiths are … well … nonsense. No matter how fervent your faith in your god and your prophets and your mythical tales, you have to contend with the simple fact that the majority of people in the world – even the religious ones – think that what you believe is rubbish.

How would we recognise the true faith? For me, a key test would be reliability. If a faith is real, it should work – not now and again, not in strange and oblique ways, but reliably and repeatedly. And yet we know that no faith matches this criterion. Prayers and imprecations are, at best, a hit and miss affair. Even the most extreme piety, the most self-abasing unctuousness, only rarely seems to deliver results. And if a faith really was the genuine article, then surely it would seem self-evident. Everyone would flock to it. All others would fall away.

The faithful, of course, get around these problems with a blinding array of excuses and prevarications. Chief among these is the idea that we are being tested. Yes, even supposedly loving gods, who are keen to bring us to their ethereal bosoms, enjoy tormenting us – to an extent, in fact, which means that most of us will fail.

Now try applying common sense to this situation. If even the faithful insist that the vast majority of religions are wrong – indeed, all but one of them – then it stands to reason that there is a very good chance that all of them are. As we’ve already seen, if you pick any one faith you’ll find most of the people in the world are against it. You can do this for every religion.

So, if all the religions are demonstrably wrong, and they all have the divine as their common thread, the inescapable conclusion is that the very concept of the divine is itself wrong. It might be a delusion. It might be the ‘misfiring’ (as Dawkins would put it) of part of our psyche (which is kind of where I’m heading with the evolution thing). It might simply be that we poor mammals are simply not up to the task of comprehending the entire universe and must weave stories to accommodate what we can’t fully grasp.

Whatever the explanation for our tendency towards superstition, if we are honest we must at least acknowledge the possibility that at the heart of the world’s religions lies … nothing. That the divine is merely a common and rather simple device employed by the other thing we all share – our brains. So far, this is what Owen Jones has failed to do. Oh well, just sit back and enjoy the wackiness.