You’re definitely right that it is a *challenge* for all humanists to make it a positive worldview. I only have to compare my posts here to Tim’s over at The Friendly Humanist to see that mine are dripping in negativity. But then that’s more my style, and more in line with my personality. I call a spade a spade and I don’t suffer fools.

Don’t get me wrong, by the way, I’ve heard sniping from both the HA and the HSS. It’s weird but some of it seems to be on a very personal level which is genuinely surprising for me. You’d think the similarities would outweigh their differences.

It seems to be true that many individual humanists are very preoccupied with religion. The high proportion of religion-related meetings held by HSS local groups would suggest this is as true of HSS members as it is of anyone else. Given the current climate, I don’t find this particularly surprising; concern about the power and privilege of relgion and wanting to do something about it is the stimulus for many people joining humanist organisations.

But the challenge facing all of us as humanists is to develop humanism as a positive worldview for the 21st century and the constant focus on religion isn’t doing much towards this objective. The HA has many distinguished ‘Honorary Associates’ some of whom are contributing greatly to humanist thought. I would hope that they will be speakers at Humanist Academy events in future – or do any of the other things promised on the HA website. At present their role appears to be to lend the HA an air of credibility that it would otherwise lack. It is early days, however, and at least the HA are trying to do something. Hopefully the HA will learn from its mistakes.

By the way, I would have expected that, instead of sniping because they weren’t invited to the party, the HSS would be supporting initiatives by other humanists as well as organising their own public, national events geared at developing a positive humanist philosophy. If I’m not mistaken, the only public HSS debate held recently was by a local group on the existence of God!

Finally, all those interested in humanism – regardless of their personal theological stance or world view – are welcome to join in the discussions at http://www.thinkhumanism.com.

It’s strange that there’s such rivalry between the HA and the HSS. I’ve heard it said before that the HSS are only interested in making money from ceremonies, and on the other hand that the HA don’t really do anything. Surely both are looking for the same thing? It’s a divisive force that can’t be good for humanism.

One point that Sue England made that I thought was appropriate was that giving rights to a group (such as giving some aspects of Sharia law official status in the UK for the sake of the Muslim community) doesn’t necessarily mean that individuals within the group enjoy more rights, and may even mean the reverse.