The Atheist Blogger

The British broadsheet newspaper The Telegraph has been caught in a despicable attempt to blacken the name of a new atheist student organisation of which I am a proud member. The article in question, titled “Atheists target UK schools” is only made more misleading by its subheading, which reads “Atheists are targeting schools in a campaign designed to challenge Christian societies, collective worship and religious education.” Of course, neither of these is an accurate description of what the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies (AHS) is campaigning for. The AHS is a student organisation aimed at universities and colleges, not schools, and nothing the AHS is campaigning for includes challenging religious education or collective worship.

The Telegraph articles states:

The federation aims to encourage students to lobby their schools and local authorities over what is taught in RE lessons and to call for daily acts of collective worship to be scrapped. It wants the societies to hold talks and educational events to persuade students not to believe in God.

What the AHS actually wants to do is encourage interfaith discussion through a variety of events, focusing on both scientific and religious education, as well as supporting charity work. The aims of the current initiative are outlined in brief here:

• To teach students how to debate and create dialogue between school faith groups.
• Provide the school with fun and educational events and activities, including two student-led courses: ‘Perspectives’ in which a speaker from a faith group gives a talk followed by Q&A, and our ‘One Life’ course, which considers moral and ethical issues without god. Many events will also support the scientific curriculum.
• Encourage charity volunteering.
• Give students the experience of running a group and managing events.
• Show students that it’s ok not to believe in god and encourage critical thinking.
• Bring out issues concerning religious privilege in schools such as collective worship and incomplete or biased religious education.

The Telegraph article, perhaps one of the most blatant examples in recent years of “lying for Jesus” goes on to quote Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute on the matter of this supposed atheistic child indoctrination.

Atheists are becoming increasingly militant in their desperate attempts to stamp out faith. It is deeply worrying that they now want to use children to attack the Christian ethos of their schools. Many parents will also be anxious at the thought of militant atheists targeting their children. – Simon Calvert, Christian Institute

Of course the AHS is using children to counter Christianity, but the children in question are well into their late teens and early twenties, old enough to think for themselves one might have concluded. The implication present in both the Telegraph article and in Simon Calvert’s quotation is that the AHS are targeting children of primary and secondary school age, and this is a completely fallacious assertion. Recently, the AHS has been approached by several 6th form students who wish to form atheist groups at their respective colleges, and as a result 16-18 year olds from across the UK have been invited to a conference at Warwick University on 21st June. The aim of this is to help students set up societies at their colleges, and to support them.

As far as I am aware, the only organisation who are involving the younger generations of children is Camp Quest, which is a summer camp for the children of nonbelievers. This can hardly be called atheistic indoctrination though, since the children who go there all choose to participate, and the parents of those children are well aware of the activities that the camp includes.

In response to the article, AHS Press Officer Chloë Clifford-Frith had this to say:

The AHS is disappointed that the paper chose to twist information as far as possible to create a negative, sensationalist message out of a positive development for educational provision in schools.

The AHS does not and would never seek to challenge religious education in the manner that article goes on to suggest. The AHS strongly believes in the importance of a balanced, impartial and full religious education and would support the introduction of a national RE curriculum to ensure standards are met.

To find out more about the Warwick University conference on 21st June, please contact press@ahsstudents.org.uk or visit ahsstudents.org.uk.

Yesterday, I attended the launch of a new UK charity, the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies (AHS). They are similar to the international charity Secular Student Alliance, an organisation of which my student group is affiliated.

The plan was to travel up to London by catching the 8:23am train, a feat that was made immediately impossible for me, as I slept through three alarms and woke up at 8:40. Literally running the 2 miles from my house to the train station, I arrived only to find that all the self-service ticket machines had gone faulty (even the cash ones). Finally on the train, I mused over the frequent saying that when something goes wrong, everything else seems to go wrong as well, but eventually resorted to shoving this highly irrational thought to the back of my mind to get beaten into a pulp by psychological projections of Daniel Dennett. Instead, I concentrated on trying not to throw up as the train hurtled along to London (being England, there were of course no seats available).

Arriving in London, I met up with the only other member of our group who had bothered to turn up (or perhaps he was the only one who woke up on time), Jack. We were already running late, but I was assured by a quick phone call to the President of the AHS, Norman Ralph, that everyone was just mingling for the first hour. We arrived at Conway Hall, the “headquarters” of the South Place Ethical Society, the oldest surviving freethought organisation in the world, and were met by the Norman Ralph and introduced to a few members of the organisation.

The hall was filled with students, and organisations like the National Secular Society (NSS) and the British Humanist Association (BHA) had set up tables packed with information. I took the opportunity to join the BHA for half-price (we’re in a recession y’know), and to talk to members of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, who are planning to protest Sharia Law courts in the UK on March 7th.

At that moment, Richard Dawkins walked into the room. While officials went to greet him, Jack and I were reduced to giggling schoolgirls, whispering “That’s Richard Dawkins…3 feet away from me” to each other. We eventually regained our manly composure, and I decided I’d go talk to the professor, something which Jack decided was “too much”. Richard Dawkins was standing on his own, a banana in his hand, when I snuck up on him and introduced myself, saying how I was a fan of his work, and how it was just amazing to meet him. He said he liked my t-shirt (“There’s probably no god…”) and that he’d been seeing the colour scheme being used in various places. I finally told him that my friends would kill me if I didn’t get a picture taken with him, and he happily obliged.

Richard Dawkins shows he is not afraid of the atheist's nightmare.

In his speech, which was preceded with talks by Polly Toynbee and Professor A C Grayling, Dawkins pledged to support any student group that wanted to start up, and to write to his charity (The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science) if we ever needed money to organise events. The audience rightly applauded the pledge, and Dawkins ended his speech with a few highly amusing anecdotes.

So the Royal Holloway Secular Students will be joining the ranks of the AHS, and hopefully be running numerous events throughout the next year, especially with the support the AHS, SSA, and RDF!

A few photos I took of the event are available in my photos section.

My recent article deals with the misconception that the UK is a “secular nation“. A secular nation does not depend on the public view of secularism, but on how the country is run. It doesn’t matter if the majority of or even the total populace agree with secularism, because if the country’s constitution somehow includes religion, the majority opinion is null and void. Likewise, a completely religious country could indeed be very secular if they didn’t mention religion in their government.

So after taking in this information, which do you think is more secular? The UK or the USA?

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I get tired of Americans always claiming that we have it “so good” over here because we are such a secular country. In reality however, I think America is more secular. Your constitution restricts the government from making a national religion^[1]; in essence calling for a separation of church and state (the definition of secularism). We have no such ruling.

Many would argue that the words “In God We Trust” on money and “One Nation Under God” on the Pledge of Allegiance are not things you would find in a secular nation, and this is true. The difference being that in the USA, you could take your case to the Supreme Court and get these words taken off (in principle, although for other reasons this might not happen). In the United Kingdom, the government could decide to put “God” everywhere and we wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it.

So both countries are not truly secular (I doubt there are many countries that are), but to say that the UK is predominantly more secular is false.

National Religion

For one thing, the United Kingdom has a national religion, Christianity. It’s called “The Church of England”^[2] (CofE), and is headed by the monarchy, our head of state. The head of state, currently Queen Elizabeth II, has to swear to protect the religion of the UK at their coronation. When asked,

Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law? Will you maintain and preserve inviolable the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England? And will you preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of England, and to the Churches there committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges, as by law do or shall appertain to them or any of them?^[3]

Liz replied,

All this I promise to do. The things which I have here before promised, I will perform, and keep. So help me God.

Who was doing the question asking? Why, only the person prevailing over the coronation: The Archbishop of Canterbury, the highest position to hold in The Church Of England. In a truly secular nation, the Queen would have been crowned by the Prime Minister, and would have vowed to protect the laws of the nation, not the laws of God.

Government

House Of Lords

The church has infiltrated the very heart of government though, and 26 members of the clergy are always elected to the House of Lords to sit as the Lords Spiritual^[4]. The House of Lords are overseers of the House of Commons, which holds the government as elected by the people. Whilst their power is restricted by parliamentary acts, they are able to delay certain bills.

Not only are clergy sat in the House of Lords, but a prayer is said before chamber sessions even begin^[5]. Both the House of Lords and House of Commons participate in prayer, which although voluntary, is still an anti-secular event.

Additionally, the blasphemy laws that plagued our nation since their 17th century induction into the common law system were only abolished on May 8th, 2008^[6]. That’s 6 months ago to-the-day. It’s a step in the right direction, but the long road to secularism is miles long.

Education

I know full well how much religion impacts on education. Over 25% of primary schools (ages 5-11) are CofE Schools, and just under 6% of secondary schools (11-16) share this attribute^[7]. These are government funded schools, and these figures are for one church. There are many Roman Catholic schools that receive funding from the government too.

I went to two primary schools, both CofE, and both situated next to churches. We had prayers twice a day, and when we left, we were given a Bible as a present (I threw mine away). My secondary school was founded and named after Bishop John Wordsworth^[8] and is situated next to Salisbury Cathedral, following the CofE faith. We also had prayers daily, but luckily when I left I had something useful…namely an education.

Now I’m attending Royal Holloway, a university that is connected to the monarchy in some bizarre way, and therefore still connected to the Church of England.

So please, the next time you consider how much “better” it is over here, why not consider how much worse it is too?

A simple philosophy that is so mindbogglingly easy to follow, yet the religious seem to be up in arms about gay marriage, and they get worse every year. Somehow the religious seem to think that they came up with this great idea called “marriage” and that is has been violated by homosexuals. The truth, as it so often is in these cases, is completely the opposite.

Marriage predates verifiable recorded history, essentially a social extension of the mating procedure for reproduction. The Greeks and Romans had marriages, both opposite sex and same sex. There were no civil ceremonies, only an “agreement” for husband and wife, or husband and husband, wife and wife accordingly.

So what violated this traditional standard of marriage? Oh that’s right…it was the Christians.^[1] In 342, the Christian emperors Constantius II and Constans banned same-sex marriage. In 390, three other Christian emperors, Valentinian II, Theodoisus, and Arcadius, made homosexual sex a crime punishable by death (burned alive because Christians are so merciful).

As I write this, religious fundamentalists across several different religions are rallying together to support a California proposal that effectively bans homosexual marriage. Marriage, they reckon, should be up to the religions, not the state. I ask, why can’t you have it both ways?

It would be simple. Define a state marriage that has all the perks of “regular” marriage, allowing anyone to marry anyone. Let the religions decide what they want to do about marriage within religion. There would be no difference in opinion either way. Religions would still reckon that state marriages weren’t governed by God, whilst the religious homosexuals forced to take a state marriage as their only option would argue that they were.

It has worked in the UK for the last few years, and there is no reason why it couldn’t work anywhere else. Secularisation is the only sufficient train of thought that respects the wishes of all groups. It calls for a separation of church and state. The state cannot control the church and the church cannot control the state. A very simple relationship that allows people to either align with one or both, depending on what they want to do.

So yes, let’s be traditionalists. Let’s take marriage back to its original status: An agreement between two people to be loyal and faithful to each other for the rest of their lives.