Cumbria Humanist Group

Stop Press!

This page will contain updates of Campaigns and Issues in the news, with links to media coverage.

(See also Links page to access websites of national and local newspapers, magazines and journals. These will give contact details for various publications and we urge you to write as Humanists and challenge the extreme views and attitudes of the religious fundamentalists.)

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Keep up to Date.
We urge you to sign up for the regular email newsletters from the British Humanist Association and the National Secular Society. Both of these highlight relevant political and cultural issues across the world media.

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Lobby your MP.
A very useful website is They Work for You which gives full details of all Members of Parliament, including contact details and voting history, and offers a very straightforward means of contacting your MP about issues - such as the challenge to the blasphemy law on 9 January 2008. At a meeting last week one of our Group, Roy Pomfret, urged members to lobby their MP on issues such as this and surprised us with the information that when an MP has just nine letters from constituents on the same subject they feel obliged to act. (Presumably they couldn't all be from the same address? Somebody did actually ask me that a few days later!)

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20 June 2008.   Published in the Cumberland & Westmorland Herald on 14 June, a letter from one of our members, Tim Strevens, challenging a local campaign to preserve failing churches and pointing out the historical role of the church in maintaining social oppression.    (NEW)

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25 May 2008.    Thought for The Week : A major Humanist concern over the years has been the BBC’s refusal to include non-religious speakers on its Thought for the Day slot on the Radio 4 Today programme. This again strikes me as an attempt to jump on the religions’ bandwagon when we should be driving our own. Look, for example, at Radio 4’s A Point of View (R4, 9.50 p.m. Friday, 9.50 a.m. Sunday): this ten minute programme (TFTD is two minutes) with contributors such as Lisa Jardine, Clive James and Lucy Kellaway, offers intelligent, secular comment and analysis (cf. TFTD !) of a range of cultural and ethical issues.

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17 May 2008.   Andrew Copson, BHA Director of Education, wrote the Face to Faith column in today’s Guardian, applauding the news that Humanism is now to be include in the syllabus for religious studies at GCSE.

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15 May 2008.  Einstein. Amusing article in Tuesday’s Guardian. In the past, Einstein’s attitude to religion has seemed somewhat ambivalent. (“Science without religion is lame: religion without science is blind.”) But the recent discovery of a letter to the philosopher Eric Gutkind would seem to place him firmly on the side of science. “The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses . . . “ and “ . . . religion is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.”

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3 May 2008.   There were two letters replying to ours in this week's Cumberland News, one from a local vicar. Yes, we are responding. (Click here to see the letters and our response.) In our reply we cite the Report of the Guardian/ICM Religion Survey, published in December 2006, which gives entirely opposite figures to those quoted by the vicar from the 2001 census. (Yes – the one with the Jedi ! )
9 May 2008. Our response wasn't published in today's Cumberland News, but as we have Anne Pickles of Cumbrian Newspapers as our speaker at next week's meeting, we are letting things lie for the moment! 

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25 April 2008.  Last week’s Cumberland News published a letter from a group of Christian church leaders in Carlisle attacking the racism of the BNP and urging readers to use their vote to defeat this: it’s rather disturbing to see how many BNP candidates are standing in next week’s local elections in Carlisle. We didn’t see why the Christians should claim the prerogative on the morality of this issue, so we responded as the Cumbria Humanist Group. Circulating a draft letter by email brought responses from a number of members so that our letter was submitted with 25 members’ ‘signatures’ on it. And we were very pleased to see that it was published – almost word for word – in today’s Cumberland News, which also contained the report of our last meeting (see Documents page), again word for word as submitted. 

An essential website for Humanists - Darwin Online.  It's been there for some time but there was a major development last week when Darwin’s private papers were added to the website.

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22 April 2008.   "Look Away Now" (BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday at 6.30 pm) a new sport / comedy series, hosted by Garry Richardson of the Today programme, last week (16 April) included some hilarious bible-mocking! I’ve split this into three sections as they featured in the show. (See Quotes and Misquotes! page for links to audio.)

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23 March 2008.   From the BBC news website, on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill,  about which the senior Catholic clergy are getting into a terrible tizz! (And one suspects that they don’t even have a single O level Biology – or equivalent! – between the lot of them?) This is not about the creation of ‘monstrous hybrids’ combining human and animal DNA, but merely involves the use of an animal ovum cell casing as a vessel for human DNA, to produce functional embryos and stem cells without the need for scarce human ova. The imposition of a three line whip seems to be fuelling the non-debate, but Gordon does seem to be giving in on that one. ( What's this really all about? UK Big Pharma v US Big Pharma?? Cynic? Moi?)

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2 March 2008.  This week.   Today's Observer has the main headline "Religious schools show bias for rich" and presents evidence that the selection processes of the faith-based schools are exacerbating social division within state education. 

Also in the Observer, Nick Cohen's article on fundamentalism  shows that despite recent attempts to abolish the anachronistic blasphemy laws, things seem to be getting worse rather than better, while George Monbiot in the Guardian last Tuesday challenged the catholic church’s role in the increasing rate of abortion, to say nothing of its impact on the spread of HIV/AIDS worldwide.

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14 February 2008. For years now Humanists and Secularists have criticised the BBC for excluding our speakers from their Thought for the Day slot on the Radio 4's Today Programme.  One of our members had an email from a colleague in the Humanist Society of Scotland telling her about a new podcast Thought for the World to be broadcast over the next few weeks with speakers such as A C Grayling and Arthur Smith.

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7 February 2008.   Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and not usually regarded as a raving right-winger by the standards of Anglican fundamentalism, has today launched new controversy by advocating the recognition of Sharia law within the British legal system.
A real cynic (moi??) might wonder at the hidden agenda of the Anglican church in raising this now?
And there I was, believing that something called The Enlightenment occurred during the eighteenth century, and we are are now in the twenty first century, and I've always believed that we move forwards and not backwards . . . or have I been asleep and missed something?
(See coverage on BBC News and the Guardian, and the Links page gives access to a wide range of media who will also be reporting this 'hot' issue.)
This can only be good as a recruitment incentive for the Humanist and Secular organisations, so we should be seizing the opportunity to react. Write in, phone in . . . whatever it takes!

Both the BHA and NSS were quick off the mark in responding to this. Hanne Stinson, BHA Chief Executive has been on BBC News, and Andrew Copson, Education & Public Affairs Officer, now has a blog up on the Guardian’s “Comment is Free”  site. If you’d like to add your voice to the debate do visit the site .

This whole issue has probably been something of a storm in a teacup: Williams was essentially talking about arbitration on domestic matters such as marriage and divorce rather than a parallel system within civil law, but even here there are conflicts of human rights. Marriage and divorce both have legal status with major socio-economic implications and should be separate from any religious authority. Sharia is essentially patriarchal, with a high level of gender inequality, and it encompasses polygamy which is illegal in European civil law. Surely any true case for equality can only be made within a secular civil legal system, where the religious arbitration councils have no formal recognition.
Apart from everything else, this all shows how important it is to revive the Harris case for removing the bishops from the House of Lords (or Second Chamber of Parliament . . . ?).

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1 February 2008.  In November 2007 the BHA published the document "Quality And Equality: Human Rights, Public Services And Religious Organisations", stating " If religious organisations are to be included in the supply and delivery of such public services, we believe the Government must take steps to address the problems that will inevitably arise."

AND NOW . . . as they used to say in exams - "Compare and Contrast" !

From NSS Newsline of 1 February, a report of a speech made in the House of Lords by Graham Dow, Bishop of Carlisle. (Frightening!!)   Read the full speech here.

The National Secular Society is campaigning for total exclusion of 'all faith groups' from service provision.

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email : info@cumbria-humanists.org.uk 

 Phone Chris Allen on (01228) 810592 or Iain Paterson on (01768) 881245.