Ethical Record The Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society Vol. 117 No. 2 £1.50 February 2012 ON RUPERT SHELDRAKE’S ‘DOGMAS OF SCIENCE’ A Materialist’s Reactions to 10 alleged delusions scientists hold (see p 7) 1. Dogs are complex mechanisms, rather than living organisms. Fathoming an animal’s complex mechanisms can only enhance one’s appreciation of it as a living organism. 2. All matter is unconscious. Consciousness is an illusion. Not all matter is unconscious – physical brains generate consciousness (ie experience) which is a real, not an illusory, phenomenon. 3. The total amount of matter and energy is always the same. In 1948, respected physicists H.Bondi, F.Hoyle and T.Gold proposed a steady- state cosmology wherein new matter continually appeared – a genuine because it was capable of falsification by evidence – it made predictions. 4. The laws of are fixed. If, say, the strength of gravity did fluctuate, physicists would naturally seek the ‘law’ that governed the fluctuations…… which law, if found, would not itself fluctuate. 5. Nature is purposeless; has no goal. The shift from barren, Aristotelian teleology (eg as in Genesis) to the fecund, Darwinian mechanism of natural selection is justified by a wealth of evidence. 6. Inheritance is material…….carried in the DNA, RNA etc…… but not in Sheldrake’s ‘morphogenetic field’ which makes no predictions. 7. The image of a tree you see is inside your brain, not out there. Is your phantom limb ‘out there’as well? 8. Memories are stored in brains. Yes, unfortunately – would we could save them all in cyberspace! 9. is illusory. I certainly hope so – otherwise our thoughts would be a hackers’paradise! 10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that works. The world awaits discovery of the mechanisms that will destroy cancer.

A MODERN DAY CREATION STORY John Rawles 3 THE SCIENCE DELUSION Rupert Sheldrake 7 BOOK NOTICES Norman Bacrac 11 NEW ADDITIONS TO THE HUMANIST LIBRARY Cathy Broad 11 CHRISTOPHER ERIC HITCHENS (1949 – 2011) Jennifer R. Jeynes 12 VIEWPOINTS M Zeki, E Bostle, J Edmondson, F Pirani, D Forsyth 18 MEMBERSHIP SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR 2012 Chris Bratcher 22 ETHICAL SOCIETY EVENTS 24 SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. Main phone for all options: 020 7405 1818 Fax (lettings): 020 7061 6746 www.ethicalsoc.org.uk Chairman: Chris Purnell Vice-chairman: Jim Herrick Treasurer: Chris Bratcher Editor: Norman Bacrac Please email texts and viewpoints for the Editor to: [email protected] Staff Chief Executive Officer: Jim Walsh Tel: 020 7061 6745 [email protected] Administrator: Martha Lee Tel: 020 7061 6741 [email protected] Finance Officer: Linda Alia Tel: 020 7061 6740 [email protected] Librarian: Catherine Broad Tel: 020 7061 6747 [email protected] Hon. Archivist Carl Harrison Programme Co-ordinator: Ben Partridge Tel: 020 7061 6744 [email protected] Lettings Officer: Carina Dvorak Tel: 020 7061 6750 [email protected] Caretakers: Eva Aubrechtova (i/c) Tel: 020 7061 6743 [email protected] together with: Angelo Edrozo, Alfredo Olivo, Rogerio Retuerna, Cagatay Ulker Maintenance: Zia Hameed Tel: 020 7061 6742 [email protected] New members Thomas Cardy, Birmingham; Kieran Duffy, Cricklewood, London; Girish Ramadurgam, Rotherhithe, London; Ann Rogers, Hayes, Middlesex; Joseph Xuereb, Westminster, London.

JAMES HEMMING ESSAY PRIZE, 2012 The subject for 2012 is: No moral system can rest solely on authority. It can never be sufficient justification for performing any action that someone commands it. (A J Ayer, 1910-1989) Discuss. The Prize awards are: 1st Prize £1000; 2nd Prize £500; 3rd Prize £250. The prize money is provided by the South Place Ethical Society. Entries of no more than 1,500 words will be accepted from any student at a UK school or college studying for AS or A2 levels or qualifications at the same level who is 19 or under on 1 April 2012. The essay must be accompanied by a completed entry form and posted to: James Hemming Essay Prize, 1 Gower Street, London WC1E 6HD by 1 April 2012. The James Hemming Essay Prize is administered by the British Humanist Association, New Humanist and the South Place Ethical Society. For more information please visit www.hemmingprize.org.uk

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 now £35 (£25 if a full-time student, unwaged or over 65)

2 Ethical Record, February 2012 A MODERN DAY CREATION STORY John Rawles Author of The Matter with Us (Pen Press 2011) Summary of a Lecture to the Ethical Society, 27 November 2011

There are three controversial aspects of creation which even humanists may have some difficulty in accepting: • the origin of the universe, • the origin of life, and • the origin and nature of consciousness. How can these problematic aspects of creation be incorporated into a scientific creation story without recourse to the supernatural? The Origin of the Universe Prior to the account of the origin of the universe, the prevailing theory was of an eternal, steady state universe. The current ex nihilo big bang theory evokes two questions which seem to require a metaphysical or supernatural answer: What caused the big bang, and what was there beforehand? These questions are misleading, however, and result in part from the metaphorical mathematical language used to describe the event. Mathematics is a language invented and used by humans to describe the experienced world. Just as our verbal language owes its structures to our biology and the way in which we see the world, maths also is grounded in our experience, which is why it works as a descriptive language of the physical world. Much of mathematics, however, is an imaginative construction which has no counterpart in reality, in the same way as imaginary worlds may be created with our verbal language. One particular imaginative leap which concerns us here is to treat zero as a number like any other. As a language, mathematics is particularly good at describing changes involving time and motion, which are experienced as being smoothly continuous, or analogue. But both time and motion are qualitatively different from their mathematical representations, which are discontinuous and digital.* It is this discontinuous digital representation of analogue physical quantities which makes mathematics fundamentally metaphoric. Metaphor is describing something in terms of something very different, like describing nature as number. Another fundamental difference between nature and number is that, while mathematics may describe nature, it does not determine it. The smooth continuous motion of the planets around the sun is accurately described by mathematics, but numbers play no part in directing planetary movement. Although Newton’s universal law of gravitation is expressed as a mathematical equation, numbers play no part in the law’s implementation.

*Note. Although at present, in both ordinary and , space and time co-ordinates are represented by continuous quantities, ie the so-called ‘real’ numbers. {Ed.}

Ethical Record, February 2012 3 The big bang presents us with an impenetrable barrier of ignorance as to what, if anything, came before it. Since the big bang, time and space are thought to have varied continuously: the expansion of the universe, which is still occurring, is analogue. But time and space may also have been changing before the big bang, and may have changed while crossing the divide at time zero between before and after, but we cannot know whether or not that is so. This is because although zero is classified as a number like any other, in one respect it is different from all other numbers: one cannot divide by it. This prohibition results in the singularity of the big bang. The big bang is a break at time zero, not necessarily in the continuity of the physical processes underway at that time, but in the continuity of their calculation. Rather than marking its origin, the big bang may be considered as a landmark event in a continuous history of the universe, of which the earlier part is unknown and unknowable. In that case, the question ‘what caused the big bang’ is inappropriate and does not require an answer, least of all a metaphysical one. Light is an emergent property of a system which, to begin with, consisted simply of atoms of hydrogen in the early universe interacting with each other by means of gravity. The mutual gravitational attraction of hydrogen ultimately resulted in the creation of light from nuclear fusion in the sun at the centre of our solar system. This is a bottom up creation story, replacing the top down story of fiat lux. It gives us a completely new perspective on matter itself. Matter is often thought of as being passive stuff, something we do things to, not something unpredictable and creative which does things, spontaneously, all by itself. The Origin of Life When our solar system came into being, the universe was already about ten billion years old, time enough for the hundred or so elements of the periodic table, including carbon, to have been created by repeated passage through stellar furnaces comprised by explosions of supernovae. An agglomeration of the star dust from such explosions became planet Earth. On Earth, on the principle that given sufficient time, every possibility becomes a near certainty, every conceivable combination and permutation of chemical elements would have occurred, every chemical compound formed, usually to quickly decompose again into its constituents. The key step in the creation of life was the formation of a stable molecule which replicated itself. The favoured candidate for this role is not DNA but the related RNA. Once this happened, life was underway, its subsequent evolution being then directed by Darwin’s principle of natural selection and survival of the fittest. Any genetic modification was perpetuated if it resulted in a change in the organism which led to a greater number of gene copies being replicated. Thereafter, the evolutionary process filled the world with a staggering variety of species of life occupying every possible ecological niche. But what is life? Life is matter in a temporary, dynamic state of dis-equilibrium with its environment, and life has been passed down to us like an Olympic flame, without interruption, from its microscopic origin some three billion years ago.

4 Ethical Record, February 2012 The Origin of Consciousness For many people, consciousness is the sticking point in developing a secular creation story. Long ago, philosopher John Locke argued that just as matter cannot arise from nothing, mind, or thought, cannot arise from matter; he seems to have been wrong on both counts. But today there are still those, including thoroughgoing atheistic scientists and philosophers, who just cannot equate mind with brain**. Being alive and conscious is the ultimate indescribable experience. We all find it impossible to imagine how this wonderful state of being alive and aware can arise from biochemical processes inside our heads. And yet there is no evidence that consciousness exists independently of life, and sadly, no shortage of examples of consciousness being extinguished with life itself. Systems Theory These three very different aspects of creation may be brought together in a single creation story which is called, for want of a better name, systems theory. A system is a collection of items of the same sort of thing, whether atoms of hydrogen, neurones in the brain, or members of an animal or plant species. Whatever a particular system consists of, the key thing is that its components react with each other in some way, with the result that new molecules, new properties, new species of matter, new arrangements or new institutions come into being. This is what is meant by emergent properties. The properties which emerge from such a system are not possessed by its components, and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. So the wetness of water, for example, is an emergent property of a system consisting of two gases, hydrogen and oxygen. New varieties of matter emerging from a system may in turn constitute a new, higher level system. Thus, the one hundred elements originating in supernovae make up a chemical system with enormous creative potential. As all these elements combine in a myriad ways with each other, innumerable compounds with new properties emerge. The example was given of water, H2O. Another example is carbon combining with oxygen to give the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, CO2. One of the new molecules to be created in this chemical system had the novel property of self-replication: RNA. At that point, from the system consisting of the chemical elements, life emerged. Dumb matter had come to life. An animal or plant species is a higher order system still, in which its members react with each other in a multitude of ways, one of which is competition - for nutrition, shelter or for a mate. According to Darwin, it is in this competitive environment that new species originate by means of natural selection and survival of the fittest. So light and life are emergent properties of two fairly simple physico-chemical systems, while life itself constitutes another system of much greater complexity and potential, from which new living species originate.

Note** The word ‘mind’ may reasonably be used for any mental activity, including unconscious thought, in which case it could be equated with brain; but to say that consciousness equals (or is identical to) brain, rather than being generated by brain, is a contentious issue today. {Ed.}

Ethical Record, February 2012 5 What about consciousness? The brain, with its billions of neurones, and trillions of ways in which they may be connected with each other, is said to be the most complicated structure in the universe. Consciousness may be seen as an emergent property of a system consisting of neurones in dynamic communication with each other. Vision features strongly in consciousness, and even with our eyes shut we can picture a situation and see how the land lies. With our eyes open the information from our two-dimensional retinas is repeatedly processed to detect faces, lines, surfaces, movement, colour, all in three dimensions. Somehow, in this iterative reprocessing of raw sensory data – or our memories – besides the extraction of meaning, there emerges consciousness and short term memory. Consciousness has been described as thickening the present, prolonging that instant of time between past and future, allowing the formulation of an appropriate response. One of the features to note in this account of systems theory is the relationship between systems at different levels. Individual atoms of hydrogen in the early universe had little influence on the course of events, but collectively, by means of their mutual gravitational attraction, they gave rise to galaxies of stars. The emergent system of stars, however, had a very profound effect on the lower system of hydrogen, where many of the atoms lost their identity as they were fused together to make heavier elements. Similarly, the competition between members of an animal species may result in the emergence of a variant with a new survival feature, and, as a consequence, the extinction of those who lack it. Human Systems with Unintended Consequences We humans collectively create systems which may then take on a life of their own, with emergent properties and a predominant interest in self promotion and self perpetuation. Think of the economic system with its emergent property of the invisible hand of the free market, and the balance of supply and demand. Or the banking system, or capitalism, or the system of government we have set up. Once these systems are up and running, we have little individual influence over them, but they have a huge impact on us, and may sometimes threaten to overcome us. To summarise, a ‘bottom up’ creation story is presented in which a material and natural account supplants one which is spiritual and supernatural or ‘top down’. In my view this in no way diminishes the magnificence of creation, or of our appreciation of it; quite the contrary. The more we learn of the workings of the natural world, of living creatures and of our own bodies and brains, the more we are in awe and wonder at the amazing properties of the matter of which everything in the universe, including ourselves, is made. But the materialistic creation story is also a humbling one because it does not boast of any special relationship with a creator. Rather, we learn that we are a Johnny-come-lately species in the world, and we are here by chance rather than by design. We also learn that we have much less control over ourselves and our lives than we imagine, or would like to have. Nevertheless, we can all rejoice in the extraordinarily lucky chance by which we find ourselves in such a wonderful world, and we can rejoice, too, in the many and varied qualities we find in each other. 6 Ethical Record, February 2012 THE SCIENCE DELUSION Rupert Sheldrake Lecture to the Ethical Society, 29 January 2012

The “scientific worldview” is immensely influential because the sciences have been so successful. Their achievements touch all our lives through technologies and through modern medicine. Our intellectual world has been transformed through an immense expansion of our knowledge, down into the most microscopic particles of matter and out into the vastness of space, with hundreds of billions of galaxies in an ever-expanding universe. Yet in the second decade of the twenty-first century, when science and technology seem to be at the peak of the power, when their influence has spread all over the world and when their triumph seems indisputable, unexpected problems are disrupting the sciences from within. Most scientists take it for granted that these problems will eventually be solved by more research along established lines, but some, including myself, think that they are symptoms of a deeper malaise. In my new book The Science Delusion I argue that science is being held back by centuries-old assumptions that have hardened into dogmas. The biggest scientific delusion of all is that science already knows the answers. The details still need working out, but the fundamental questions are settled, in principle. Contemporary science is based on the claim that all reality is material or physical. There is no reality but material reality. Consciousness is a by-product of the physical activity of the brain. Matter is unconscious. Evolution is purposeless. God exists only as an idea in human minds, and hence in human heads. These beliefs are powerful not because most scientists think about them critically, but because they don’t. The facts of science are real enough, and so are the techniques that scientists use, and so are the technologies based on them. But the belief system that governs conventional scientific thinking is an act of faith, grounded in a nineteenth century ideology. I am pro-science. I want the sciences to be less dogmatic and more scientific. I believe that the sciences will be regenerated when they are liberated from the dogmas that constrict them. The Ten Core Beliefs that Most Scientists Take for Granted 1. Everything is essentially mechanical. Dogs, for example, are complex mechanisms, rather than living organisms with goals of their own. Even people are machines, “lumbering robots”, in ’ vivid phrase, with brains that are like genetically programmed computers. 2. All matter is unconscious. It has no inner life or subjectivity or point of view. Even human consciousness is an illusion produced by the material activities of brains. 3. The total amount of matter and energy is always the same (with the exception of the Big Bang, when all the matter and energy of the universe suddenly appeared). 4. The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at the Ethical Record, February 2012 7 beginning, and they will stay the same forever. 5. Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction. 6. All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other material structures. 7. Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains. When you look at a tree, the image of the tree you are seeing is not “out there”, where it seems to be, but inside your brain. 8. Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death. 9. Unexplained phenomena like telepathy are illusory. 10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works. Together, these beliefs make up the philosophy or ideology of , whose central assumption is that everything is essentially material or physical, even minds. This belief-system became dominant within science in the late nineteenth century, and is now taken for granted. Many scientists are unaware that materialism is an assumption; they simply think of it as science, or the scientific view of reality, or the scientific worldview. They are not actually taught about it, or given a chance to discuss it. They absorb it by a kind of intellectual osmosis. In everyday usage, materialism refers to a way of life devoted entirely to material interests, a preoccupation with wealth, possessions and luxury. These attitudes are no doubt encouraged by the materialist philosophy, which denies the existence of any spiritual realities or non-material goals, but here I am concerned with materialism’s scientific claims, rather than its effects on lifestyles. {Materialist philosophy includes conscious experience which is highly valued. [Ed.]}

In the spirit of radical scepticism, in The Science Delusion I turn each of these ten doctrines into a question. Entirely new vistas open up when a widely accepted assumption is taken as the beginning of an enquiry, rather than as an unquestionable truth. For example, the assumption that nature is machine-like or mechanical becomes a question: “Is nature mechanical?” The assumption that matter is unconscious becomes “Is matter unconscious?” And so on. The credibility crunch for the “scientific worldview” For more than 200 years, materialists have promised that science will eventually explain everything in terms of physics and chemistry. Science will prove that living organisms are complex machines, minds are nothing but brain activity and nature is purposeless. Believers are sustained by the faith that scientific discoveries will justify their beliefs. The philosopher of science called this stance “promissory materialism” because it depends on issuing promissory notes for discoveries not yet made. Despite all the achievements of science and technology, materialism is now facing a credibility crunch that was unimaginable in the twentieth century. Sydney Brenner and Francis Crick In 1963, when I was studying biochemistry at Cambridge University, I was invited to a series of private meetings with Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner in Brenner’s rooms in King’s College, along with a few of my classmates. Crick 8 Ethical Record, February 2012 and Brenner had recently helped to “crack” the genetic code. Both were ardent materialists. They explained there were two major unsolved problems in biology: development and consciousness. They had not been solved because the people who worked on them were not molecular biologists—nor very bright. Crick and Brenner were going to find the answers within ten years, or maybe twenty. Brenner would take , and Crick consciousness. They invited us to join them. Both tried their best. Brenner was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his work on the development of a tiny worm, Caenorhabdytis elegans. Crick corrected the manuscript of his final paper on the brain the day before he died in 2004. At his funeral, his son Michael said that what made him tick was not the desire to be famous, wealthy or popular, but “to knock the final nail into the coffin of .” (Vitalism is the theory that living organisms are truly alive, and not explicable in terms of physics and chemistry alone.) Crick and Brenner failed. The problems of development and consciousness remain unsolved. Many details have been discovered, dozens of genomes have been sequenced, and brain scans are ever more precise. But there is still no proof that life and minds can be explained by physics and chemistry alone. The fundamental proposition of materialism is that matter is the only reality. Therefore consciousness is nothing but brain activity. It is either like a shadow, an “epiphenomenon”, that does nothing, or it is just another way of talking about brain activity. However, among contemporary researchers in neuroscience and consciousness studies there is no consensus about the nature of minds. Leading journals such as Behavioural and Brain Sciences and the Journal of Consciousness Studies publish many articles that reveal deep problems with the materialist doctrine. The philosopher David Chalmers has called the very existence of subjective experience the “hard problem”. It is hard because it defies explanation in terms of mechanisms. Even if we understand how eyes and brains respond to red light, the experience of redness is not accounted for. In biology and psychology the credibility rating of materialism is falling. Can physics ride to the rescue? Some materialists prefer to call themselves physicalists, to emphasize that their hopes depend on modern physics, not nineteenth-century theories of matter. But physicalism’s own credibility rating has been reduced by physics itself, for four reasons: First, some physicists insist that quantum mechanics cannot be formulated without taking into account the minds of observers. They argue that minds cannot be reduced to physics because physics presupposes the minds of physicists. Second, the most ambitious unified theories of physical reality, string and M- theories, with ten and eleven dimensions respectively, take science into completely new territory. String theories and M-theories are currently untestable, so can only be judged by reference to other theoretical models, rather than by experiment. They also apply to countless other universes, none of which has ever been observed. As Stephen Hawking points out in his book The Grand Design, Ethical Record, February 2012 9 M-theory has solutions that allow for different universes with different apparent laws, depending on how the internal space is

curled. M-theory has solutions that500 allow for many different internal500 spaces, perhaps as many as 10 , which means it allows for 10 different universes, each with its own laws.… The original hope of physics to produce a single theory explaining the apparent laws of our universe as the unique possible consequence of a few simple assumptions may have to be abandoned. Some physicists are deeply sceptical about this entire approach, as the theoretical physicist Lee Smolin shows in his book The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science and What Comes Next (2008). String theories, M-theories and “model-dependent realism” are a shaky foundation for materialism or physicalism or any other belief system. Third, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, it has become apparent that the known kinds of matter and energy make up only about four percent of the universe. The rest consists of “dark matter” and “dark energy”. The nature of 96 percent of physical reality is literally obscure. Fourth, the Cosmological Anthropic Principle asserts that if the laws and constants of nature had been slightly different at the moment of the Big Bang, biological life could never have emerged, and hence we would not be here to think about it. So did a divine mind fine-tune the laws and constants in the beginning? To avoid a creator God emerging in a new guise, most leading cosmologists prefer to believe that our universe is one of a vast, and perhaps infinite, number of parallel universes, all with different laws and constants, as M-theory also suggests. We just happen to exist in the one that has the right conditions for us. This multiverse theory is the ultimate violation of Occam’s Razor, the philosophical principle that “entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity”, or in other words that we should make as few assumptions as possible. It also has the major disadvantage of being untestable. And it does not even succeed in getting rid of God. An infinite God could be the God of an infinite number of universes. Materialism provided a seemingly simple, straightforward worldview in the late nineteenth century, but twenty-first century science has left it far behind. Its promises have not been fulfilled, and its promissory notes have been devalued by hyperinflation. I am convinced that the sciences, for all their successes, are being stifled by outmoded beliefs that protect the citadel of established science, but act as barriers against open-minded thinking. The sciences would be better off without them: freer, more interesting, and more fun. Rupert Sheldrake is a Plant Physiologist and author of more than 80 scientific papers and 10 books, including The Science Delusion (Jan 2012). His web site is www.sheldrake.org.

The views expressed in this Journal are not necessarily those of the Society. 10 Ethical Record, February 2012 BOOK NOTICES THE GOD DEBATES A 21st Century Guide for Atheists and Believers (and Everyone in Between) John R. Shook, pub. Wiley Blackwell (2010) ISBN 978-1-4443-3641-2 John R.Shook is Director of Education and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Inquiry, Amherst, New York, author of The Future of (2009) and Dewey’s Philosophy of Spirit (2010). His book contains very clear and detailed discussion of all the usual themes in theology, atheology (‘the intellectual effort to explain why a worldview should not include any god’). This book is in the Humanist Library. IN THE NAME OF GOD The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Ethics and Violence John Teehan, pub. Wiley Blackwell (2010) ISNB 978-1-4051-8382-6 John Teehan is Associate Professor of Religion at Hofstra University. His analysis leads him to argue that “violence done in the name of religion is not a perversion of religious belief, as many apologists would like us to believe, but flows naturally from the moral logic inherent in many religious systems, particularly monotheistic religions, and that this moral logic is grounded in our evolved psychology.” This book is in the Humanist library. NB NEW ADDITIONS TO THE HUMANIST LIBRARY DEC 2011- JAN 2012 Annas, Julia Intelligent virtue 2011 Bess, Michael Choices under fire 2006 Cave, Peter Thinking about death 2004 Donaldson, Sue Zoopolis: a political theory of animal rights 2011 Gaut, Berys Art, emotions and ethics 2009 Goldacre, Ben Bad science 2009 Gopnik, Adam Angels and ages 2009 Humanist Philosophers’ What is humanism? 2002 Kant, Immanuel Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals 2002 LaFollette, Hugh Ethics in practice 2007 Lilla, Mark The stillborn god 2007 Locke, John Letter on toleration 2002 Martin, Michael Cambridge companion to atheism 2009 Nagel, Thomas What does it all mean? 1987 Neiman, Susan Moral clarity 2009 Nietzsche, Friedrich The anti-Christ 2010 Norman, Richard The case for secularism 2007 Pinker, Steven The better angels of our nature 2011 Rai, Lal Deosa Human rights in the Hindu-Buddhist tradition 1995 Russell, Bertrand What I believe 2004 Singer, Peter How are we to live? 2008 Singer, Peter Practical ethics 2011 Sommerville, C. John The decline of the secular university 2006 Trigg, Roger Religion in public life 2008 Voltaire Candide 2005 Widdows, Heather Global ethics 2011 Cathy Broad, Librarian Ethical Record, February 2012 11 CHRISTOPHER ERIC HITCHENS (1949 – 2011) Jennifer R. Jeynes

HITCH-22 (2010) is the title of the memoirs of Christopher (Chris was long demoted) Eric Hitchens, the prolific, secularist writer, journalist, wit, pamphleteer, contrarian (his usage) and anti-theist (also his preferred term). The allusion is not overtly explained at first; I suppose it is presumed most people will know Joseph Heller’s seminal Vietnam novel, Catch-22 and that Hitchens campaigned energetically against the war when he was at Balliol College Oxford. We learn later how he was flexing his radical muscles at the Perse Public School he attended at Cambridge when he informed his housemaster he would be no longer be donning the uniform of the school’s ‘Combined Cadet Corps’ with its ‘Queen and Country’ ethos. The master opposed this on the usual grounds that it would ‘set a precedent’ but yielded to Christopher’s argument that it would do no such thing as none of the other boys wanted to follow suit. Indeed there is also a footnote here that it was at about this time that he read Catch-22 and was thrilled when Yossarian, confronted by Major Danby’s version of the old official trick-question, “Suppose everybody felt that way?” replied, “Then I’d certainly be a damn fool to feel any other way, wouldn’t I?” Hitchens’ Education The reason Hitchens attended the Perse School he learnt when eavesdropping on an argument between his parents, sitting on the stairs in his pajamas. His pretty and beloved mother, Yvonne, insisted to her naval commander, 12 years senior husband that even if it were well beyond their means, “If there is going to be an upper class in this country, then Christopher is going to be in it.” “My mother wanted above all for me to be an English gentleman.” Hence the nonconformist and brave opinions expounded in mellifluous public school tones. “You, dear reader, be the judge of how well that worked out.” Would she be impressed that he was smacked on the bottom by Mrs Thatcher with an order paper for ‘being a naughty boy’ i.e. telling her she was sexy – with them both apparently enjoying this experience? Hitchens enjoyed a supreme advantage in his childhood that Sigmund Freud also noted and enjoyed himself, the essential experience of being truly loved by his mother. She noticed that he skipped the baby-talk stage and went straight to speaking in complete sentences, even supposedly, “Let’s all go and have a drink at the club!” She then helped him learn to read, ‘via the tedious adventures of a woodland elf or goblin with the name of Lob-a-gob...... !’ In this way he became committed for life to having some sort of reading matter within reach at all times and was always ahead of the class. Friends and enemies alike acknowledge the breadth of his reading though he himself felt it sometimes lacked depth. Yvonne was from a broken Jewish home in Liverpool, before meeting Commander Hitchens as a Wren in the Second World War but decided not to mention she was of Jewish descent due to some ‘slight unpleasantness’ inflicted on her mother in the millinery trade in the 30s. She was pleased she could pass 12 Ethical Record, February 2012 as English and was too apparently ashamed to mention die Judenfrage so Christopher and his younger brother Peter, did not know of their Jewish ancestry till late in life. Yvonne wanted to see her son represent Balliol on the University Challenge team. He did, on his very first television appearance. Unfortunately for the ‘effortless superiority of the Balliol Man’, term introduced by Master Jowitt in the C19, the team was trounced – by St. David’s Lampeter – a theological college as well, in North Wales. Hitchens was also felt miffed when he was told he was the second most famous person at Oxford – first being Mike Rosen, now an acclaimed children’s poet but then extremely radical in leftwing politics. Hitchens could not remember very much about his father but had a heroic memory. They were at a swimming pool party when Christopher heard a splash and saw the Commander, fully clothed in the shallow end, holding a little girl who had been drowning quietly, pipe still clamped in his mouth. Someone had squealed and he had been the first to react, while afterwards claiming ‘anyone would have done it’. Christopher noted the little girl’s father, who should have been paying more attention, giving a glare of ‘undisguised rage and hatred.... that hateful look taught me a lot about human nature in a short time. Christopher (who in spite of his love of words doesn’t mention if he minds what could be irritating for some non-believers, to have a name meaning in Greek, ‘bearer of Christos, the Christ, the anointed one’) was involved at the tragic end to his mother’s life. She had left his boring but devoted father and eloped with a defrocked priest. He was tragically called to Athens to identify the body of his mother. They took overdoses but it seems as if Yvonne had tried to phone him long distance to London and she could not reach him. He felt he could have encouraged her to carry on if they had spoken. As it was November 1973 and there had been a massacre of anti-junta protestors, he took advantage of being in Greece to file copy on the Colonels. His father died speedily of oesophageal cancer aged 87. Prologue with Premonitions This is the first chapter of HITCH-22. As it happened, there was and is an appalling irony in this title for the book’s first chapter, which would not have escaped the author (or readers now) when he became ill on a publicity tour in the USA, where he had lived since 1979. “One fine June (2010) day, the author is launching his best-selling memoir, in a New York hotel, the next he’s throwing up backstage at The Daily Show, in a brief bout of denial, before entering the unfamiliar country – with its egalitarian spirit, martial metaphors and hard bargains of people who have cancer” reported Vanity Fair. One of the five literary quotations displayed before the text starts is by Leopold Bloom, the anti-hero of Ulysses, by James Joyce: ‘Read your own obituary notice; they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life.’ His morbid but fortuitous reflections (he felt it was time to write his memoirs) were elicited by reading a report of the forthcoming exhibition in January 2009, Ethical Record, February 2012 13 entitled, ‘Martin Amis and Friends’, in a copy of Face to Face, the National Portrait Gallery’s programme of future events and exhibitions. It featured the work of a photographer, Angela Gorgas, lover of writer Martin Amis from 1977-1979. One of the photos included was taken in Paris in 1979 of Martin, poet James Fenton and Christopher Hitchens, who were all close friends, “ranged along a balustrade that overlooks the city.....I remember the occasion well... after a decent lunch, somewhere in Montmartre...looking at the horrible wedding-cake architecture of Sacre Coeur. (Perhaps this explains the faintly dyspeptic expression on my features)...The accompanying sentence read, ‘Martin was the literary editor of the New Statesman, working with the late Christopher Hitchens’.....” One’s Own Extinction “So there it is in cold print, the cold unadorned phrase that will one day become unarguably true. It is not given to everyone to read of his own death, let alone when announced in passing in such a matter-of-fact way. As I write in the dying months of the year 2008, having just received this reminder-note from the future, that future still contains the opening of the exhibition and the publication of this memoir. The fact is that all attempts to imagine one’s own extinction are futile.” The Director of the NPG, Sandy Nairne sent an anguished note of apology – the ‘late’ should have been attached to the photo of Pat Kavanagh, wife of (his friend, the writer) Julian Barnes, who had died of a brain tumour. This made things “more poignant as I had just opened a letter from Julian Barnes thanking me for my note of condolence on Pat’s sudden death. I had also congratulated him on the vast critical success of his recent meditation on death, sardonically entitled, Nothing to be Frightened of. I praised his balance of contrast between Lucretius who said because you will not know you are dead you need not fear the condition of death and Philip Larkin who observes in his imperishable Aubade that this is exactly the thing about the post-mortem condition that actually does and must make one afraid.” Hitch (as he liked to be known) was soon diagnosed with the oesophageal cancer from which he died. Treatment began. It had reached Stage 4. He noted wryly, “There is no Stage 5.” “In whatever kind of a ‘race’ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist,” he wrote in Vanity Fair, for which he had been a contributing editor since November 1992. He realised eventually that he had been in denial about the likely consequences of his intrepid smoking and drinking. The Vanity Fair Editor, Graydon Carter, described him as ‘of ferocious intellect who was as vibrant on the page as he was at the bar.’ I wonder if he later regretted the picture on the front of the hardback version of HITCH-22 which shows him hunched intently over a lit cigarette (he was inhaling), eyes closed and smoke rising. Although the BBC referred to him as alcoholic as if it were a distinguishing characteristic of him when it announced his death in the news, his friends and colleagues seemed to have found him able to ‘hold his drink’ and get up early the next morning, unlike them, to complete any promised article. He didn’t have any regrets he claimed about heavy smoking and drinking. “Writing is what’s 14 Ethical Record, February 2012 important to me and anything which helps me to do that – or enhances and prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies argument and conversation – is worth it to me. It was impossible for me to imagine having my life without going to those parties, without having those late nights, without having that second bottle.” Hitchens reported regularly on the progress of his treatment in Vanity Fair from the time, “I have been advised by my physician that I must undergo a course of chemotherapy on my oesophagus. The advice seems persuasive to me. I regret having to cancel so many engagements on such short notice.” Presumably the Americans also admired the impressive calibre of this English under-statement. His weakened physique succumbed to a complication of the condition, pneumonia. Shortly before his death aged 62, he stopped treatment at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, in Houston, Texas, not before he had finished writing the last article which had been commissioned from him. In March 2011 the Telegraph magazine published an article entitled, ‘Atheist Christopher Hitchens could be ‘saved’ by evangelical Christian’. In recent years Hitch had received new popularity/notoriety as part of the ‘new atheism’, especially on the publication of god is Not Great – how Religion Poisons Everything in 2007. I think this book is extremely well written and I recommend it even for those of us who do not need to be persuaded of the damage caused by primitive religious beliefs. Personalised Medicine He was now a guinea pig for a new personalised medicine partly developed by Dr Francis Collins, a geneticist with very strong religious views. Dr Collins is a former director of the National Human Genome Research Project and also the author of a bestselling book, The Language of God: a scientist presents evidence of belief. The two had often met in the past as adversaries in the debate about whether a deity, ‘God’, exists. Now Hitchens was one of the few people in the world who had had his entire genetic make-up mapped and was receiving a new treatment that targeted his own, damaged DNA. “I’m an experiment,” said Hitchens. Samples were taken from healthy tissue and from his tumour and on each of them six billion DNA matches were run in order to catalogue any mutations found in the cancerous cells. He received good news that there was a genetic mutation in the tumour for which there already exists a drug. “At least it spares me some of the boredom of being a cancer patient because what I’m going through is very absorbing and positively inspiring.” The two became friends. Friendship had played an important part in fact to Hitchens in his life and many who had appreciated the way he went out of his way to help when they were starting their professional writing careers came out to praise that part of his complex character. Hitchens had been a long-time columnist for Free Inquiry and R. A. Lindsay, President of Center for Inquiry. CFI expressed the Center’s sadness on his death. “Christopher Hitchens was a gifted writer and polemicist with razor-sharp wit and an acute intellect who was also a steadfast champion for secularism. He regularly spoke for CFI and the Council for Secular Humanism.” Ethical Record, February 2012 15 A Swing to the Right? Some of us found it hard to forgive Hitchens for his support for G.W. Bush/T. Blair/neocons war for regime change and oil profits in the 2003 Iraq war. After the attacks on America on what is known as 9/11, he became re-energised, savaging Islamic Terrorists as ‘Islamofascists’. He did however defeat the sanctimonious T. Blair in debate on the existence of a god even when very ill. We can admire his personal bravery, however, not only for how he coped with terminal illness but also for instance in writing about ‘waterboarding’. He wanted to join in the debate on the basis of understanding it and underwent it himself to see if it could be classed as torture. He felt as if he were drowning and was able to confirm, yes, it is torture. He wrote a very articulate attack on the British monarchy in the Chatto Counterblasts series in 1990, years before Republic got itself organised. He aroused much ire from religious commentators for his critique of Mother Teresa, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice for Verso in 1995. “Who would be so base as to pick on a wizened, shrivelled, old lady, who has consecrated her entire life to the needy and destitute? .... Lone self- sacrificing zealot or chair of a missionary multinational?” Who but Hitch would precede such a critique with examples from his prodigious store of world thought? To pay tribute to the way intellects such as his and theirs can counter Holy Scriptures/ superstitious nonsense let us revisit one: “Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanour” Sigmund Freud The Future of an Illusion Hitch at Conway Hall Library What do you think is the most beautiful word in the English language? I was personally delighted that Christopher states in Hitch-22 that without hesitation he would give the word ‘library’. The only time I met him was at the 75th anniversary celebration of the opening of Conway Hall in 2004 when I took the opportunity to show him round the Humanist Reference Library. He was certainly very interested in our freethought holdings. In fact I gently chided him for not being a more regular user and he had the grace to look slightly abashed. I wish I had known then that he would be quoting admiringly what Eugene Leviné said at his trial in Munich in 1919 for being a revolutionary after the counter-revolution following the end of the First World War: “We are all dead men on leave”. It behoves all of us to remember this. What I would have liked to tell Christopher was that the son of Eugene Leviné who in 1919 was either in utero or a very small baby, was a very agreeable, longstanding member of the Ethical Society, still alive and I would be very happy to put them in contact. Subjects of his 11 books include George Orwell; Thomas Paine; Thomas Jefferson; William Jefferson Clinton (the triangulations of); the Elgin Marbles; the enduring Anglo-American relationship; Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger; Henry Kissinger, the Trial of;

16 Ethical Record, February 2012 Pamphlets on Karl Marx and the Paris Commune; the Monarchy - Britain’s favorite fetish; Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice; A Long Short War: the postponed liberation of Iraq. Christopher Eric Hitchens, born Portsmouth, 13.4.49; elder of 2 boys; married 1981 Eleni Maleagrou, one son, one daughter, marriage dissolved; married 1989 Carol Blue; one daughter; died Houston, Texas, 15.12.11.

Examples of Christopher Hitchens’ trenchant opinions: (all exact quotes) Religion: The main source of hatred in the world is religion and organised religion. Bill Clinton: a habitual and professional liar. The Bible: The bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals. On Writing: Everybody does have a book in them but in most cases that’s where it should stay. On Christmas: a moral and aesthetic nightmare On George W. Bush: he is unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated and apparently quite proud of all these things. On the Royal Family: the House of Windsor has achieved the near-impossible by way of its own negation. Its misery and frustration which are inseparable from the hereditary principle of random selection – the same principle that undid the Cromwells and will undo Kim Il-sung – are such as to make Britain look more like a banana republic, not less. On Drinking and Smoking: cheap booze is a false economy. My keystone addiction is to cigarettes, without which cocktails and caffeine (and food) are meaningless. On Having Cancer: sobering in one way and exhilarating in another .... It has given me a more vivid idea of what makes life worth living and defending. On his Atheism: No evidence or argument has yet been presented which would change my mind. But I like surprises. On Torture: (after submitting himself to waterboarding) If waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture. On Mother Teresa: She was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty... She has gigantically increased the amount of poverty and misery in the world. The vast sums of money she raised were spent mainly on building convents in her own honour. On Himself: I burned the candle at both ends.... it often gave a lovely light On Death: Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of paradise and the dread of hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.

Ethical Record, February 2012 17 VIEWPOINTS Secularism versus Socialism? Terry Liddle’s article on the relationship between secularism and socialism (Ethical Record, Dec 2011) gives a seemingly accurate, but yet very misleading if not sentimental, account. It concentrates on events in Britain but these ideologies were world-wide. It is clear that socialism had diverse origins and forms and at least part of it was profoundly religious. In Britain socialism was very much based on the bedrock of non-conformism. Many socialists are reluctant to admit this not because they are religious but because they are in denial of the way socialism itself was proclaimed as a disguised religious ideology. Socialism, whether ‘utopian’ or ‘scientific’, was a replacement religion with all the attendant characteristics: it had a catechism, liturgy, founding texts, competing hierarchies, doctrinal disputes, ‘theological’ exegeses, textual debates etc. These are indicative of being a religion, albeit disguised. It is no accident that many socialists, even if not practising, came from very religious backgrounds and or a religious upbringing. Socialism was also remarkably hierarchical and almost replicated the structure of the Catholic Church. What is the difference between a papal encyclical and a proclamation by the Politburo? Or the difference between papal infallibility and the all-knowing and unquestioned Dear Leader? Discuss. Moreover socialism had the disadvantage of making most progress in tandem with capitalist advance regardless of its specific ideology. Secularist advance, on the whole, was not related to the prevailing political ideology. In addition, socialism in its various forms was a millennial /utopian/ messianic project which would allegedly create a perfect society. This justified the huge sacrifices in this world. A belief system which copied the very beliefs it condemned. That might explain why it attracted such fanatical devotion with such tragic consequences. Its totalitarian ideology sought to impose itself on its followers as well as others. Secularism believes in the primacy of individual conscience which must not be shackled. Socialism, in its various forms, mostly believed the opposite. Although having Left sympathies on some issues (but not all) I am not a socialist because I am a secularist and therefore do not follow a dogmatic belief system. Unlike most socialists who would, if possible, seek to impose socialism as the official ideology of the state. The notion that somehow secularism and socialism had common origins or can be (re)united is deeply flawed. It is based on the ‘what if’ view of history. For there may have been a point at the end of the 19th century when socialism and secularism and other progressive movements could have been united and ushered a new golden age of fraternity peace, goodwill etc. But as we know all such hopes were destroyed in the first few weeks before and after August 1914. 18 Ethical Record, February 2012 What Annie Besant Did Many of the optimistic social movements which would have created this new world were dominated by deeply damaged and twisted personalities. Terry Liddle cites a discredited figure like Aveling who is now best remembered for driving Eleanor Marx to suicide. Hyndman was one of many eccentric characters who later betrayed socialism and switched to the Right. Bradlaugh was quite right-wing. The evidence does not support Liddle who mentions Annie Besant but neglects to inform us what she did next. So what was her, er, secular trajectory ? She became a Theosophist. Many non-socialists also support secularism which had origins outside of socialism. Indeed secularist gains preceded democracy, and of course socialism, in most societies from the Edict of Nantes onwards. Socialism grew with democratisation. Now secularism, far from being united with socialism, is its main victim. Most of the attacks on secularism and secularist gains are from the politically-correct, multiculturalist, victim-obsessed and identity-obsessed last century ‘Left’ which has lost all its moorings. It is the joining of the two ‘actually existing’ religions of socialism and multiculturalism which are the greatest threat to secularism. Far from being attached to this new ideology, secularists should launch an attack on this and snuff out such bogus forms of ‘socialism’ in their cradle. Instead some are persisting with 1917 fantasies based on rather naive ‘progressive’ views. History of the 1890s is not about to repeat itself. If it does so it will be as farce. Mazin Zeki – London, North Most of the above references to ‘socialism’ seem to apply to Stalinism rather than to democratic socialism. {Ed}. The Population is Ageing The recent Viewpoints correspondence on population has not yet addressed an important issue: ageing. According to figures released by the Office for National Statistics (UK) on 29 September 2011, the percentage of the population aged 65 and over has risen from 15% in 1985 to 17% in 2010, an increase of 1.7 million people in this age group. This trend is expected to continue so that by 2035, 23% of the population is projected to be over 65. Not only is the population ageing, but there has been progressive ageing of the older population itself. In 1985, there were around 690,000 people in the UK aged 85 and over, accounting for 1% of the population. Since then the numbers have more than doubled, reaching 1.4 million in 2010, 2 per cent of the UK population. By 2035 the number of people aged 85 and over is projected to be 2.5 times larger than in 2010, reaching approximately 3.6 million and accounting for 5% of the total population. This increase has come about to some extent as a result of better living conditions, but a more significant factor is probably the amount spent by the NHS on medication and other interventions for those of us who are of pensionable age and who no longer pay National Insurance contributions* whatever our means. Vast amounts are also spent on research into the ‘diseases *NI funds pensions etc; the NHS is funded from general taxation. {Ed.} Ethical Record, February 2012 19 of ageing’ by various agencies, both public and private. Care of the elderly accounts for huge expenditure by national and local government. It also provides a large number of jobs, but many of these are poorly paid although a great deal is expected of those who do them. If people are well enough to enjoy life this expenditure is perhaps warranted, but I wonder how many of the 750,000 dementia sufferers in the UK ( Alzheimer’s Society) are alive only because physical conditions they have are being treated. The same question applies to many older people whose lives are blighted by loneliness. Currently there is much debate about ways of caring for the elderly, but I believe consideration of the ethics of keeping people alive to ever- increasing ages is also needed. Eileen Bostle (SPES member) Harrow Abraham’s Non-sacrifice of Isaac I found the article by Clare Carlisle on Kierkegaard (ER Dec 2011) most helpful as I could build it on to some recent reflections of my own. The historical context of this story is one in which the sacrifice of children was by no means uncommon. So Abraham too had the urge to give his most precious possession - his only child and one born when he and his wife were quite old - to God. Gone then too would be any real hope of descendants, something which he dearly wanted. But as we know, at the very last moment the story goes (Gen 22; vv 1 - 19) that the angel of God spoke to Abraham and saved Isaac’s life, adding that Abraham was to do no harm to Isaac. This lines up perfectly with the constant refrain throughout the Old Testament that the Jewish people were not to sacrifice their children to God. I think that because we no longer believe in angels there is a tendency psychologically to finish our take-up of the story at the point when Abraham binds Isaac and places him on the wood of the altar and is about to kill him. But in ancient times the story of the voice of an angel speaking the commands of God would be the overwhelming end-point. From now onwards it was clear that God wanted children’s lives to be preserved; they were His; He would care for them. This view is reinforced in the New Testament.

I doubt very much that this story was intended literally. What it does is to focus down onto a shift in the cultural meaning of the relationship between parent and child, which is exactly what Clare is seeking to explore. The old prophets would often deliver their message in the way of a dramatic story so that its impact was easily remembered and transmitted. Most people would have been illiterate so when it was eventually written down and we have the story we all know we may overlook the fact that its cultural meaning, taken in its entirety, would be very different in the era in which it appeared from what might superficially seem to be the case if one reads it out of context in our own age. John Edmondson – Louth, Lincolnshire

20 Ethical Record, February 2012 The Science Delusion After reading ’s* review of Rupert Sheldrake’s new book, The Science Delusion in the Camden New Journal (26 Jan), I do not see how I can remain a member of an organisation which gives space and time to its author**. Felix Pirani*** - London Central Editor’s notes. * Emeritus Professor of Biology, UCL ** RS spoke to the Ethical Society on 29 January; his text can be read in this issue of the ER (pg7). See Editorial pg1. *** Felix Pirani is Emeritus Professor of Rational Mechanics in the University of London. He has published scientific papers and popular articles about cosmology and gravitation and is author of Introducing the Universe (1990). Comments on the AGM of the S.P. Ethical Society I am very glad that I did not travel up from Eastbourne to the AGM. Over the years, I have chaired many AGMs for different organisations; but I am puzzled by what happened at the AGM. It seems most undemocratic; see ‘AGM of the S.P. Ethical Society’ (ER Dec 2011). I would like to know why motions 1 and 2 were referred back to the GC? [The AGM agreed to remit these two motions on the understanding that the GC would take their import into consideration in future publicity material. {Ed}] Why motions 3 and 6 were withdrawn by the proposers? [The AGM’s Chair, Chris Purnell, acceded to each Proposer’s request to have their respective motions withdrawn. {Ed}] The most extraordinary one is motion 5 about whether to charge for admissions to the Sunday morning lectures. It was actually carried by the meeting and then after a GC discussion on 7 December, the GC voted to maintain the new admission policy even though the meeting had decided against this. [The motion “instructed the GC to reconsider and revoke” its decision on fees. The Society’s Treasurer, Chris Bratcher, has now written his explanation of the GC’s re-affirmation of its decision, printed in this issue of the ER, p22 {Ed}] It seems that the members present at the AGM were not enabled to decide anything! Dorothy Forsyth - Eastbourne

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 know of your intention to visit. The Library has an extensive collection of new and historic freethought material. Members are now able to borrow books from the Library. Readers will be asked to complete a Reader Registration Form, and must provide photographic ID, proof of address and proof of membership. They will be issued with a Reader’s card, which will enable them to borrow three books at a time. The loan period is one month. Journals, archive material, artworks and other non-book material cannot be borrowed. Full details of the lending service are available from the Librarian. Cathy Broad, Librarian Tel: 020 7061 6747. Email: [email protected]

Ethical Record, February 2012 21 MEMBERSHIP SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR 2012 Charges for non-members attending Sunday Meetings The Treasurer, Chris Bratcher, explains

The General Committee of the Society, at its July 2011 meeting, endorsed new rates of membership subscriptions for 2012 and charges for non-members attending Sunday Meetings after the 2011 Summer break. As the ‘onlie begetter’ of these proposals, I should explain the What and the Why. Why. Reports commissioned on the Society’s health have repeatedly said ‘that growing membership should be a top priority for SPES’, and that ‘this has not been the case, and a mere handful of members join each year’. ‘In our view SPES needs to set out a clear definition of the benefits of membership.’ The concern was not financial but a matter of ensuring that the Society has a healthy body of active members to enable it to survive as an organisation that has to source its trustees and honorary officers from amongst them. Although we currently do better than a ‘handful’ of new members, the concern remains, and the tangible benefits of joining are hard to determine and promote. Although most of our members do not come on Sundays, the lecture programme is the source of growth. The assumption has been that frequent attenders would naturally want to become members and would take steps to do so. Too often, this has not been the case. The fault may lie with our less than assertive prompts to join, but it is clear that, if the pleasure of attending on Sunday can be enjoyed without membership, there is often insufficient incentive to join. Particularly in view of the quality of our lecture programme, the time has come to charge attenders who are not members a modest amount. The purpose is not to meet our costs of providing a speaker, let alone to defray our other indirect costs, or make a profit. It is to create a membership incentive, because members would not be charged. The provision of a speaker and venue remain charitable. The principle of charging has already been established with the Sunday Concerts. We do not expect the Society to carry the whole cost of a concert but to keep it charitably priced. The same principle is simply applied on a smaller scale. It is also well understood and accepted in other charities admitting people to talks or premises and by their public. It is a sad fact that people tend to value things more if they pay for them, attend on time, and even behave better! What. The GC accordingly approved a rate of £3 with a £2 concessionary rate for students, pensioners and the unwaged, who are not members, collected by a ‘trust’ box at the meeting room entrance. This would replace the voluntary collection, notionally to defray refreshments. The charge will not apply to our events on Sunday afternoons. It may be extended to, or increased for, special lectures on other occasions, but that is something that the Committee will consider on an ad hoc basis.

Subscription rates have been set year on year without regard to the Society’s financial position or the material benefits of membership. The rate till the end of 22 Ethical Record, February 2012 2011 was £20 (£15 concessions). The rates have been unrealistic for many years, particularly given the costs of servicing members. From a charity and tax law perspective (as well as being sane policy), subscription income has at least to cover the cost of directly and exclusively servicing members, otherwise we are subsidising members out of funds held for public charitable purposes. The fact that you are, of course, also members of the public, as are the members of any other charity with such a structure, is by the by. It is what you get by virtue of being a member of the Society that matters. The Ethical Record is in substance a members’ journal (and clearly so for ‘benefit’ purposes), with negligible sales to the public or to non-member subscribers, even though we trust it is read more widely by humanists through that distribution. The present, rather notional, cover price directed to such sales does not reflect our costs, i.e., what we spend on members by giving you the Record. The annual costs of publication + postage approximate to £40 per head with our present membership. It is quite clear that we should not claim Gift Aid on subscriptions, as rates stand. For this reason alone the annual sub must increase. The only way of reducing it in future is by growth of members. Having regard to the shock to the system of a full hike of membership fees, the Committee agreed to a charge of £35 (£25 for the usual concessions) from 2012. This will still remain a bargain for Sunday morning attenders with any regularity, who would otherwise incur the £3/£2 charge. The good news, particularly for those of you of pensionable age, is that I have also broached the question of revisiting Life Membership. This category of paid-up members exists, but at a historical cost of 21 x an annual sub; there have been, understandably, no takers in recent years as far as I am aware. I am thinking we might offer it to pensioners for something like 4 x the new concessionary rate. Initial reaction from the Committee (at least from the under 80s) has been positive. More thought by all is necessary; particularly as to whether something can also be offered to other age groups. Editor’s note: For many years, the Society has been in regular receipt of atheist, freethought, humanist, rationalist and secular journals from around the world in exchange for the Ethical Record. A room in Conway Hall’s north basement now has a large collection, of use to researchers, part of the Humanist Library. The Record is also sent to various humanist groups and a number of academic and other institutions around the world.

WHO IS TODAY’S NAPIER? Commenting in 1844 on the Hindu practice of suttee, in which a widow was expected to throw herself on to her late husband’s funeral pyre, Sir Charles Napier (who achieved plinthhood in Trafalgar Square) said to the Hindus: The burning of widows is your custom. Prepare the funeral pile. But my nation also has a custom. When men burn women alive, we hang them and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs. NB

Ethical Record, February 2012 23 PROGRAMME OF EVENTS AT THE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC1R 4RL. Tel: 020 7405 1818 Registered Charity No. 251396 For programme updates, email: [email protected] Website: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk Admission to Sunday morning lectures is free for members of SPES and £3(£2conc) for non-members. For other events, no charge unless stated. Sunday meetings are held in the Brockway Room. FEBRUARY 2012 Sunday 12 FLAWED ETHICS AND CLIMATE CHANGE 1100 Evan Parker and David Williams Sunday 19 NATURALISM AND THE MORAL OUGHT 1100 Catherine Wilson Sunday 26 BAD SCIENCE BEYOND THE WESTERN WORLD 1100 Martin Robbins MARCH Sunday 4 EVIDENCE: MEDICINE MEETS THE 1100 John Worrall Sunday 11 RELIGION, IDENTITY AND DETACHMENT 1100 Rumy Hasan Sunday 18 PARANORMALITY: WHY WE ALL SEE WHAT ISN’T THERE 1100

One Law for All’s RALLY for FREE EXPRESSION AND THE RIGHT TO CRITICISE RELIGION following threats of violence and the cancellation of a meeting at Queen Mary College where One Law for All spokesperson Anne Marie Waters was unable to deliver her speech on Sharia. 14:00–16:00 on Saturday 11 February 2012 at Old Palace Yard opposite the House of Lords, London Some confirmed speakers: Nick Cohen (Writer), A C Grayling (Philosopher), Kenan Malik (Writer), Gita Sahgal, (Centre for Secular Space), and Terry Sanderson/Keith Porteous Wood (National Secular Society) Details from Maryam Namazie at www.onelawforall.org.uk or [email protected]

CONWAY HALL EVENING CLASSES, JANUARY 2012 Conway Hall is running evening classes developed for a general audience by members of the Humanist Philosophers’ Group: Brendan Larvor, Peter Cave and Prof. Richard Norman: To make a booking or for more information about dates, tutors and further details on course content, please email [email protected] or call 020 7061 6744 or look up www.conwayhall.org.uk/courses

SPES’s CONWAY HALL SUNDAY CONCERTS 2012 Tickets on the door (£8/£4 concessions). 6.30pm Full details on: www.conwayhallsundayconcerts.org.uk

Published by the South Place Ethical Society, Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, WC1R 4RL Printed by J.G. Bryson (Printer). 156-162 High Road, London N2 9AS. ISSN 0014 - 1690