Humanists in Education

One thing that a lot of humanists like to get worked up about is education. I don’t know if it’s the terrifying thought of all those little kiddies being brainwashed in faith schools or what, but something about it makes our blood boil. But as one of the key functions of the state, the education system is something secularists of all types like to concentrate on.

This year education has become a big feature of Scottish humanism. The Humanist Academy has been slogging at the issue for a while under the enthusiastic June Maxwell, and has a humanism course available for the national curriculum for 16 year olds in the Scottish education system.

Seeing her getting things done, the HSS have doubled their efforts to outdo her (for some reason I don’t fully understand the HSS and the HA don’t get along too well) and are making education their prime target, launching their education programme this weekend at Our Dynamic Earth (what a venue) which, as an officer of the Student Humanist Society, I’ve been invited to.

And whilst these two heavyweights battle it out, the rest of the humanists in Scotland sit back and reap the benefits. Magic!

Hopefully the BHA will get moving on it so these benefits can be nationwide. What they need is an arch-rival counter organisation right on their patch to motivate them. Maybe we should start a fake one just to annoy them. We’ll call it… the People’s Front of Judea! Even better, the Judean People’s Front! Maybe not.

Argh!!

I can’t help feeling that the Lothians NHS system is out to get me. My whole week has been like a pantomime. This is a long story and if anyone’s bored, of a delicate disposition or suicide-prone, they shouldn’t read it.

Last Friday, I woke up to find that my ear was blocked, and after trying to unblock it I came to the fairly logical conclusion that something must be stuck in there. So I thought I’d play it safe went to the university doctors that afternoon instead of having a go myself, and she peered inside to see something white (probably a cotton bud). Still no idea how it got there, it’s pretty strange and one of the stupidest “injuries” I’ve ever had before - although I did once break my toe ‘fixing’ an arcade game machine. So the doctor tried to take it out with a pair of tweezers and failed, pushing it back in. She then referred me to the ENT ward at St Johns, which is about a 2 hour bus journey away, because she didn’t feel so confident doing it herself, not being a specialist.

I got on the bus, and in true pantomime style the driver was going about a million miles an hour, and the old lady sitting next to me kept clinging on to me for dear life as we went round the corners. I arrived at St Johns, thinking I’d be there for an hour at most and then I’d be on my way back home to enjoy my weekend revising. No, there I was, alone in the waiting room for over an hour, when I got called in and a very junior doctor straight out of med school tried to get it out with a sucker tube thingy. That didn’t work either and it hurt like hell. I’ve been there for almost 2 hours now and it’s not budging, so the doctor says “I think it would be a good idea if you stayed overnight so a more senior doctor can look at you in the morning.”

I’ll be damned if I’m spending a night in hospital on a throat ward with spluttering old men keeping me awake all night when I’ve got work to do, so I said “I’d rather go home, I’ll come back here first thing in the morning”. In hindsight I should have just stayed on the bloody ward, but I failed to see how a doctor with an extra letter after his name would be more qualified to get something out of my ear, surely a mechanic would do a better job. 2 hours on the bus later I got back home and got on the internet, to see if there was anyone in Edinburgh who might be able to help me, not 2 hours away, and to my horror I discovered that Lauriston Place, not 5 minutes from my flat, has an ENT clinic. So I thought I’d ring them in the morning and go there instead of St Johns.

So I rang the next morning and the person on the other end told me that the appointments office is only open weekdays. I looked at my watch and it was 9.30am, too late to get myself down to St Johns in time to catch the senior doctor. No matter, I can wait till Monday, I’ll call Lauriston then and get an appointment.

So Monday comes around and I call Lauriston first thing hoping I’ll be able to get an appointment that day. No. The jobsbody on the other end says “oh you can’t book an appointment here, you’ll have to go and get your GP to ring St Johns and get an appointment at the clinic here…”. So with a funny feeling I was going around in circles, I went back to the university doctor during open access that morning, and they got me an appointment at Lauriston for this morning, Thursday. So after another 3 days of not being able to hear anything that goes on on my left side (not ideal for a barman), I went there this morning.

Would you believe it, I got the same junior doctor at the clinic who couldn’t help me at St Johns. I’m banging my head against a wall here and she still can’t get it out, but luckily there’s another doctor next door who she thinks can help. So she goes and gets him and he’s one of those old school patronising bastards who treats both me and her like 4-year old schoolchildren, but at least he’ll be able to help, I’m thinking. Again, no. He takes a look and after noting that I’ve got very strong cerumen glands, haven’t I (why yes doctor, I suppose I have), he puts some weird jelly stuff in my ear that will supposedly reduce the swelling, and gives me an appointment on Monday when hopefully someone’s going to do something about my friggin ear! Meanwhile I’ve got an oral exam tomorrow morning, which won’t be fun because I can’t hear half of what people are saying to me in English, never mind Chinese.

Just a bit of a rant.

Humanist Society AGM

This time of year appears to be AGM season. The Edinburgh HSS had theirs on Monday, the National HSS is having theirs on the 26th, and the student Humanist Society had ours last night. First of all I’m proud to announce that I’ve been voted in as the Secretary of the society, stepping into Stuart’s shoes, who is now Society President. This means I’ll be doing such things as the Monday newsletter (which may well change day depending on my timetable next year). If anyone reading here would like to be added to the mailing list, drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do. Lucy will be continuing as Treasurer, and we also announced the creation of several new officer positions, namely the Publicity officer which has been temporarily filled by Jo and Daniel, the Webmaster taken by Nick, and the Library officer which Gareth has kindly agreed to take on, as well as Ordinary Member positions (aka Minions), taken up by Roger, Dave and Amy (IIRC).

One of the things we wanted to do at the meeting was inform everyone about the activities at secularportal.com, and the upcoming conference which will be taking place in Edinburgh over the summer, and to formulate a makeshift programme for the event, which is shaping up to look pretty good. We also had a plethora (I’m using that word too often) of ideas for events next term, which is fantastic, and I’m sure we’ll be able to get a lot of them off the ground.

Anywho, a very fulfilling evening for the society, methinks.

Planet Humanism

The more observant among you may have noticed that I’ve added Planet Humanism to my blogroll. It appears to be basically a humanist feed reader. I’ve also been added there, so any time I post here, it should come up on there. Cool!

I urge you to take a look around on there, it’s got loads of articles and links which any humanist would find useful.

Dawkins and Holloway

Last night some of us at the Humanist Society went to an event at the Edinburgh Science Festival, where Richard Dawkins and Richard Holloway sat and had a conversation with each other about God, Religion and Spirituality, at George Square Lecture Theatre here at Edinburgh University. It was a great event, and afterwards Richard Dawkins signed my copy of Unweaving the Rainbow.

Anyway it was really interesting because they didn’t really disagree on anything. The event was all filmed, so I’m sure you’ll be able to see it soon enough, either on YouTube, RichardDawkins.net, or at the Edinburgh Science Festival website.

What I want to discuss mostly here is Richard Holloway’s views about God and religion. If you don’t know much about him, he was formerly the Bishop of Edinburgh in the Scottish Episcopal Church, but he must be the most liberal Christian you’ll ever meet. The funny thing is, he doesn’t actually believe what the Bible says, he doesn’t believe God exists, or in the virgin birth, or that Jesus of Nazareth was Christ, the Son of God. What he does believe is that Jesus was “an extraordinary man”, by which I assume he means a great teacher, with huge moral authority, and that the Church does a lot of good. Indeed Richard Dawkins then compared Jesus with other moral figures of our day such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, and Mahatma Gandhi, but we don’t claim there is anything supernatural about these people. In short, as much as I don’t like labelling people, in this case it is useful, and I would describe Richard Holloway as an agnostic/pantheist.

The two men spent some time discussing the Bible stories as “beautiful myths” that can teach us a lot, whether or not they are true. Dawkins correctly noted that you could say exactly the same about the aboriginal myths about the Dreamtime, or Polynesian myths, or any other set of myths in the world, and yet Holloway specifically chooses the Christian myths, what’s that about? And furthermore, he picks and chooses which parts of the myth are useful for teaching morals, it’s not the myth itself which tells us what is moral, we put our own subjective judgement on it and decide for ourselves. So why bother with the myth?! Why not just jump straight to the morals?

So in what sense is Richard Holloway a Christian? I would say he’s not at all because he doesn’t believe in God or what I call “the mythical Jesus” (as opposed to the historical Jesus), but he defends his position saying that he still calls himself a Christian because he still associates himself with the community that has had such an influence on his life, and because he still sees the good work that the church does and the good moral teachings of the church. But then if I was living at home, I could say that as well, and it doesn’t make me a Christian. A question I wanted to ask would have gone like this: Just as there are good points about the Christian religion, so there are also very negative points. How can you justify to yourself continuing to associate yourself with a religion which is misgynistic, homophobic, and continues to condemn people to death in AIDS-ridden Africa through its condemnation of contraceptive use? Admittedly most of that is the work of the Catholics, but it gives Christianity as a whole a bad name.

I suspect the answer would have incorporated the facts that he thinks religion does more good than it does bad, and that the church is gradually changing. But I can’t help thinking that there is no good act that a Christian can do that an atheist cannot also do, but someone’s religious beliefs can make them cause a lot of damage, which an atheist would not do.

Anyway, a great event, look out for the video.