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.

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.

Scientology Protest 2: Operation Party Hard

As this Saturday was L Ron Hubbard’s birthday, Anonymous decided to celebrate it in style with a full blown protest party near the Church of Scientology in Hunter Square. Admittedly I forgot about it completely, but luckily I happened to be crossing the road at the exact same second that Stuart was driving past (he didn’t run me over), and I was duly reminded. The protest itself was pretty much the same as last time. Plenty of signs, about the same amount of people but we were a bit more spread out in the square so it didn’t look as many, but I thought it was much better organised. People had learned their lessons from the last one and brought extra cardboard for signs, as well as tape, and we had balloons, party bags and stickers rather than just flyers. I’ll spare you the details.

In any case from the last protest there’s been a few issues brought up. The student media saw it as pointless, or even discriminatory, and various comments were made such as “what are they trying to do?” and “what will an attack on the people they claim to be victims of the organisation actually achieve?”

It’s a fair question, but it’s totally missed the point of the protest. This isn’t an attack on the ‘church’ members, the protest isn’t about them at all! The whole point of protesting is to raise awareness to the general public that the building we were outside is a church of Scientology (misleadingly called “The Hubbard Academy for Personal Independence”) and that the ‘free personality tests’ and ‘free stress tests’ that they’re offering are actually ways of getting you into their cult and robbing you of their money. It is a public awareness campaign.

Before I wasn’t so sure it was necessary, but since the protests I’ve spoken to several people who have briefly fallen victim to it, or who have taken a test and not gone any further, and it’s entirely necessary and appropriate to make people aware of what they’re getting themselves into. They take advantage of people who are vulnerable or gullible and take their money away and it’s not remotely fair. That’s why Anonymous is protesting.
Captain Shamrock

Quality sign

Protestors

Our Sign

Holocaust Memorial Day

I’m a bit annoyed with myself. This year is the first year I’ve missed a Holocaust Memorial Day service, which took place last night at the Chaplaincy at the University. It wasn’t my fault; I had to work. But at the same time if I’d thought ahead I could have made sure I wasn’t working. What’s worse is that I also missed the Remembrance Sunday service because my alarm didn’t go off and I slept straight through. Back at home I normally mark this occasion with a big parade through my local village with my scout district and it was a shame to not be there this time. So this is my way of commemorating the event

I think it’s imperative that we continue to mark events such as Holocaust Memorial Day. Only by remembering the mistakes in humanity’s history can we ensure that something similar doesn’t happen again. It is for this reason that Holocaust Denial is a crime in some countries; if we don’t remember it, it could end up happening again.

The problem is, though, that similar things have happened again. Saddam Hussein’s extermination of the Kurds and Marsh Arabs, the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsis by the Hutu, the Bosnian genocide in Srebrenica, and the Darfur conflict, which Colin Powell declared genocide in 2004, and which still continues today.

So is humanity learning from its mistakes? I don’t think so, in spite of the efforts of the organisers of Holocaust Memorial Day. It seems to me that the only time this remembrance is ever put into practice is when the government brings in a particularly adventurous piece of legislation, or an example of the “nanny state” is brought up, then people refer to it as “Nazi” in order to garner up opposition to it.

This is an insult to the memory of the millions of people who died in the Holocaust and in the Second World War.

Today I went to visit my friend’s grave. He died a little over a year ago in a motorbike accident, but today was the first time I went to his grave. I’ve never been one for gravesides or funerals really. Don’t get me wrong, today was absolutely appropriate; two of my friends and I went down, laid some flowers, stuck around and had a beer each in the mid-afternoon moonrise (stupid early nights :P), left him one on his headstone, remembered some good times, and then went on our way. It was nice.

But it’s not something I normally do. I have a lot of dead relatives; all my grandparents have died, as has my great aunt who I was close to, my great uncle and several family friends, all people I knew. But I don’t visit their graves. My adopted grandmother (long story) is buried right over the road from my house, but I still don’t visit her grave.

My main reason is that I don’t know what to do there. Obviously I don’t pray, so should I just talk to them? But I know they can’t hear me, so the only reason I’d be talking is for my own benefit, and I can do that anywhere, I don’t need to be near a grave. I suppose I could just do what I did today, but again I can do that anywhere, and I often have met up with mates for a drink in his honour, and remembered the good times. The presence of a dead body isn’t really a prerequisite. Nor is it desirable in most cases, hehe.

In any case, his death came as a shock to all of us, particularly as he was someone our own age. It was a very sobering reminder of our own mortality, and it provoked thoughts in me about my own funeral arrangements. I read fairly recently that in 2008, humanist funerals are expected to become the third most popular type of funeral ceremony in Scotland, presumably after Catholic and Church of Scotland ceremonies. But I don’t think I want a grave in some graveyard with a load of other dead bodies, where people will feel obliged to visit and feel awkward. I’d much rather have a bench or something, and a memorial service with my favourite music, photographs, hopefully decent holograms by the time I die, rather than the depressing death ceremonies that are so common. I decided a long time ago that if anything were to happen to me, all my organs can be donated to whoever needs them, and anything that’s left will be donated to science.

Something that always seems to confuse people when I tell them of my atheism is my beliefs about after we die. Lots of people I’ve met who don’t believe in God have told me that they like to think there’s something better afterwards, or that they believe in some airy-fairy kind of spirit or ascended being, that I don’t really understand properly. I think it’s important to face up to the fact that once you’re gone, you’re gone for good, and there’s no consciousness left over. The only thing that’s left of you is your impact and legacy on the world through people’s memories of you, and the influences you’ve had on them. Which is why it’s important to make the most of this life. It’s the only one you’re going to get.

Humanist Holidays

Recently, the Friendly Humanist has taken a great interest in what we, as humanists, should do about festivals and holidays. Obviously there is a genuine need for some kind of holiday at this time of year; it’s cold and horrible and I wouldn’t get up in the morning if it wasn’t for my mum shouting at my brother to get up and go to college (ooh I didn’t mention, I’m writing now from beyond the border!).

The Friendly Humanist has been concentrating on the Cosmic Calendar, a brilliant piece of thinking by Carl Sagan, who reduced the entire history of the cosmic universe into a calendar for 1 year. With this timescale, the early homo sapiens only came into being in the last 10 seconds of New Year’s Eve. I’ve read other ways of comparing it. If you stretch your arms out at each side, and conceive that the fingertips of your left hand represent the origin of life on Earth, and the fingertips of your right hand represent the present moment, then (if I remember this analogy correctly, I can’t remember where I read it) vertebrates would only emerge at about your right elbow, homo sapiens would only emerge at the knuckle nearest your fingernail, and all recorded history since the Greeks would be erased with just a single stroke of a nail file. Makes you feel really significant, doesn’t it?

Anyway I’ll come back from my tangent and ask the question I’ve been thinking about for a good couple of weeks now. It’s all very well using logical alternative methods to come up with our own humanist holidays, but is it necessary? We have perfectly good holidays right here that are becoming increasingly secular, and I think we can just hijack them. After all, was Christmas not originally a pagan festival before the Church hijacked it and suddenly decided (arbitrarily) that Jesus was born on that date? Now, especially in the UK, I think people are more and more deviating away from the “true” meaning of Christmas, and it’s being hijacked by secularists as a time to be spent with family, which is certainly appealing to a humanist lifestyle. The same can be said of other religious festivals.

But the downside is that if we did that, we’d be hearing the same criticism that I’ve heard a number of times, that humanism is merely a parasite of Christianity and other religions. But why not!? Why shouldn’t we take the good bits of religion, like the ”love your neighbour” morals of the New Testament, or in this case the family values of Christmas, and get rid of all the bullshit? Religion (in my case Christianity) is a big part of the culture, history and heritage of our society, and we don’t have to reject all the good things that it entails when we reject the religious beliefs.

The thing about all this is that if we take on any humanist holidays of our own, whether we hijack pre-existing ones or we make up our own, is that from the outside humanism will look just like another religion, and we’ll become part of the very thing many of us are trying to destroy. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing, because it may help humanism appear as a more viable alternative to religion, but at the same time compromises our values somewhat. Make up your own mind.

Human Rights Day

Happy Human Rights Day everyone! Admittedly I only realised when I walked past the stall outside the Library (actually did some revision today, w00t!), but still it deserves marking in some way.

Remember, Human Rights aren’t just those annoying laws that stop us killing off all the foaming-at-the-mouth bible bashing loonies in a glorious mass cull, you have them too! So do your bit and mark Human Rights Day in your own special way. And by ‘mark’, I don’t mean like dogs mark their territory. Save that for Easter.