Showing posts with label Humanism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Humanism. Show all posts

Saturday, 28 November 2009

Please don't label me




Sarah found this interesting article in the times which offers a critique of the British Humanist Association's current poster campaign.

Interesting stuff whether you look at from a religious or a secular perspective:

...If you believe something important to be true, then you shouldn’t pretend it is an open question. This goes for secular humanists as much as for religious believers. If, for example, you are a convinced atheist, and you think that belief in God is false at an intellectual level and damaging through its distorting effects on morality, then of course you would want to share this conviction with your children. It would be unjust to keep it from them. Similarly, if you believe in God, and you believe that this faith is not just a lifestyle choice or a cultural imperative but an objective truth with profound implications for human existence, how could you not share this conviction with your children?...

...It’s a fantasy to imagine that children can be raised in a philosophically neutral environment without some dominant world-view. Theism – as much as atheism, materialism, or secular humanism (these terms are not synonomous) – provides a particular understanding of the meaning of the world and of human life, which will help structure a child’s understanding and values. But if you try to bring your children up in an environment which is indifferent to questions of ultimate meaning, then your purported neutrality will already have been lost. If, in effect, you say to your children, “I don’t care enough about these values or convictions to share them with you”, or “they are important to me but not important in themselves”, then you are presenting them with a very particular world-view...

Friday, 19 September 2008

Controversy at the Royal Society

On a more serious note (and in case you missed it) there has been controversy this week at the Royal Society, the oldest scientific society in existence, after an article in the Guardian claims that the Education Director Professor Michael Reis had called for Creationism to be taught in schools. Michael Reis claims he was misrepresented in a subsequent letter to the editor but apparently he has since resigned from his post anyway. Now, Richard Dawkins enters the debate.

On a related theme, Humanists are currently suing the UK's government's exam agency over its decision to prevent a board giving humanism equal status to faiths in a religious education GCSE.