Archive for the ‘Humanism’ Category

Leeds Skeptics September 2012

Sunday, September 23rd, 2012 | Foundation, Humanism

This month, Alex Gabriel travelled all the way up from Devon to discuss his experiences at Soul Survivor, the biggest Christian evangelical festival for young people, in the UK.

September Humanist Community

Wednesday, September 12th, 2012 | Foundation, Humanism

This month saw the first of the new format “roving venues” Humanist Community. As such, we met for a meal at Akbar’s on Greek Street.

On humanism, and being positive

Monday, September 10th, 2012 | Humanism

One of the criticisms that has been put forward about humanism is that it always has to be positive. Many aspects of that humanism is there for are simply not positive – it’s an alternative to religion, and religion is a thought controlling, people oppressing, unscientific load of nonsense.

However, as someone who labels myself as a humanist, I think both these statements can be true, and work together well.

Yes, religion is an evil that the world would be better off without. But saying that you can’t tackle this issue with a positive attitude is not only incorrect, but it is also naively counter-productive, even though it may seem intuitive.

The reason is, is that we know by now that, most of the time, arguing with someone’s beliefs only entrenches them further.

I mean, how many people do the believer and atheist camps actually win over to the other side? Almost none. In fact, it’s so rare that when we do, we feel the need to put a spotlight on them and get them to give talks about their conversion, because it almost never happens.

One of the reasons for this, is that arguing your case, even if you’re case is incorrect, actually reinforces your own belief that you must be right. In fact, even for us skeptics, who are aware this is a problem and try to counter against our own biases, it is difficult to avoid.

This has been general knowledge for a long time, but a great example is given in Richard Wiseman’s recent book about captured American soldiers in the Korean War.

During their time in the prison camps, they were often bribed to say or write about how positive communism was, and were encouraged to take part in mock debates in which they argued for communism.

The result – because they undertook the actions of promoting communism, an idea that not only doesn’t work and isn’t fair (in my humble opinion) but was specifically what they were fighting against in said war, they actually started believing what they were saying.

Similarly, when you get someone in a confrontational argument about their beliefs, where it be religion or any other form of ill-founded prejudice, bigotry or simply factually untrue belief, getting them to argue the point is only going to reinforce their belief most of the time, not weaken it.

So what can we take from this?

Firstly, I think it is a mistake for those in the freethought movement who suggest humanism’s approach of being nice and positive with people, is a sign of weakness or that we not as firmant in stopping the evils of blind faith from damaging our society. It isn’t – they’re just going about it in a more rational, scientific way.

Secondly, when considering your attitude, especially when running groups, it is important for it to be informed by this research.

For example, at A-Soc we discussed, on several occasions, the idea of having a debate with the religious societies where we would take the opposite position. IE, we would argue there was a god, while they would argue there wasn’t. Unfortunately, we never followed through with the idea. It is also worth considering what interfaith (sorry, can’t think of a better term) activities can be done between atheist and believer groups that promote an understanding of each others principles, rather than a confrontational nature – which in the end, actually have a reverse effect from what they are intended to have.

Moral outrage

Thursday, July 12th, 2012 | Humanism, Religion & Politics

When my friend Norman dared to suggest that a skeptical philosophy should include the ability to challenge our own beliefs, he was quickly buried under a landslide of “how dare you” reactionary opinion.

Moral outrage as a substitute for rational argument. Where have we seen that before? So, I’ve taken the liberty of reframing said post into a most fitting surrounding.

You have to wonder, at what point while Ophelia Benson was reading a story about a live kitten someone had encased in concrete up to the front legs, did she stop thinking about what a despicable act it was, and start thinking “I could use this for my own purposes.”

Sisterhood of the Oppressed

Wednesday, July 11th, 2012 | Humanism, Religion & Politics

All I ever wanted to do was run a local free thinking group and stage lively though provoking events. It was a simple dream. Because of this, I don’t tend to read all the skeptics blogs. Fair play to you if you do, a lot of them are good, it’s just that I would rather go out and do something positive.

I compromised my principles along the way. Throughout my leadership at Leeds Atheist Society we operated a policy of positive discrimination to get more women involved in the society. All well and good put there is no such thing as positive discrimination, it’s just discrimination, and “positive” normally means that the flip side, and there is always a flip side, is directed at the majority, so it’s OK to discriminate. In fact, by our third year, six of the nine committee members were female.

I even launched a pro abortion campaign with the society, in conjunction with the then-not-even constituted feminist society, and ensured women were represented on the board of trustees of my charity and that women spoke at my conferences.

But none of this was enough to keep the wolves from the door. When Leeds Skeptics booked a speaker that we originally hoped would provide an empowering talk for women, discussing research suggesting gender stereotype threat wasn’t holding them back, we soon came in the firing line. Not a “hey, I’ve done some more research about this speaker, here it is, maybe you should reconsider”, but a you clearly hate women and want to “punch them in the mouth”. As Trystan Swale points out, I clearly deserve the stake.

Given all the discussions surrounding it however, I couldn’t help but to be dragged into what turns out to have been an on-going debate for several months regarding feminism and skepticism. It seems to be mostly making a mountain out of a mole hill – very serious issues but the resolution seems to be a) put a harassment policy in place and b) don’t bad mouth TAM, and everybody would be happy again. But go read about it for yourself, I haven’t read all the blog posts and I’m sure it’s more complicated than that.

However, now that I have been dragged into some of it, ended up reading one of the most controversial pieces of the whole debates – Paula Kirby’s open letter, Sisterhood of the Oppressed. It turns out to be an excellent read. Lest I not be called fair, you can read the rebuttals and background too.

In it, Paula suggests that a positive attitude of empowering women, it is a much more powerful too than constantly playing the victim card. This is exactly what feminism should be about in the modern day, and indeed, it is the fact that some branches of feminism don’t adopt this attitude that causes such a rift between equal rights campaigners and some of the feminist movement.

While everyone will have their own points of view on the issues raised, I think that Paula should be commended for having the courage to put topics into the public sphere for discussion.

P.S. It is issues similar these that Ken McLaughlin deals with in his new book “Surviving Identity: Vulnerabity and the Psychology of Recognition”, of which he will be discussing at the next meeting of Leeds Salon on Monday. An event I would highly recommend attending for anyone in the Leeds area.

Panic on a Plate

Sunday, July 8th, 2012 | Events, Humanism

For the June meeting of Leeds Skeptics, Rob Lyons, deputy editor of Spiked and author of Panic on a Plate: How Society Developed an Eating Disorder, joined us to discuss his book.

I had invited Rob up after seeing him give a similar talk at Leeds Salon and have previously blogged about it. It’s an excellent book and I highly recommend giving it a read – grab yourself a copy from Amazon.

West Yorkshire Humanists AGM

Friday, June 29th, 2012 | Humanism

This month saw the AGM of the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire. It was a rather well attended affair, at least for an AGM, which normally sees people stay away. This year, I had volunteered to give a short talk as well, so hopefully that proved to be a bit more of a draw.

While it’s pretty much business as usual, I will be changing my role from a general committee member to treasurer of the society. We’re also going to gauge interest in bringing over bigger speakers over the next year, so we will see how that goes.

How do they keep getting away with it?

Monday, June 4th, 2012 | Humanism, Religion & Politics

The May meeting of the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire saw Mike Granville speak to us on the topic of “The Vatican: How Do They Keep Getting Away With It?”

It was a chilling reminder of the amount of outrageous things the Catholic church have done and gotten away with over the centuries, from the the Papal states, to the complicity in Hitler’s Nazi Germany and constantly covering up child abuse.

This also struck a chord with Alistair McBay’s recent article in NSS Newsline who commented that a certain “non-resident octogenarian” named Rupert Murdock was recently hauled up in front of a government committee to answer claims about his organisation covering up people’s phones being hacked and described as not being fit to lead such an organisation.

Yet, when another non-resident head of a multinational organisation arrives in the UK, someone we know covered up child abuse claims against priests and even resisted their removal from the priesthood, he is welcomed with open arms on what was described as a state visit.

Humanist Community May meeting

Sunday, May 20th, 2012 | Events, Humanism

This month’s Humanist Community of Leeds was looking very promising with the glorious sunshine that the weekend had experienced. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite last until Sunday evening, but it was an enjoyable evening none the less. With food now served until 10pm we were a little less under pressure to get started and enjoyed a long evening of discussions that was arguable even more political than normal.

The Quest for the Historical Jesus

Monday, May 14th, 2012 | Humanism

At a recent Atheist Society meeting, Karel du Pauw provided a brick by brick deconstruction fo any claim that Jesus could have been a historial figure.

A similarly great deconstruction, though not as comprehensive as Karel’s, is provided by the film The God Who Wasn’t There and it is a subject I have previously touched on even though I don’t believe the question makes any sense.

Such talks really bring things into focus – not just for the fact that the Bible isn’t true, but also open up interesting questions about why people believe in it. Clearly, it isn’t because it makes sense from a historical perspective. There is simply no evidence that King Herrod had all the babies killed, there has never been anything like people having to return to their hometown for some kind of Roman census and there are someone simply forgot to tell the earlier writers of the books of the Bible that Jesus was an actual historical figure that actually lived on Earth.

Yet, lots of people, sometimes even smart people (though statically far less often than less smart people) believe it.

To me, it is a stark reminder of why it is so vital that we have groups like the Atheist Society. Clearly, rational thinking and evidence are not the only forces at work when people make a decision as to whether follow a religion or not. There are emotional factors to be considered too, and if we can’t provide for those in the same way that religious institutions do, critical thinking won’t win hearts and minds.