Join us for a gentle 2.5 mile riverside walk near the historic town of Ludlow
OR
Simply join us for lunch afterwards in the CHARLTON ARMS, Ludford Bridge, Ludlow SY8 1PJ
Please let us know if you are coming by 23 May.
Food parcel
At the last Committee meeting it was decided that a sum of £75 would be donated to those in need in Ludlow. In December Peony and Pamela went to a local supermarket to make the purchases which proved to be more difficult than you might think. Which items would be most useful? Should we go for quality or quantity? And finally ‘Is that all we can get for £75?’ In case anyone is wondering, we didn’t buy a case of sherry – we only used the box, honest!Dignity in dying
By Malcolm Rochefort
My Mother died just before Christmas. She was 93, so it wasn’t exactly unexpected. The tragedy of it was rather that she had been very ill with cancer for the last 6 months, and had been suffering whilst at the same time, very aware of what was happening. Visits to the care home were depressing, as she had become practically deaf, so conversation was almost impossible, but she would often say that she wanted to die in the night.
Why do I raise this rather depressing thought? Everyone I spoke to about it, my sisters, friends, relatives, acquaintances all agreed that you wouldn’t let an animal suffer as she did – and yet we did, we had no choice under the law of this country, and she was far too ill to travel. Eventually the doctor put her on a diamorphine drip for pain-relief, and the end, mercifully, came within a few days of that. We’ve had talks about dignity in dying, and this brought it home – she really had none, and suffered greatly.
Why do we continue in this country to accept these archaic laws around death, not tackling what everyone recognises is a very complex subject because it’s so difficult? We must find a way to give people choice at the end of their lives, and this experience has at least renewed my determination to help those campaigning for a change in the law, and reassured me that we are right to fight against religious privilege and dominance of how we run our last days.
She wanted a cremation and, unfortunately, a religious service, even though I can never remember her voluntarily going to church, apart from for weddings and funerals. I think she was only religious in the old, superstitious way – ‘just in case’. The C of E vicar had at least met her a few times, and knows my sister quite well, so gave a fairly sympathetic homily. He knew we were secular Humanists, which I helpfully reminded him just before the service, and he at least dropped the proposed bible readings. Whether this was deliberate, or the result of nerves at reading to an audience including the chair of a Humanist group and a Humanist celebrant, I’m not sure. In the end it was a bright crisp winter’s day, with snow on the ground, and it was good to meet old friends and relations – but this doesn’t make up for the lack of choice she had about how and when she died.
The struggle against religious privilege
Charles Bradlaugh 1833-91
Report of a meeting led by Dan Bye of the National Secular Society.
Dan Bye was a founder member of Sheffield’s Humanist Group in 1993. He has been active in the National Secular Society (NSS) for 25 years, being the longest serving member on its Council of Management.
Dan gave us some background to the founding, in 1866, by Charles Bradlaugh of the NSS. Various Socialist movements were collapsing in mid-Victorian times. One point at issue was the fact that atheists like Bradlaugh could not pursue any action in Court as they would not be able to take the Oath. Robert Owen’s group proposed a nonconformist Oath, but George Holyoake refused the idea of any Oath, and split from Owen. Holyoake coined the term ‘Secularism’ in 1851, as an ethical movement to unite all people for Social Reform.
Bradlaugh however felt that the group should be campaigning against the privilege of Church and Religion, and split to form the National Secular Society. He was very litigious, battling for 12 years to get elected as an atheist MP, a further 6 years before he was able to take his seat. Eventually, in 1888, a change in the law allowed Universal Affirmation.
The NSS is seen as a more militant organisation than the British Humanist Association. NSS has been instrumental in work towards abolishing the Blasphemy law (2008), and it has been successful in lobbying for the imminent removal of the weak ‘insulting’ term from s5 of the Public Order Act.
Dan explained that ‘secular’ in meaning is the opposite of ‘sacred’, ie not connected with religion. More recently, NSS is concentrating on a narrower definition of its work within secularism, that is on progress towards the separation of Church and State.
NSS takes a ‘strong’ principled line on such matters as religious schools (against), and against any exceptions for minority religious activities such as council money for transport to schools for some, Chaplains in hospitals, ritual slaughter of animals, prayers in Council meetings.
Early on, Dan showed a graph which confirmed that ‘religious affiliation’ has reduced with each generation – a process called secularisation.
An excellent talk and lively discussion.
‘The tangled web’ – An account of the interwoven lives of Shelley, Byron, William Godwin, Mary Shelley et al.
Report on the meeting led by Gareth Owen.
Gareth was introduced as a poet and a former presenter of ‘Poetry Please’ on Radio 4. There was a good turn-out for the meeting and many new faces were seen. The talk he gave was fascinating and delivered in an engaging manner. The ‘web’ he described was, indeed, ‘tangled’ and the writer of this piece will not attempt to unravel it as she will fail to do it justice. Some interesting ‘markers’ in the talk are, however, highlighted below:
Gareth began by stating that Shelley was an atheist, vegetarian, for ‘free love’, and a republican. At the age of 18 he was sent down from Oxford for writing a pamphlet on ‘The Necessity of Atheism’. Gareth read out an extract from the pamphlet, and I was struck by how succinctly and eloquently Shelley put the arguments for atheism, writing in 1811.
‘If he [God] is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has, filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED? If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest.’
Shelley wrote ‘one of the first pacifist statements’, entitled ‘The Mask of Anarchy’. Apparently, Shelley also influenced Marx.
Gareth gave us a brief summary of the connections between William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary and Percy Shelley and Byron. Their lives may seem dissolute, by modern day standards, and full of drama -a ménage of adults and children who travelled extensively, two deaths by drowning, intrigues and affairs (Did Byron and Shelley prey on women?), and the death of both children. Byron lived the longest, dying at the age of 36.
Despite what may be thought or suspected of Shelley and the others, they have left a rich literary legacy.
Should we fund ‘faith’ schools?
Report on the talk by Richy Thompson, BHA Campaigns Officer.
Richy’s talk covered the history of ‘faith’ schools in England to the present day and the rise of Academies and Free Schools. He gave out an overview of different types of ‘faith’ schools, stating that 34% of state schools in England and 14% in Wales have a religious character. Key points of interest were:
- The number of ‘faith’ schools is increasing and the Church of England may be planning a large expansion of its schools
- The running costs of Voluntary aided schools are funded by the Local Authority as well as 90% of building costs. The religious group only have to pay the remaining 10%.
- All schools have to hold a daily act of collective worship, either in line with the faith of the school, or, if the school is not a ‘faith’ school, of a broadly Christian character, (though the majority of ‘non-faith’ schools do not implement the law – 80% according to OFSTED – and it is not enforced). Many schools do, however, hold ‘assemblies.’ Richy receives many complaints from parents concerned about the effects on their children, including evangelising and the telling of stories which give them nightmares.
- Academies and Free Schools, many of which are controlled by religious groups, are state-funded. Richy stated that ‘evangelical’ and ‘pseudoscientific’ groups had been approved. These schools do not need to teach the wider national curriculum or hire qualified teachers.
Richy identified ‘six myths’ which are used to defend ‘faith’ schools and he put forward arguments as to why they are untrue. He concluded by reiterating that ‘faith’ schools can be divisive and that all children should be educated together.
Change of Name: Ludlow and Marches Humanists
The name of the group is changing. Following the AGM there was an email poll in which the majority of respondents voted to change the name to Ludlow and the Marches Humanist Group. This has been shortened but still retains all of the essential elements that members in favour of this change wanted. However, the bank will need to process the name change and the British Humanist Association and National Secular Society have to be notified before the new name can be confirmed. Hopefully this will be announced in the next Newsletter this autumn.
The web site will reflect the new name in due course.
From the Chairman
Welcome to our late spring 2012 edition of the Newsletter, and the Group blog.
We are including an article by Donald Howells, who now lives in retirement in Richards Castle, having been chair of the Portsmouth Humanist Group and great contributor to their regular newsletter, which I believe was called ‘Hemlock’, which does suggest a distinctive sense of humour.
Donald talks about his wakening to the reality of evolution, helped by visits to the wonderful Natural History Museum in Kensington as a child. Similarly, I remember visits to the Natural History and Science museums in London as a child (I was born in Fareham), but this was about three decades after Donald – in the 1960s. Whether this influenced my subsequent beliefs I’ve no idea, but they are a great place to take children, and I still enjoy the odd visit as an adult.
Donald ends his article with a proviso about possible ways humanity could destroy the planet, and that reminded me to mention what I think may be a very important book I’ve just finished, called the Medea Hypothesis, by Peter Ward. Mr Ward is a planetary scientist employed by NASA and so writes with some authority, in this case about the Earth, past and future. His choice of Medea is interesting – for those who know their Greek mythology, you will probably recognise her as the wife of Jason, who infamously killed her own children, exasperated by the behaviour of her husband (not that that’s a good enough excuse).
Peter Ward deliberately sets himself against the popular Gaia hypothesis of life on Earth – which broadly assumes that the total Earth flora & fauna act as a self- regulating mechanism to produce optimum conditions for life. I’ve always personally thought this smacked of wishful thinking, but Mr Ward systematically goes through the 4 billion years of life on Earth to date and points out that several of the mass extinction events were almost certainly provoked by life itself – starting with the mass production of oxygen by the blue-green algae, and going through a couple of ‘snowball Earth’ epochs, and stagnant ocean periods. Looking forward, I was surprised to read that he thinks life on Earth only has another 100 to 500 million years to run (only, because the Sun won’t explode for another 5 billion years). The mechanism of failure he postulates is an unusual one, bearing in mind our current concerns on global warming – the loss of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which will lead to the loss of plant life, as we know it. Plate tectonics and weathering all have a part, but plant life itself will cause its own downfall, using up residual atmospheric carbon dioxide until it reaches the deadly 100 ppm minimum for trees, 10 ppm minimum for grasses – so we’ll go through a period of loss of forests, or perhaps replacement with bamboo, before the end.
The book is not all doom and gloom, though, as Peter Ward sees humanity as the living planet’s saviour – we must engineer on a grand scale to balance the atmosphere and prevent an ‘early’ demise of life as we know it here. That task will start by having to deal with the consequences of the temporary blip of increased carbon dioxide we are currently experiencing – which will lead to loss of the Greenland and, eventually, Antarctic ice sheets through global warming (almost inevitable, he believes) over the next few hundred years. As the seas rise and we lose coastal cities and rich low lying farming land, we will have to make sure that the new land opened up in Greenland and Antarctica is suitable for farming – preventing the inevitable inland lakes (formed by land depressed from the weight of ice) from becoming ‘contaminated’ by seawater. The carbon dioxide rise will only be temporary, in geological terms, and it will steadily decline over the millennia unless we also engineer stability in the atmosphere. Fascinating stuff – and I believe it could be a critical message for future generations. It is also hopeful – humanity can save the planet. That should cheer us up.
Subscriptions and Donations
Many thanks to all those who have now renewed their membership for this year and made donations. A gentle reminder to those who have yet to renew that only paid-up members of the group may vote at the AGM.
In the News
Council Prayers Decision
The council prayers controversy rumbles on with Eric Pickles claiming he will change the law and some councils saying they will act illegally. Archbishop Carey completely lost all sense of proportion in his reaction. Our chairman has had two letters published in the local press putting our point of view in much more measured terms.
The council prayers controversy rumbles on with Eric Pickles claiming he will change the law and some councils saying they will act illegally. Archbishop Carey completely lost all sense of proportion in his reaction. Our chairman has had two letters published in the local press putting our point of view in much more measured terms.
Ludlow and Marches Humanists 