Ethical Record The Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society Vol. 116 No. 2 £1.50 February 2011 NEW BIOGRAPHY OF BRADLAUGH LAUNCHED AT CONWAY HALL Author Bryan Niblett showing his new book to Rabinder Singh Sohil, 19 January 2011

Photo by Kanwal Preet daughter of Rabinder

In the Brockway Room of Conway Hall, scientist and barrister Bryan Niblett presented his new biography of the courageous secularist Charles Bradlaugh MP, the founder of the National Secular Society in 1866, the book’s title being Dare to Stand Alone. Bryan had been researching in detail the legal battles which marked Bradlaugh’s tempestuous career as pioneer in social and political affairs, consulting the resources of the Humanist Reference Library at Conway Hall and the Bishopsgate Institute. Jim Herrick (who reviewed the book for The Freethinker), author Debora Lavin and Dr. Rabinder Singh Sohil, Chairman, Bradlaugh Hall Trust, India (where Bradlaugh is revered) and Asad Abbas addressed the meeting. Terry Liddle (Freethought History Research group) was too unwell to attend but his review of the book can be seen in this issue of Ethical Record. A fine review also appeared in The Independent (14 Jan). Norman Bacrac A HISTORY OF HUMANISM John Severs 3 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE Sandra Knapp 11 Book Reviews - THE STORY OF CHARLES BRADLAUGH, ATHEIST AND REPUBLICAN by Bryan Niblett Terry Liddle 15 SOCIALISM: VISION AND REALITY by Hyman Frankel Jerry Jones 16 THE VIRUS? A RESPONSE BY KEITH WARD Ian Buxton 18 Viewpoint: Physicalism And Epiphenomenalism Tom Rubens 23 ETHICAL SOCIETY EVENTS 24 SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. Tel: 020 7242 8031/4 Fax: 020 7242 8036 www.ethicalsoc.org.uk Chairman: Jim Herrick Hon. Rep.: Derek Lennard Vice-chairman: Ed McArthur Registrar: Andrew Copson Treasurer: Chris Bratcher Editor: Norman Bacrac Please email texts and viewpoints for the Editor to: [email protected] SPES Staff Finance Officer: Linda Alia Tel: 020 7242 8031/4 [email protected] Librarian: Catherine Broad Tel: 020 7242 8037 [email protected] Programme Co-ordinator: Ben Partridge Tel: 020 7242 8034 [email protected] Lettings Officer: Carina Dvorak Tel: 020 7242 8032 [email protected] Admin: Tel: 020 7242 8031/4 [email protected] Caretakers: Eva Aubrechtova (i/c) Tel: 020 7242 8033 together with: Angelo Edrozo, Alfredo Olivo, Rogerio Retuerna, Cagatay Ulker Maintenance Operative: Zia Hameed Maria Aubrechtova, who left to take another post, is thanked for her work for the Society. Dr Jim Walsh has been appointed as the new CEO. He is expected to take up his post by mid-February. New Members We welcome John Dowdle of Watford; Richard Eastburn-Hewitt of Kingston upon Thames; David Simmonds of Essex.

THE HUMANIST REFERENCE LIBRARY The Humanist Reference Library is open for members and researchers on Mondays to Fridays from 0930 - 1730. Please let the Librarian, Catherine Broad, know of your intention to visit. The Library has an extensive collection of new and historic freethought material. Tel: 020 7242 8037. Email: [email protected]

To receive regular news and programme updates from SPES via email, please contact Ben Partridge at [email protected]. Similarly, if you have any suggestions for speakers or event ideas, or would like to convene a Sunday afternoon informal, get in touch with Ben on 020 7242 8034.

SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Reg. Charity No. 251396 Founded in 1793, the Society is a progressive movement whose aims are: the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism and freethought the cultivation of a rational and humane way of life, and the advancement of research and education in relevant fields. We invite to membership those who reject supernatural creeds and are in sympathy with our aims. At Conway Hall the programme includes Sunday lectures, discussions, evening courses and the Conway Hall Sunday Concerts of chamber music. The Society maintains a Humanist Reference Library. The Society’s journal, Ethical Record, is issued monthly. Memorial meetings may be arranged. The annual subscription is £20 (£15 if a full-time student, unwaged or over 65).

2 Ethical Record, February 2011 A HISTORY OF HUMANISM John Severs Summary of a Lecture to the Ethical Society, 21 November 2010

When researching this topic, I realised that it was multi-faceted, not simply a question of who questioned the , but how they came to do so. It’s my take on Humanism in the Western world and by no means exhaustive. At the time of the Ancient Greeks, although some, such as , were punished, there was more latitude than in most of the Christian era. It is telling that Thomas Jefferson, in 1821, wrote of the need to ‘encourage a hope that the human mind will someday get back to the freedom it enjoyed 2,000 years ago.’ The Classical World

Theth belief that the world wasn’t necessarily ordered by gods was started in the 6 century BCE, by the ‘physical’ philosophers. According to Guthrie, in his History of Greek Philosophy, this was where philosophy originated, when ‘the conviction began to take shape in men’s minds that the apparent chaos of events must conceal underlying order, and this order is the product of impersonal forces.’

th In the 5 century BCE, the thinking of philosophers called ‘natural theologians’ laid the foundations for possible disbelief. Protagorus (481-411), made man the measure of all things, of the reality of those which are and the unreality of those which are not and said, regarding the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or what they are like to look at.

Importantly, the group called the Sophists decided that religion and morality were a matter of man-made custom and therefore subject to change. Werner Jaegger, in his book, The Philosophy of the Early Greeks, states that Democritus (460-370 BCE) rejected any form of divinity: ‘His description of nature in terms of the interplay of countless atoms in empty space ruled by the power of chance left no room for teleology and the deification of moving forces.’ Democritus rejected the afterlife, claiming everything was subject to decay. His views were linked to those of (c.341-271 BCE), who argued that the gods had no influence on human life. The last philosophical movement to develop in Greece was the Sceptics. They argued that, as nothing can be known with complete certainty, we should neither deny nor affirm anything. Carneades, however, questioned Divine Providence, arguing that a caring god would not have created earthquakes and disease. In the Roman era, the majority of sceptics kept quiet. Cicero (106-43) was one of these, saying, however…. There are no miracles. What was incapable of happening never happened, and what was capable of happening is not a miracle.

Ethical Record, February 2011 3 Lucretius (c. 94 – 55BCE) in his poem, De Rerum Natura, perceptively wrote: Both in earth and sky they see that many things happen whereof they cannot by any known law determine the causes. So their occurrence they ascribe to supernatural power… and afterwards we shall more rightly discern… out of what it is that everything can be created, how all came into being, without help of the gods. This, then, was the period in which we saw the beginnings of religious scepticism and beliefs in a naturalistic approach to understanding life, although only a few rejected belief in gods. Following this relatively enlightened period, the Christian religion became dominant, imposing a cruel regime with no freedom of expression. Up into the 17th century, belief in magic and astrology was often integrated with religion, with all being seen as branches of the supernatural. There was also a lack of understanding of the nature of disease. The church competed with ‘wise women’ who offered advice and potions in claiming cures. It would be wrong, however, to think that there was no development in the process that would eventually lead to rationalist thinking. Aristotle, for example, with his rejection of immortality, was translated and widely read in the 12th century. Amalric, Professor of Philosophy in Paris, argued, in 1206, that god worked through everything, there was no other life. This is interesting because there had been almost a thousandth years since expression of this sort of naturalistic view. In the 14 century, some thinkers began to adopt the naturalistic approach and saw belief in god as a matter of faith. Faith divorced from reason, philosophy from theology, naturally led to scepticism. The famous logician, William of Okkam (c. 1280 – 1349), rejected claims that it was possible to demonstrate god’s existence and the immortality of the soul.

The rapid growth in printing in the middle ages aided scepticismth with the writings of such as Lucretius available from the middle of the 15 cent. The first well-known martyr was Michael Servetus, a scientist and writer. Publication of his book, The Errors of the Trinity, led to conviction for heresy and burning at the stake in Geneva in 1553. Many early dissenters were Italian. Commodo Canuove was denounced to the Venetian Inquisition in 1576 for having said We have never seen any dead man who has returned from the other side to tell us that paradise exists, or purgatory, or hell. All these things are the fantasies of priests.

Alvise Capuano recanted his views to the Venetian Inquisition in order to save his life. The inquisition summed them up as You believed that the world was created by chance and, when the body dies, the soul dies also. You believed that Christ was the adopted son of the Madonna.

4 Ethical Record, February 2011 Giulio Vanini was burned to death for stating in his books that an immaterial god could not create a material world, a spiritual being could not communicate with a corporeal one. It was at this time that we had the beginnings of scientific realism: Kepler (1571-1630) established the heliocentric planetary laws of motion, in opposition to the church’s earth centred view; the polymath Bruno, burned at the stake for saying that the universe was infinite, and Newton. Although none of them were unbelievers, they ignited the touch paper that lit the flame at a later point. Descartes (1596-1650), an avid Christian, is believed to have inadvertently added to the undermining of belief, the Cartesian approach to religion being the same as to science: clarity, examination, inquiry and criticism. Montaigne (1533-1592) rejected miracles, wisely stating: in things hard to prove and dangerous to believe it is better to lean towards doubt than towards assurance.

Pierre Charron (1541-1603), first a lawyer, then a priest, published a best seller in 1600, De la Sagesse, in which he recanted, saying All religions have this in common ... they are an outrage to common sense .... All discover ..... miracles, ....., sacred mysteries, ...... (and) articles of faith ...... necessary for salvation, ... one finds the most extraordinary claims … , but these only serve to inspire greater reverence. The 17th Century th In the 17 century, interest was moving from supernatural to natural explanations of phenomena. French philosopher, Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), writing anonymously, attacked the theory that portents are divinely inspired, reflecting the wrath of god, saying: investigation, not authority is the order of the day, as is belief in the stability of nature, a stability which does not any longer allow of divine and arbitrary intervention.

He argued strongly against the core Christian premise that you could not have morals without religion. Missionaries had discovered societies, for example, in the Caribbean, that had no religion but were very moral. The ‘Caribs’ were censorious of theft and felt morally superior to Europeans, who displayed great greed. Jean Meslier, (1664 -1729), an Abbé, was a vigorous campaigner against social injustice. On his death he left a document, Mon Testament, in which he castigated Christianity. Referring to the Gospels, he said: Those who say that these books are divinely inspired must admit that they know this by faith alone, ... But how can faith … establish the authority of the books that are the grounds of this faith? What folly is this?

And, marvellously, that the ills which beset men would not be cured until: the last king has been strangled by the entrails of the last priest. Ethical Record, February 2011 5 There were many others who criticised religion; for example Voltaire (1694 – 1778) who accused the church of dogmatic bigotry. Candide, in El Dorado, asks if he can see the priests and, when told there are none, exclaims: What! You have no monks to teach, govern, ... and burn people who do not agree with them?

Baron d’Holbach (1723 – 89), a genuine polymath, was the founder of the group Les Philosophes. Using a pseudonym, he wrote in System of Nature (1770): Ignorant of the real cause of our happiness or pain, we create gods, superstitions and myths as paths to well-being, ..... Helpless and fearful, we trust to an authority that can justify itself neither by evidence nor reason.

Jaques-André Naigeon, in his forward, wrote that religion’s authority came from the presentation of god as a tyrant; it was a product of fear and ignorance. As a scientist, d’Holbach argued that the world was eternal; that we did not experience creation or destruction of matter, but recombination. In Good Sense (1772), d’Holbach was one of the first to address an issue that became a hoary chestnut in attempts to undermine non-belief: It is asserted that ... another life is of the utmost importance to the peace and happiness of societies …. What need is there of terrors and fables to make a rational man aware of how he ought to conduct himself on Earth?

It was not surprising that he wrote anonymously. In 1768, a Jean Josserand was tried for selling a copy of d’Holbach’s Christianity Unveiled and was sentenced to 3 days in the stocks, branding and 9 years in the galleys. (1713-84), in his famous Encyclopaedia, wrote mockingly of damnation and theologians and, specifically, their disparagement of the intellect: Do they want our faith to be blind or enlightened? ... If enlightened, why try so hard to convince us that the light of reason is too weak to be our guide? ..... And how can we trust our judgement in this or in any other matter, if all faith in the power of reason is destroyed? In Britain Gerrard Winstanley risked death by claiming the devil was not a real person, but reflected qualities like selfishness, and heaven and hell did not exist, saying: Neither are you to look for God in a place of glory beyond the sun, but within yourself. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was highly critical of religious dogma, perceptively noting: The universe, that is the whole mass of all things that are, is corporeal, that is to say, body, and hath the dimensions of magnitude, namely, length, breadth and depth; also, every part of body is likewise body, and hath the like dimensions, and consequently every part of the universe is body and that which is not body is no part of the universe: and because the universe is all, that which is no part of it is nothing, and subsequently nowhere. And: Religion arises out of man’s curiosity; out of his desire to know (or invent) the causes of things, as well as out of his fear of the unknown.

6 Ethical Record, February 2011 The first person in the UK to be tried and hanged for was Thomas Aikenhead (in 1697) who claimed that Christ was an imposter who had ‘played pranks’ (i.e. miracles), and being both god and man was as great a contradiction as squaring the circle. The enlightenment produced a lot of opponents of religious orthodoxies, many of them deists, with criticism centred on much of the Bible being based on God showing himself through revelation. They argued that there could be no such thing; there were no miracles! David Hume (1711-1776), known as the Great Infidel, always denied non-belief. In his works, however, particularly Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, he undermined the foundations upon which religions were based. Firstly, he exposed the myth of everything needing a cause, asking, if God created the world, what created God and for what purpose and what created that cause and so ad infinitum. Next, in regard to suffering from natural causes, such as earthquakes and famine, if God was omniscient and omnipotent, he must have been aware of the suffering and, if omnibenevolent, as claimed, why did he allow it? Then, finally, Intelligent Design. Archdeacon Paley famously argued that the earth was like a machine and therefore must have a designer. Hume recognised that, superficially, the claim had merit, but the more he thought about it, the less he liked the idea, there being an insurmountable gap between the natural world, of whose origins we are ignorant and an artefact, say a house, which we know to have been built. He decided that the Earth was self- perpetuating, more like a vegetable, something regenerated, not manufactured. Hume rejected miracles, stating: For it is with the mysteries of our religion, as with pills for the sick, which, swallowed whole, have the virtue to cure, but chewed, are for the most part cast up again without effect. His indictment of religion was damning: To all the purposes of life, religion is useless ..... No new fact can ever be inferred from the religious hypothesis; no event foreseen or foretold; no reward or punishment expected or dreaded beyond what is already known by practice and observation.

The first avowedly atheistic book published in Britain, An Answer to Dr Priestley’s Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever, was written in 1782 by Matthew Turner. One interesting question raised was whether if believers became convinced that God did not exist, they would still act in a moral way. Turner argued they would and, if so, what was the point of claiming that leading a moral life required belief in God? Another very important area at this time where entrenched belief was undermined was in the heavens. It had long been accepted that the solar system was encased in a sort of shell-shaped cover. Herschel (1738-1822), with his self- made telescopes, blew it to smithereens. He showed that the universe was constantly changing; vastly bigger than had been thought and possibly infinite. Some cosmologists with atheist views were willing to stick their necks out. It’s said that Napoleon spoke to Pierre Laplace regarding his famous book, Système Ethical Record, February 2011 7 du Monde, saying Newton has frequently spoken of God in his book. I have gone over yours, and have not found his name mentioned once. To which Laplace gave the withering reply: Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis. Humphrey Davy It was around this point that we saw the last breaths of alchemy and its replacement with the science of chemistry. Humphrey Davy (1778-1829) wrote a series of essays on religion versus materialism. He argued that: All human consciousness depended directly on physiological processes, that every change in our sensations and ideas must be accompanied by a corresponding change in the organic matter of the body. He wrote a proof to show that the soul could not exist.

th Through the 18 century, we saw people attempting to bridge the gaps perceived between rational thought and natural law AND faith and divine control. It saw the start through scientific experiment of what Turner says in his book, Without God, Without Creed, was the further withdrawal of God’s hand from nature and the cosmos. It showed moralism as standing on its own and non- acceptance of the soul. Philosophers continued to lead the charge against faith with, for example, (1804 – 72), cleverly saying: God is nothing else than man; he is, so to speak, the outward projection of man’s inward nature.

Writers and poets were also among the sceptics: Marvell, Dryden, Schiller, George Eliot; later Hardy, Tolstoy and Mark Twain. Shelley was expelled from Oxford in 1811 for writing a pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism, signed ‘Through deficiency of proof, AN ATHEIST’, and sending copies to college heads. He argued that religion had a negative effect by ‘fettering a reasoning mind through its restraining bonds.’ Remarkably, as a non- scientist, he argued in A Refutation of Deism: that animals exist in certain climates results from the consentaneity of their frames to the circumstances of their situation; let these circumstances be altered to a sufficient degree, and the elements of their composition must exist in some new combination, no less resulting than the former from those inevitable laws by which the universe is governed.

A major criticism in the mid-1800s was of the Calvinist stress on predestination, with the Rev. Thomas Beecher saying: it was hard to accept that God has made a very small number of mankind on purpose to be saved and all the rest to damn them.

Religion was condemned by some political theorists. Marx saw it as a sort of fantasy arguing that, as it had been invented by man, it must be satisfying a need. Therefore it should be analysed and replaced with something non-religious that would satisfy the same needs. This was echoed by Nietzsche, who added a salutary warning: God is dead: but given the way of men, there may be for thousands of years caves in which his shadow will be shown.

8 Ethical Record, February 2011 th From the 17 century onwards, scientific experiment, with its demand for what was called ‘reliable knowledge’, exerted a growing influence over how religion was perceived. Science was, of course, to have the most destructive effect on what had been the bedrock of belief for the vast majority. Before Darwin and Wallace, Charles Lyell, in his book, Principles of Geology, showed that the world was at least millions of years old, not 6,000 as claimed. The massive blow was, of course, the publication of Darwin’s books. Darwin found it difficult to reject religion, stating: ...... that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported ... I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. and The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I must be content to remain an agnostic.

For 1,700 years the vast majority had accepted the book of Genesis as absolute truth. Not surprisingly, it was instrumental in leading to an upsurge in rational thinking. T H Huxley debated Darwin’s theses with Bishop Wilberforce who made the error of asking Huxley whether he was related to an ape on his father’s or mother’s side. Huxley states that: I asserted that a man has no reason to be ashamed to be related to an ape. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would be a man, a man .... who plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them with aimless rhetoric.... and appeals to religious prejudice.

Another ‘bulldog’ was Charles Bradlaugh who was elected MP for Northampton in 1880. He incorrectly assumed that the Evidence Amendment Acts (1869/70) which allowed atheists to give evidence in court would give him the right to affirm. He agreed to take the oath, but was not allowed to because it was argued that, as an unbeliever, he could ‘not be bound by it.’ After being repeatedly re-elected, he took his seat in 1885. Affirmation was made law in 1888. Robert Ingersoll A renowned orator was Robert Ingersoll who travelled throughout the USA arguing the case for non-belief. He aimed to destroy arguments made for belief and biblical claims, using measurements e.g. Noah’s Ark. How did snails originating from 12,000 miles get back home? We may sniff at this approach today, but must remember that the majority of preachers then drew on the Old Testament as literal truth. Ingersoll made a valid point to believers who accepted Evolution: Would an infinitely wise, good, and powerful god, intending to produce man, commence with the lowest possible forms of life; during immeasurable periods of time, almost imperceptibly improve upon the rude beginning, until man evolved? Would countless ages thus be wasted?

Increasing numbers expressed disbelief through the 20th century. Many were scientists like the brilliant British discoverer of anti-matter and Nobel Prize winner in 1933, Paul Dirac (1902-84), who, linking his views to social justice, said: What I do see is that this assumption (belief in almighty God) leads to such ... questions as to why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors he might have prevented.

Ethical Record, February 2011 9 Surprisingly, the first ever Rationalist periodical appears to be The New Harmony Gazette, produced by Robert Owen in New Hampshire, USA, in 1825 in which he inveighed against the concept of original sin, future rewards etc. Charles Southwell published the virulently atheist and blasphemous magazine, The Oracle of Reason, in the UK in 1842 and was imprisoned for a year and, following a lecture in which he expressed his disbelief, the next editor, G.J. Holyoake was given 6 months. One line in his indictment is worth noting: I do not believe there is such a thing as God. If I could have my way I would place almighty God .... on half pay. When Holyoake came out, he founded The Reasoner which ran in parallel in its latter years with The National Reformer, an atheist periodical, part founded by Bradlaugh in 1860. The first freethinking organisation, founded in 1839, was based on Robert Owen’s teachings and was called The Universal Community Society of Rational Religionists, thankfully soon abbreviated to the Rational Society. They had 65 branches and organised alternative Sunday Schools. Holyoake organised a meeting of 300 freethinkers in 1851. They founded the Society of Reasoners, soon changed to The Secular Society. Under Bradlaugh’s guidance in 1866, branches joined together to form the National Secular Society. Scientific Humanism From the 1870s onwards, evangelical young agnostics, including Huxley began using periodicals to spread what they called ‘Scientific Humanism’, the first general use of the term. The Rationalist Press Association was set up in 1890. Its list of Honorary

Associates in 1940 makes very interestingst reading – it includes Arnold Bennett, Sir John, later Lord, Boyd Orr (1 head of the UN FAO) and Sir Julian Huxley (1st head of UNESCO), Clarence Darrow (defender in the Scopes monkey trial), Albert Einstein, , Somerset Maugham, , H G Wells and Sir Henry Wood. They were incredibly successful, selling 4 million books in 25 years (1902 – 27) and running the Thinkers’ Library from 1929 – 51. The British Humanist Association and the South Place Ethical Society have common roots, starting with the establishment of a dissenting, Philadelphian, chapel in 1787. A variety of policy and name changes eventually led to the establishment of a number of Ethical Societies around the 1900s and an umbrella organisation, the Ethical Union, with South Place keeping its independence. The BHA was formed from the Ethical Union in 1963. The changes that occurred over the centuries are summed up beautifully by Jim Herrick: History as the unfolding of God’s divine plan or as a source book of moral fables gave way to an attempt to understand the nature of society and change within it. This meant that the historical accuracy of religious claims came into question – particularly in how it attempted to explain the unexplainable.

10 Ethical Record, February 2011 I end with a verse from an amusing but quite profound poem about Martians by Noel Coward, Do I believe? Have they, to give them self-reliance, a form of Martian Christian Science? Or do they live in constant hope, of dispensations from some Pope? Are they pursued from womb to womb, by hideous prophecies of doom? Have they immortal souls like us, or are they – less – presumptuous? Major Sources Blom. P A Wicked Company (The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment) Basic Books 2010 Against The Faith Herrick Jim Glover & Blair 1985rd Hitchens, Christopher (Ed) The Portable Atheist (3 Ed) De Capo Press 2007 Holmes, Richard The Age of Wonder Harper 2009 All in my Mind: A Farewell to God Kennedy, Ludovic nd ; Sceptre 1999 Knight, Margaret (Ed) Humanist Anthology (2 Ed, Revised by Jim Herrick)

Reprinted RP A 2005 nd Thomas, Keith Religion and the Decline of Magic Penguin (2 Ed.) 1972 Thrower, James Western Atheism: A Short History Prometheus Books 2000 Turner, James Without God, Without Creed (The Origins of Unbelief in America) John Hopkins University Press 1985 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE: CONSERVATION AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT Sandra Knapp Natural History Museum, London Lecture to the Ethical Society, 9 January 2011 I am a plant taxonomist – in the 19th century I would have been called a natural historian – and have spent much of my career collecting and documenting the plant diversity of the tropics. Even though he was primarily interested in animals, not plants, the 19th century British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace has always fascinated me – a professional naturalist-collector who struggled to be accepted into the Victorian scientific ‘establishment’ despite his pivotal role in the articulation of evolution by natural selection – he was a man full of contradictions. Wallace was a true field biologist. His collections, despite the tragic loss of many of them in a fire that sank the ship Helen as he was returning from his first major tropical foray to South America, truly expanded knowledge of the biological diversity of both the New and Old World tropics. From a 21st century perspective it is difficult to reconcile the image of a man who shot and killed eighteen orang-utans (the nineteenth he shot got away), with that of the man who advocated the establishment of botanical reserves in the tropics and railed against social injustice. Alfred Russel Wallace did all of these things, and his relationship with nature and the environment is both typically Victorian and astonishingly modern. Wallace’s interest in natural history began when he was an apprentice surveyor with his brother, grew while he taught school in Leicester and made the

Ethical Record, February 2011 11 acquaintance of Henry Walter Bates, and blossomed during his twelve years in the tropics. An interest in natural history, however, does not automatically make a person interested in its conservation. Alfred Russel Wallace lived at a time of excitement and establishment of the international conservation movement at the cusp of the 20th century, but appears to have played little direct part in it. In Britain, he lacked the African colonial establishment credentials of many of the key players, and he only visited America in later life. His collecting experiences in some of the most diverse places on Earth gave him an intense, almost spiritual, appreciation for the grandeur and beauty of natural places, and his acute observation of the habits and ranges of many species of plants and animals gave him the data needed to analyse the impact of humans on the environment. Wallace, however, was not really a ‘proto-conservationist’. His deep sense of the importance of human beings and his passionately held social reformist views meant his take on conservation was less wildlife and beauty-oriented than that of his contemporaries - he saw nature in terms of its relationship to human beings. In his travels to the Amazon and southeast Asia Wallace combined his acute observational skills with his ability to find, identify and catalogue collections of the most marvellous specimens of natural history, mostly birds, butterflies and beetles. His writing, both from the field and after he returned, gave to the late Victorian public lyrical, sometimes slightly hyperbolic for some modern tastes, descriptions of the plants and animals of the tropics. Seeing new things, beautiful things, is very exciting. Upon catching a magnificent birdwing butterfly – whose wingspan is more than 10 cm – Wallace felt “much more like fainting than …. when in apprehension of immediate death”. I have never felt quite like that upon seeing something new, but then again, I have never seen a birdwing butterfly in the wild! A passionflower floating in a river had me walking upstream in water up to my chest though, so I suppose all field biologists are alike deep down. But beauty and the thrill of the new also makes one think. When Wallace first saw the prized King Bird of Paradise – a tiny red and cream jewel – he reflected that such beautiful creatures live their whole lives out of the sight of humans, a shame, but that should humans ever reach those places, they would surely disturb the ‘nicely balanced relations’ and cause the extinction of these same beautiful creatures. This made him realise that “all living things were not made for man”. He stood raptly watching a black jaguar in the Amazon, his gun to his shoulder, but in awe of the spectacle. In all the many years I have worked in the New World tropics I have never seen a jaguar in the wild – he was lucky, but he knew it. Despite all his vivid descriptions of the life of the tropical forests in which he travelled, Wallace very rarely wrote about man’s effect on the environments in which he was collecting and travelling. This is not to say he did not notice the effects human beings, both native and colonial, were having on natural habitats. He saw that the collection of turtle eggs could decimate populations, and commented on the scarcity of large mammals such as elephants and rhinoceros as agriculture advanced. I am sure he saw, as I have, tracts of forest cut down

12 Ethical Record, February 2011 between visits, or trails and roads washed away in flash floods where logging and agriculture stripped the vegetation from the land. Once he returned from his tropical travels, Wallace’s writings began to take a synthetic turn, and here, in the relative comfort of Britain he began to voice opinions that sound more environmentally radical – he put together all his observations, not just for entertainment, but to use as instruction for those in power. He was not directly involved in conservation lobbying groups like the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Animals of the Empire, but he did write popular books, designed to be read by those who voted, and whose opinions, he felt, could change the way politicians behaved. His experiences collecting allowed him to see the complexity of life’s interactions, and how simple decisions by those in power could change things utterly, often for the worse. He wrote about the clearing of land for coffee plantations that increased soil erosion, and very pointedly about the – as he saw it – irresponsible decisions of those in power on the tiny island of St. Helena. He also had detailed suggestions for things to do … … suitable provision shall be made of forest or mountain ‘reserves’, not for the purpose of forestry and timber-cutting only, but in order to preserve adequate and even abundant examples of those most glorious and entrancing features of our earth... It is not only our duty to posterity …, but it is absolutely necessary in order to prevent further deterioration of climate and destruction of the fertility of the soil, which has already taken place … to a most deplorable extent. … … there should be no exception to the rule that all rivers and streams except the very smallest should be preserved as public property and absolutely secured against pollution; while all natural features of especial interest or beauty should also be maintained for public use and enjoyment ……..

Pollution of the air and water are contributing factors to two of the principal drivers of biodiversity loss – some things never change – pollution was one of the factors in the rise of the environmental movement in the mid-twentieth century, and in fact, had been an issue for those concerned with nature the century before. For Wallace, pollution was an issue intricately tied up with the land, its use and misuse, and with its effect on people’s everyday lives. He placed responsibility for misuse of resources squarely on the shoulders of the system, not on individuals. The “struggle for wealth” was the cause of the irreversible destruction of the products of nature, and at the beginning of the 20th century he thought it was going on at a reckless pace. Some things don’t really change; we know that today the rate of exploitation of resources is increasing rapidly, and if Wallace thought it was bad in 1900, just imagine how he might have felt today! But to my mind, his focus on the system and away from the individual leaves out an important piece of the environmental puzzle – people are part of any system, and individual action does have consequences, however small they might seem. Although many of Wallace’s statements still ring true today, he was not a prophet, nor was he particularly out of step with the zeitgeist of his time. His intensely personal views meant that often he did not really set his opinions in the

Ethical Record, February 2011 13 context of what was going on elsewhere, but instead seems to depict himself as the only one with views on these topics. This can make him seem a lone thinker, perhaps even possessing ‘devastingly accurate foresight’. But Wallace was different, for him nature existed for human beings, either for rational and equitable use in the present or as a complex net developed by evolution culminating in man - it was man that mattered. This I think puts him in a unique position in his thinking about conservation of biodiversity for his time. While some of his thinking seems idiosyncratic or even patently false in a 21st century context, it nevertheless is in tune with broad, challenging goals set by the international community to put an end to poverty, educate all, empower women and achieve a stable environment. These goals too are centred on human beings, but for a different reason. Today we can see how the human species is one of many, one that has had a huge and ever-increasing impact on the world around us, but still a species of animal like all others. If we are to maintain a dynamic, evolving planet – human needs must be taken into account. The balance is difficult, and engenders much argument. Conservation thinking has gone a long way from its early beginnings in colonial game reserves and national parks, through species-centric campaigns to conserve charismatic animals, but has come full circle to be framed as sustainable development, broadly in a landscape view that takes into account human beings and their needs. This current focus would have been entirely understandable to Wallace; he too put our own species at the centre of what the world was all about. But he recognised that knowledge of the rest of nature was a prerequisite to caring about our planet: If this is not done, future ages will certainly look back upon us as a people so immersed in the pursuit of wealth as to be blind to higher considerations. They will also charge us with having culpably allowed the destruction of some of those records of Creation which we had it in our power to preserve; and while professing to regard every living thing as the direct handiwork and best evidence of a Creator, yet, with a strange inconsistency, seeing many of them perish irrecoverably from the face of the earth, uncared for and unknown. I wonder if he would think we, with all our investment in biodiversity conservation and scientific study of nature, had even moved part way toward achieving what he considered necessary for a habitable planet?

L VIRGINIA WOOLF AND MADNESS: CA HI TRAUMA NARRATIVE IN MRS. DALLOWAY ET TY N W IE IO E OC AT by Suzette A. Henke N S IC BL PU A monograph based on the Virginia Clark Memorial Lecture delivered on 9 July 2008 to the Ethical Society. £5 post free from the Society.

14 Ethical Record, February 2011 BOOK REVIEW - DARE TO STAND ALONE The Story of Charles Bradlaugh, Atheist And Republican by Bryan Niblett, 391 pages hardback, ISBN 978-0-95647-0-8, Kramedart Press, Oxford, 2010 Terry Liddle This is the first major biography of Charles Bradlaugh for nearly four decades. Its title is taken from a song in The Secular Song and Hymn Book edited by Annie Besant. Much of the research for it was undertaken in the library at Conway Hall with the kind and able help of the then librarian Jennifer Jeynes. The book traces the story of Bradlaugh’s life, times and activities from his humble origin as the son of a solicitor’s clerk in Hoxton, East London to his career as a Member of Parliament for Northampton. In many ways Bradlaugh’s story is the story of Secularism and Radicalism in the second half of the 19th Century. He became one of the most outstanding lecturers, speakers and journalists of his day. Bradlaugh had left home after a bitter clash with Rev. John Packer of St. Peter’s church, Hackney and became a lodger in the home of Eliza Sharples, the former partner of Richard Carlilse. Poverty and debt drove him to join the Dragoons. He was stationed in Ireland and the blatant oppression of the Irish poor left a lasting impression on him. On leaving the army, he went to work as a solicitor’s clerk with the hope of becoming a fully qualified lawyer. In 1850 he gave his first public lecture at Warner Place Hall. Many, many more were to follow. The meeting was chaired by George Holyoake. Niblett is rather unfair to Holyoake, depicting him as a moderate as opposed to Bradlaugh the miltant. In fact Holyoake had been imprisoned for blasphemy and had tested bombs similar to the type used in a bid to assassinate Napoleon III. Bradlaugh was a stern opponent of socialism. Niblett accepts Bradlaugh’s claim that he won his debate on socialism with Henry Hyndman. Hyndman tells a different story in his memoirs Record of An Adventurous Life. In any event both Edward Aveling and Annie Besant became socialists. The book has much to say about Bradlaugh’s relationship with both Aveling and Besant. Aveling was a notorious womaniser and scrounger and Bradlaugh rescued him from imprisonment as a fraudulent debtor. Aveling would have made an excellent science teacher. That he chose the more difficult path of agitation must say something positive about him. Niblett speculates as to whether Besant had a sexual relationship with both men. She may not have had one with Bradlaugh but I can’t imagine her not having one with Aveling. Aveling was replaced in Besant’s life by another socialist, Herbert Burrows. He was interested in the Victorian fad of spiritualism and took her see Madame Blavatsky which put her on the path to Theosophy. While the book is a mine of information, it is not without its flaws. William

Ethical Record, February 2011 15 Morris was not a founder of the Social Democratic Federation - he joined after its foundation. J.M.Robertson was no kind of socialist, he was a Liberal MP and cabinet minister. Aveling and Eleanor Marx did not elope to Derbyshire. They went to visit Olive Schreiner and Havelock Ellis. The book contains a moving account of Bradlaugh’s funeral. His Northampton supporters threw their rosettes into his grave and taking the spades from the grave, the diggers filled it in themselves. This book will be a valuable addition to any freethinker’s library. Dan Allosso, a post graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, is also writing a new biography of Bradlaugh. It will be interesting to compare and contrast the two books.

BOOK REVIEW: SOCIALISM: VISION AND REALITY by Hyman Frankel Bury St. Edmunds: Arena, 2010. £18.99, paperback 341 pp. ISBN 978-1-906791-57-5 Jerry Jones Hyman Frankel, who died last year aged 91, was a life-long socialist and Marxist. From the age of 18, he was an active member of the Communist Party of Great Britain until it was disbanded in 1991, after which he joined the Alliance for Green Socialism. This book, in effect, is a statement of his final thoughts on socialism based on his experience of the arguments and controversies that took place during his 75 years of activity in the labour movement. It is addressed, as he puts it in the opening sentence of the preface (p.7), “to the many, chiefly young, people in Britain who have lost faith in party politics.” “The collapse of the ‘communist’ regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe,” he continues, “left millions, especially the young, bewildered. Millions believed that Soviet Russia somehow represented at least some attempt to build a new and better civilisation. Disgusted by the obscenely rich nations and individuals at the same time that millions were facing hunger and starvation while world leaders wrangled, young and older people have become more and more scornful of politicians and increasingly sceptical about party politics and political parties. “It is because both disillusion and dogmatism are so widespread that this book was written. It tries to explain what socialism is by explaining what it means and traces actual instances through history. It discusses the Soviet form and the reasons for its failure; and it suggests prospects for the future both here in Britain and elsewhere….” The rest of the book, in 19 chapters, is presented in the same polemical and easy-to-read style. In Chapter 1, he gives a remarkably concise critique of capitalism and how it has changed over time. The next three chapters outline his basic ideas on the meaning of socialism, drawing on classical texts by Marx,

16 Ethical Record, February 2011 Engels and Lenin, and others, as well as more recent thinkers. For instance, he quotes, approvingly, Tetsuzo Fuwa, chair of the Japanese Communist Party, when he rejects the idea that a socialist system is simply one in which the means of production are state owned, arguing that “[t]he goal of socialism was not to allow the state to play the key role in the economy” (p. 57), which is not to say that the state has no role to play. In Chapter 5, Frankel discusses why socialism in the Soviet Union took the form it did, what some of the benefits were, why the regime degenerated into a dictatorship under Stalin, and why, even after major reforms, it eventually collapsed. In the following chapter, he considers whether China is socialist or capitalist – or somewhere in between. The remainder of the book covers many other issues, all placed in their historical context, which embellish his views on what socialism is about. Thus, he has a chapter on ‘freedom, democracy and human rights’, in which, among other things, he emphasises that socialism and democracy go hand-in-hand – you cannot have one without the other. Other issues covered include war and peace, nationalism, socialism and religion, ‘how socialists should behave’, the ‘women’s cause’, racism, and the future of the planet. In the middle of all that, he has a fascinating chapter, by far the longest, entitled “Growth of a Vision”, which is an extensive critical review of literature through the ages idealising how society could be better organised, ranging from Utopia by Thomas More, first published in 1516, to News from Nowhere by William Morris and the various utopias described by H G Wells. In the final chapter entitled, “The Long Haul, or, If When and How” he looks at what we can do to hasten the advent of ‘real’ socialism. Then there is a short end-piece, where he becomes more personal, describing how his beloved wife and life-long companion, Nan, having been brought up as a Tory, came to join the Communist Party in the 1940s, and the lessons that this might have for “the next stage [in the struggle for socialism]”. All in all, the book takes one through an amazing journey inside the broad- thinking mind of an intellectual who also did much to put his ideas into practice. It dispels many of the myths put about by vested interests opposed to socialism, and encourages us all, in our day-to-day activities, to organise and fight for a better future for our children. It should appeal to young and old alike, experienced activists as well as newcomers. Unfortunately, the book has no index, and it could have done with better proof reading, but these criticisms do not detract from the content. It is highly recommended.

The Conway Hall Jazz Appreciation Group meets on the third Tuesday of each month, except August, to listen to, discuss and enjoy jazz music in a relaxed atmosphere. We gather at 6.30pm for a 7.00pm start and the sessions are about two hours long. Events are usually free, with donations accepted for light refreshments.

Ethical Record, February 2011 17 THE GOD VIRUS? A RESPONSE BY KEITH WARD Chaired and organized by the Centre for Inquiry (UK) Provost, Stephen Law, 30 November 2010 Report by Ian Buxton Oxford theologian Keith Ward – familiar on the London lecture circuit due to his appointment as Gresham Professor of Divinity and elsewhere – spoke on the titled theme for an hour or so before fielding questions. He kicked off by examining any senses in which religion could be regarded as a “virus” – even analogically – and argued that the words “virus” and “religion” (or personally held religious belief) are disanalogous in just about any sense that one might choose to consider. Thus he acknowledged: 1) That although religions can be viewed as “contagious”, so with equal reason could any idea or body of knowledge, and added that it is by no means clear that we can simply “catch religion” with the casual ease with which we can become infected by some micro-organism when in contact with other people. 2) That there is an admitted analogy between antibodies and arguments contra religion. 3) That although religions can be “detected” by untrained individual human beings, micro-organisms cannot. 4) Both religions and micro-organisms have specific vectors of propagation. 5) The claim that both religions and micro-organisms “programme” their hosts to propagate the ‘infection’ further is contentious, because not all religious people engage in proselytisation. The rule is that only a minority of the adherents of any religion do so to any serious extent. (However, I might add that many viruses can lie dormant for decades within human hoists without posing risk of contagion to others). Sue Blackmore: Religion Tends To Be Altruistic Ward added that Sue Blackmore – surely the planet’s Number One Contender in the “meme propagation” stakes – had gratifyingly emailed him immediately upon hearing that he was about to give this talk at Conway Hall and had (after at least 20 years) changed her mind about the adverse health risks of religions in consideration of the two factors: that religion correlates with child-bearing (Q: is that a good thing, necessarily?) and that it tends to be altruistic. (Really? What about the Crusades? What about the numerous mediaeval Inquisitions? What about the philistinism of aggressively rampant religions, such as the dynamiting of ancient Buddhist statuary in Afghanistan, or the deliberate inculcation of the illiterate-for-the-masses dark ages in Europe, whose effects lasted for roughly 1,000 years?) He quoted Harold König’s claim that there is “no correlation between personal religious belief and mental illness”. (I’ve just done a quick web-whack on his name and apparently he’s an ophthalmologist. Did König mean instead 18 Ethical Record, February 2011 to say: “There’s no correlation between personal religious belief and visual impairment?”) One supposes that that’s fine as long as we actually have an unambiguous definition of “mental illness” – the DSM is continually revising its terminology and “diagnostics” – and also as long, of course, as we decide to regard the holding of any set of beliefs which no-one would even begin to take seriously within any other context (I refer of course to religious “beliefs”) as not indicative of some form of mental illness! It would appear that in this case at least considerations of political correctness militate against the ascription of mental illness to holders of such “beliefs”, since it would generally be perceived to be acutely embarrassing were the majority of most populations throughout the world to be labelled not only “ill” but, even worse, to have been deliberately inculcated into such a difficult-to-reverse state. Notwithstanding, Ward then proceeded to claim that there is a positive correlation between religious belief and well-being. Well, there’s undeniably a correlation between social respectability and well-being, and a sure-fire method of acquiring social respectability – not that I’m suggesting perfidy or insincerity – is to evince the pattern of religious adherence which prevails wherever you happen to live! I’m also prompted to speculate about the curious Christian doctrine of “Original Sin”. Many “recoverees” from Christianity have been strongly critical of the immense burden of self-perceived guilt which they have carried since childhood as a result of having subscribed to this ideological condition. Have they been experiencers of “well-being”? Ward then proceeded to claim that “many religions lack a god or gods”. Many? Buddhism, certainly .. and? .. He then asked what the criterion is for “religion” if the ontological claim excludes godhood, and so proceeded to expand the definition of religion – claiming that “there’s no such thing as religion in general” and adding that Marxism and football could be considered strong contenders. (No particularly novel revelations there, then!) Darrell Ray’s The God Virus The principal motif throughout Ward’s talk was an attack on the “aggressive” claims of Darrell Ray, (who spoke on his book The God Virus at a CFI event at Conway Hall on 23 October 2010), beginning with his claim that “all religions are alike”. Ward’s response: “Are they? Maybe there is something in people that is virus-like – psychologically pathological. As for brainwashing, well I’m a total failure as a brainwasher. I tell my children that Oxford theology has the tendency to destroy religious beliefs, not reinforce them.” Nice try, Keith, but we’re not convinced. What about yourself? Swinburne? .. And hordes of others hailing from Blue-Brick Land, but particularly from Oxford. He avowed especial admiration for Quakerism, that peculiarly pacifistic and unaggressive brand of belief in which “people simply wait until they quake”. Ward moved on to the (dubious, in my opinion) subject of “rationality”, claiming that “rationality was invented in Europe by the Catholic Church”. (Was he kidding?) An example of such “rationality”, apparently, is Anselm’s claim that the number of people born is exactly equal to the number of souls

Ethical Record, February 2011 19 descended from Heaven”. (Wow! Is this rationality in action or is the Pope an atheist?) He continued: “Anselm and Aquinas in their teachings were not appealing to the Bible.” (Never?) “It would be absurd to regard their reasoning as an example of ‘blind faith’ “. Ward’s extrapolated claim was that with the arrival of the Enlightenment “reason became more important than faith, but only a minority of Enlightenment intellectuals were either atheists or agnostics”. Not being an actuarial statistician of Enlightenment fideistic affiliation, I confess total ignorance of the lie of the land in regard to his claim, but one might perhaps otherwise have “reasoned” (!) that the term “Enlightenment” denoted precisely that cast of educated 18th century opinion which rejected the claims of religions, so here’s an online definition: ‘The Enlightenment’ has been given many differing definitions but it was, at its broadest, a philosophical movement of the eighteenth century which stressed human reasoning over blind faith or obedience and was thus in contrast with much of the religious and political order of the day, while also encouraging ‘scientific’ thinking. Ward: Rationality Is Itself A Proof Of God Make of that what you will! However, Ward’s burgeoning thesis at this point became manifest. It was that the human capacity for rationality is itself a proof of God’s existence (!). Ward conceded that the belief that values somehow “exist” within the universe is indeed irrational .. and l’m minded at this juncture to repeat this admonition to that contingent of SPES members who strenuously maintain that certain actions are simply “good” and others “bad”. How could they possibly “know”? This, however, is a deeply distracting philosophical (pseudo-)conundrum in my view, so let us defer to Ward’s opinions. He continued by stressing what he considers is a thorny problem for philosophical naturalists: “How is it possible for us to know anything? Is it not surely God who is the source of our capacity to understand?” Countering Ray’s claim that religionists’ claim to “know religious truth” is arrogant, Ward waxed rhetorical: “The physical chemist Peter Atkins, whom I am sure is known to some of you, has said quite categorically that my own religious belief is a consequence of too little oxygen getting through to my brain. Isn’t that tremendously arrogant?” What’s up, Keith, can’t you take a little joke now and then? (Don’t know about the oxygen bit, but Peter’s belief that the cosmos exists as a result of “borrowed gravitational energy” is definitely out of kilter with most contemporary cosmologists’ views. That doesn’t make it wrong, of course, much less arrogant.)

He continued: “Let’s just say that we all of us believe that we believe the truth. Some of us are theists and some of us are atheists and one of us is wrong .. but .. religion has survival value.” (Really? What about – e.g. – the Cathars? “Survival” .. for whom? The orthodox believer?) “It has adaptive significance and is deeply rooted in the human psyche.” (Ward not only believes in a “God”, but he also believes in a “psyche” – which as Francis Crick has rightly, if politically incorrectly, observed, hardly any scientifically educated person

20 Ethical Record, February 2011 would be prepared to make house room for. He added: “Belgium – a Catholic country – is unable to maintain stable government because of the language conflict. Is this due to religious disagreement? Certainly not, it’s France versus Holland! No, the real virus seems to be ethnic hatred, which often uses religious orientation as a hook on which to hang ethnic disputes. The tragedy of the so-called which follows Dawkins, Ray and Sam Harris is that it uses religion as a scapegoat. Yet another factual mistake in Ray’s book is his belief that kamikaze pilots were thinking of the next life as they flew their planes into the enemy’s ships, but this is simply untrue. I’ve never met Ray, but I’m afraid that I can’t take him seriously. I’ve just given you 3 examples of major factual mistakes that he’s made. No major wars have been of religious origin.” Well, I suppose that The Hundred Years’ War simply didn’t happen, then. Ward proceeded to give us the benefit of his potted snapshot of the philosophy of science: “Science is not unique in its error-correcting approach. What about theology? History? Music?” (Yes, Keith, what about them?) “What we do do is to adjust older beliefs in accordance with our scientific and moral beliefs. One of my predecessors (F.W. Morris) was sacked for not believing in eternal damnation. Nowadays, I suspect that any theologian who does believe in it would be sacked.” All very cosy and hunky-dory for contemporary, self-effacing Christianity then, we are (supposedly) being led to suppose! “So yes”, he went on, “there are ways of correcting our moral beliefs. In fact, Ray’s book is precisely an attempt to correct religious beliefs, but not a very good one. Catholics believe in natural law, not revealed law. So what can I say about Ray? Some sorts of religious belief might be virus-like in blinding us to certain mistaken aspects of our thinking. I’ll end by quoting from Ray: Attend to the philosophy of science and know more about psychology. Many people have actually done that and remain obstinately religious.” Well, I suppose that Ray was being a little gung-ho there, Keith. He was, of course, giving vent to what in philosophical circles is known as a normative utterance! Most Philosophers Are Non-believers During the ensuing question period I asked him about his curious and clearly empirically false belief that most philosophers have been and remain to this day believers in the claim that “rationality derives from God”, and I pointed out that a clear majority of contemporary English-language philosophers are indeed “non-believers” (the majority of that large faction in turn being actual atheists.), excepting oddities such as Richard Swinburne, Norman Malcolm and Alvin Plantinga. I related to him a reply which I’d heard from Paul Horwich several years ago, who when asked: “How many philosophers believe in God?”, at which, somewhat startled at the nature of the question, he gave a long pause and then with a slightly amused shrug said: “Mm… 5 … maybe … 10 per cent.” A questioner who was clearly better armed than myself in a statistical sense

Ethical Record, February 2011 21 pursued the attack by quoting from the findings of the (American) Christian Philosophical Society, who apparently have the intellectual honesty to admit that even in America – that quintessentially God-fearing country by “western” standards – fully 72% of professional philosophers declare themselves atheists, even though fewer than 50% would be prepared to commit themselves to anything closely resembling a science-friendly philosophical naturalism. Ward tried to deflect this by suggesting self-selecting sample bias: “I very rarely respond to questionnaires”, but the attacker – who was he? I’d like to know; well-mounted attack, that man etc – refused to be deflected from his sense of purpose. Eventually, after a further 5 minutes or so in which various members of the audience began shouting that he should address the issue conscientiously, he decided to retract his peculiarly insular and misinformed belief about philosophers’ general beliefs in regard to the G-notion. One goal to us, then, I reckon. Another fairly astute question was: “Religious belief, like falling in love, is fundamentally irrational, and not rationally informed as you claim. Theological advocacy is not the cause of religious beliefs but, rather, it follows them, as an attempt at post hoc justification.” Ward replied that the famous 19th century monist idealist F.H. Bradley had said that metaphysics is the science of giving good reasons for the holding of bad beliefs! He added that Plantinga himself has pointed out that everyone has non-rationally derived ‘basic beliefs’ about everything, in the sense that an infinite regress of justification is simply impossible! Well, yes, Keith, but isn’t it just the case that the examination of these ‘big questions’ does in fact constitute the subject-matter of a subject known as philosophy? You yourself admit to having had some acquaintance with the discipline! Another questioner asked: “Do you believe that for God even contradictory operations are possible, such as the creation of square circles and so on?” Ward replied that Descartes certainly held that view, and that various thinkers had at various times invented “non-necessitarian logics” (lacking Aristotle’s postulate of nonself-contradiction) but that he personally didn’t think that even God is capable of contradicting himself! (Phew, what a relief, then.) Gratifyingly, he made the surprising concession that atheists are in general “more sophisticated than” religious believers. “You have to learn atheism. You see, most people do not employ the method of empirically based inductive reasoning.” (i.e. the scientific method.) Donald Rooum’s concluding question was: “Doesn’t the belief in someone’s personal infallibility constitute the definitive criterion of religion? I ask this because of my extensive contacts with members of the British Communist Party during the late 1940s, all of whom without fail refused to accept any evidence of Stalin’s cruelty and other improper or immoral behaviour.” Ward’s reply then: “No”. {Doesn’t this reply contradict Ward’s earlier answer that Marxism could be considered a religion? [Ed].}

The views expressed in this Journal are not necessarily those of the Society. 22 Ethical Record, February 2011 VIEWPOINT Physicalism And Epiphenomenalism: Differences And Similarities Physicalism is the doctrine that consciousness, as a mental entity, does not exist.* Hence, when we speak of consciousness, we are really talking about the physical brain: its states and activities. So, what in folk-psychological language are called the conscious mental processes of thinking, reflecting, remembering, deciding etc. are actually brain-dispositions and functions. Since the latter are physical entities, the former should, as far as possible, be described in the language of physics. The brain, then, is the only agency and, indeed, the only reality in the sphere popularly and traditionally known as the mental. It is the only factor that causes brain-states and the actions of the human agent arising from those states. By contrast, epiphenomenalism is the view that consciousness does exist, in addition to the physical brain. It exists as a property or attribute of brain-states and activities. So, the physical brain is not the only reality. However, consciousness has no causal efficacy; it does not produce effects, either in terms of subsequent brain-states/processes or of actions by the human agent. As a property of a brain-state, it is wholly passive; therefore a succession of experiences of consciousness are ‘passengers’ carried along on the sequence of brain-states. Only the latter, then, are the causes of subsequent brain-states and subsequent human actions. It will be clear that the differences between physicalism and epiphenomenalism also point to their similarities. In both, the physical is the bottom-line consideration, as the only causal agency. That epiphenomenalism posits a mental entity in addition to physical ones does not affect this point. The latter, moreover, renders the differences between the two outlooks relatively unimportant, when both are viewed in the broad neo-Darwinian perspective. The focus of neo-Darwinism is the evolution of the physical — including, of course, the evolution of the brain; and, in both doctrines, discussion of ‘mental experience’ is ultimately referenced to the evolved state of the brain. There are additional convergences between the two outlooks. Since both see the brain as the only agency, both regard a study of recurrent1 brain-actions, of the given tendencies and propensities of a person’s brain, as the guide to explaining his actions. Further, as well as identifying brain-patterns, there is the issue of appraising them, making some judgement about their calibre; in this, the educational and cultural sphere, both positions look to the same physical data. Tom Rubens – London N4

1 A study now extensively available due to advances in neuro-physiology. At the same time, it should be said that such a study needs to be conducted with mindfulness of the environmental influences on the individual. Brain-action reflects a variety of influences, environmental and genetic, while of course still remaining brain-action, and therefore the centre of interest for both physicalism and epiphenomenalism. *{Some physicalists identify consciousness with the brain.[Ed.]}

Ethical Record, February 2011 23 PROGRAMME OF EVENTS AT THE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC1R 4RL. Tel: 020 7242 8031/4 Registered Charity No. 251396 For programme updates, email: [email protected] Website: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk No charge unless stated Sunday meetings are held in the Brockway Room. FEBRUARY 2011 Sunday 6 THE MORAL MIND 1100 Henry Haslam, author Wednesday 9 BHA/SPES Joint Event: DARWIN DAY LECTURE: 1900 MUTANTS AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT THEM Professor Armand Marie Leroi, Imperial College London Saturday 12 PER/SPES 1100 EDUCATION AND THE BIG SOCIETY – contributions to discussion welcomed Sunday 13 DARWIN’S SACRED CAUSE 1100 James Moore, author and Open University lecturer Sunday 20 SCIENCE, HUMANITIES, RELIGION: HOW MANY CONFLICTS? 1100 Richard Baron Tuesday 22 JAZZ CLUB 1900 Film: Jazz on a hot summer’s day. Sunday 27 THE TEUTONIC SHIFT FROM CHRISTIAN MORALITY – 1100 KANT, SCHOPENHAUER AND NIETZSCHE Peter Hughes MARCH Sunday 6 SPECIESISM AND PAINISM - A MODERN MORALITY 1100 Richard Ryder, author and philosopher Sunday 13 BUDDHISM: GODLESS RELIGION OR DEVOUT ATHEISM? 1100 Stephen Batchelor Sunday 20 TBC 1100 Ernest Rodker Sunday 27 CHOICE, FREEDOM AND AUTONOMY 1100 Thomas Pink, Kings College London SPES’s CONWAY HALL SUNDAY CONCERTS 2011 FEBRUARY 6 Maggini Quartet: Beethoven, Bridge, Mendelssohn 13 Navarra Quartet: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven 20 Sitkovetsky Trio: Haydn, Smetana, Mendelssohn 27 Callaghan Piano Trio: Faure, Mendelssohn, Chopin MARCH 6 London Concertante String Trio: Schubert, Villa-Lobos, Mozart 13 Carducci Quartet: Haydn, Ravel, Beethoven 20 Maggini Quartet: Haydn, Bridge, Mendelssohn 27 Tim Hugh ‘cello, Simon Callaghan piano: Debussy, Beethoven, Rachmaninov 6.30pm Tickets £8; under 18 £4 Full details on: www.conwayhallsundayconcerts.org.uk

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