Ethical Record The Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society Vol. 114 No. 3 £1.50 March 2009 A NEW TRANSLATIONOF BAROND'HOLBACH'S CHRISTIANITYUNVEILED

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This edition by David flolohan contains a wealth of biographical material on d'Holbach and his circle, previously only available in French. Illustrated and annotated liberally, it sets all the documents in their biblical, historical, philosophical, political and cultural context. See page 18 Hodgson Press

THE SPIDERS OF ALLAH: Travels of an Unbeliever on the Frontline of Holy War James Ilider 3 THE REPUBLIC OF HEAVEN; GERRARD WINSTANLEY AND THE DIGGERS John Severs 7 FIXING OUR BROKEN DEMOCRACY Ken Ritchie Ii

THOMAS PAINE, POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION AND CURRENCY CRISIS Ellen L. Ramsay 17 BARON D'HOLBACH AND THE FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENT 'It's raining bombs on the house of the Lord' aDiderot David Holohan 18 VIEWPOINTS: Sue Mayer, Dick Clifford.Tom Rubens 30

ETHICAL SOCIETY EVENTS 32 SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WC I R 4RL. Tel: 020 7242 8031/4 Fax: 020 7242 8036 Website: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk email: [email protected] Chairman: Giles Enders Hun. Rep.: Don Liversedge Vice-chairman: Teny Mullins Treasurer: John Edwards Registrar: Donald Rooum Editor, Ethical Record: Norman Bacrac SPES Staff Executive Officer: .Emma J. Stanford Tel: 020 7242 8031/4 Finance Officer: Linda Alia Tel: 020 7242 8031/4 Lettings Officer: Carina Dvorak Tel: 020 7242 8032 Librarian/Programme Coordinator: Jennifer Jeynes M.Sc. Tel: 020 7242 8037 Lettings Assistant: Marie Aubrechtova Caretakers: Eva Aubrechtova (i/c); Tel: 020 7242 8033 together with: Shaip Bullaku. Angelo Edrozo, Nikola Ivanovski.Alfredo Olivio, Rogerio Retuerna, David Wright Maintenance Operative: Zia Hammd New Members The Society is pleased to welcome to membership Leonard Atkinson of Grays in Essex, Alun Llewelyn of Kenton in Middlesex, John Molson of Harpenden in Hens, Peter Morgan of Ashford in Kent, Tiffany Prince of Wanstead, Sylvette Wyatt of North London

Donor The Society is grateful for a donation from Mr L.E. West of 150.

Obituary We regret toteport the death of Julien Gross of London NW3

Voltaire Lecture - a joint BHA/SPES event Kenan Malik on THE GUILT OF SCIENCE? Race, Science and Darwin Chair: Polly Toynbee 6.30pm, Thursday 23 April 2009, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC IR 4RL LS (BHA or SPES), £7 others. Tickets online from www.humanism.org.uk by debit/credit card or by cheque to British Humanist Association marked FOR VOLTAIRE LECTURE with your name and a return address, to 1 Gower Street, London, WC I E 611D.

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, 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, evenine courses and the renowned South Place 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 £18 (£12 if a full-time student, unwaged or over 65).

2 Ethical Record, March 2009 THE SPIDERS OF ALLAH: Travels of an Unbeliever on the Frontline of Holy War James Hider, Times Middle Eastern Bureau Chief Lecture to the Ethical Society, I I January 2009

What do you say to a man whose cousin has just been ripped apart by a suicide bomber during a Muslim festival in Iraq? I told the young sheikh I was sorry for his loss. Wrong answer. The sheikh brushed aside my condolences. 'I am jealous of him, he has gone straight to heaven' he told me with absolute conviction. 'I'm sure my cousin is being hosted by Imam Hussein even now.'

The encounter took place in the Shia holy city of Karbala, south of Baghdad in March 2004, the first time the faithful had been allowed to gather freely to celebrate the festival of Ashoura, marking the death of Imam Hussein, in decades. Outside, pilgrims who had spent the morning beating themselves over the heads with swords until their scalps were bloody, resumed their devotions despite the fact that almost 100 of their fellows had just been blown to pieces by a gang of Sunni suicide bombers who believed they, too, were going to heaven. The remains of the kamikazes could be seen next to their victims — lakes of blood, mangled corpses, a security guard placing a woman's severed head on her body so it wouldn't be lost for burial.

A Pathogen Through History Such is the power of ideas - and the absolutism of religious ideals in particular. In the Middle East, you can trace the course of such ideas like a pathogen through human history, as ancient notions of existence spread from one civilization to the next, mutating and taking over large groups of people, forcing them into courses of action that to the rational mind appear insane.

In 2006, in the self-proclaimed Islamic Caliphate which Al Qaeda-led rebels had established just 30 miles north of Baghdad, reliaious zealots tried to enforce •their own brand of morality dredged up from the seventh century. Greengrocers were killed for displaying cucumbers next to tomatoes, because one apparently represented masculinity and the other femininity. Bananas had to be sold in discreet black plastic bags for the same reason. Absurd, but disobeying could cost you your life. The pinnacle of this weirdness came in an order for shepherds to make their goats wear underpants so as not to offend (or perhaps arouse) holy warriors. The penalty for violating this Benny Hill-style ruling, was death. And not an easy death either - beheadings were the standard practice for Al Qaeda' killers, while the Shia death squads who roamed Baahdad preferred using electrical drills to off their victims.

By that summer of 2006. Iraq was a terrifying Petri dish for examining the way ideas mutate and transform themselves into deadly myths and ideologies. For 35 years, people had lived in a bubble of fear, fed news only by the paranoid, brutal dictator Saddath Hussein. When the American military kicked down the door of the aSylum in 2003, there was a sudden implosion of warped beliefs, conspiracy theories and crazed ideologies that demonstrated just how quickly and violently the human mind can be whisked off into the darkest recesses of madness.

Ethical Record, March 2009 3 At first, shortly after the invasion, conspiracy theories emerged through the recent surface of oppression, urban myths developed about American soldiers deserting in droves, or claims arose that the US military was covering up their huge losses by burying dead troops in mass graves out in the desert. Some of these were clearly malicious in intent - the rumour that the ubiquitous Ray-Ban sunglasses worn by US soldiers against the dust and dazzling sunlight were actually said to be X-ray specs that could see through women's clothing was one example. A ridiculous notion, but one that some Iraqi men readily believed: they duly went and got their guns to protect their womenfolk's modesty. With no independent media to rely upon, and no history of normal, rational behaviour to act as a yardstick, it was enough for someone to voice an idea for it to be possible.

By keeping his people in the dark - to the point where many would consult magic men in touch with djinns, or genies, to solve crimes rather than going to the corrupt police — Saddam had left Iraqis in a state of almost medieval gullibility: many people I spoke to believed their president, still a fugitive after the war, could never be killed by the Americans because he had a magic stone that he wore around his neck, protecting him from bombs and bullets. The charm had apparently been 'scientifically' tested on chickens and cows to make sure it worked, I was told by a number of people. Fire a bullet at a cow wearing the charm and the projectile would fly around its target.

Throughout history, myths have arisen and been adapted by subsequent civilizations. In 701 BCE, the unstoppable Assyrian army laid siege to the city of Jerusalem, capital of the tiny kingdom of Judah, at a time when the Jewish faith was still crystallizing. Some 20 years earlier, the same war machine from what is now Iraq had laid waste to the kingdom of Israel, just north of Judah, carrying the 10 tribes away into slavery and assimilation. But now, The Prophet Isaiah proclaimed in the name of the still-untested god Yahweh, that against all the odds the Assyrians would perish at the hands of an angel of death sent by the Lord. Isaiah's people put their faith in him, while to even the odds the Judean military commanders blocked off the wells around the besieged city. Sure enough, the Assyrian conquering hordes dropped like flies, probably from cholera contracted from drinking unclean water.

Birth Of The Giant Spider Myth In the meantime, the pious people of Jerusalem thanked their one all-powerful God for delivering them from slavery. In future, defeats would not be interpreted as god's failure to protect his people, but instead, as punishment for their failure to live up to his ideals. Monotheism was cemented in the human imagination, and even today, religious minds blame tsunamis, military defeats and hurricanes on the 'sins' of the victims. Sometimes in the midst of the honors of war, the birth of a myth can be specifically located and identified. In spring of 2004, there was another siege, this time by the US marine corps who were attacking the Iraqi city of Fallujah. I was embedded with the US combat forces when a popular photograph was doing the rounds on the internet - it showed an American soldier holding his helmet, from which dangled two huge camel spiders, the first latched on to the helmet, the second dangling from its mate.

4 Ethical Record, March 2009 Unbeknownst to the reporters and the marines we were embedded with, there was also an internet connection still up and running inside Fallujah, and the pictures were being viewed by the determined Mujahedin who had moved in and taken hold of the city. Quickly the myth spread amongst the ill-educated but devout fighters, that Allah had sent giant spiders to attack the Crusader invaders of the town - there were reports of monster arachnids carrying off marines, while flocks of doves would circle over US sniper positions to help the holy warriors locate their foes in battle. The Myth Of Divine Retribution Of course, the people of the Middle East are far from being alone in their ready familiarity with myth. As the American death toll mounted, radical Christian Evangelists in the United States would say it was divine retribution for America's tolerance of homosexuality. Other fundamentalist Christian groups, known as Christian Zionists. donate millions of dollars each year to the Jewish settlement movements in the West Bank, believing that once Jews have returned to the whole of the Biblical lands. the Messiah will return and Armageddon will finally deliver them from the woes of the world - although, at this point, they believe the Jews themselves will either have to convert or perish in the final meltdown. Many of the religious Jewish settlers hold a similar belief, although they have a slightly different take on the situation and assert that once they are in possession of their ancient lands, a prophecy of world peace will be fulfilled.

Worryingly, it is not just the more extreme church-goers who seem to hold on to these. fantasies. Shortly before the invasion of Iraq. President Bush was forced to dismiss the man he had appointed as Deputy Undersecretary of Defence for Intelligence, Lieutenant General William G. Boykin. The devoutly Christian general had made the political mistake of publicly admitting his religious interpretation of the battle he had fought in Somalia with a Muslim warlord a decade before. 'I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.' Which is essentially what any adherent of a monotheistic faith has to believe. It says so in the holy scripture. General Boykin lost his job for being honest about what he believed. Probably former president Bush believes it too. After all, while holding office as the world's most powerful political leader, he once told Palestinian Prime Minister Mahrnoud Abbas that he was under marching orders from God.

'God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.' And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq', and I did,' according to senior Palestinian officials.

The migration of idols and ideas from one civilization to another can take extremely unexpected twists. In 2007, llamas took that squeaky clean American icon, Mickey Mouse, and turned him into a symbol of Islamic resistance against Israel. In one of the strangest and most disturbing children's programmes ever broadcast - a kind of cross between Sesame Street and an Abu Ghraib video — an actor dressed up in a Mickey Mouse costume was shown being captured by other Palestinian actors dressed up as Israeli security forces, and beaten to death for refusing to sell them the rights to his ancestral home inside Israel.

Ethical Record, March 2009 5 The message to the under-13s of Gaza was clear: death fighting the Israelis is what awaits you. During the same visit to Gaza, in the summer of 2007, a 14- year-old boy on an Islamic Jihad summer school training camp told me it was his ambition to die fighting the Israelis - he was only annoyed he had to wait another four years to sign on to the suicide missions that the militant faction reuularly launches.

Such religiously strait-jacketed thinking can be seen across the Middle East. In Rutba, a run-down little town in Iraq's western desert, a young guerrilla told me he had decided to fight the Americans simply because the Koran commands all Muslims to resist anyone who tries to occupy their land. Combined with the cold, metal reality of the arms stashes that Saddam had left strewn across the country, this basic ideology brought the mightiest military in the world to the brink of abject failure.

God An Accident Of Evolution There are two ironies to the holy wars in the Middle East. The first is the increasing neurological evidence that belief in 'God' or gods is probably an accident of evolution, a by-product of humanity's extraordinary ability to create tools to dominate our natural environment and survive. That ability is based on the development of our unique understanding of cause and effect. However, that adaptive thinking appears, over millions of years, to have seeped into other parts of our inquisitive brains, as our ancestors searched for an explanation of how their world works. If we are here — the effect — there must be a cause: there must be a maker, and if we are made, we must have some meaning. Scientists, recently, have even identified what is known as a 'God spot' containing the biological basis for religious belief.

The other irony is also based on scientific research: a recent genetic study Israeli and international doctors working out of a Jerusalem hospital comparing rare blood disorders common to both Ashkenazi Jews and Palestinians found a far closer genetic similarity in the Y chromosome between the two communities than between Palestinians and other Arabs.

This has fuelled renewed interest in a theory developed 60 years ago by Israel's first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, that Palestinians are in fact the descendents of the Jews who inhabited the land at the time of the Roman expulsion. According to the theory, the Romans emptied the urban centres to stamp out the continued religious-nationalist uprisings, but left the farmers on the fertile land, one of the breadbaskets of the empire. Slowly, the peasants lost their old identity, converting first to Christianity as the Roman Empire changed its religion, then to Islam with the Muslim conquest, when tax breaks and job advantages lured people into switching faith. The researchers of this theory contend that the Jews who stayed kept their land but lost their identity, while the exiles kept their identity but lost their land.

Which would make the constant conflict in the Holy Land, the epicentre of so much global unrest in the world, a confused battle of ideologies waged by members of the same ancient tribe.

6 Ethical Record, March 2009 THE REPUBLIC OF HEAVEN; GERRARD WINSTANLEY AND THE DIGGERS John Severs Retired Senior Lecturer in Initial and In-service Teacher Training: Member of North East Humanists: BHA Local Development Officer for County Durham Lecture to the Ethical Society, 1 March 2009

In Britain, in the state of flux that existed during the interregnum. there was a suspension of the previously strict censorship on publications. This led to a massive outpouring of tracts from dissenting religious groups. In parallel with this freedom and the existence of a number of semi-democratic decision making bodies in the army, the penalty for Atheism was death.

One of the strongest and most active campaigners were a Christian group, the Levellers, who, through pamphlets and petitions, pushed vigorously for democratic systems of mling the country and the army. They claimed that no one should be subservient to another because of wealth, social standing or position (e.g. the clergy). They campaigned, initially with, and then against. Cromwell to achieve their aims. The Levellers were against the master and servant set-up. quoting scriptures to show that it was wrong, and wanted a vast increase in suffrage.

The Agreement Of The People In their best known document, The Agreement of the People, they outlined a new constitution. In it they state We declare and publish to all the world, that we are agreed as followeth: _That the Supreme Authority of England and the Territories therewith incorporate, shall be and reside henceforward in a Representative of the people consisting of four hundred persons, but no more: in the choice of whom (according to natural right) all men of age of one and twenty years and upwards (not being servants, or receiving alms, or having served the late King in Arms or voluntary contribution), shall have their voices and that laws should be no respector of persons but apply equally to everyone: There must be no discrimination on grounds of tenure, iNtate, charter, degree, birth or place.

Leveller agitation strongly influenced the outcome of the famous Putney Debates of October 1647 where the Army Council under Cromwell discussed the case for democratic government (along with a written constitution and freedom of conscience and speech) Geoffrey Robinson says, in a new introduction to the transcripts of the debates. 'There may be traced the acceptance - centuries later in the Universal Declaration of Human rights and now in two-thirds of the nations of the world - of the idea that government requires the consent of freely and fairly elected representatives of all adult citizens, irrespective of class or caste or status or wealth. Gerrard Winstanley, a prolific writer of pamphlets, was a leveller who opposed institutionalised religion. In his first tract (spring 1648). The Mysterie of God Concerning the Whole Creation, Mankinde, he recorded his personal views. He then believed in millenarianism - that Christ would come to earth and rule for I WO years and the deserving poor would be 'absorbed' by him in the triumph of good over evil.

This was very real. As Cohn (1970) says, Tor medieval people the stupendous drama of the Last Days was not a fantasy about some remote and indefinite future but a prophecy which was infallible and which at almost any given moment was felt to be on the point of fulfilment.'

Ethical Record, March 2009 7 Winstanley's views were unusual. He rejected the current Calvinist orthodoxies which proclaimed that only a few would gain redemption and go to heaven, arguing that every man could be saved.

In the The Mysterie of God, Winstanley argued that the devil was not a real person but within you. reflecting selfishness, and can be set free and that heaven and hell are not separate places, at a distance, but on earth a good man 'has heaven in his heart'. He returns to this repeatedly in his writings, stating, 'As yet none ever came from the dead to tell men on earth, and, until then, men ought to speak no more than they know'.

By the Autumn of 1648, Winstanley appears to have changed his views, including shedding the mysticism, now sounding more like a rationalist. Tellingly, his denial of a separate personal god is clear - 'So that you do not look for a God now, as formerly you did, to be a place of glory beyond the sun, moon or stars nor imagine a divine being you know not where, but see him ruling within you.'

Winstanley emphatically denies the resurrection and ascension. The apostles can't have seen Christ arise and ascend to God in heaven, for God is in no particular place but in every place and every creature. He believed that we must submit to the light of reason if there is to be love between all creatures. To him, God and reason were one and the same thing. In a postscript to the next pamphlet, with the glorious title Truth Lifting Up its Head Above Scandals, he wrote a poem entitled Reason As King, with verses such as the following. When Reason Rules in whole mankind Nothing but peace, will all men find

The Most Advanced Radical Of The Century Petegorsky (1941) claims that his pamphlet of January 1649, The New Law of Righteousness marked a further transition in his development with his emerging as the most advanced and outspoken radical of the century, arguing, for example, that 'social and economic reorganisation is society's most vital and immediate need.'

It was not enough to nurture spiritual beliefs through the soul but necessary to develop systems based on practical morality; for example, the sharing of products and goods equally, the law to be fair to everyone regardless of wealth, etc. He argued against institutions he saw as preventing this. The monarchy was described as a 'heathenish' innovation, and criticized, exploitative lawyers and the clergy who preached the duty of subservience to the people. He was strongly opposed to bondage. Covetousness is constantly evoked in his writings as allowing the few to take from the many. He wrote the following eloquent words (p. 28, Boulton)

Did the light of reason make this law, that if one man hath not such abundance of the earth as to give to others he borrowed of; that he that did lend should imprison the other, and starve his body in a close room? Did the light of Reason make this law, that some part of mankinde should kill and hang another part of man-kinde, that could not walk in their steps? Surely Reason was not the God that made that law; for this is to make one part of the Creation alwaies to be quarrelling against another part.

8 Eth cal Record, March 2009 Winstanley describes falling into a trance and hearing the words - Worke together; Eat bread together; declare all this abroad'. He now believed that it was not enough to argue his beliefs, but that the dispossessedshould take matters into their own hands and set up communities basedon equal labour and sharing the products of what he termed the Earth's common treasury. Although the pen was mightier than the sword, the spade was mightier still. He emphasised this in The True Levellers Standard Advanced, stating

Take notice, that England is not a free people, till the poor that have no land, have a free allowance to dig and labour the commons, and so live as Comfortably as the Landlords that live in their inclosures

The Diggers He called his followers the True Levellers and they became known as the Diggers. In April 1649, they went to St George's Hill in Surrey and planted seedson common land. From the beginning, they were beset by problems. Their dwellings were destroyed and seeds dug up. They did not resist physically, replanting and rebuilding and singing songs like the famous 'You noble Diggers all. Stand up now.' They moved to Cobham but, without success,being viciously and repeatedly attacked (by forces organised by the parson). Although the venture ended in failure, Winstanley retained his beliefs, stating. 'The land was made for all and true religion is. to let everyone enjoy it.'

It was very telling that this was what he now saw religion as being. Winstanley's greatest work is believed to be The Law of Freedom. It evolved as a submission to a parliamentary commission set up to consider the laws of the land. He argues for abolition of the priesthood and Lords of the Manor and the setting free of land, forests, etc.. and proposed that the electorate should have no property or class qualification.

- With foresight, he suggested posts (with holders not necessarily church members) such as peace-makers, a cross between counsellors and magistrates with powers to restrain, and post-masters, fascinatingly, precursors of a national communications network. He argued against a large standing army, suggesting small units in each locality, with duties rather like the police force today

Of the greatest interest is undoubtedly the role proposed for the Minister:- I . To be elected to serve for one year On the clay of rest, to read the news, collected by the post masters, and The Laws of the Conunonwealth (But not to expound on them) He may make speeches- on All Arts and Sciences Religion? The Minister may speak of the Nature of Mankind, of, for example, his darkness and his light and his love and his envy. To Winstanley, these subjects were religion. The Nature of Mankind was linked to the Law of Nature (or God). The Bible? No mention. As Boulton (1999) says Not so much Sunday in church, more the South Place Ethical Society (!!) Also

'every one who hath any experience, and is able to speak of any Art or Language, or of the Nature of the I leavens above, or of the earth below, shall have free liberty to speak when they offer themselves' The Minister or Reader, is 'not to assume all the power to himself as the proud and ignorant Clergy have done.' Every speaker

Ethical Record. March 2009 9 'is required to speak nothing by imagination, but what he hath tbund out by his own industry and observation in tryal.'

On education, he showed remarkable vision, arguing against selection, perhaps the first ever to do so, with all boys and girls learning to read. He suggested a draft constitution containing 62 laws - each with a drastic punishment for breaking them. E.g. Anyone administering the Law for money shall 'dye as a traytor to the Commonwealth'.

Death was also the penalty for continuing 'to practise as priests or paid clergy' described as 'put to death for a Witch or cheater', (he believed that preaching about hell and life after death amounted to witchcraft). It is difficult to square this with his claim that 'no man should be troubled for his judgement or practice, so he live quiet in the land'.

Was Gerrard Winstanley A Humanist? His views that Heaven and Hell did not exist as separate entities in the sky but were here on the earth, what he called the Republic of Heaven; that God and the Devil were reflected in qualities of the inner self, particularly Reason and Righteousness as reflected in the Power of light or love which could overcome the devil and the power of darkness, reflected in Selfishness and Covetousness; his view that man can't possibly know of what will happen after death, would suggest so. Also, he did not see his social ideas and economic and political beliefs as a contradiction of his religious views but a logical development of them.

Brailsford, in his excellent book on the Levellers, describes Winstanley as a secularist and agnostic. And Poulson in The English Rebels says, 'He developed his ideas into a kind of rational humanism without a personal god or saviour, heaven or hell.' Petegorsky says, 'Religion finally became for Winstanley a concept to which supernatural considerations were wholly alien: .... essentially a broad radical humanitarianism concerned exclusively with human relationships rather than any mystical communion with the supernatural.'

Winstanley, however, right to the end, expressed what he said in spiritual terms. Despite the fact that in practice he had jettisoned all the views he expounds in his first tracts, he may not have been able finally to repudiate all aspects of his original belief in a moral order that existed independently of man and required no reference to human experience for its validity.

His references to the creation and the occasional use of scriptures to illustrate his arguments may suggest that he was a believer, in part, of traditional teachings and the description of his being a Christian Humanist, an apparent oxymoron, by some, including his biographer, David Boulton, was apt. It may very well be the reason that he escaped indictment under the blasphemy laws.

In any case, he was a clearly a remarkable man, capable of great insights and remarkable vision. His views on education, the rejection of women's subservience, suffrage, the ministry and how the country should be ruled puts him light years ahead of his time. A man certainly worth remembering and honouring. A verse from one of his few poems aptly sums up his beliefs:

10 Ethical Record, March 2009 Covetousness might may overcome rationall right for a time, But rationall right must conquer covetous might, and that's the life of mine The law is righteous, just and good, when reason is the rule But who so rules by the fleshly will, declares himself a Mole.

Footnote Winstanley, born in 1609, wrote 23 tracts in the space of 39: years and, as far as is known, despite living for another 30 years, nothing after that. lie eventually became a quaker and, it is believed, remained one for the rest of his lif e. This may seetn surprising given his views, particularly in regard to advocating the death penalty for transgressing a number o f his proposed laws, his belief in an eye for an eye etc. but it is important to appreciate that the quakers became the only effective organised opponents of the government and the established church. At that time they had not developed pacifism as the bedrock of their beliefs that if later became. Also. the lack of a dominant minister would have appealed to him.

Bibliography Boulton. D Gerrard Winstanley and the republic of heaven, Dales Historical Monographs 1999 limilsford H. N. The Levellers and the English Revolution, Cresset Press 1961 (Spokesman 2nd Edition 1983) Hampton. C A Radical Reader:Me Sing)* for change in England 1381-1914, Spokesman 1981 Petegorsky. D. W. Lefi-Wing Democracy in the English Civil Mr (A Study of the Social Philosophy of Gerrard Winstanley), Gollanez 1940 Caine. D Comrade Jacob, (novel) Andre Deutch 1961 Cohn. N The Pursuit of The Millenimn (Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anamhists of the Middle Ages), (3rd Revision 1970) Pimlico 2nd Edition 2004 Poulsone The English RebelsJourneyman press 1981

FIXING OUR BROKEN DEMOCRACY Ken Ritchie, Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) Lecture to the Ethical Society, 22 February 2009

Politics is, or should be, the way society collectively takes decisions — it is therefore something that concerns us all and should belong to us all. Of course we cannot vote on every issue as might have been done in ancient Greece— instead we must resort to representative democracy in which we choose those who will take decisions on our behalf.

But instead of then regarding our MPs as our representatives, we rank politicians alongside estate aeents and second-hand car dealers as the people we least trust. While distrust of politicians is not a new phenomenon, its intensity has grown alarmingly in recent years: we do not just distrust them, we despise them and cynicism has been replaced with contempt. Politics has become a dirty word — not something that should be discussed in polite company.

Our attitude to politics is reflected in levels of participation in elections. Before 2001 general election turnout was never below 70% (other than in the exceptional circumstances of 1918), but in 2001 it dropped to only 59%, and for the number who did not vote exceeded the number who voted for the winning party. In 2005, in spite of the government's efforts to make voting easier through postal voting, turnout only crept up to 61%. Ethical Record, March 2009 II Party Membership Plummeted Membership of political parties has also plummeted to little over I% of the electorate and only a tiny proportion of members are actively engaued in political activity. Moreover, while parties are not finding many recruits, their existing members are growing old — the average age of Conservative members is in the mid 60s and members of other parties are not far behind.

Party membership and turnout are related. In spite of television and the national media, what prompts many people to vote is the knock at the door or a leaflet through the letterbox, but parties no longer have the active people-power to run their election campaigns in the way they used to do.

So what has uone wrong? Society has changed. In the past, if you were working class you would vote Labour while if you had a white collar job you would probably vote Conservative. The major parties were there as representatives of class interests. But while class is still a major curse of our society, class divisions are not as entrenched as they were. Parties can no longer rely on their former bases of support: this affects in particular Labour which finds there are just not enough traditional, generally unionised, workers to give it electoral success.

This is not a bad thing. We want voters who will not just vote for a party because it was the party of their parents and their grandparents. Voters look at the parties in the way they would look at uoods on a supermarket shelf — if they like what they see, they will vote for it, but if they don't see anything to buy, they will not bother to vote. That voters are more open to persuasion is good, but it is not so good in that people have become potential consumers of what the parties have on offer rather than real participants in politics. The divide between people and politics has intensified. Parties have also lost out as places where people meet to discuss the issues of the day. In our more affluent society everyone has their television at home and can afford more visits to the pub or cinema. Society has become more atomised and collective action through parties is no longer what it was.

It is not that people are less interested in political issues but, instead of turning to political parties to work out solutions, they prefer to join the single issue campaigns. No-one can deny the importance of these campaigns, but they are not a substitute for parties. Politics is about looking at the demands of all interest groups and mediating between them. Our political system depends on parties — parties aggregate views and present voters with packaged choices and should present alternative programmes of government in a way that provides voters with meaningful choices.

Stuck In Tribal Battles But instead of parties offering alternative visions, they seem to be stuck in tribal battles. Our politicians rarely rise above petty, point-scoring debates, fuelling a cynical media that sells copy by cheap attacks on politicians rather than analysis of policy options. The manner in which journalists denigrate politicians damages politics itself.

12 Ethical Record, March 2009 Politicians are of course to blame for the way they leave themselves op-en to criticism, but the electorate must also take its share of the responsibility. We have unrealistic expectations about what politicians can deliver. Politics is rarely about issues that present themselves in black and white terms - it is about the messy business of seeking compromises between competing interests. Politicians may lack the honesty to admit they do not have all the answers to society's problems, but we should at least recognise that they cannot please all the people all of the time.,

How can we begin to build a more constructive, enlightened political culture? It would be foolish to pretend there was any easy answer, but the one key change we need to make is in our electoral system. It is the electoral system that links people to.their political representatives, letting us to choose who they will be and allowing us to turf them out if we are dissatisfied with their performance. That, at least, is the theory, but we have an electoral system that limits our choice and makes getting rid of people we don't want difficult.

Labour won the last election with a majority of 66, allowing it to do more or less as it likes. Yet Labour was elected with little more than a third of the votes — when you take turnout into consideration, just over one in five electors supported Labour — hardly a mandate to run the country.

Our voting system is unpredictable. Usually it gives an exaggerated majority to the largest party - we.have never had a party in power with a majority of the votes since 1935 — but we have also had elections, such as 1951 and 1974, in which the party with most votes did not win. In 2005 the Conservatives had more votes than Labour in England, but Labour won almost half as many English seats again as the Tories.

That is because our elections are not about winning votes, but about winning seats. A party whose votes are fairly evenly spread will perform may do badly, while a party whose votes are concentrated on particular seats will tend to do better. General elections are not fought across the country but in marginal constituencies. In the non-marginal seats, we can safely predict who will win — if you don't support the dominant party, your vote is little more than a gesture of defiance. If you do, your vote will just contribute to a superfluous majority.

In general elections rarely as many as 10% of constituencies are genuinely marginal. In those constituencies, parties know which voters will support them, which will not, and which will never vote. There are perhaps 10% of voters whose support they need to win — 10% of electors in 10% of the constituencies means I% of the electorate. In the last election the main parties targeted only 2% of the electorate — if you were one of the 98%, your vote was effectively taken for granted. -

But there is a wider political consequence of this type of election. Parties all conduct their focus groups to find out how they can win these few critical voters. Their manifestos are constructed to attract them, and consequently we see a convergence of policy because everyone know broadly what that group wants to hear

Ethical Record, March 2009 13 Our Faulty Electoral System If we had an electoral system in which the winner was the party with most votes, campaign strategies would be very different. We could then expect manifestos, and therefore policies, to be different. Labour, for example, has more interest in winning a few hundred extra votes in marginals than in winning tens of thousands of extra votes in its heartland constituencies. If total votes was a criterion for winning, then Labour would have much more to gain from putting its campaign resources into its heartlands — the inner city areas where turnout has been much lower than average. A direct attack on poverty would be more of a winning policy.

A move towards proportional representation would therefore put more life into democracy: not only would elections be fairer to parties, and hence to voters, but would value all votes equally, giving everyone a reason for voting wherever they live, and would give parties an incentive to campaign everywhere.

The more proportional a voting system is, however, the less chance there is of a single party gaining an outright majority of the seats, resulting in either a coalition or minority government. That many regard as a reason for not changing the system. They argue that coalitions, involving compromise, are weak while single party governments are strong. It was, however, such a 'strong' government that allowed Margaret Thatcher to introduce the poll tax, even although it was opposed by most of the electorate and even many in her own party. We want strong government, but government that is strong in the sense that it has a strong mandate from the electorate.

Most countries of Europe have coalition governments, and many of them are stronger than ours. In Scotland for eight years we had a Labour-Lib Dem coalition which in the main worked well. Since 2007 Scotland has had a minority SNP administration with only 47 of the 129 seats, but it has nevertheless been effective. Legislation proposed by the SNP can be voted down, while opposition parties can propose motions and win. The Scottish Parliament has become a real debating chamber, not just a rubber stamp for executive action. Alex Salmond has described it well: "A chamber with debates based on the power of argiument, not the argument of power". That is surely what we should be aiming at for Westminster.

Preference Voting Electoral reform, however, is not just about proportional representation but also about offering voters more meaningful choices. This can be done through preference voting in which voters rank the candidates in order of preference. If a candidate cannot use a vote, it is transferred to the voter's next choice and so on until it finds a candidate does need it. The result is that most voters find their votes have helped elect a candidate — very few votes are wasted.

The Single Transferable Vote (STV) is the system advocated by ERS because it combines proportionality with preference voting. In Scotland, where STV was introduced for local government elections in 2007, nearly three quarters of voters found that their first choices of candidates had been elected, and we expect well over 90% found they had voted for at least one successful candidate..

14 Ethical Record, March 2009 Compare that with the last general election when only a third of MPs were elected with a majority of the votes. None had the support of a majority of the electors. With our first-past-the-post system the most unpopular candidates can be elected if opposition to them is spread amongst other candidates. This phenomenon has allowed the BNP to win seats in local government, and indeed there is a seat it won with only 28% of the vote — something that would not happen with a system of preference voting.

Voter choice is not just an issue during elections. Proportional systems require several candidates to be elected in larger, multi-seat districts. An elector requiring the assistance of an MP can thcn choose which district MP to approach. If, for example, a district elects two Labour, two Conservatives and a Lib Dem member, then most electors would have an MP of their preferred party. Representation is then improved, because while a single MP can attend to cases raised by all constituents, it is impossible for them with a single vote in the Commons to represent the diversity of constituents' political views. MPs do not of course like such a challenge to their monopolistic positions in their constituencies, but we are told that competition is good in all other fields and there is no reason why it should not apply to MPs in their jobs as representatives.

Some electors might, for example, want to approach a woman MP, but at present only I in 5 of our MPs are women. There is something wrong with our democracy if our parliament does not to some extent reflect the make up of society. Getting a more diverse House of Commons is not just about changing the voting system, but our electoral system, by creating so many safe seats for male incumbents provides few opportunities for aspiring women.

A proportional voting system, requiring parties to select several candidates in each multi-seat district, would, however, help. To broaden their appeal, parties would have an incentive to present a mix of candidates — men as well as women, younger as well as older candidates, and in some areas candidates from ethnic communities. International comparisons demonstrate that countries that use proportional systems generally have a higher proportion of women MPs.

It is not just the male, middle-class dominance of Parliament that separates it from the electorate — it is also its petty point-scoring and unnecessarily adversarial debates. Proportional representation would encourage a new political culture. Political debate will always be robust, but if you know an outright majority is unlikely, it is not sensible to slag off opponents you might need to work with in government. In a multi-party, proportional system, you cannot win by just defeating one opponent — you also need to do more to promote positively the policies you think will attract voters.

STV takes this one stage further. Candidates likely to well in an STV election are ones that will not just attract first preference votes, but will benefit from votes transferred from other candidates. To attract transfers from voters who support other candidates, there is an incentive to say where you agree as well as where and why you disagree, thereby encouraging a less confrontational and more attractive form of politics.

Ethical Record, March 2009 15 If Electoral Reform Offers So Many Benefits, Why Is It Not Changed? A simple reason is that change requires government action, and governments are disinclined to change the systems that gave them large majorities on minorities of the vote. Labour when in opposition promised a referendum on the electoral system, but when in 1997 it found itself in government with a 179 seat majority, it changed its mind on the issue.

So Where Does All That Leave Us? Firstly let me give some credit to Labour. In its first term it was the most reforming government for many decades — a true period of constitutional renaissance. We had devolution to Scotland and Wales, and in a more faltering fashion to Northern Ireland, with proportional systems used in each case. We had a proportional system introduced for European elections — even if not a very good one — and a beginning to the end of hereditary Lords, even if an end to a hereditary monarchy was never going to be on the agenda.

But what Labour failed to do was honour its commitment to referendum on how we elect our MPs. It set up the Jenkins Commission to propose an alternative system, but after 10 years its report is still gathering dust. We were then offered a review of experience of alternative systems: it took 7 years to produce and offered a positive view of the benefits of reform, but still no action, and with a general election only a year away, time has run out and we are unlikely to see any.

However, major political changes generally only happen when there are political circumstances that require it and it is possible that such circumstances are not that far away. The chances of Labour winning the next election outright seem slim, but the present electoral system creates a bias against the Conservatives because of the way their vote is distributed. An outright Conservative win is therefore far from certain, and a hung parliament a real possibility. This would make it necessary for a major party to reach a deal to get the support of a minor party, and if minor parties stick to their guns, electoral reform can be the price of support in any negotiations.

For electoral reformers the coming period will be a tense one. If the election leads to a Conservative Government, we can only look forwards to a 4 or 5 year period of simply saying to Labour, "we told you so — you had your chance but you blew it". But a hung parliament may give a real opportunity to make a major change in the nature of our politics. It depends on how pro-reform politicians play their cards. Our job is to make sure that the opportunity, if it arises, is not missed.

If we are successful, we will see a move to a more representative and more effective Parliament, but we may also see the beginnings of a move to a new style of politics — one in which more people want to participate, one in which politics rises above the present sterile party warfare, and one in which politics becomes something for us all. A better voting system can give us better politics, and better politics can give us a better society.

16 Ethical Record, March 2009 THOMAS PAINE, POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION AND CURRENCY CRISIS Ellen L. Ramsay

8 June 1809 marks the bicentenary of Thomas Paine's unfortunate death on his farm in New Rochelle, New York. The coincidental timing of his bicentennial with the current global economic melt down is both unfortunate for his supporters and a magnificent irony for those exasperated by the lack of historical memory amongst humans. This is in reference, of course, to the ungoverned and unrestrained hand of certain bankers in the world. Thomas Paine, along with other notable supporters of American Independence, helped found the Bank of North America in May 1780 with a personal subscription of $500. The bank, a subscription bank intended to fund the veterans of Washington's army, was incorporated by Congress and then by the state of Pennsylvania on 1 April 1782. The bank had an interesting and successful history but came under attack when it became too large and was unable to repeal its charter. Paine wrote about the general economic collapse that followed the War in a pamphlet entitled Dissertations on Government, the Affairs of the Bank and Paper Money (1786). He pointed out that the greed of the banks had caused them to lend money without proper security, and to pass their debt on to subscribers with a 6% interest payment in perpetuity while the banks continued to invest at 10-12% and speculators received a further 20-30%. Paine then argued against the creation of a paper currency to see the country out of its economic crisis. One would presume that the banking system had much changed since the 18th century and that renegade bankers would be called to task for their flagrant excesses. Paine was one of the victims of the economic collapse in his day, left with interest payments as a subscriber to a bank. An important if not pivotal fact in the entire collapse had been a prolonged war that not only sank the American economy, but also drained English and French coffers. The urgency of good government and diplomatic solutions to conflict could not be overstated when the system collapsed and the economic burden fell on to the average citizen. Charles Bradlaugh wrote about theunrestrained expense of war in 1880 in a Freethought Tract. From the English side, the war with America was estimated by reformers to have cost £139,521,035 by 1781, not including a further £1,340,000 in compensation payments and £4,000 per year in stipend(to Loyalists from 1788. The citizens of at least three countries were left with the burden of the debt and the consequences of war. Thomas Paine subsequently set about proposing designs for civilian iron bridges to replace the temporary wooden bridges that had been constructed during the war period. According to Moncure Conway, this was Paine's way of suggesting a better, longer term investment in the country and (had the bridge designs been adopted) a solution to his personal financial problems. Why the bankers weren't restrained after the 1780s is a different and apparently a more enduring problem. Suggested reading: Moncure D. Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, Watts & Co., 1909.

Ethical Record, March 2009 17 BARON D'HOLBACH AND THE FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENT 'It's raining bombs on the house of the Lord' D.Diderot David Holohan Author of a new translation of Christianity Unveiled by Baron d'Holbach Lecture to the Ethical Society 8 February 2009

First I want to make a few introductory remarks about the intellectual climate in which d'Holbach wrote, and then I'll come on to his attack on Christianity and the Church in the light of Christianity Unveiled and his writing subsequent to this early work. It is my contention that Christianity Unveiled was a blueprint for (a) all future works he was to write against Christianity and (b) serves as a stratagem of attack upon Christianity for what we could call 'Operation Unveiling'.

'The Century Of Luminaries' Near the beginning of a new century, the French scientist and man of letters, Bernard de Fontenelle (1657-1757) anticipated the forthcoming eighteenth century with great excitement and optimism: he thought that the 1700s would be 'a century which will become more enlightened day by day, so that all previous centuries will be lost in darkness by comparison'. Thus he heralded the Age of Enlightenment. In French this period is known as the `Siecle des Lumieres', but the English 'Age of Enlightenment' seems to me to be a rather dull expression by comparison with the French: it carries none of the excitement and multilayered meaning of the French. In keeping with the French expression, we could call it 'The Century of Luminaries', where 'luminary' means someone of outstanding genius, who comes along and lights up the world, who sheds light on ignorance. Ignorance is often characterized by an absence of light, or darkness and we have many words in English which express this - words such as obscure, obfuscate, etc.

This era was not just a French phenomenon - its effects and ethos spilled over into many European countries and the expression 'The Century of Luminaries' is rather apt at the moment as we consider Charles Darwin in this bi-centenary year of his birth. When casting a retrospective glance in 1784 over the Age of Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) remarked that in essence it had been a period of emancipation from superstition and ignorance. For d'Holbach, superstition and enlightenment were incompatible: in his greatest work, Syseme de la Nature (1770) he states, 'If ignorance of nature gave birth to the gods, knowledge of nature is destined to destroy them' .

The Age of Enlightenment was an unparalleled period of intellectual revolution, a period of scientific, philosophical and political writing and publishing, during which, to use Jonathan Swift's expression, writers and thinkers unleashed 'an artillery of words', as they tested and debated all manner of traditional beliefs and dearly held nostrums, as well as introducing many totally new ideas. Not least to come under this artillery fire was Christianity generally, and the Roman Catholic Church specifically, since that was the established creed of France. With time the target was broadened out, so that many different faiths and ideas were challenged in a number of European countries.

18 Ethical Record, March 2009 The great Denis Diderot (1713-1784) commented in 1768 on this artillery fire with specific reference to the Church, as it was under repeated and merciless attack, saying, 'It's raining bombs on the house of the Lord. I go in fear and trembling lest one of these terrible bombers gets into difficulties.' (i) Now when he uses the words 'terrible bombers', he was not showing his disapproval that the Church was coming under attack. He had an axe to grind against the Church because it was chiefly the ecclesiastical establishment that had put a stop to the ongoing publication of his innovative and impressive encyclopaedia, known as the Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonne des Sciences, des Arts et des Metiers, which we know in English as the Encyclopaedia or Classified Dictionary of Sciences, Arts and Trades, on which all the finest minds in France collaborated. This encyclopedia was a beacon of intellectual endeavour, which carried articles on every sphere of knowledge at the time - scientific, sociological and political, but it was the articles on philosophy and religion in particular, which caused the established Church to take exception to the entire project.

The Philosophes The contributors to the Encyclopedic were known as philosophes, a word which means so much more in French than 'philosophers'. They were literary figures, polymaths, scientists, linguists, philosophers - all were fearless men who took delight in calling into question all the superstition and accepted doctrines of the establishment. They were regarded by the Church as ecclesiastical terrorists, the enfants terribles of the eighteenth century, who didn't care on whose sensibilities they trod.

The Encyclopedic was vast in its conception and volumes were published serially: in all it carried 72,000 articles over 18,000 pages of text, plus volumes of some 4,000 plates. The first seventeen volumes were released between 1751 and 1765, but after only a year, when the Church could take no more of its subversive articles replete with innuendos, a halt was called to its publication, although work was carried out on it clandestinely and the project was permitted again after a hiatus of a few years.

I mentioned the word innuendo and this was an important feature of the articles of the work. Every bombing raid needs a plan or stratagem, and one of the philosophes' tactics was to include material critical of the Church which the writer would not openly state was his own opinion: he would simply say, 'Now, some people think this ...' or probably, if the opinion was particularly radical, 'One appalling writer has the temerity to say that...' The implication was that the writer, of course, didn't agree with such an argument, but it ought to be reported for the sake of completeness. It was a clear case of, 'Don't shoot the messenger!'

Diderot and his fellow contributors to the Encyclopedie had already a precedent for using this stratagem in a work of a similar type, which was called the Dictionnaire historique et critique {Historical and Critical Dictionary} by Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), published between 1695 and 1702. Everything about Bayle's Dictionary was innovative: the way the text was set out on the page was what today we would call 'hypertext'- it was full of crossreferences, contrary arguments and diverse opinions, sourced and with citations littering the margins

Ethical Record, March 2009 19 of the main article. His article on King David, the Israelite king, to whose name is attached the sobriquet in the Bible 'the man after God's own heart' caused great offense. So, the implication is that to know David is to know something of God. David is seen as a towering figure, a giant amongst men in the Old Testament and within the Jewish tradition. However, Bayle's portrayal of him is anything but flattering. In fact, his article is an exercise in character assassination, with all the subtlety of Shakespeare's Mark Anthony, claiming that 'Brutus is an honourable man'. If you're going to attack an institution, one stratagem is to have a go at the founder and his boss!

Bayle had to go into exile in Holland and he finally died in Rotterdam in 1706. The ramifications of these allegations were too much for the Church to stomach: if this was 'a man after God's own heart', what does it say about the god who admires this kind of character? Similar tactics were used in Diderot's and d' Alembert' s encyclopedia. Two articles in particular invoked the Church's ire-one on 'Messiah' and the other on 'Miracles' and d'Holbach used points made in both when he started his onslaught on the Church with his Christianity Unveiled. Again the same stratagem: denigrate the founder and at the same time call into question how sincere he was and how truthfully his career has been reported.

The Messiah Very briefly, the article on the Messiah traces the root of the Hebrew word meaning 'Annointed One', which is messiah, and it examined how many times this word has been used in the Old Testament and its context. The author notes that this word was used for anyone who 'saved the people of Israel' and he quoted from the apocryphal book Sirach, which says, 'You anointed kings to inflict retribution, and prophets to succeed you', IS irach 48: 81. Other OT verses are also mentioned. He then draws attention to the career of Jesus Christ and asks how we can reconcile the concept of 'anointing kings to inflict retribution' with the rejection that Jesus met, to say nothing of his ignominious death. How could such a character be regarded as the Messiah? Hadn't the gospel writers got things wrong? So here we have an article questioning the very mission of Christ and his reason for coming into the world.

Within this whole tradition, Christ likens his reign to a sumptuous feast in Canaan, where the wine is provided by Adam, who apparently kept a pretty mean cellar, the entree would be the slain meat of Leviathan-unsalted, the Encylopedie writer tells us, because being a sea monster he was probably salty enough-and so on and so forth. All this is great fun but it has a serious point: by juxtaposing the Jesus of Nazareth figure with these mythological figures from the Jewish tradition, the author is ridiculing the whole idea of Christ as the Messiah, exposing the very concept as a fantasy. However, all this is written in an academic style, fully referenced and it is all well researched. The author then goes on to list and detail all other claimants to the post of Messiah down the ages.

The article on Miracles is also written in the same vein. The reader is invited to question whether any of them took place at all, given the witnesses, i.e., the founders of the early church were partisan and hardly independent.

20 Ethical Record, March 2009 Secondly on a philosophical level, for the Son of God to perform a miracle he had to go against the very laws of nature, which he, as God, had laid down - therefore, he was going against his own nature. All these points and arguments were used by d'Holbach in his writing from Christianity Unveiled onwards. So we see the Church being attacked by Bayle in the late 17th century and by Voltaire and the encyclopedistes in the 18th. Both Bayle and Voltaire had to go into exile on account of their writing, but neither of these two towering intellectuals could be called 'atheists', which irritated the Church more than anything else. The Church could have easily dismissed a couple of atheists as being lost causes, as people out of tune altogether with the Church. However, like many intellectuals, they were quite happy to admit that there was some kind of god, but they rejected the mythology and irrationality of a great deal of the Scriptures. What's more, they poured scorn upon the blind acceptance of superstitious tales, promoted and peddled by the Church and they insisted that some degree of faith in a divinity was wholly compatible with a rational mind and outlook. One did not need to swallow the whole fantastical ensemble hook, line and sinker.

The Gods Were Useful So as things go, Bayle and Voltaire could be singled out as actively taking part in the bombing raid on the Church, but by comparison with d'Holbach, they were really only the rear gunners! There were others who were very much in the front line of an all-out salvo on the Church and Christianity, and even on the beliefs of people like Voltaire, who was essentially a Deist. He, along with many other intellectuals in France and England, held to the view that, using the analogy of a watch, one only had to look at the internal workings of the universe to see the hand of a creator in it. However, they were squeamish over the irrational and so they rejected the concept of the Scriptures being divinely inspired, their rational minds could not stomach accounts of the miracles, especially the resurrection, and so by the time one strips out the miraculous and mythical aspects of Christianity, there was, of course, very little left. However, few intellectuals went so far as denying the very existence of a divine being and Voltaire had a horror of atheism, which he thought would lead to anarchy. He took a view like that of Cicero, that there probably weren't any gods, but they were pretty useful for maintaining order within the empire, it was the glue that held the status quo together: 'When these are gone [i.e., piety, reverence and religion] life soon becomes a welter of disorder and confusion; and in all probability the disappearance of piety towards the gods will entail the disappearance ofloyalty and social union among men as well, and of justice itself, the queen of all the virtues.' (ii)

So we have the Church and Christianity being attacked from a number of flanks, mostly by Deists. rather than out-and-out atheists. We must also bear in mind that anti-clericalism, that is priest-bashing, offering harsh criticisms of Jesuits in particular, and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, was almost a national pastime in France, even amongst those who would admit to believing more than the Deists. But it was a brave critic who took on the Church because there were

Ethical Record, March 2009 21 serious consequences for expressing doubt and radical ideas of this nature, as we can see clearly from Diderot's comment about bombing the house of the Lord. Remember he said, 'I go in fear and trembling lest one of these terrible bombers gets into difficulties.' Diderot, of course, was an atheist, not a Deist, and when his close friend d'Holbach started churning out one work after another against the Church, striking at its very foundations, he knew that he was stickine his head well above the parapet. So let's take a moment to look at the consequences, if one was caught.

The Catholic Church was very powerful within French society: firstly, the Church had a majority presence in the Paris Parlement. This was an institution which went back to the Middle Ages in France and although at the time they were established the Paris Parlement had jurisdiction throughout the whole of France, as time went on regional Parlements were set up until they were 14 in all and each one held jurisdiction over a given area. They were not legislative bodies, but courts of appeal, and generally they carried out the edicts of the king. They were heavily influenced by the Church and they had the power to pronounce books be banned and usually this was done by publically ripping up the offending work before setting it alight in a public square and forbidding any further printing, buying and distribution. This fate befell most of d' Flolbach's works. So in essence then, the Catholic Church was the chief censor of books. Secondly, it held most educational institutions in its grip.

Death For Publishing To attack the Church was to attack the status quo in general, as a royal declaration of 1728 showed: all authors found guilty of writing 'without permission' books that raised religious 'disputes' or touched upon those already raised, that 'disturbed the tranquillity of the state', or 'corrupted morals'-all charges frequently used against the philosophes-might be banished beyond the court's area of jurisdiction when tried for a first offence: for a second offence, they could be banished beyond the territory of France. In 1757, the conseil d' not {Council of State} (iii) raised the penalty for publishing, selling or distributing such works, including now any which 'tend to attack religion', to the death penalty, even for a first offence. There was also the possibility of being found guilty of lese-majestd htunaine et divine (an offence against the sovereign. i.e., treason, and God, i.e., divine treasonO)}. It is highly unlikely that even the clergy would have evoked such a law and penalty, but it was there on the statute books as a threat and in theory. If a person was found guilty of such blasphemy or trying to undermine the Church's power, the author could find himself (usually it was men) arrested and they would spend some time in one of the many prisons, such as the Bastille.

Now, by d'Holbach's time, although the death penalty existed on the law books, most sentences amounted to just a few months in prison, especially ifthe author had money and could call upon the protective influence of a notable person with good connections within high society. For the lower classes, from where the average book seller arose, the consequences were less lenient: I cite in my introduction to Christianity Unveiled a particular incident which was quite typical and one that is well-documented in the Bastille archives. Books and pamphlets putting the case against religion and some political issues were touted

22 Ethical Record, March 2009 around by young traders called colporteurs and often written material and money changed hands in and around cafes with a reputation for that. I say 'written material' because not all this kind of literature was printed: some was- hand- written and circulated in manuscript form. These itinerant hawkers of books, pamphlets and newspapers were out to make a 'fast buck' and selling this kind of material was often a sideline to another job and it was quite lucrative. Prices were high — the more radical the book, the higher the price. The police made regular raids on booksellers and printers on the off chance of finding something subversive, but if you were selling this kind of material from a mobile stall or wheelbarrow, you couldn't be raided so easily. It also stands to reason that anyone writing such material did not put his name to it and many illicit and subversive works were published anonymously or posthumously. Understandably this has given rise to the difficulty later of establishing their true authorship. However, conversations on such subjects as religious belief and the Church were commonplace, when out of earshot of the police and those who might inform, and such subversive topics were widely discussed in cafes. Here is a police report now filed away in the Bastille archive:

9 August 1729. There are in Paris certain so-called 'great minds' who speak in cafes and elsewhere of religion as a chimera. Amongst others, Monsieur Boindin has stood out more than once in the Cafe de Conti, on the corner of the Rue Dauphine, and if these people are not brought to book, the number of atheists or Deists will increase and lots of people will form their own kind of religion, as they have in England.

Monsieur Mathieu or Morleon, who rents a room in a cafe on the corner of the Rue St Dominique, on the Charity Hospital side, produces and sells copies of several works full of disbelief and maxims contrary to the existence of God and the divinity and teaching of Jesus Christ. Loads of people fsic1, priests and others, buy copies of these works at really high prices. (iv)

Witch-hunts The years 1740-50 saw a particular flurry of anti-Christian works, as did the years around the late 1750s and 1760s. The witch-hunts, carried out to find the culprits, came in waves. In 1768, a certain Jean Baptiste Josserand, a young grocer's lad, who made money on the side selling second-hand books, was arrested along with another married couple-Jean Lecuyer and his wife Marie Suisse-who were caught selling d'Holbach's Christianity Unveiled illegally. Their punishment was severe, as opposed to the much lighter punishments generally meted out to members ofthe aristocracy or to those with money. All three were sentenced to spending three days in the stocks, then they were subsequently branded, after which Josserand was condemned to spending nine years in the galleys, Lecuyer got away with 'only' five years of the same, and his wife received a five-year internment. Needless to say, the phi losophes were outraged by such a harsh sentence and the whole affair became a cause célebre at the time. SO, such was the atmosphere in which d'Holbach was writing and publishing his works against the Church.

D'Flolbach became a man of wealth. lie was born into a middle-class family in the Rhenish Palatinate in December 1723 at Edesheim, a village near Landau, and he was baptized according to Catholic rites. From a very early age

Ethical Record, March 2009 23 he showed great intellectual promise: he was noted for a superb memory. he won many prizes at school and he took a keen interest in all aspects oflearning. Sadly he was orphaned at an early age and there are very few details of this period in his life. He ended up living in Paris, being brought up with his uncle, who had made a considerable fortune. The rest of his education was completed in Paris in French, so early in his life he was already bi-lingual, his native language being German, and to French and German he added English, and, of course, Latin and Greek. He entered the University of Leiden, one of the oldest and most prestigious higher educational establishments in Europe, where he met and rubbed shoulders with an international crowd of young men who were finishing their education there or pursuing postgraduate degrees. There are letters he wrote in his teens in the British Library in which he already shows an excellent command of English for a young person of his age and he frequently corresponded with Englishmen he met there. Some of these men were to go on to hold important positions in British society - two chancellors of the Exchequer, a Lord Mayor of London ... You get the picture ... And many of these people were to remain his friends throughout his life. d'Holbach's Dinner Parties At his home in Paris in the Rue Royale, d'Holbach used to hold regular dinner parties on Thursday evenings at which just about all the foremost intellectuals in town could be found anyone permanently resident in Paris, and many more who were just passing through. His dinners were the place to be and there would be anything between a dozen to around twenty guests. Rousseau called these get- togethers the coterie holbachique. At these dinners the latest books or plays or scientific or philosophical theories would be discussed: sometimes they were themed evenings, say on topics such as the economy, when prominent experts in the field would be specially invited, but more often than not the conversation would just flow naturally on a variety of topics. Foreign diplomats and famous scientists and writers who were passing through Paris would often attend -and sometimes they would make a detour especially to be at one of these dinners. Most people found the conversation and opinions expressed free of prejudice and enlightened. There were even a couple of clerics who were regular dinner guests, but they were of the liberal variety. Ironically, even Bergier often attended - the priest whom the Catholic Church had commissioned to write a mammoth, 800page refutation of d'Holbach's Christianity Unveiled. While sitting at the dinner table, Bergier had no idea he was the guest of the very author. An alternative venue at the weekends was a chateau called Grandval, a couple of hour's drive from Paris. at Sucy-enBrie in the Mame Valley, on the banks of the Seine, which d'Holbach found a quieter place to read and write. Diderot was a frequent guest there and they discussed their literary projects.

D'Holbach met Diderot sometime around 1751-52 and in all d'Holbach contributed some 300 main-entry articles of his Encyclopedic on mineralogy, metallurgy, chemistry and mining, and a further hundred as sub-entries. Apart from that, he translated a number of major treatises on glass-making and mineralogy from the original German into French, and in doing so he made available some seminal works to French scientists who would never have made the progress they did in those fields, but for his translations. A regular dinner guest in Paris and a man ofletters, a certain Suard, described d'Holbach's

24 Ethical Recant March 2009 reading and erudition in his memoirs, 'He used to devour everything that came from the printing-presses of all countries, and let nothing escape from his vast memory, beyond what he wished to forget.'

His Works And Themes The bombs he wrote, as Diderot put it, aimed at exploding the myths of Christianity. These were the first utterly uncompromisingly atheist works to have been written and published in French. They all had to be published anonymously, or rather pseudonymously, for reasons already explained: had his identity been revealed, he would have ended up in the Bastille. All these works were put on the Vatican's Index Librorum Prohibitorutn or Index of Prohibited books and they were frequently condemned by the Paris Parlement and burned publicly in the square. D'Holbach's identity as the author of these works was kept a closely guarded secret even for some considerable time after his death, and revealed only when all danger to those who survived him had passed. For this reason, some atheist works have been attributed to him which he did not write, and other works he did write have been attributed to other writers of books with an atheist bent. Much work has been done on stylistic analysis, looking at references and letters etc., from memoirs of the period, and thanks to pains- taking scholarship completed in 1971 by an academic called Vercruysse, we now have a pretty comprehensive list of works which we can be confident in stating are from d'Holbach's pen.(v) Many of his works have been translated into English, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, German, and a few in Italian (though not many), and rather surprisingly into Turkish, the odd one into Hungarian, Czech, and, even more surprisingly, Yiddish.

So to Christianity Unveiled, not only the first major anti-Christian work d'Holbach produced as sole author, but arguably the first assault in French on the church from a purely atheist stance. He had worked as editor on the work of his friend Boulanger, who died at the untimely age of 37 in 1759, which was a great personal blow to d'Holbach. It was to Boulanger that the first edition of Christianity Unveiled was attributed when it appeared in . 1766. D'Holbach edited and published posthumously works by Boulanger, one of which was called Antiquite devoile (Antiquity Unveiled), so when Christianity Unveiled was published, people assumed it was indeed by Boulanger. That enabled d'Holbach to cover his tracks quite neatly as far as the establishment was concerned: Boulanger was out of the reach of the Church, given that he was dead, though presumably God could still get him and hold him to account. However, even a cursory look at the written style shows that the two works were the product of very different pens. Boulanger's work Antiquity Unveiled examined in great detail the story of the Flood and showed how the invention of various myths, gods and explanations for natural disasters are a response from many cultures to explain such events and how various rites and ceremonies from a wide spectrum of religions have maintained common features. The work is not particularly subversive, but in listing Christianity as a 'modern religion', as one among many others - several of which are much more ancient than Christianity - Boulanger dismisses by implication the uniqueness of Christianity and he demystifies it: he portrays it as yet another belief in a long tradition of invented myths, most of which mankind has now discarded. Some ofthe details of Boulanger's research were used by d'Holbach in his Christianity Unveiled.

Ethical Record, March 2009 25 On to the bombing raid - let's call it 'Operation Unveilingl Despite the erroneous date of 1756 being printed on the title page of Christianity Unveiled, we know that the work was in fact published in 1766 and there is a letter written by Voltaire to Helvetius in which he asks, 'Who is the real author of this work [Christianity Unveiled], which is attributed to Bolingbroke, Boulanger and to Freret? Well, my friends! What does it really matter who the real author is?' (vi) Similar doubts over authorship were expressed by Voltaire when d'Holbach published his rather cheeky, irreverent work - the Church called it blasphemous - the Portable Theology. Typically, Voltaire wrote, 'During the last three months there has appeared a dozen works of an extremely liberal type, printed in Holland. The Portable Theology is not a bit theological: it is an endless stream of jokes arranged in alphabetical order, but it must be admitted that there are such comic features in it that even some theologians cannot refrain from laughing. Young people and women read this reckless stuff avidly. Editions of all these sorts of books simply multiply.' (vii) And again in a letter to D'Alembert, Voltaire commented on The Portable Theology, 'It is a work quite to my taste and very pleasing, but I definitely had no part in its production: it's a work I shouldn't have minded at all having done and I would have been more than pleased to have been capable of writing it.' (viii)

D'Holbach believed that Christianity was the epitome of ignorance, superstition, that the Church had stood constantly against human progress and enlightenment, that the nasty god, on which the whole edifice was built, was spiteful and duplicitous, and that it could be got rid of with no risk to the moral or ethical glue that held society together. He firmly believed that it was shrouded in mystery and superstition, that it was anti-intellectual and an affront to reason, and as such, it needed the veil tearing from it. His mission statement is clearly expressed in his Preface to Christianity Unveiled:

Many men devoid of mores have attacked religion because it thwarted their inclinations; many wise men have despised it because it appeared ridiculous to them; many people have viewed it with indifference because they did not perceived its true drawbacks. As a citizen,1 attack it because I consider it to be harmful to the welfare of the state, because it is an enemy of human intellectual progress, and because it is opposed to sound morality, from which political interests can never be divorced. (ix)

Again, at the end of chapter 1 he states:

So let us conclude that the Christian religion has no grounds whatsoever to boast of its superiority in promoting morality or a political society. Therefore, let us tear from it the Veil with which it has shrouded itself. Let us go back to first principles and analyse its sources. Let us follow in its footsteps and we shall find that, rooted in deception, ignorance and credulity, it has never been, and never will be, useful to society, apart from being advantageous to men who believe they have an interest in hoodwinking humankind. Religion will never cease causing the greatest misfortunes for nations, and rather than furnishing the happiness it promises, it serves only to fuel frenzied rages, to drown nations in blood, to immerse them in lunacy and crime, and make people misjudge their true interests and their most holy duties. (x)

26 Ethical Record, March 2009 I would say that Christianity Unveiled is a blueprint for all the works d'Holbach was to publish subsequently to it. In it he sets out his major targets, the aspects of Christianity he wanted bombing or unveiling, and later on he treated these individual targets to a fuller discussion, a more detailed expose, in later works .

The Old Testament patriarchs were subjected to d'Holbach's character assassination as the founders ofJudaism, and it will come as no surprise that the character and life of Jesus Christ, his disciples and apostles are all treated in exactly the same way. In Christianity Unveiled he calls Christ and imposter, just as he did Moses, and the disciples are all gullible fools. The apostles are literally men on a mission and so their testimony cannot be trusted: they are hardly independent witnesses. In Christianity Unveiled d'Holbach points out some of the many contradictions between the gospel accounts of the life of Christ and this theme is dealt with in greater detail in his L'Histoire critique de Jesus Christ, ou Analyse raisonnee des Evangiles (1769). He throws doubt upon the central tenet of the Christian religion — the resurrection, accounts of which in the gospels are confused and the details are at variance with each other.

D 'Holbach does not just pick up on contradictory biographical details of the New Testament: he also addresses some of the more fundamental philosophical contradictions. He points out that Jesus came purposefully to enlighten the world, yet declared himself a stumbling block and admitted that his sayings were obscure. He points out that this is yet another of god's ways of trapping people. These ideas find echoes in d'Flolbach's Lettres a Eugenie (Letters to Eugenia) (1768), often wrongly attributed to Freret: he stated, 'The Bible constantly portrays God as a seducer, a tempter, a suspicious tyrant, who never knows what to make of his subjects, so it amuses him to set traps for them, all for the pleasure of being able to punish them for falling into them and succumbing to temptation.' (xi)

Copious Footnotes It has often been said that 'the devil is in the detail' and in d'Holbach's case I would endorse that sentiment: many of his most interesting points are made in the copious footnotes which he supplied to all his various works. Sadly many of these footnotes have been omitted altogether or curtailed in the English translations of his works, which was one reason 1 decided to translate Christianity Unveiled again.

Another of d'Holbach's targets is prophesy, which Bergier makes so much of in his refutation as a proof that God had a definite plan for mankind and Jesus was a key part of it. Bergier claimed that these prophesies were so true and accurate that many scholars have found it difficult to believe that details were not added after the events predicted. This, for Bergier, is proof positive of the Bible's divine origins and testimony to the true God. Well, d'Holbach is of a different opinion: he subjected Old and New Testament prophesies to the same kind of close analysis he brought to bear on the biography of Jesus and he shows how a prophet can say almost anything he wants in as flowery and allegorical language as he chooses-in fact, the more allegorical the better, because it gives

Ethical Record, March 2009 27 the interpreter lots of wriggle-room to twist subsequent historical facts to fit in with the prophesy. This theme is explored in many of d'Idolbach's works, starting with Christianity Unveiled, but it is more fully analyzed in Examen des propheties (1768).

The wonderful little work by d'Holbach —his Portable Theology of 1768, which he attributed to a certain Abbe Bernier, which may possibly be a play on his chief refuter and dinner guest, Bergier. There is only one letter different in the name. This is a work written for fun: it is satirical, written very much tongue in cheek, and it lists quite clearly succinct definitions of key words, concepts and characters from the Bible. The effect is hilarious, eg:

Bible This is the very holy book, inspired by the Spirit of God, which contains all that a Christian must know and practise. It is appropriate that the laity never read it: the Word of God would not fail to harm them; it is better by far that the priests read the Bible on their behalf; it is only they who have the stomach to be able to digest it. The laity must content themselves with the outcome of this priestly digestive process.

Jonah He was a cantankerous and quick-tempered prophet. He spent three days in the belly of a whale which, in the end, just had to sick him up - so difficult a morsel is a prophet to digest. God ordered Him to lie on His behalf to the inhabitants ofNineveh, which put him in a bad mood; a prophet generally only ever seeks to be belligerent.

Stercoraceous Chair This is a seatless chair on which a newly elected pope has to place his holy backside in order that it be placed in the right position so that his sex might be inspected in order that the Church will not fall into the inconvenient position of ending up with a female pope.

Consecration These are magical words by which a priest of the Roman Church possesses the power to force the God of the Universe to interrupt his lunch to come and change himself into bread and be bitten into himself.

In conclusion I suppose we have to ask ourselves if the Christian religion and church still need unveiling, as per d'Holbach's stated purpose in Christianity Unveiled. I wouldn't say 'bombing' because other believers in a different deity seem to have plans for that. Has d'Holbach still anything to say to the reader today? Well, I believe very definitely that he has. Just a quick example.

During Christmas of last year, there was a programme on the radio about the three kings who came to worship the new-born Jesus, after having seen a star in the sky. The programme duly pointed out that Matthew's was the only gospel to mention them and on a closer examination of the text, the commentator Ian Hislop had to admit that (a) they were not kings and (b) they were at best shadowy figures about whom we know nothing else from the other gospels and (c) the correct, modem translation is magoi which means astrologers and/or magicians, and as such, they get god's disapproval elsewhere in the bible - God did not approve of these people. If they existed at all, they were most likely Zoroastrians, but the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was specifically referred to

28 Ethical Record, March 2009 as a 'wise man' himself, went on radio as saying, in his usual woolly way, `Yes, I think I'd trust the gospel of Matthew', i.e., to tell the truth. We were then treated to an 'expert', who told us that the myrrh one of the kings brought was an incense always associated with death and that this prefigured Christ's death. Suddenly, by the Middle Ages, despite no mention of this in the one gospel account, these three magicians become Kings honouring another king, i.e., Jesus, and hey-presto by the 8th century they now have names: they are called Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar.

From there they suddenly end up in Cologne, a long way from home, their relics now working miracles despite being squirreled away in a tomb which is inaccessible to the public. Marco Polo discovered them again quite independently in some place in Persia, so we now have two sets of them. All this was then commented on by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, we are told, is one of the Church's finest intellects: Ian Hislop asks him, 'Can all this be true?' Rowan Williams replies, with all the clarity of mud: 'I think I'd want to say that truth is at the heart of a religion that's meant to be true. [ ] The basic biblical story stands and it's been the seedbed of a great outburst of imagination. [ I hope that people will still take the message.'

Well, I don't know what message you take from that, but this kind of on- going mythologizing turns my stomach and as Richard Dawkins has said, with regard to astrology, tarot cards and the like, peddling this stuff is not harmless fun, especially when it's taught in schools to children and innocent minds. Let me end with a short quotation from d'Holbach's Good Sense, and I'm sure after listening to that, we all feel as though we're in desperate need of a dose of that. 'Theology is Pandora's Box; it is impossible to shut this box again, but we can usefully warn people that this fatal box has been opened.'

Notes Christianity Unveiled, my translation, pp. xl-xli-source: Diderot, Correspondance, ed. by G. Roth et al., 12 vols (Paris, 1955-1970), VIII, pp. 234-235. De Nat. Deor. I, I, n. 2. In France, the conseil d'etat [Council of State] is an organ of the French national government whose functionsinclude assisting the executive with legal advice and being thc supreme court for administrative justice. Its members are mostly senior jurists. Wade, Ira Owen, The Clandestine Organization and Diffitsion of Philosophic Ideas in France from 1700 to 1750 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP., 1938), p. 5. Jeroom Vercruysse, Bibliographie descriptive des ecrits du Baron d'Holbach (Paris: Minard, 1971). Theodore Besterman, Voltaire's general correspondance (Geneva: I 953-1965), letter No. 12738, dated 27 October 1766, quoted in Vercruysse, Introduction, p. 33, footnote No. 33, and again under' 1756, Al, Le Christianisrne devoile, footnote No. I. Voltaire, Oeuvres completes, XIV, p. 406, Letter to Dami I aville, 16 October 1767. Ibid., LXV, p. 453, Letter to d'A I embert, 24 May 1769. My edition, p. 13. My edition, p. 19. 'La Bible nous represente sans cesse Dieu comme un seducteur, un tentateur, un tyran soupc;;onneux, qui ne sait it quoi sten tenir sur le compte de ses sujets, qui s' amuse it tendre des pieges it ses creatures, qui les eprouve pour avoir le plaisir de les punir d' avoir succombe it ses tentations Freret, CEuvres, 4 vols (Elibron Classics), vol. T, Lettres a Eugenie, p. 94.

Ethical Record, March 2009 29 VIEWPOINTS Population control is neither an obsession, unscientific, nor an irrelevance I do not know of any atheists or secular humanists who think population control alone will solve all the world's problems — starvation, disease and climate change. And if anything, population as a major concern has decreased over the last few decades, due in part to polemics such as those illustrated by Jerry Jones (see Ethical Record Feb 09, Population, Technology and Development) and the Roman Catholic Church. Population control, self-control, has to be an important part of the modern agenda, not least because population growth and technology cannot and will not grow in tandem.

Global capitalism demands poverty, cheap labour and rampant growth (for some) for its commercial purposes. The religions demand ever growing numbers of souls for god and political domination. And with climate change, a rise in temperature and sea levels, technology will have to compensate for decreasing food supplies and increasing population movements - not just find ways to keep up with the current demands for food and energy. Nor is technology the only issue. It is the political unwillingness to pay for it that will hold it back.

As for the 'sinister' aspects of population control, it would be as foolish to dismiss population control as it would be to dismiss Darwin's theory of evolution because it was used by racists and other political and social elitists to justify their abhorrent ideas that led eventually to the holocaust.

But population control is more than an economic or political issue. It is also about women's rights to control their fertility, to have children, or not, and if so, how may and how often. Impoverishing women and children by preventing them from avoiding unwanted pregnancy, high maternal and child mortality, not preventing the decimation of the population by malnutrition and disease, and especially STDs including HIV/AIDS— is to fly in the face of reason.

Birth control also has to be part of a move away from the traditional patriarchal structures, attitudes, practices and teachings in which the welfare of the family, women and children, the old and infirm are reliant on fathers, brothers and sons as 'breadwinners', leaving the nurturing to the women. A system that may have been seen as adequate in the past, but is not fit for purpose in the modem world. For many thoughtful people, the politics of anti-capitalism and exploitation does not exclude population control as part of a rational approach to sustainability — for many the politics of caring and sharing is integral to rational, atheist secular humanist thinking.

Jerry Jones' article does not in my view demonstrate that concern for the planet to sustain its predicted rise to over eight billion people (according to the UN) - in a time of climate change that is already underway - is either an 'obsession', ' ignorant', or 'unscientific'. Using the examples of fruit fly experiments, and the story of Easter Island and little else, he seeks as ever to join those enthusiasts who insist that only political priorities, often newly discovered, are the one and only solution to the world's problems. Sue Mayer, London - SE

30 Ethical Record, March 2009 Overpopulation The Root Cause Of Our Trouble Most people are uncomfortably aware of the very serious problems facing the world. Global warming is caused by our burning too much fossil fuel. Our use of oil is so extravagant that we will soon run out. Our financial system has proved to be disastrous over and over again. Real reform is essential. Overpopulation is the root cause of our troubles - the remedies are quite simple.

The worst aspect is that so few of our community leaders including industrialists, manufacturers, bankers, fmanciers, church and trade union leaders are taking an active position, too many are talking of business as usual instead of the importance of reform.

Please read and ditribute this paper:www.usersumnetIrmc/fourhorsernamhtm. Dick Clifford, Vice President, Humanist Society of South Australia. Sunday Lectures Deserve Publicity As Programme Co-ordinator, Jennifer Jeynes is to be congratulated for the exceptional calibre of the Sunday morning lectures in February this year. The talks on the intellectual climate in the 1930s, on Baron D' Holbach, on problems in Darwinism, and on the electoral system, represent a range of issues as wide and as important as, I think, will be found in any lecturing institute in London — and that includes London University. In addition to the range of subject has been the stature of the speakers: all major figures in their fields. Given the quality of what SPES has been offering Sunday morning audiences, I hope that maximal attention will be paid to giving the lectures the advance publicity they are showing themselves to deserve. I also hope that Jennifer will receive full encouragement in maintaining the high standard that has been achieved. Tom Rubens, London, N4.

The reason that I find such high calibre speakers is as the result of continual surveillance of the intellectual scene. I am constantly on the look-out and hear- out for potential lecturers or interesting television documentaries with an ethical slant I can record and show. The Today programme (minus Thought for the Day) starts at 0600 and is essential listening. Then there are the various talks and conferences I attend always with a view to the programme. Readers will recall I ventured as far as Kracow last December, and was able to give my impressions of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. It is however, knowing that there are members of the audience whose response is as intelligent and thoughthil as Tom's that makes the work worthwhile. Jennifer R. Jeynes

THE HUMANIST REFERENCE LIBRARY The Humanist Reference Library is open for members and researchers on Mondays from I2noon-4pm and on Tuesdays to Fridays from 2 - 6pm. Please let the Librarian, Jennifer Jeynes, know of your intention to visit. The Library has an extensive collection of new and historic freethought material. Tel: 020 7242 8037/4/1. Email: [email protected]

The views expressed in this Journal are not necessarily those of the Society. Ethical Record, March 2009 31 PROGRAMME OF EVENTS AT THE ETHICAL SOCIETY The Library, Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC1R 4RL. Tel: 020 7242 8037/8034 Registered Charity No. 251396 Website: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk email: [email protected] For programme updates, email: [email protected]. No charge unless stated. MARCH 2009 Thursday 19 BHA AND SPES JOINT EVENT 1830 A DARWINIAN PERSPECTIVE ON RELIGIONS. Dan Dennett (All tickets sold) Saturday 21 1100 GOD IN THE LAB. Lectures by Emma Cohen, Mike Jackson, Justin Barrett & -1600 Miguel Farias. www.cfilondon.org. £10 (FS for studentsand members of SPES, GLHA, BHA, New Humanistand Skeptic subscribers) Sunday 22 1100 WHAT SHOULD WE BELIEVE? Dorothy Rowe, the eminent psychologist on her new book on the nature of death and the purpose of life 1500 THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIANITY video by Cherie Blair Saturday 28 THOMAS PAINE SOCIETY joint meeting with Freethought History Research Group, Socialist History Society & SPES on the 200th Anniversaryof Paine's death: 1400 THOMAS PAINE — HIS LEGACY Prof. Gregory Claeys and Prof. John Keane Sunday 29' 1100 'MY GLASS IS NEAR DOWNED' - OR 'A GOOD BIT LEFT?' Viewpoints through a Glass Darkly on Old Age, from Cicero and the Ancients Chris Bratcher 1500 RELIGION AND SCIENCE video by Cohn Blakemore APRIL Sunday 5 1100 THE POWER OF POETRY Dinah Livingstone (in the main Hall) 1500 CRUCIFIXION: THE SADO-MASOCHISTIC HEART OF CHRISTIANITY Barbara Smoker (in the B. Rusiell Room) Thursday 9 1900 BOOK CLUB: MUTUAL AID by Peter Kropotkin Facilitator: Donald Rooum Sunday 12 EASTER BREAK. No meeting Sunday 19 1100 BRITISH VALUES: Reality versus Rhetoric Graham Bell 1500 HAROLD BLACKHAM MEMORIAL MEETING — reminiscences by those who knew this important figure in establishing Humanism. All welcome refreshments SPES's CONWAY HALL SUNDAY CONCERTS 6.30pm Tickets £7; under 18 £3

March 22 Cremona Quartet: Stravinsky, Borodin, Schubert March 29 Callaghan Piano Trio: Schumann, Hoist, Rachmaninov April 5 Raphael Wallfisch cello, Hiroaki Takenouchi piano: Beethoven, Sterndale Bennett, Schumann, Parry April 12 No Concert • April 19 Alba Quartet: Britten, Mozart, Shostakovich, Schumann Full details on: www.conwayhallsundayconcerts.org.uk

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