Ethical Record the Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society Vol
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Ethical Record The Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society Vol. 115 No. 10 £1.50 December 2010 IS THE POPE ON A SLIPPERY SLOPE? As a thoughtful person, the Pope is concerned that males involved in certain activities might inadvertently spread the AIDS virus to their male friends. He has therefore apparently authorised them to employ condoms, thereby contradicting his organisation's propaganda that these articles are ineffective for this purpose. He also knows that the said activities are most unlikely to result in conception! The obvious next point to consider is the position of a woman whose husband may have the AIDS virus. The Pope has not authorised that the husband's virus should be similarly confined and his wife protected from danger. The Pope apparently considers that the divine requirement to conceive takes precedence, even if the child and its mother contract AIDS as a result. For how long can this absurd contradiction be maintained? VERNON LUSHINGTON, THE CRISIS OF FAITH AND THE ETII1CS OF POSITIVISM David Taylor 3 THE SPIRIT LEVEL DELUSION Christopher Snowdon 10 REVIEW: HUMANISM: A BEGINNER'S GUIDE by Peter Cave Charles Rudd 13 CLIMATE CHANGE, DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN NATURE Marek Kohn 15 VIEWPOINTS Colin Mills. Jim Tazewell 22 ETHICAL SOCIETY EVENTS 24 Centre for Inquiry UK and South Place Ethical Society present THE ROOT CAUSES OF THE HOLOCAUST What caused the Holocaust? What was the role of the Enlightenment? What role did religion play in causing, or trying to halt, the Holocaust? 1030 Registration 1100 Jonathan Glover 1200 David Ranan 1300 A .C. Grayling Saturday 18 December 2010 at Conway Hall 10on the door. Free to Friends of CFI UK, also GALHA, SPES, BHA, AHS, CAMP QUEST, NEW HUMANIST SUBSCRIBERS. SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway HallHumanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WC IR 4RL. Tel: 020 7242 8031/4 Fax: 020 7242 8036 www.ethicalsoc.org.uk Chairman: Jim Herrick Hon. Rep.: Derek Lennard Vice - chairman: Terry Mullins Registrar: Giles Enders Editor, Ethical Record: Norman Bacrac Email texts and viewpoints for the Editor to: [email protected] SPES Staff Chief Executive: Emma J. Stanford 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] Finance Officer: Linda Alia Tel: 020 7242 803114 [email protected] Lettings Officer Carina Dvorak Tel: 020 7242 8032 [email protected] Lettings Assistant: Marie Aubrechtova Caretakers: Eva Aubrechtova (i/c) Tel: 020 7242 8033 together with: Angelo Edrozo,Alfredo Olivo.Rogerio Retuerna. Cagatay Ulker Maintenance Operative: Zia Hameed The Society thanks Shaip Bullaku and David Wright for their work over many years as Caretakers. New Members We welcome to the Society: Simon Callaghan of Ruislip; John Cunningham of London E9; Anna Fairbairn of London W3; Fraser Harrison of Bury St Edmunds and Emma Stanford of Edgware. Donors We thank members who responded to the appeal for funds towards the Library ceiling repairs. SEES AGM, 14 NOVEMBER 2010 GENERAL COMMITTEE (CHARITY TRUSTEES). The following were elected to vacancies on the GC for 3-year terms: Chris Bratcher, Andrew Copson, John Edwards and Edmund McArthur. The existing Trustees are: Norman Bacrac, Jim Herrick, Marina Ingham, Donald Langdown, Derek Lennard, Terry Mullins and Chris Purnell. The Society thanked Don Liversedge, who resigned, for his many years service including being Treasurer and Hon. Representative. HOLDING TRUSTEES. The following, being over 75, were elected as Holding Trustees for one year: Don Liversedge, Terry Mullins and Barbara Ward. Existing Holding Trustees are: Norman Bacrac, Chris Bratcher, Giles Enders, Jim Herrick and Tom Rubens. The Society thanked Harry Stopes-Roe, who stood down, for his many years service including work in the 1980 High Court case which established the Society as an Educational Charity. SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Rcg. 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, evenin2 courses and the Conway Hall Sunday Concerts of chamber music. Thc 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, December 2010 VERNON LUSHINGTON, THE CRISIS OF FAITH AND THE ETHICS OF POSITIVISM David Taylor, Blackham Fellow Lecture to the Ethical Society, 31 October 2010 At the start of the twenty-first century it is difficult to comprehend the soul searching experienced by many intellectuals in the middle years of the nineteenth century as they faced the ethical revolt against Christian Orthodoxy. Today an inability to accept traditional Christian dogma at face value is commonplace. However in mid-nineteenth century Britain there were considerable ethical and practical obstacles to the casting aside of all belief. Religion then occupied a major place in the public consciousness and was central to the intellectual life of the age. It was feared that unbelief would lead to moral degeneration and a collapse of the established system of values underpinning society. The philosopher Henry Sidgwick drifted away from orthodox Christianity in the 1860s but continued to regard Christianity as 'indispensable and irreplaceable — looking at it from a sociological point of view.' Even the atheistic Frederic Harrison wrote that 'man without religion is a nutshell in the wind.' In 1831 J.S. Mill had prophetically anticipated what lay ahead when he wrote. 'Mankind have outgrown old institutions and old doctrines, and have not yet acquired new ones.' They were like Matthew Arnold's traveller 'between two worlds, one dead and the other powerless to be born'. The crisis of faith stemmed initially from the development of Biblical criticism led by a group of German theological works such as Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity and Strauss's Lif C of Jesus, both of which were translated into English by George Eliot in 1846.* Shortly afterwards came the new discoveries in the world of scientific geology and evolution led by Charles Darwin. J.A. Froude wrote, 'The controversies of the place unsettled the faith which we had inherited.' Added to this was a growing repugnance towards the ethical implications of some basic Christian doctrine such as original sin and eternal punishment. Despite Sidgwick's loss of belief, he recognised the importance of Christianity in its moral sense and accordingly sought to separate it from its theology. Others went further as they sought to develop a new moral and ethical framework to work through the issues of the day. The Bible had been the cornerstone of English Protestantisrn and 'if God and the Bible no longer commanded absolute allegiance, what was there for man to serve?' In their search for an answer a number turned to the French philosopher Auguste Comte who's Positivism with its Religion of Humanity seemed to fill the void. Comte: The Three Stages Of Humanity How did this new religion differ from others? Like other monotheistic traditional religions it had a 'Great Being' that could be conceived as God. However, unlike others it was far from being a Metaphysical Being; rather it was 'humanity itself — in the form of Great Being —which was composed of conscious elements, namely people.' Positivism was a humanist philosophy which held that man should rule his life on scientific, not metaphysical, principles, and that the *The SPES Library has an earlier anonymous translation published in 1842/4 Ethical Record, December 2010 3 worship of God should give way to that of humanity. Comte divided the progress of mankind into three historical stages. These were firstly the theological, which relied on supernatural agencies to explain what man could not explain otherwise; then the metaphysical in which man attributed effects to abstract but poorly understood causes and, finally, the positive because man now understood the scientific laws which control the world. Comte and his followers believed that it was this third stage that mankind was now entering. After reading Comte's Philosophie Positive George Eliot's partner G.H. Lewes wrote: 'A new era has dawned. For the first time in history an explanation of the World, Society and Man is presented which is thoroughly homogenous, and at the same time thoroughly in accordance with accurate knowledge.' The impact, challenge and influence of Comte, on a wide area of intellectual, religious and political thinking in nineteenth century Britain has long been recognised. He not only focused the minds of a large number of prominent Victorians on the possibility of replacing Christianity with an alternative religion based on scientific principles and humanist values, but also made many converts. Even the agnostic Huxley, in 1854, wrote about Comte, 'I cannot swallow his Religion of Humanity, and yet his arguments as to the necessity of Religion of some sort have great weight with me.' In the early years of the last century Edward Pease commented 'It is difficult for the present generation to realise how large a space in the minds of the young men of the eighties was occupied with the religion of Comte.' Terry Wright has noted that `the inner struggles of many of Conite's English disciples, so amply documented in their note books, letters, and diaries, have not so far received the close sympathetic treatment they deserve.