The Cabbages of Doom

Well done, Ireland. I am proud of my semi-adopted nation (by residency/marriage). This is what democracy is all about. The whole of society being given a clear mandate to determine its values.

No party politics. No politicians feeling like they have a mandate to implement unpopular decisions just because they managed to get elected. The voice of the people, making a clear statement that they are pro-equality.

Rest of the World, the bar has been raised.

A modern society has to be a secular one. A secular society is not an atheist society; it is a society in which no one gains undue favour or faces discrimination due to their religious beliefs - or lack thereof.

According to the British Humanist Association:

1.2 million school places in England and Wales are prioritised for young people whose parents are of a particular religion, which is more than the total number of places at grammar schools and private schools combined. The law permits ‘faith’ schools to discriminate in all sorts of ways, including in admissions and employment, which has been shown to contribute to social segregation in communities up and down the country.

Religious discrimination is bad enough. What’s even worse, is that some schools seem to be using their ability to select students to discriminate against students from poorer socio-economic backgrounds. It’s not clear whether this is direct or indirect discrimination but given the general negative correlation between wealth and religiosity, it is hard to see how it could be accidental. Either way, it’s clearly not good.

To combat this discrimination, the Fair Admissions Campaign has been established.

Are you facing the prospect of your child being unable to gain admittance to your local school, because of religious selection? Or have you had to game the system in order to get them in? Are you happy to live in a society in which children are discriminated against on these grounds, while parents feel compelled to behave in this manner?

This situation is clearly unfair, and that’s what we’re here to challenge. We are a new campaign that is supported by a wide coalition of individuals and national and local organisations, aiming to tackle the single issue of religious selection in school admissions.

Happily, many organisations - including religious ones - are supporting this campaign. Religious selection as a basis for education has to end.

Religions already have tax-exempt institutions in which they can try to influence the minds of the innocent. They do not need schools as well. If you live in the UK, please support the campaign.

Last week, coelsblog had a great post on religious tolerance: Religions are entitled to tolerance, but not to respect. In it, she lays out the important distinction between tolerance (allowing the existence) of and respect (having admiration) for something. She also calls out people who erroneously criticise Richard Dawkins for being intolerant, when he is only being disrespectful and religion has no right to respect.

It is an important distinction worth reminding people about and I wonder whether I sometimes fall into the trap myself. Tolerating a belief means that you do not try to forcibly stop people from holding it. It is not the same as letting that belief go unchallenged. (That is where the respect comes in.)

For me, I think the real issue is over the boundary between religious beliefs and religious practices. Whilst there is a definite need to tolerate the former, there is no need to tolerate the latter. (One only has to imagine a religion that features ritual murder and cannabilism to see this.) As coelsblog says:

"Yes, religious beliefs should be tolerated, and, yes, religious practice should be tolerated (provided only that it complies with the usual civil law)..."

One problem, I think, is that people often conflate refusal to tolerate certain religious practices that don't comply with civil law with refusal to tolerate religious belief, for they often see them as one and the same. So, the fact that Creationism is not tolerated in a science class (or the Giant's Causeway) is interpreted as a lack of tolerance for the religious belief behind it, whereas really it is the result of a lack of respect for that belief.

This is, in essence, the heart of secularism: people can believe what they want but it is up to society to determine what is acceptable behaviour and no belief system (religious or otherwise) gives one a "get out of jail free card" to ignore or supersede the laws, rights and responsiblities that follow.

There was an interesting article in the last edition of New Humanist magazine by Richard Smyth, "Down with Secularism", in which he argues that:

"It compromises democracy, it promotes and rewards hypocrisy and doublethink, it reflects a crippling failure of imagination on the part of its proponents and it’s founded on principles that are cynical, unempathetic and deeply un-humanist."

The argument seems to revolve around the fact, in a democracy, everything should be open for argument - including religion. Well, no argument there but I am not really sure that secularism stops arguments about religion, it just stops the state performing or endorsing - or stopping - certain activities because they are religious. Surely, the cornerstone of secularism is not to sweep religion under the carpet, it is to stop religious discrimination - negative or positive - in civil life.

He does make some good points and I suggest reading the article but I think the points he makes are not against secularism, they are against particular manifestations and misunderstandings that surround secularism.

Take abortion, for example. Richard writes:

"Perhaps the argument here is that a gay marriage or an abortion, say, is in some sense a personal matter, and nobody else’s business. If so, it’s an argument that crumbles as soon as you spin it around and take a look at it from the other side. If I believe that human life is sacred, then an abortion is essentially a murder. A woman has no more right to terminate her foetus than a mother has a right to strangle her three-year-old son. And a person who believes this has a moral obligation to prevent it wherever possible. The same goes for a person who believes that human society is being irreparably damaged by buggery and opiates (or whatever) – and the same goes, too, for a government.

It is deeply dismaying that so many liberals struggle with this basic empathetic step. Anti-abortion activists and their ilk are not (necessarily) evil or wicked or heartless. They’re just incorrect. They have made an error in reasoning. They have got their sums wrong. That’s all."

Well, I would agree with that. What I wouldn't agree with is the idea that secularism results in religious views on gay marriage and abortion from being rejected. They are not being rejected because they are religious. Yes, indeed, some of the individual opponents to "pro-life" organisations and religious homophobia may have a problem with them because they are derived from an irrational belief in what a certain deity likes and dislikes, but that does not mean that a secular society rejects those views because of that. Quite the opposite! That's what secular means, isn't it? The religious belief - or otherwise - of the proponents are immaterial, it is the actual outcome that is important.

If pro-life lobbyists can convince enough people that a blastocyst is a person, they have every right to get abortion banned as murder. But the crucial point is that the reason for that ban should be that the democratic choice of society is to side with that idea and make that choice. It should not be because Britain is a "Christian country" with a Christian monarch and bishops in the House of Lords that can force through Christian views despite being a minority position. (With so many children forced by circumstance to attend a Church of England school and bishops in the House of Lords, we are not secular enough in the UK, sadly.)

Quite recently, I did a course at work on "Equality and Diversity" and the principle of secularism strikes me as very similar to that of equality and diversity at work. No one should be unfairly advantaged or disadvantaged because of their religion (or lack thereof). This does not mean that no one can ever ask for something for religious reasons (such as a feast day off work) and it does not mean that every religious request has to be pandered to and approved. It's about avoiding discrimination, not about eliminating religion.

The same goes for religion in society. If a religious practice - such a circumcision - is deemed to contravene the law or human rights as laid down by democratic society, it should most certainly not get a get-out-of-jail-free card just because it is religious. But, if a religious practice - such as keeping your head covered - does not constitute an actual problem it should certainly not be banned or discouraged just because it is religious either.

The confusion, I think, comes from the working definition of secularism that Richard Smyth is using. I disagree that:

The basic premise of secularism is that religion should be kept out of politics.

The basic premise of secularism is that religion and politics should be kept separate - it's a subtle but important distinction. Political decisions should not be made because they are religious but that does not mean that religiously-motivated views should not be aired - you just need to convince enough people that they are right before they are acted upon.

I also think that Richard Smyth might be touch a naive about religious views and how wrong they are. Another one of his criticisms is one of hypocrisy:

"The Princeton Professor of Religion Jeffrey Stout has pointed out that “some people in liberal societies hold religious views which will influence significantly the contribution they wish to make to public debates... But these [people] recognise quite pragmatically that their religious motivations and justifications are not shared by everyone else. So they present their views in ways which can be agreed with by people who do not share their religious perspective.” (The quotation is from Graeme Smith’s Short History of Secularism.)

That is, they practise hypocrisy and cant. And the secularist lobby is quite happy for them to do so."

I would disagree here. Although I think that all religion is ultimately irrational and faith-based, this does not extrapolate out to all of the individual positions and beliefs held by religious people. Indeed, one of the big arguments against Christian morality is that it depends very much on cherry-picking which bits of God's Law still apply - it is put through a modern rationalist filter, up to a point. So, stoning to death of disrespectful children is out. Homosexuality may be in or out depending on your interpretation but, generally, there is some (albeit often post hoc) rationalisation of why something is good or bad. Abortion is bad because it is murder, not because the Bible forbids it. (Not surprisingly, I don't think it is explicitly mentioned anywhere. It all comes down to interpretation of where life begins.) If you belief that God is good and God demands X then you also believe that X is good and look for reasons to support that belief. It is not hypocrisy to then pull out those reasons to try and convince someone else that you - and God - are right.

The fact that they have to come out with reasons other that "God said it" is a good thing. It opens debate, highlights issues and keeps the discussion real. Secularism avoids it becoming an argument of "God says" versus "No He didn't" or - worse - no argument at all because the earpiece of God makes all the rules.

Long live Secularism and making political decisions based on their merits not their source. And long live freedom to discuss, promote and oppose religious beliefs!

The issue of same-sex marriage has been getting a lot of attention recently, both sides of the Atlantic. Highlights have included a Scottish Cardinal who is so out of touch with reality that he believes legalising gay marriage would “shame the UK in the eyes of the world” (not the part whose opinion I would care about) and, in a mind-boggling statement of inverted intelligence, declared it to be a “grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right”. (What?!) Of course, this was followed up by the greatest quote of all by Chief Executive of Stonewall, Ben Summerskill:

“If Roman Catholics don’t approve of same-sex marriage, they should make sure they don’t get married to someone of the same sex.”

It seems that things are a little more sinister across The Pond, and the (unfortunately not-ironically-named) "National Organization for Marriage" (for marriage, are you sure?) has called for a nationwide boycott of Starbucks for supporting Gay Marriage. Happily, we don't live in a world where conservatives get to enforce their narrow-minded bigotry on everyone else unchallenged, and Sum Of Us have started a counter-campaign to thank Starbucks for standing up for equal human rights, in their #EquaLatte campaign. (Who can resist a good pun, eh?) So far, over 640,000 people have signed up versus 29,000 on NOM's "Dump Starbucks" pledge site. Job done, I think. Well done, Sum of Us! (You can sign up here.)

There's been a bit of a furore over the past couple of days after a brave citizen reported the Bath contingent of the "Healing On The Streets" (or "HOTS") movement to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for making the unsubstantiated claims that God could heal you (on the street) through them. You can read the actual account of the complaints made at the blog of the complainant, Hayley Stevens.

Hayley is an atheist but, more importantly, a skeptic and complained on skeptic grounds that HOTS were misleading people with claims that cannot be supported by evidence and could detrimentally influence the weak and vulnerable away from authentic medical treatment. ASA agreed and have ruled that HOTS have to remove these claims from their advertising material.

Do HOTS respond with tales of clear and unequivocal healings performed by HOTS teams? No. Of course, HOTS had the opportunity to counter the complaint with convincing evidence that supports their claims but they have none. (Their website contains "Hot Stories" of successful healings - presumably their most convincing stories. Judge for yourself how anecdotal they both(!) are. Why is it that God never regrows an amputated limb or anything else unambiguous and unattributable to placebo?) Instead, they try to deceive and grope for support by playing the "religious persecution" card, totally inappropriately, including a news article disingenuously entitled "UK Advertising Standards Authority try and stop HOTS Bath from sharing the Gospel!" 

Well, if HOTS cannot - or will not - tell the difference between "sharing the Gospel" and making unsubstantiated claims, then I think that speaks volumes about both the evidence for their Gospel message and their true motivation for "healing" strangers on the street. (I thought the Gospel was about forgiveness from sin, not healing from physical ills. I obviously did not pay enough attention in Sunday School.)

It's not just HOTS, though. Bible Reflections also ran the story, saying that the ASA "would now like us to recant our Christian faith in the Bible". No, they wanted you to agree to "not make claims which state or imply that, by receiving prayer from [HOTS] volunteers, people could be healed of medical conditions." They are welcome to believe it, they are just not allowed to push those beliefs on others without evidence. Like HOTS themselves, BR went for a misleading headline, claiming that ASA were "trying to stop Healing on the Streets". Again, no. It was not trying to stop them entirely, just to stop their unsubstantiated claims.

The complainant - an individual, not a group, as claimed by Bible Reflections - was not complaining on anti-Christian grounds but rather on anti-non-evidence-based medicine grounds. And quite rightly, too. Anecdotes are not evidence. If people wish to seek out faith healing then that is their business. However, accosting the vulnerable in the street and encouraging them share personal matters with strangers in the hope of unproven potential to be healed is a different matter, and wrong. It would be wrong if it were Homeopaths, wrong if it were psychics and wrong if it is faith healers.

But isn't it all harmless, even if it doesn't work? HOTS are not making money or trying to con people, like psychics or homeopaths.

Well, in some ways, I think faith healers are even worse. HOTS may think that faith healing is harmless because they believe it. But who do they believe God heals? Those with faith, presumably. And what is one of the "reasons" that faith healing does not "work" when it fails? Insufficient faith. How do you prove your faith in God's healing? By avoiding conventional treatments. Sure, HOTS may not explicitly encourage this but it would be very naive to believe that it is not a subtext. Almost as bad, what's the other "reason" it doesn't work? "God's will." Given that most people are not healed - either that or their "Hot Stories" editor needs sacking - what HOTS are really doing is going around implying that people are sick either because they lack faith or it's God's will. That's wrong on many levels.

No one is asking you to "recant your faith", HOTS, just to stop meddling and misleading people with your unproven beliefs. I've seen these people before in Winchester and felt annoyed but not had the guts to do anything about. Well done, Hayley Stevens.