National Anthems

I have a real beef about the UK National Anthem. Not so much about the tune, which is OK, but about the words. The first three lines are the following:

God save our gracious Queen!
Long live our noble Queen!
God save the Queen!

My beef is not because I dislike the Queen – I don’t, though I’m sympathetic to the case for republicanism - it’s the ‘God’ word that I object to, along with the ‘save’ word. As an atheist I can’t buy into anything to do with God, and I’m unclear about what is meant by the word ‘save’. Save from what exactly? Doubtless it has some historical meaning like ‘preserve’, though not in any kind of cryogenic or mummification sense. And whatever the intent I suspect it will be lost on most people reading/ singing it today. 

Then there’s the second verse which hardly anyone knows:

O Lord our God arise,
Scatter her enemies,
And make them fall:
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix:
God save us all.

This is rife with reasons to dislike it. There’s the first line which kind of contradicts Christian belief in that it suggests God needs to arise when we are led to believe Jesus (God incarnate) had already risen. Then there’s the terrible rhyme in the next line, followed by a request to do nasty things, Putin style. Enough said!

Now if you want an example of a good national anthem, lyrics wise, then the Slovenian one below has got to be up there with the best:

Long live all the nations
that yearn to wait for the day to come
that everywhere the sun walks
the strife will be driven away
that every compatriot
will be free
and the man living at one's borders will
not be a devil but a neighbour!

To me that comes across as an entirely humanist anthem

Graham Connell

Our Greatest Moral Failing

The August GMH Meeting was a Discussion: In 2115, what will our descendants condemn as our greatest moral failings?

John Coss opened the meeting by summarising an article written by Stefan Klein and Stephen Cave entitled, What will morality look like a 100 years hence? The authors point out that norms and values change, e.g. in 1915 – sexism, racism, imperialism, anti-Semitism and homophobia were not just accepted, but expected, even required.  The authors self-identify as ‘progressive’ and are glad that these attitudes are increasingly unacceptable. But OUR values will also be supplanted – and not always in ways we will welcome.

What is the proper reaction to such change? A good start is to CONSIDER HOW OUR VALUES MIGHT CHANGE OVER THE NEXT 100 YEARS.

Secondly, there is an idea of moral progress that can help us see how values might change in ways that we today could accept as FOR THE BETTER even though it may not be easy for us. This alerts us to the contingency and particularity of our own moral views. It pricks our illusion that we are at the pinnacle of moral progress. It is different from asking ‘what are you or I doing wrong’ which implies we are not living up to CURRENT moral standards. Instead, it addresses our moral
IMAGINATION. Rather than speculation about future norms, we can look at underlying trends that are still unfolding, and ask where we are failing not individually but COLLECTIVELY as a moral community. In other words we can imagine a better world and in so doing may help to make it real.

As to what counts as moral progress, the authors argue that morality means giving common concerns or the wellbeing of  others as much weight as one’s own self-interest. The tricky question then is: WHO COUNTS AS THE ‘OTHER’? They conclude that moral progress means including ever more people (or beings) in the group of those WHOSE INTERESTS ARE TO BE RESPECTED. In these terms we have come a long way. But there is room for improvement, and so a key aspect of moral progress is imagining HOW THE CIRCLE MIGHT WIDEN STILL FURTHER.

The authors claim that recent research supports the view that the more people feel connected with others, the more moral they are. Hence they hope that an increasingly globalised interconnected and interdependent world will also be an  increasingly benevolent one, with ever more people (or beings) drawn into the circle of concern. But these changing values have a price. For many of us, they will mean sharing or giving up privileges that we have long enjoyed, admitting that our comfortable lifestyles are based on industries of exploitation, or otherwise recognising that we have in a hundred ways been wrong. This is not a message we rush to hear! But debating the question of what we will be condemned for in 100 years may be a way of easing the transition.

The authors then put forward four suggestions as to what they think we might be castigated for in 2115, which they regard as natural extensions of progress so far. 

1. Rights for future generations, i.e. extending the circle of moral concern IN TIME. This will involve massive  restrictions on our freedom of action, since current activities have impacts on people far into the future 
2. Rights for other conscious beings: non-human animals feel pain and many other emotions 
3. ‘Opening the floodgates’: in 100 years, our descendents may be impressed by current levels of welfare and prosperity in the developed world, but appalled that access to them depends on where you are born 
4. Healing criminals: in 100 years, no one will believe in absolute free will or that anyone chooses to become a criminal but we will not find it easy to decide who to treat, how radically and when, nor to extend sympathy to those who commit the worst crimes 

The authors acknowledge that there are many other changes they could imagine, and say they have barely touched on the  question of INEQUALITY. For many who live through them, these changes will be extremely uncomfortable – but they will not be troubling for those who grow up with them.

John suggested that the discussion should focus on societal norms in modern technological societies and how these are likely to develop, assuming that civilisation develops continuously from the present but the position of humanity in 2115 is significantly less favourable relative to how things would have been if current environmental challenges had been
adequately addressed in a timely manner.

A lively and healthy debate ensued. One of those present suggested at the conclusion of the discussion that we (GMH) should consider getting involved with H4BW - Humanists for a Better World, a BHA special interest group. See https://humanism.org.uk/about/h4bw/. The meeting was well attended, especially given that it was August, with a lot of new people in attendance.

Is Humanism a Leftist Philosophy?

At the Stockport August meeting we had a debate on ‘Is Humanism a Leftist Philosophy?’

Speaking for the motion David Seddon opened his remarks by saying that if he had been writing an essay he would have started by defining the terms Humanism and Leftist, but he was limited by the time constraints of the meeting. He did say that Humanism is a philosophy and that Right and Left ideas are political ideologies. Humanism is not political.

Throughout history Humanism has been about equality and democracy the same as socialism. Modern Humanism started with Erasmus who was a Christian but began to think more about people than Heaven and Hell. Jesus was a socialist as evidences by his exhortations on ‘Blessed are the meek, suffer little children…, Easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle…', and giving money to the poor.  The Quakers ,formed in 1652, searched for God in everyone, even paedophiles.

With the enlightenment we had philosophers such as Voltaire and Rousseau. The American revolution promised Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness, whilst the French revolution shortly afterwards promise Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.  Both countries rejected religion as an integral part of Government. 

We need to value everyone whether they are on benefits or trying to leave Calais. We all inhabit one planet and as a race we are destroying it. Children who do well at school are not entitled to a better life than those less fortunate. All children should have a good education. Socialism and Humanism look to greater equality and agree about republicanism. We have one race and one planet, we need to work together.

Speaking against the motion Brian Stanyer said he believed he was as much a Humanist as David even though his politics were very different. He is also an republican and wants to see an end to the House of Lords. However, he is pragmatic and doesn’t believe that socialist thinking achieves what it sets out to do.  He believes that Socialism does not encourage people to strive and does not accept that people have different qualities. 

He does not believe in equal pay for everyone because if people at the top are not encouraged they stop working.  Nationalised industries were run inefficiently.  The philosophy is lovely but the results are disastrous.  He wants harsh attitudes to drugs and wants to  motivate people to do the right thing.  

A lively debate followed. Here are some of the comments from the floor:

Christianity and Capitalism support the existing social order and are resistant to change.

Religion is right wing.

Inheritance of wealth perpetuates social inequality.  Inheritance tax closes the door after the horse has bolted. We need to avoid letting people get rich in the first place.

The right wing is socially conservative whilst socialists want change.  

The right wingers also want change in a different way. 

You could not call yourself a Humanist and be on the far right.

Human nature determines your policies whether selfish or co-operative.

Are people motivate by money or by interesting work?

Many people have an idealistic streak as evidenced by the large number of volunteers.

Society should be change in the long term but we need to respond to emergencies now.

Most people just want to earn enough to live a reasonable life.

The Chair tried to get the debate back on track and the debate was wound up with a discussion on Free speech.

Amnesty International

The July GMH meeting was a talk and interactive workshop on Amnesty by Anne Walker.  Anne is a voluntary member of Amnesty and as such confesses to not being a specialist in human rights law. Her main involvement is in the Amnesty Trainers Network where she helps develop material for local campaigns for Amnesty International UK (AIUK).

Amnesty is based in London and has 5 hubs globally. Its vision: ‘is of a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and other international human rights instruments’.

Although it started out as an organisation supporting prisoners of conscience, its mission now is: ‘To undertake research and action focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of these rights’.

The Manchester branch of AIUK to which Anne belongs has four campaigns underway currently:
1. Stop Torture Campaign which is focused on 5 countries: Nigeria, Mexico, Morocco, Uzbekistan and the Philippines.
2. Save the Human Rights Act
3. Country Specific Campaigns in:

• Burma

• Southern Africa

• Countries in South America (esp. Venezuela) 

4. My Body My Rights - The My Body My Rights campaign comes from the belief that ‘sexual and reproductive rights are human rights that belong to us all’. Furthermore they entitle us to:

• Make decisions about our own health, body, sexual life and identity without fear of coercion or criminalisation 

• Seek and receive information about sexuality and reproduction, and access related health services and contraception

• Choose our intimate partner and whether and when to marry

• Decide what type of family to create

• Live free from discrimination, coercion, violence, including rape and other sexual violence, female genital mutilation, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, forced sterilisation and forced marriage.

It is noteworthy that the UDHR does not cover sexual and reproductive rights (SRR) and does not apply to the unborn child. However some international human rights law does now cover SRR and has made recommendations to states to adopt it.

In Latin America in places where there is no access to contraception and no sex education there is the highest rate of teen pregnancy. And where there is additionally a total abortion ban 57% of teen deaths in pregnancy are due to suicide.

Some of the reasons given for not allowing or providing contraception are:

• Suspicion – belief that it has another purpose

• Trust – some men believe it leads their women to infidelity

• Tradition – large families are seen as a good thing

• Affordability – it has to be paid for and women are afraid to ask their husbands for the money 

Campaigns in support of SRR are underway in:

• Burkina Faso – to promote access to affordable contraception

• Nepal – to prevent uterine prolapsed due to women being put to work very soon after pregnancy

• Maghreb – where rape victims are forced to marry their rapists. This has its foundations in old French law that was only repealed in France in 1994. Morocco has changed its law but Algeria and Tunisia still have it.

• El Salvador – to end a total ban on abortion.  Anne gave an example of a pregnant woman for whom after 3 scans it was shown that the foetus had brain damage but an abortion was denied. An international campaign forced the government to allow an intervention, but they delayed till much later so that it could be classed as induced labour.  In another case a doctor was given a prison sentence for carrying out an abortion which was in fact a miscarriage.

Anne also mentioned the law in Ireland where in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland abortion is illegal except in limited circumstances. The maximum sentence for carrying out an abortion in N. Ireland is life and in the Republic it’s 14 years.

This was an interactive presentation whereby audience members were allocated into groups and asked to present back their own views regarding the issues of women’s rights and what could be done about them. It generated a lot of lively discussion within and amongst the groups all of whom seemed appreciative of the opportiunity to participate.

If you’re supportive of Amnesty’s campaigns, there are a couple of online petitions that you might be interested in:

Save the Human Rights Act http://www.amnesty.org.uk/issues/Human-Rights- Act
Abortion Law Reform - Republic of Ireland  http://www.amnesty.org.uk/issues/Sexual-and- reproductive-rights http://www.amnesty.org.uk/issues/Sexual-and- reproductive-rights

Morality

The July meeting at Stockport was given by Derek McComiskey.  He presented a personal view of some aspects of morality – stressing that it is not necessary to know anything about morality in the abstract to be a good person. The Humanist concern to act morally is a key feature of our world-view.

He described how someone comes to build their understanding of morality in a series of layers. Firstly were are born pre-programmed to learn morality. This “hard-wired” predisposition almost certainly comes from our long evolutionary development as a social creature. Secondly we are socialised in a particular context. Then, when older, we can learn more formally. There is a strong analogy with language acquisition.

To make a moral judgement there is an interplay of Intuition and Theory. We can often make a judgement with almost no thought, as we have strong gut feelings, or intuitions. However, there are difficult issues where we need to reflect, and fall back on theories.

A brief discussion about whether we can rely on our moral intuition concluded that it works well most of the time. However Derek gave examples (primarily Disgust) where it seems to misfire. Also experiments show that pro-social behaviour can be altered by seemingly inconsequential factors: e.g. people are more helpful if there is a pleasant smell in the air.

But if intuitions can be “wrong” - can we find a reliable yardstick in Moral Theory? There are a number of theories which claim to have procedures for comprehensively settling issues. The main ones were discussed, along with situations where they seem to fail.

So both intuition and theory can let us down. There isn't a fail-safe way of knowing what the right thing to do it. Helpful in this predicament is American philosopher Bernard Gert. He suggests that harm to others (death, pain, disability, etc) is the basis of moral thinking. He says that all “moral agents” know that these things are wrong to do unless there is sufficient justification. He is clear that there need not be a unique moral answer to every situation. We need to use careful reflection and discussion with others to sort out the best solution to difficult problems.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has analysed attitudes according to five moral categories (1) Care/Harm (2) Fairness (3) Loyalty/Betrayal (4) Respect for Authority (5) Purity. People who are socially liberal stress the first two only. Social conservatives include them all. Our cosmopolitan society leads to us mix with different “moral tribes” - i.e. people who emphasise different moral categories to us. This illuminates why we often talk at cross purposes.

In the last 20 years there has been an explosion of psychological and neuroscientific research into decision making – including moral decision making. This is building up a body of knowledge about exactly how and why we make the decisions we do, and the factors that influence us.

Effective Altruism is a recent phenomenon grounded in consequentialist ethics. It applies reason and evidence to find out how we can do the most good. Oxford philosopher Toby Ord has committed to living on £18k and giving the rest of his pay. He set up Giving What We Can – and the website there has a calculator to work out how rich you are. There are charity evaluation site to make sure your donated money does the best good.

The Euthyphro Dilemma is attributed to Socrates. If things are good because God commands them, and for no other reason, then he could command terrible things and we would have to call them good. If God commands things because they are good – it suggests that moral judgement is independent of God, and that he is subject to it. Most theists find this difficult.

If you are in a discussion with someone who tells you that their God is necessary for Goodness – ask to take a look at what their scriptures say. It is hard to take lessons in morality from the god of the Old Testament or of the Quran/Hadith.

Finally, we looked at the argument put forward by a prominent Christian speaker about “Objective” moral values, and how this points to God. After much discussion - we didn't agree with him!

Resources:

Websites:

http://www.yourmorals.org/ - Test Yourself

http://www.givewell.org/ - Charity Evaluation

https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/ - Evidence based giving information, and "How Rich Am I" calculator

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/ - Research for the Bible, Quran and Book of Mormon

Books:

Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil. Paul Bloom

Morality Without God. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

The Moral Landscape: How Science Determines Human Values. Sam Harris

Experiments In Ethics. Kwame Anthony Appiah

TED Talks:

http://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_morals

(short clip from the above talk, re. monkey fairness experiment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo)

http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code

Population Matters

/

The Stockport group meeting in June was lead by Brian McGavin from Population Matters.  He spent 20 years working in multimedia for the Government and other organisations. He became tired of spinning government lines on environmental issues and unsustainable growth of the planet as he felt the planet was under great danger.

He quotes Lester Brown, an American environmental analyst, who insists that overdevelopment and overpopulation are resulting in mankind killing the planet. On the other hand he says that the Journalist George Monbiot refuses to recognise that population is the main driver of ecological problems. In spite of the population increasing by one million extra people per day population issues are not taken seriously by politicians. Climate change is mentioned much more often than overpopulation.

We need a radical restructuring on many fronts to achieve a sustainable steady state economy. Population Matters is at odds with Greenpeace, The Green Party, The World Wildlife Fund etc. The Green Party do not want to address overpopulation and refuse to carry Population Matters Advertisements in its Newsletter.
Brian McGavin recommended a 54-page book Valedictory: Population Overshoot by Lindsey Grant to be found on the Negative Population Growth website..

In the US problems are exacerbated by mass immigration , expected to reach 3.360 to 4.400 per day by 2050. There is concern about Obama’s plans for amnesty of illegal immigrants when there is the prospect of endless streams of immigrants from failed states. The moral issues need to be solved in the country of origin e.g. large numbers of illegal immigrants from Eritrea cite the harsh conditions and length of National Service. The EU population is not stable, again because of immigration. Statistics are available on the Eurostat website. In Australia the population hit 20 million in 2010 and could double every 33 years. One problem here is that only 6% of the land is cultivable. In Syria, a country with a high population growth, there was a perception that when there was a drought Sadat only helped the Allawis and this led to support for ISIS. 

Fossil fuels are enormous drivers of the ability to tame the environment but they are not in the happy state many think they are. The production of liquid fuel from oil will not last very long and the differences are expected to be made up with fracking, tar sands etc. OPEC countries deliberately keep the price of oil down to discourage fracking but oil prices will eventually shoot up as there will be a 20% shortfall in 20 years. Fracking has a 69% depletion rate in the first year and 94% depletion rate over 5 years so the sites run out in no time at all. Tar sands are also inefficient and requires a lot of oil energy to get a return.
Wind and solar energy are intermittent and the nuclear power favoured by many relies on Uranium where the ores often contain 2% or less of Uranium being energy inefficient to extract and could run out altogether in 50 years. If the number of reactors is doubled it could run out in 20 or so years. Fusion power is not yet a realistic proposition.

The solutions include reducing car use and having more home energy installations. Fossil fuels should be save for building capital energy-reducing proposals and for such things as mining the rare metals required for mobile phones. The third runway at Heathrow should be abandoned and High speed trains used instead of short haul flights.

Meantime the population of the world is heading for 11 million so food and water will be required on a large scale. Warnings that we have about 30 years to stabilise the population have to date been ignored.

To get a viable sustainable population it would be necessary for each woman on the planet to have an average of no more than 1.3 children until 2040, after which the average could rise to 2.1 to maintain stability. Increases in elderly populations are a red herring. The Pope is releasing his first encyclical letter but is still intransigent on birth control. Islam has no edicts against birth control but in Iran women are being coerced to have more children. Massive population increases are projected for Ethiopia, Mali and Nigeria amongst others.

One solution would be to make overseas aid conditional on stopping barriers to family planning.

Rise of the Religious Right and the Impact on Women

June's GMH Meeting was a talk about the rise of the religious right and the impact on women in the UK, given by Sandhya Sharma.

The talk started with a video dating back 20 or so years showing how women in minority, primarily Asian, communities in London started to demonstrate against the then rise of religious fundamentalism and how they were ignored by the anti-racist and leftist movements. Also how women in Bradford around the same time started to demonstrate against domestic violence in their communities and how the religious leaders and the political left tried to shut them up.  Moving on to more recent times Sandhya explained how there’d been a gradual shift from state sponsored secular services, e.g. welfare and housing services, towards services run by religious institutions. Austerity measures from the government had heightened the effect with almost no public money going into entirely secular services like the Asian Refuge (for women and children fleeing domestic violence or forced marriages) with which Sandhya was involved.  However the people providing the services run by religious institutions are often from the very communities the women are seeking refuge from. And rather than holding the perpetrators responsible for their immoral, and sometimes illegal, actions, e.g. in matters related to domestic violence and abuse, their preference is often to take a conciliatory approach and unite the parties again.