Petition for secular state education

This is a really important issue. We should just teach children to think for themselves and let them make their own minds about religion as they approach maturity.

http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/make-all-state-schools-secular-say-no-to-faith-run-state-schools

Jonathan Edwards on losing his faith.

". . . now its not there any more and I feel perfectly fine."

Huge decline in UK Christianity

The latest Office of National Statistics Integrated Household Survey figures on religion reveal an extraordinarily rapid decline in Christianity in Britain. The figures, published this week, show that growing numbers of Britons are rejecting religious belief, with almost one in four now saying they have “no religion at all”

Keith Porteous Wood, NSS Executive Director, urged Ministers to reflect on the decline of religious belief as they sanctioned an ‘ever-increasing’ number of state funded faith schools, a move which was ‘marginalising the non religious’.”

Respondents throughout Britain were asked “What is your religion, even if you are not currently practising?” In 2011, 68.5% answered “Christianity”, compared with 71.3% in 2010. This roughly 3% decline over just one year is repeated over England, Scotland and Wales, building confidence in the figures. As might be expected, there was a reciprocal rise over the same period in the “no religion” category: 23.2% in 2011 compared with 20.5% in 2010.

From a National Secular Society article. Read on.

Philip Pullman CBE

Philip Pullman the author of the trilogy of childrens' books "His Dark Materials", was chosen by The Independent in 2006 for its ‘Good List of 50 campaigners, thinkers and givers’: the panel of experts at The Independent cited the worlds this ‘campaigning atheist’ creates ‘in which children see good as a matter of choices that are within their control. Pullman wants children to realise they are the inheritors of philosophical, artistic and scientific and literary riches’.

Speaking on ‘faith’ schools, Philip Pullman has said:‘What I fear and deplore in the 'faith’ school camp is their desire to close argument down and put some things beyond question or debate. It's vital to get clear in young minds what is a faith position and what is not – so that, for instance, they won't be taken in by religious people claiming that science is a faith position no different in kind from Christianity. Science is not a matter of faith, and too many people are being allowed to get away with claiming that it is, and that my 'belief' in evolution is a thing of the same kind as their 'belief' in miracles. What we need in schools, really, is basic philosophy.

In an interesting interview on the Christian website Third Way, he said:

‘This is the mistake Christians make when they say that if you are an atheist you have to be a nihilist and there’s no meaning any more. Well, that’s nonsense, as Mary Malone discovers. Now that I’m conscious, now that I’m responsible, there is a meaning, and it is to make things better and to work for greater good and greater wisdom. That’s my meaning – and it comes from my understanding of my position. It’s not nihilism at all. It’s very far from it.’

Philip Pullman, a longstanding supporter of the BHA. is today to be given an award for services to Humanism at the British Humanist Association’s annual conference in Manchester. 

From BHA article here.

At 'Jesus' camp

The evangelical intent to bring children to God as expressed here is nothing short of criminally indictable child abuse – that it is permissible under the yoke of “religious freedom” is an abhorrent indictment of American society and an education system that allows home-schooling. 

Jesus camp - the movie (2006)

THE UK 2011 Census

End Hereditary Religion

First international day of protest against hereditary religion | End Hereditary Religion

Richard Collins.

I’m starting to float the idea of organizing an international day of protest against the religious grooming of children. This is a big undertaking, but simply talking amongst ourselves will never change anything. Discussion is enormously helpful in making us understand the problem we face, but until we serve constructive notice on parents and institutions nothing is going to change.

Read more.

Tony Blair at it again . . . .

Tony Blair has been waffling away again, this time in Montreal, trying to big-up his ridiculous Faith Foundation.  Apparently McGill University has become involved in its "Faith & Globalization Initiative." I wonder why? Do its students know? I was going to read up about it but, unfortunately, found I was due to watch TV.

However in the Montreal Gazette article the following quote from his speech particularly caught my eye:-

"The single most important thing for people of one faith is to know about the others. The more you know and the less the ignorance, the less the fear of the other, and it's often the fear that creates problems."

The point he seems to overlook is that the more rational people learn about some faiths the more they fear them; not excluding the particular cult he favours.  

Bill Maher with Richard Dawkins

The UK census "religion" question.

This was the voluntary question posed in the 2001 census. It is generally considered to be somewhat of a leading question, even though the first tick box allows selection of "No religion", this is not strictly a logical answer since "No religion" is not a religion.  This is  immediately followed by the "Christian" option and it is thought likely that in 2001 many people naively identified themselves as "christian" because they had been told that is what they were when young and had had the idea reinforced by schooling and being told at intervals throughout their lives that they lived in a 'christian' nation. This is not at all the same thing as believing in an invisible magic friend and regularly attending and financially supporting a church.  This is clearly indicated by the vanishingly small figures for church attendance and the many churches being closed, demolished or put to other uses.

This anomaly produced the result that over 42M people declared themselves as belonging to the christian faith and the government uses these results  to justify diverting taxpayers money to faith schools and other religious groups: and the BBC to justify using licence fees to fund a disproportionate amount of religious programming. 

In 2011 British citizens will have the first opportunity since 2001 to make clear the extent of their religiosity yet, notwithstanding strong representations by the British Humanist Society and the National Secular Society it is believed the question will remain unaltered.

We are all aware that christianity has had significant influences on our history and culture but we are where we are and, if we believe that, in the modern world, religion can be a dangerously divisive influence, the answer to the religion question should be clear.

Read an NSS article on this subject.

The Church of England

I went to a CofE primary school and it was pretty ineffectual as regards indoctrinating me into Christianity. The CofE is senile and relatively harmless and I used to think it was worth tolerating for its quaint historical link with our culture & constitution. The problem arises that in modern, anything-goes, England it has opened the door to alien, militant religions who are committed to exploiting ruthlessly any opportunity for recruiting to the ranks of unreason.

A Festive Message . .

. . from the NSS President, Terry Sanderson which seems worth the widest possible UK readership:

This is the time of year when, if even for just a few hours, we can relax and withdraw from the conflicts and frustrations of day to day life. Religious people will tell us it is a wonderful opportunity to sit down and give thanks for the birth of Jesus and Christianity.

But that isn’t always a welcome message, as Christianity begins to show its true face again after a few decades of relative peace and quiet. Once more we can see the intolerance, bigotry and irrationality. These are the real traditions of Christianity, not the soppy sentimental stories that are fed to children in our schools.

Because of the appalling pronouncements and behaviour of “faith leaders” (particularly Pope Ratzinger and his many imitators) more and more people are coming to the conclusion that maybe the birth of Christianity wasn’t, after all, the best thing that ever happened to the human race. Instead, Christmas has become a de facto secular festival.

Already we are being told that half the population is “considering” going to church this Christmas* This happens every year, as the religious propagandists try to convince us that we are still a church-going nation. After the holiday it is usually revealed that something less than 5% actually showed their faces at (a C of E) church over the holiday **. The population of this country prefers to spend its time in the more wholesome atmosphere of home, where true loving feelings reside.

But despite this wholesale rejection of traditional organised religion by the people, the churches are now wielding temporal power the likes of which they have not dreamed of since Victorian times. Faith-based welfare, a religion-dominated education system, millions of pounds poured into suspect religious groups, exemptions from progressive equality and Human Rights legislation – this is religion at its self-serving worst, and most compassionate people detest it.

Opposition is building slowly, but it needs to get itself organised.

We know that there are many people who support the NSS’s aims and objectives, but who don’t join. For instance, people who subscribe to Newsline far outnumber those who commit to membership of the NSS.

And yet, unless these people who often feel passionately about the unwanted encroachment of religion into our lives make the commitment to get organised, the religious steamroller will continue on its journey to flatten our choices and restrict our autonomy.

These last few weeks have seen a huge propaganda push by the religious to firm up their position in the political life of this country. The media seems happy to go along with this, apparently on the assumption that because a few strategically placed bombs in London traumatised the nation for a while, we are all suddenly of the opinion that religion has revived and is at the centre of everyone’s life.

While we know that the traditional places of worship – the Church of England and the Catholic Churches - are declining rapidly, further evidence has emerged this month showing that immigrants are importing their own brands of religion into Britain. They generally take their faith more seriously than the “I’m spiritual but not religious” brigade that makes up the majority of the population in Britain (or the “fuzzy faithful” as they’ve been called).

Muslims from Pakistan and India, Catholics from Poland and evangelical Protestants from Africa and the Caribbean are bringing with them unpleasantly conservative religious beliefs that sometimes shock and repel the majority. They often seem primitive, hysterical, fanatical and alien, full of hatred and intolerance and crazy, senseless rules. Honour killings, violent, sometimes fatal, exorcisms, denial of medical treatment to children on the assumption that prayer will be sufficient, the treatment of women as chattels and the spouting of unvarnished hatred of non-believers, gays and Jews from the pulpits of mosques.

These new religious enthusiasts are still a relatively small minority, estimated at the 4.5 million mark. Among the mainstream population the move continues from indifference to religion to outright hostility to it. Look at the responses to this BBC forum which asked whether religion should be kept out of politics.

The majority of respondents think categorically that religion and politics should be kept well apart, but they do little more than express opinions on internet forums. Meanwhile, the small band of determined believers insinuate their way into ever more aspects of our lives.

The BBC forum question was sparked by comments from the Archbishop of Canterbury in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. In it, Williams said: “The trouble with a lot of government initiatives about faith is that they assume it is a problem, it’s an eccentricity, it’s practised by oddities, foreigners and minorities. The effect is to de-normalise faith, to intensify the perception that faith is not part of our bloodstream.”

He seems to imagine that it is the duty of MPs to put their “faith” at the forefront of their politicking as though it were inevitably a good and benign thing. But as we are increasingly seeing around the world, when religion inserts itself into politics and bids for temporal power it can be repulsive in the extreme. There is an inevitable self-serving quality about religion in politics, and whenever it gains a foothold it isn’t long before demands for privilege ensue and eventually the brutality begins.

But anyway, Dr Williams is completely wrong about this Government. It appears to have developed a kind of religious mania and fallen for this idea that really, underneath all their Godlessness, the British people are really pious and holy. We had hoped that lunacy had gone with Holy Tony, but apparently zeal burns ever brighter at Number 10.

A couple of weeks ago, Gordon Brown organised a tea party at Downing Street for 100 “faith leaders”. At it he said: “I don’t subscribe to the view that we are a secular society and that there is a naked public square. At the centre of our society is a belief that faith has a role in legitimate public debate. There may be controversy over individual issues but Christian values are at the centre of national life.”

The happy clappies present at the meeting then gave up their hallelujahs, and the Reverend Nicky Gumbel, founder and leading light of the evangelical Alpha Course, demanded that everyone present pray for the Prime Minister’s success at the Copenhagen Summit. (Among those present at the shindig was the self-professed atheist, communities minister John Denham who I am sure was happy to pray along with the many and various men of the cloth who were gathered around him, even though he apparently doesn’t believe a word of it. Reportedly he was not the only one squirming at being ambushed into evangelical prayer by Mr Gumbel).

The Reverend Steve (Mr faith-based welfare) Chalke who was, apparently, not at Downing Street on this occasion is, nevertheless, a familiar figure at Number 10. He spends a lot of time there negotiating the Christian takeover of our social services and an expansion of “faith-based education”.

His Oasis Trust has eleven academies in the bag with more in development and, as he will tell you, they have open admissions arrangements, so anyone can attend. However, I am not sure what Hindu, Sikh, Muslim and atheist parents think when they read that the ‘ethos’ of these schools is inspired by the “person and life of Christ”. Can someone explain to me why the taxpayer is shelling out tens of millions of pounds for Mr Chalke to tell captive children that their life is incomplete without Jesus?

The Tories promise even worse, with their Religious Rump already being described as the Tory Taliban.

The NSS’s policies are definitely in line with majority thinking and yet we are unable to get people in large numbers to join together to protect their own principles and rights. Consequently, the religious organisations have no problem raising large amounts of money, bringing together their troops when needed and bringing heavy influence to bear on politicians.

If we are to stop this minority running our lives we really are going to have to unite and make a commitment to pushing back the tide of reaction that religion brings with it. You can join the NSS online or by post with a cheque to NSS, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL.

Why not make it your New Year’s resolution to commit to your own principles and do something more than writing to internet forums about it?

The Atheist Bus Campaign

Sadly the Atheist Bus Campaign is now over. It was a great ride. After appealing to raise £5500 it topped out with a staggering £153,516.51. This included a farewell £1000 from Simon Bishop who helped so much to give the campaign its amazing legs.
There is still time to donate to the Campaign against Faith Schools which has also reached its target of £30,000. This closes on April 25th.
After that its "The Next Stop". See link in my sidebar.

Faith Schools - Good News!

The Campaign against Faith Schools has now reached its target thanks to the heroic intervention of champion donor Simon Bishop. The amount raised now stands at £30,004. This spoilt my little scheme for every previous donor to give a few pounds more but I'm a very forgiving kind of person.