I am in a minority. As an atheist who supports the aims of the National Secular Society and Humanists UK in almost every other area, including abortion, I find I am at odds with most of my fellow humanists on the issue of legalising assisted suicide and euthanasia (ASE). But there are excellent secular reasons for opposing ASE.

Assisted suicide—or, as some euphemistically call it, ‘assisted dying’—is in the news again, thanks (among other things) to the tabling of an ‘assisted dying’ bill in the Scottish Parliament and the publication in February of a Health and Social Care Committee on Assisted Dying/Assisted Suicide report. Countless legislative attempts have taken place in this and other countries to legalise ASE. Keir Starmer, who favours legalisation, may well dedicate government time to the issue, should he become Prime Minister.

First, we need to be clear about what we are discussing. Euthanasia (from the Greek ‘good death’) is where the doctor acts to end life. It can be voluntary or involuntary. Passive euthanasia is death by omission, i.e. when doctors, either of their own volition or at the request of the patient, purposefully end medical treatment, leading to death. Passive euthanasia might also include a patient refusing food and drink but still being kept comfortable by medical attendants. Such acts are legal. Assisted suicide is when the doctor provides the means but the patient takes the final action. ‘Assisted dying’, or ‘Medical assistance in death’ (MAiD), appears to be a compendium term that might or might not include some of the above. It does not bring clarity to the issue. In fact, as we shall see, it confuses people.

We should also be clear in our language—and humanists should be suspicious of a campaign that uses comforting but vague terms like ‘assisted dying’ to market its ideas. We atheists reject mythology and face facts, yet this term is used uncritically. If a doctor hands you a gun and you shoot yourself, that’s assisted suicide. If she hands you a rope and you hang yourself, that’s assisted suicide. But if she hands you poison and you ingest it knowingly and with the intention of ending your life, we are meant to believe that it is not suicide but ‘assisted dying’? It is no good substituting comforting new myths for old ones.

Moreover, the term ‘assisted dying’ does not help public understanding. In a UK poll conducted in 2021, when asked ‘What do you understand by the term “assisted dying”?’, 42% of Brits polled thought it meant ‘Giving people who are dying the right to stop life-prolonging treatment’. As noted above, this is a right that they already have. When proponents of ASE argue that the majority of Brits support the legalisation of ‘assisted dying’, it is useful to remember that much of what they support is already legal.

I am against a change in the 1961 Suicide Act, not to the rare situations where death is hastened as a byproduct of preventing suffering. Assisting a suicide should remain a crime, as should giving someone a lethal injection, even at their request. I am not against someone hastening their own death by refusing medical treatment or refusing food and water, which is already legal, because individual freedom from unwanted physical intervention trumps our need as a society to save lives.

There are four basic reasons why humanists should join with religious folk in opposing legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia. First, it is not necessary, being built on an irrational fear of a bad death. Second, though many who support the campaign do so out of compassion, utility is the real force behind campaigns; some citizens—particularly those who are disabled or elderly—are inevitably valued less than others. Third, where it has been legalized, real harms have occurred. Fourth, one need not believe in God to conclude that we, as a society, should strive to prevent rather than assist or encourage suicide. Let’s take these arguments in turn.

A fear-mongering campaign

The campaign to legalise assisted dying often plays on people’s fears of how they and their relatives might die. Indeed, many of us have witnessed difficult deaths. But organizations like Dignity in Dying play on our fears. In 2019, the CEO of Hospice UK, a charity that works with those experiencing death, dying, and bereavement, publicly chastised Dignity in Dying for the ‘sensationalist and inaccurate’ portrayal of death in a video to accompany its ‘The Inescapable Truth’ campaign.

Dignity in Dying removed that particular video but it continues to claim that 17 people will suffer as they die every day. What it does not say is that that number is about 1% of an estimated 1,700 people who die every day in the UK. Moreover, ASE will not help those at the end of life. In the Netherlands, where it is legal, up to 42.8% of people experience pain and/or restlessness in their last hours of life. And tellingly, in Oregon, one of the supposed success stories of ‘assisted dying’ legalisation, pain does not feature in the top reasons why people opt for death. This is about existential, not physical, pain.

The (relative) value of lives

ASE’s progressive image is undeserved. Euthanasia was but a branch of the campaign for eugenics when it was first raised as an idea. As the German zoologist Robby Kossmann put it in 1880, ‘the human state . . . must reach an even higher state of perfection, if the possibility exists in it, through the destruction of the less well-endowed individual . . .’

In 1920 Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche published a pamphlet entitled Permitting the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Living. They argued that ‘there are indeed human lives in whose continued preservation all rational interest has permanently vanished’. The German psychiatrist and neurologist Robert Gaupp targeted mentally disabled people when he said that it was time to remove ‘the burden of the parasites’. In this context, we need to remember that Canada today is considering extending euthanasia to those who suffer only from mental illness.

The utility reasoning also exists today, though proponents of ASE are shyer about mentioning it than their predecessors. A Canadian government report entitled Cost Estimate for Bill C-7 “Medical Assistance in Dying” sees savings of up to $53,264 per patient with ASE. Are we meant to believe it when the report’s authors demur that ‘this report should in no way be interpreted as suggesting that MAID be used to reduce health care costs’?

Let’s look at the evidence from countries where ASE is legal. Though every country where it is legal justified changing the law with reference to cases involving the terminally ill, the use of death as a solution for medical and social problems followed. Thirty-nine people suffering only from autism and/or other intellectual disabilities—nearly half of them under fifty—have been euthanized in the Netherlands, where assisted suicide and euthanasia have been legal since 2002. One was an autistic man in his twenties. His record said that he was a victim of regular bullying, that he ‘had felt unhappy since childhood’, and that he ‘longed for social contacts but was unable to connect with others’. On this basis, and at his request, his doctor euthanized him.

Across the Low Countries (Belgium legalized euthanasia in 2003), prisoners, children, those suffering only from dementia, and young people with clinical depression have been euthanized.

Given that, in one large study, over half of the patients predicted to die within a particular period of time lived longer than expected, it is likely that thousands of people who have died from euthanasia have had their lives cut short. Those who, like me, oppose capital punishment worry that innocent people will be killed by an imperfect system, yet few seem to use the same reasoning when it comes to ASE.

Should we prevent suicides?

Perhaps the biggest harms, however, are intangible. There are signs, particularly with the COVID-19 crisis, that some no longer adhere to the principle that human lives—whether rich or poor, black or white, young or old—are equally worthy of protection. We view suicide as generally negative because we value our fellow human beings, even if they do not value themselves. Not all suicides are wrong, but it should be our basic position that we prevent suicides when we can.

As the humanist sociologist and pioneering author of Suicide, Emile Durkheim, remarked over a hundred years ago:

‘. . . [S]uicide must be classed among immoral acts; for in its main principle it denies [the] religion of humanity. . . . No matter that the guilty person and the victim are one and the same . . . If violent destruction of a human life revolts us as a sacrilege, in itself and generally, we cannot tolerate it under any circumstances.’

Of course, many who favour legalised ASE support suicide prevention. But how do they differentiate the two? As Not Dead Yet, an organization of disabled people opposed to ASE, points out, it is assumed that those with fewer years left and those with disabilities lead less valuable lives and, thus, are directed towards ASE—while others are strenuously prevented from killing themselves. Legalising assisted dying would be a huge step in the wrong direction. It will lead to some people’s lives—on physical, or sometimes mental grounds—being deemed as not worth living. That would be a dire and dangerous situation. There is wisdom yet in the famous old Christian precept, Thou shalt not kill.

More on the assisted dying debate

National Secular Society podcast on the 2021 Assisted Dying Bill: Emma Park interviews A.C. Grayling and Molly Meacher, Baroness Meacher

Bishops in the Lords: Why are they still there? by Emma Park

Assisted dying: will the final freedom be legalised in France? by Jean-Luc Romero-Michel

The post Think again: the humanist case against assisted suicide and euthanasia appeared first on The Freethinker.

One of the curious facts of history, especially since the Second World War, is how (to the presumptive embarrass­ment of Fundamentalists) “houses divided” (several nation states and famous families) have managed not only to stand up, but often do so with considerable success. For this reason I have chosen the above title for an article on the structure of the Humanist/Rationalist¹ movement in Britain. Before going any further I must apologise firstly for excluding the Irish movement from this essay, for reasons of simplicity (Ireland is a “special case”); and secondly for the long list of footnotes, which I have ap­pended separately to avoid too many digressions in the main text.

Many newcomers to this movement are at first be­wildered by the mystical trinity of abbreviations — BHA, NSS and RPA — into which it is divided at the national level. He or she eventually finds out that these are the names of the main national organisations, the British Humanist Association,² National Secular Society³ and Rationalist Press Association Ltd.⁴ Later on, the newcomer will come across another London-based body of quasi-national im­portance, South Place Ethical Society,⁵ known as SPES or “South Place” (or sometimes “Conway Hall”). Having worked out what all the abbreviations stand for, one can sympathise with the new member for asking, “Why so many organisations for the same thing? Why on earth don’t they all unite or something?”

I must confess that, in my own case, I was never much bothered by this phenomenon of division when I first joined the movement (around 1963), perhaps be­cause I have a sense of history and suspected that the various organisations had arisen as a result of different circumstances in the past; but the fact still remains that many new members do wonder why there is not now just one national Humanist society, and not only newcomers: in the last few years a number of leading Humanists have advocated a unified movement at the national level. For this reason, in particular, I venture into print in order to represent the opposing case; I contend that the present arrangement serves the cause of Rationalism as a whole (at least potentially) far better than a single monolithic structure.

To begin with, unity is not practicable for legal reasons as the law now stands. A few years ago the RPA had to break off its affaire du coeur with the old Ethical Union as the RPA had become an educational charity (which precluded it from political campaigning) and a court ruled that the Ethical Union’s aims and objects were not charit­able in law. The two bodies had jointly “floated” the British Humanist Association (as the word “Humanism” had suddenly come into vogue in the late 1950s) with a view to eventual merger if the “trial marriage” had worked out. When the RPA was forced to retire from the BHA the Ethical Union changed its name to British Humanist Association and decided, quite rightly in my view, to re­main non-charitable in order to campaign for law reforms. The National Secular Society has always been a non-charitable reform society, and therefore it, too, could not merge with the RPA.⁶

Secondly, a single Humanist national organisation simply would not work out: It would tend to be unstable, and once its leading members started quarrelling — as being human they would do — there would always be the tempta­tion for a dissatisfied faction to secede and set up a society of its own; “back to square one” again! Humanism is essentially a compromise term for a wide spectrum of ideas, including Freethought, Rationalism, Secularism,⁷ Ethicism (even Deism perhaps); it is not a monolithic, detailed ideology and for this reason people of different tem­peraments and outlook have their own interpretations of what Humanism means to them. The three national bodies, together with South Place, at present cater for nearly all tastes within the “spectrum”, and for those of us whose philosophy is more elastic membership is available in all four bodies, if we can afford it.

The existence of several national bodies provides an additional safeguard for the movement at large; it ensures that, in the event of one of the organisations “going off the rails” and making a fool of itself in the eyes of the general public, the movement as a whole can (at least partially) be redeemed by the other bodies publicly dis­senting from the actions of the first. This argument also holds good if one of the societies falls into the hands of incompetent officers or a lazy committee. Another advant­age lies in the field of political campaigning and law re­form, where sometimes two voices raised in unison sound more impressive than one, as in the case of Abortion Law reform, supported by both the BHA and NSS.⁸

Excluding for the moment South Place and the RPA, it is still feasible to suggest that the BHA and NSS, both non-charitable, politically minded bodies should merge. In fact this has already been suggested (by the BHA) and turned down (by the NSS Executive Committee). Whilst a measure of co-operation between these two organisations is essen­tial, for instance in running the Humanist Parliamentary Group, I would submit that there are a number of ob­stacles — some trivial, others more important — to their complete union.

The obvious problem is that of name: the NSS is by far the oldest⁹ of the two organisations and has a great pride in its history, and would be reluctant to abandon its title. The BHA, on the other hand, would be anxious to keep the word “Humanist” in the name of a combined body and could advance the claim of having the larger member­ship for this.¹⁰

Before dealing with the other problems I think it is necessary to examine them in the light of a number of rumours (and veiled personality disputes) that have crept in over the years. For an ideology traditionally devoted to debunking myths the Humanist movement has acquired a surprising number of its own, and I would like, if I can, to try to “lay” a few of them.

The first myth I would like to mention is one that I used to hear about five years ago from vociferous, but ill-informed, members of certain NSS branches. It was to the effect that the societies outside the NSS orbit were full of half-hearted agnostic quislings who did not have the cour­age to stand up and be counted or practice militancy. If anyone still believes this I would remind them that in the past (before the BHA existed) South Place, and particularly its leaders, never failed to speak up when it came to “the crunch”, e.g. Bradlaugh’s Parliamentary struggle; G. W. Foote’s imprisonment; discrimination against Annie Besant; slavery and the Corn Laws; not to mention RI in schools!¹¹ It is easy to poke fun at parodies of baptism, such as the SPES “Naming Ceremony of Welcome”,¹² but it should not be forgotten that under the influence of Annie Besant in the 1870s the NSS held similar “naming cere­monies” until Bradlaugh put a stop to them; and if the singing of Ethical Hymns (now discontinued) sounds ludicrous to the twentieth-century Freethinker, the Secular Songs that once filled the Hall of Science would be just as excruciating!¹³ South Place is still, of course, famous for its Sunday concerts.

The other myth is characteristic of new, often BHA-oriented members of, particularly, local Humanist groups; I have also heard it from people who should know better: the story is put around that the NSS is a pack of bigoted atheistical “Paisleyites” dedicated solely to attacking or­ganised religions, “bishop baiting”, or episcopophagy,¹⁴to use Sir Alfred Ayer’s colourful term. The simple fact is, of course, that the NSS has campaigned ever since its in­ception, on a whole host of issues, particularly birth control, Irish and Indian home rule, woman suffrage, re­form of the Sunday Observance laws, freedom of the press and against dictatorship.¹⁵ Anyone who actually reads some of the old NSS religious debates will find them fairly free of what the average Humanist understands by bigotry, and whilst I cannot say that I have never encountered bigotry in the NSS I have come across far more outside in the form of Secularist-baiting.¹⁶ I very much hope that since the NSS has wound up its branches and encouraged their members to join local Humanist groups the old ani­mosities will die down; this seems to be the case as about 75 per cent¹⁷ of the active local groups are now affiliated to the NSS as well as the BHA.

Another obstacle to NSS-BHA unification is a recent change in policy being undertaken by the BHA. The latter has decided to concentrate its policies and activity upon the advocacy of the concept known as the Open Society, and at the same time to play down as far as possible former disagreements with the churches — the “sour old tunes” of “old-fashioned Rationalists”. Let me say quite clearly that I am entirely in favour of the Open Society¹⁸ concept as an improvement upon the present situation or the Dutch “confessional” system, but I question the bury­ing of the “old tunes”. I am no prophet of the future, and for all I know the BHA may acquire a booming member­ship by attracting people to its ranks who have in the past been put off by its former attitude to religion. On the other hand, by making its more or less sole aim the Open Society the BHA may well find itself to a very large extent duplicating the aims and policies of the National Council for Civil Liberties, so splitting the “mar­ket” for both bodies, and itself breathing very thin air as far as members go. We must wait and see.

In any event, if the BHA does go ahead with its change of policy, the NSS will be left “holding the baby” as far as anti-ecclesiastical campaigning is concerned. There is, of course, a possibility that the Society could as a result of this become obsessively anti-clerical, but from my know­ledge of the officers and general membership I feel pretty certain that the NSS will continue to carry out a balanced programme of activities without going to either extreme. Christianity may be dying, but its political and financial power in this country is still a force to be reckoned with; and I feel that those of us who believe that religion is an illusion have a moral and emotional duty to say so, if only in homage to the millions who have suffered, directly or indirectly, because a lie was foisted upon Europe two thousand years ago.

Speaking for myself, I am a shameless “old fashioned Rationalist”. I believe it was Marx who said that “nothing makes sense apart from its history”, and I think this certainly holds true of Rationalism (of which Marx had rather a dim view). I do not propose that we should live entirely in the past, dwelling endlessly upon the “dear dead days beyond recall”, but the past, if good, can serve as an in­spiration to future action, and never did any movement have less cause to be ashamed of its heritage. To us has been passed the mantle (or iconoclast’s hammer!) of Paine, Carlile, Conway and Mill; Bradlaugh, Garibaldi, Robertson, and Ferrer; McCabe, Bruno, Bertrand Russell and many others — let us wear it with pride! To me the “old tunes” are the Rationalist’s Marseillaise, but let us offer the hand of co-operation and friendship (so long as it is reciprocated) to those who find them “sour”, even if we pity them their tone-deafness!

. . .  How sour sweet music is

When time is broke and no proportion kept!

So it is in the music of men’s lives! ¹⁹

1    I use the terms “Humanist” and “Rationalist” more or less as synonyms here. Like Bertrand Russell, I regret the latter’s pass­ing out of fashion.

2   BHA, 13 Prince of Wales Terrace, London, W8.

3   NSS, 103 Borough High Street, London, SE1.

4   RPA, 88 Islington High Street, London, Nl.

5   SPES, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL.

6   The RPA now provides a book service for its members, many of them overseas; it also holds annual conferences and is the wealthiest of the national bodies.

7   I use the term Secularism here as it is applied to the NSS; it should be distinguished from so-called Neo-secularism, the ephemeral brainchild of W. S. Ross (1844 – 1906, “Saladin”), a “respectable” agnostic with a grudge against Bradlaugh, the NSS, and contraception. This may explain why NSS members tend to speak of themselves as “Freethinkers” rather than “Secularists”.

8   Very few members of either body opposed abortion law reform; exceptions were Baroness Wootton and Leo Abse MP (who resigned from the BHA over this issue). Many of the active reformers were also Humanists.

9   Founded 1866, by Charles Bradlaugh.

10 The Executive Committee has shown a virginal modesty about revealing the NSS membership figures; however, I am reasonably certain that the BHA has the larger membership.

11 See Ratcliffe, S. K., 1955. The Story of South Place (London) or any biography of Moncure Conway or William J. Fox.

12 Harry Knight (former SPES General Secretary) tells me that this practice is now virtually redundant.

13 For some people even South Place was not ritualistic enough at one time; Stanton Coit left it to form his own Ethical Church,  now no longer in existence.

14 Literally, “bishop-eating”. Ayer has rarely missed a public opportunity of embarrassing the NSS.

15 See Tribe, D. H., 1967. 100 Years of Freethought (London).

16 The persistence over the years, and in the face of all evidence, of anti-NSS prejudice is quite remarkable. Soon after joining a local group a few years ago I attended a social evening at which it was mentioned that I was an NSS Committee member; a young lady sitting next to me was quite horrified that someone so apparently normal could be even vaguely associated with “that lot”. Last year the lady in question joined the NSS! Free­thinker readers will remember David Tribe’s recent review of Essex Forum No. 1 in which he claimed that the editorial had slighted the NSS. The editor replied to the effect that his re­marks were directed only to certain individuals in local Essex groups who were “putting off” potential new members. The editorial was so worded as to be capable of this interpretation, but it seems extraordinary to me to commence a “prestige” magazine of this type by “washing one’s dirty linen in public” — hardly a good advertising technique!

17 Fide William McIlroy, General Secretary, NSS.

18 The term Open Society is recent (1945, see Popper, K. R. [4th edn., 1962] The Open Society and its Enemies, 2 vols. London) but the ideas it embodies go back at least to the Chartists and Victorian radicals, including the Freethinkers.

19 Shakespeare, W. King Richard II, Act 5.

See also:

The Freethinker on the British Humanist Association, 1967

‘Possessed by Not-Quite-Holy-Spirit’

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The post From the archive: ‘A House Divided’ appeared first on The Freethinker.

Humanists contributed immeasurably to ethical debates in Britain in the mid-twentieth century. Relatively small in number, yet often vocal and articulate, the humanists made their voices heard in a land where moral politics remained dominated by Christianity. There is much to be said about the rise and fall and rise again of one of the movement’s major organisations, Humanists UK, which emerged from the soup of 19^th century counterculture to be constituted as the Union of Ethical Societies in 1898.

But the focus here is upon some of the thinkers and activists whose humanist views informed and contributed to progressive political campaigning in Britain from the 1940s to the 1960s. Most of these people were familiar figures in British humanist and secularist organisations, but some spent most of their time in campaigning for their particular ethical causes. A brief introduction to the activities and concerns of a selection of these people can serve to illustrate the reach of humanist ideas, as well as how these ideas were able with varying degrees of success to influence social policy, moral sensibilities, and even international law.

Sexualities  

A concern with the politics of sexual morality has been a staple of the humanist movement since the 19^th century, with humanists and rationalists frequently locked in combat with religious conservatives. Humanists contributed immeasurably to the struggle to reform laws and attitudes surrounding sex in the 1950s and 1960s, making the medical and legal case for liberalism in sexual culture and in the process providing a younger generation with ammunition to craft social change.

Humanist intellectuals were vocal in support of gay law reform from its earliest beginnings. They provided some of the least equivocal evidence to the Wolfenden Committee in 1954, generally favouring decriminalisation over the age of eighteen and the social acceptance of gay men. Humanists including the philosopher A.J Ayer, the author E.M Forster, the archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes (wife of playwright J.B. Priestley) and the sociologist Barbara Wootton, were vocal in their support of the Homosexual Law Reform Society upon its foundation in 1958. By contrast, only a handful of liberal clergy joined and they often expressed reservations.

One of the most intriguing personalities in the liberal intellectual vanguard of the fifties was the Ulster Unionist MP, Harford Montgomery Hyde, who repeatedly spoke in favour of reform in the House of Commons, and for his efforts was deselected by his local party. Hyde, whose political career in an establishment political party with a socially conservative electorate required him to remain discreet about his religious views, described himself in his autobiography as having been both a humanist and a rationalist since the 1920s. Although himself heterosexual, Hyde was a staunch ally to the gay movement and in 1968 published one of the first histories of homosexuality written from a sympathetic perspective.

Humanists were active, too, in early sorties against the oppressive moral codes which surrounded heterosexuality prior to the liberalisations of the later 1960s. Eustace Chesser was a humanist and progressive as well as a psychiatrist and researcher who penned a stream of popular advice manuals on aspects of sexualities from the 1940s onwards, along with works on medical sociology. In 1959, Getting Married, a booklet which Chesser published witn the British Medical Association, resulted in a wave of reactionary opposition. The pamphlet, which suggested that pre- and non-marital sex should be the result of individual choices, was withdrawn and a television appearance by Chesser blocked. Undeterred, Chesser then penned a polemical defence of his arguments which aimed to demolish the ‘outmoded’ theological prohibition of sex before marriage.

Nuclear disarmament

One of the most strenuous contributions of humanist intellectuals to the politics of morality in post-war Britain was, unfortunately, the least successful. The case for unilateral nuclear disarmament was, in my view, morally unanswerable, yet advancing it relied on attempts to influence transnational politics which would in turn prove futile in the face of the Cold War. A network of elite scientists, including the humanist Jacob Bronowski (who had been one of those dispatched by the British government to assess the impact of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and the nuclear scientist Joseph Rotblat, mobilised in the mid-1950s to oppose nuclear weapons. The majority of signatories of the 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto – which opposed nuclear weapons – were humanists. Humanists were well-represented too amongst the membership of the founding executive committee of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in 1957. The CND is perhaps most closely associated with the philosopher Bertrand Russell, a luminary who was widely admired by the public for his unshakable moral convictions and whose bestselling 1927 exposition, Why I am not a Christian, remains in print today.

Barbara Smoker, the campaigner, author and former president of the National Secular Society, formed a link between CND and the leadership of humanist and secularist organisations. She had joined Russell’s short-lived ‘Committee of 100’, a non-violent group campaigning against nuclear weapons, which deployed direct action tactics such as mass demonstrations at locations including American air bases. The idea of the ‘Committee’ was that there would be safety in numbers, as the government would be unwilling to convict so many people at once. Russell’s scheme failed, observed Smoker, when the authorities simply arrested random people, demonstrating that the government was less concerned with justice than he had imagined. When Russell was convicted for his protest activities and obliged to spend two weeks behind bars at the age of ninety, Smoker was amongst his supporters in court. She was also closely involved in the clandestine ‘Spies for Peace’ movement, which worked to reveal and publicise egregious plans by the British state to shelter their elites in secret bunkers while the rest of the population were to be abandoned to perish in the nuclear holocaust.

Human rights

Another committed humanist was H.G Wells, who in 1931 inspired the foundation of the Progressive League, an organisation which aimed to bring together campaigners and thinkers dedicated to social and ethical reform. Motivated by the catastrophic failure of the League of Nations, by the early 1940s, Wells was very concerned with the development of the concept of universal human rights, with their implicit shift from the rights of nations to those of individuals. His efforts stimulated the formation of the Sankey Commission, chaired by the lawyer John Sankey. This resulted in the Sankey Declaration of the Rights of Man (1940), which was issued for a wide readership in paperback and serialised in the Daily Herald by the journalist and humanist campaigner, Peter Richie Calder, under the succinct title: ‘What are We Fighting For?’

Wells’s and Sankey’s endeavours in turn influenced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) – particularly in terms of vocabulary. Wells appears to have been the originator of the phrase ‘freedom of thought, conscience and religion’ which was inherited by the 1950 European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), which carried the underlying idea of the plurality of secular and religious ideologies, the freedom of worship, and the freedom to change and not to have a religion. Noteworthy, too, was the absence in these documents of the notion of enforcing a state religion and the absence of mention of god or gods. The latter was a source of controversy, and religious interests at the 1948 Congress of Europe insisted on the addition of a reference to ‘common heritage of Christian and other spiritual and cultural values.’

The Sankey Commission’s eleven clauses created paradigms for the thirty articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the eighteen articles of the European Convention, and thence to the development of further international agreements. The contribution of humanists to the creation of the human rights movement requires further research, but it seems clear that the chain of innovation can be traced back to the visionary thinking of H.G Wells, who, as bombs rained down on Britain in the early 1940s, foresaw that the concept of the equality of rights for every human being might be the foundation upon which international co-operation between nations could rest.

These individuals were but a few of the leading figures in Britain who campaigned for real-life change to the ethical basis of national and international laws in the mid-twentieth century, leading the charge for progressive reform. Our book explores their efforts and shared humanist outlook.

The Humanist Movement in Modern Britain: A History of Ethicists, Rationalists and Humanists, by Callum Brown, David Nash and Charlie Lynch (2023), is published by Bloomsbury.

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The post Humanists and ethical reform in mid-twentieth-century Britain appeared first on The Freethinker.

I was recently interviewed by Christoph De Spiegeleer via Zoom about the history of freethought and open enquiry and their future, both in Britain and around the world. De Spiegeleer is a Research Fellow at Liberas, a heritage and research centre for the history of the liberal movement and the freedom ideal in Ghent, Belgium.

The full audio recording of the interview (in English), with a written introduction (in Dutch), is available on Liberas’ website; it can also be accessed on YouTube. Below is an edited and abridged version.

We discuss the relationship between freethought, secularism and humanism, and their namesake organisations in the UK; why secularist issues like disestablishment still matter; how the religious mentality can recur in many guises; and why satire and irreverence are vital to the open society.

~ Emma Park, Editor

Christoph De Spiegeleer:   How does one become the editor of the Freethinker today?

Emma Park:      There are two main magazines of freethought in Britain. One is the Freethinker and the other is the New Humanist. The NH was founded not long after us (in 1885). The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by G. W. Foote, who would go on to be the second president of the National Secular Society. From that perspective, it has long been closely associated with the NSS. But it has always been technically independent because it is published and mainly funded by an independent company, Secular Society Limited. It went online in 2014, and that was simply because it was too expensive to stay in print.

I am now trying to find ways of making the Freethinker relevant in the third decade of the 21st century. It is important for the magazine to be independent, both of the National Secular Society and Humanists UK, but also to be a voice for secularists, humanists and those of a liberal, non-religious disposition in general. It is necessary to rethink what freethought means, why it matters, and what the challenges are. Even in the 19th century, religion was only one issue among many of relevance to freethinkers; today that is still true.

De Spiegeleer:     How do you see the relationship between the Freethinker today and explicit atheism and republicanism?

Park:    The Freethinker is a freethought magazine. We are more or less atheist and republican. ‘Freethought’ means the stance whereby you question everything. You start from a position of no knowledge and you use the tools you have, of reason, observation, logic, reflection, critical enquiry and the scientific method, where appropriate. The freethinking attitude is naturally to question religious superstition and authority, as well as all other forms of dogma and authoritarianism.

The Freethinker is atheist or strongly agnostic in that its starting point is that there is no evidence for any god. Is it republican? Certainly as a matter of principle. It questions the authority of the ancient, hierarchical system of the monarchy, which seems totally irrelevant to today’s world and out of keeping with the idea that all people are equal.

On the other hand, the question of what to do about the monarchy touches on the distinction between cultural liberalism and political liberalism.

You can have the culture and the principle that having a monarchy is a bad idea, but then the question is how to actually abolish it. When is the right time to do so? What system should it be replaced by? That is a political issue. As a magazine, we do not take a stance on the specific practicalities of how this should be done, because it is an incredibly complicated question – but we would certainly urge contributors to debate it. We have also published a cartoon satirising the current state of Britain’s monarchy.

De Spiegeleer:     From the beginning, G.W. Foote used satire and cartoons to ridicule Christian beliefs. He actively courted outrage. Is this still an important legacy for the Freethinker today? Do you still find it important to use cartoons and satire to criticise religious beliefs?

Park:    Satire and and cartoons are still important. Irreverence matters, because in order to have truly free thought and speech, you have to be able to laugh. To laugh at authority is a way of questioning it. If you cannot laugh at authority, it means you accept it.

What form that satire and those cartoons should take changes with the times. Foote conceived the Freethinker from the perspective of the working class man who was criticising the hierarchy of state religion, which was imposed from the top down on people like him. For instance, there is one, called ‘Moses Getting a Back View’, which is a sketch of Moses looking at the seat of God’s trousers. Today the humour in this cartoon would probably seem crude, especially since these cartoons of Old Testament characters often seem to have an antisemitic edge in the way they depict Jewish people, or at least could be interpreted that way.

Nevertheless, I think there is still a place for satirical cartoons. The magazine that has arguably done the most to demonstrate this in Europe is Charlie Hebdo. It has an important role to play in the broader European culture of satire and the criticism of religion.

We cannot do what Charlie Hebdo does because we do not have the resources. Our approach is also a little gentler and less caustic. However, as far as circumstances allow, we do commission satirical and irreverent cartoons. Our main cartoonist at present is Paul Fitzgerald, aka Polyp, who describes himself as a ‘radical cartoonist’. He has drawn cartoons for us about religion, Rushdie, the culture wars and more. We also recently commissioned the Jesus and Mo cartoonist to create a special edition of his cartoon strip on the theme of civil liberties.

Again, it is a question of taste, and of putting the cartoon into a context which is relevant. I would  not want to use cartoons to gratuitously attack religions or to perpetuate stereotypes or generalisations, but rather to make a specific point. 

De Spiegeleer:     Is the disestablishment of the Church of England still a major issue for the secularist movement in the UK? And what is the role and the position of the Freethinker in this regard?

Park:    Yes, disestablishment is still very important.

Historically, the term ‘freethinker’ comes into the English language in about the late 17th or early 18th century (see the Wikipedia entry for an overview). At that time it was used for people who were not necessarily atheists – because that was still very much a term of abuse and incrimination – but people who questioned the established church. There is also a long tradition of independent artisans in parts of the UK, for instance in Northampton (later Bradlaugh’s constituency), who valued self-reliance above state interference.

In the English Civil War of the 1640s, all sorts of radical sects arose who were not necessarily atheists, but who questioned the authority of the Anglican church – the Ranters, the Diggers, the Levellers, and so on. You can see a rebellious, even iconoclastic criticism of religion developing during this period, all the way up to someone like Thomas Paine in the late 18th and early 19th century, whose Age of Reason attacked what he called ‘priestcraft’. Paine was a deist, not an atheist, but he certainly opposed established religion.

Resistance to established religion is a resistance to a religious and political hierarchy. It is resistance to being told what to think. It is part of the idea of liberty, which has a very strong tradition in Britain. One of the key things the Freethinker aims to do is to champion liberty, because I think we in Britain have lost sight of its importance in the last six or seven years. ‘Liberty’ has become a dirty word, contaminated on the political left and right by all the things that have happened. But I think it really, really matters.

To return to disestablishment, as long as you have an established church, you have the state saying that religion is not only a part of the national identity, it is a part of the constitution. The monarch is the head of the Church as well as the head of state. It is very strange to imply that God is somehow involved in the monarchy – or that bishops should be in the House of Lords. The only other country in the world that has clerics in its legislature is Iran.

Disestablishment is essential to secularism, to freethought, to having a society in which people really are able to think and act for themselves without being pushed in a certain direction, as tends to happen when religious organisations are given political power.

According to the 2021 census, less than half the population are Christian, and 37.2 per cent have no religion. Yet religion is part of the fabric of public life in Britain in a way which clashes with the lack of religion in the lives of many of its inhabitants.

De Spiegeleer:     I am wondering whether there is a difference between an organisation like the National Secular Society and Humanists UK when approaching the role of religion in British public life. Do you see a difference between, say, a humanist, a secularist and a freethinker when they approach this important issue or not?

Park:    Yes, there is a difference. I should say, in the interests of transparency, that I am at the moment a member of the National Secular Society, but not of Humanists UK. And having done podcasts for the NSS, I know a little more about it than HUK. But I should stress that I cannot speak for either organisation – the Freethinker is independent of both. That is deliberate, because we say things that neither the NSS nor HUK would necessarily want to say or would agree with.

The NSS is a political campaign group that aims to challenge religious privilege. Its aims are narrow, and it is much smaller than HUK. But their histories are intertwined.

HUK was founded in 1896, not long after the NSS (1866), as the Union of Ethical Societies. HUK today covers a lot of the same ground as the NSS, even if they view secularism as a sub-category of humanism. I recently interviewed Andrew Copson, who is the president of Humanists International and the Chief Executive of Humanists UK. From what I gather, they are trying to define humanism, to foster it as a cultural and political organisation, and to provide the services I referred to (as a substitute for religious services of a similar kind). They are a charity, unlike the NSS, because they have broader aims, and they publish books about humanism as well. They also provide the secretariat to the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group.

I know many people who are supporters both of HUK and the NSS. The organisations have had their differences, which is why they do not cooperate, unfortunately, as much as they ought to on these issues.

I would probably consider myself a secular humanist if I knew what humanism was. Humanism is a difficult term and it means different things to different people. HUK have put together a Humanist Heritage website in which they include many people from the past who would not necessarily have described themselves as humanist. In this sense, ‘humanist’ is used as a heuristic label. But HUK also uses ‘humanist’ of their own organisation, which has very specific political and campaign ends, as well as a distinctive ethical approach. I question whether these different uses of ‘humanist’ are always consistent.

The appeal of freethought is that it is not a philosophy, but just a starting point. Questions of how to live, how to behave, what to think, what one’s culture should be, are difficult and complicated, and, I would argue, cannot easily be answered by one ethical system.

Freethought is a critical stance. It is individualist, not collectivist: it treats the individual as an end, not a means. In many religious and political ideologies, the individual is treated to some extent as a means to a greater end – communism is an extreme example. In my view, the ability to experience life, culture and the world, and to flourish, is something that can only be done at the level of the individual human being. This approach draws on a humanistic tradition which goes back to the classical world via the Renaissance.

The Freethinker aims to encourage a culture in which people can talk rationally about difficult issues. Speaking and thinking freely are acquired skills, like speaking a language – use it or lose it. Today, the Freethinker aims to step back from the political-cultural polarisation of the ‘culture wars’ and to criticise everything. As a result, we have ended up exploring controversial political topics from perspectives which would doubtless be unpopular to one side or other, or both. But we are trying to foster a liberal culture, in which people can discuss controversial issues rationally and without fear, anger or prejudice.

De Spiegeleer:     What are the guidelines that everybody should respect in order to have a civilised culture of free speech in the Freethinker?

Park:    This question is fundamentally about deciding what you as a magazine mean by free speech: what you want your culture to be, what you would and would not permit. The approach we adopt is to permit more or less everything to be discussed that can be discussed within the limits of English law and within the spirit of the Freethinker. We allow the offensive, but draw the line at the grossly offensive – which is a matter of judgement and taste in the circumstances. But this is something that we have to keep thinking about because things can change so rapidly. With the aid of the Secular Society board, I have put together Community Guidelines for comments: these also apply to our contributors.

Speech is not just about what you say, but how you say it. The Freethinker encourages clarity, objectivity, logic and, as far as possible, intellectual honesty. In our guidelines for contributors, we also discourage punditry, pontification and rants.

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The post Freethought in the 21st century appeared first on The Freethinker.

The National Secular Society and the British Humanist Association (now Humanists UK), and associated organisations and individuals, have had a mixed relationship over the last century and a quarter. Some people have been members or supporters of both; others have taken sides. The Freethinker and the New Humanist are both independent publications, but historically, the former tended to be more closely associated with the NSS, the latter with the BHA. This was so even though the Freethinker usually described itself as a ‘secular humanist’ publication – or, under David Collis’ nine-month editorship, a paper of ‘freethought and humanism’.

The image of the week is of the first editorial by Collis when he was the incoming editor of the Freethinker, published on 20th January 1967. Collis first congratulates the NSS, somewhat reservedly, on its first hundred years (it was founded in 1866). He then makes the point that many members of the British Humanist Association, which had been formed from the Ethical Union (formerly the Union of Ethical Societies) and the Rationalist Press Association in 1963, were also members of the NSS and the RPA. Collis also clearly considered himself a humanist. However, as he acidly points out, the RPA had subsequently withdrawn ‘from this companionate marriage’ with the BHA.

One of the gripes which certain secularists and freethinkers had long had with the ethical organisations and their humanist successors was to do with that ancient British bugbear, class. Although the BHA had shown much promise, it had quickly become, in Collis’ view, ‘heavily loaded with well-educated middle-class people … narcissistically Intellectual Humanists … disinclined to fraternise with working-class people.’

Whether this says more about the BHA or Collis is another matter. However, it would probably be fair to say that, in the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century, despite their overlap, the NSS and the Freethinker tended to address a working-class audience, while the ethical and humanist organisations and those associated with them tended to be more ‘establishment’, or at least respectable.

To the outsider, this historic rivalry might seem reminiscent of the conflict between the People’s Front of Judaea and the Judaean People’s Front. We make no comment about the relationship between the organisations or their political inclinations today – except to note that while there may be strength in numbers, there is also virtue in differences of opinion.

In closing, Collis emphasised the editorial independence of the Freethinker, even from the National Secular Society. As he put it, ‘I shall gladly consider articles on Freethought and Humanism from anyone, Roman Catholic Cardinals and Fundamentalist Hot-Gospellers included.’

We second this approach. Cardinals and Hot-Gospellers, humanists and secularists, progressives, conservatives and even liberal centrists, are all free to apply. We ask merely that they all abide by the same standard of clear argumentation on the basis of reason, logic and evidence.

The post Image of the week: the Freethinker on the British Humanist Association, 1967 appeared first on The Freethinker.

Nearly three years ago, Humanists UK launched the Humanist Heritage project, with the aim of commemorating its 125th anniversary in 2021. The Union of Ethical Societies, as Humanists UK was first known, was formed in 1896 by a federation of societies whose culture was rooted in living well without reference to supernatural ideas. These societies, part of what became known as the ‘Ethical movement’, had first appeared in England in the 1880s. They emerged from a melting pot of 19th-century freethought which itself was born from an intellectual tradition spanning over two millennia.

The ethical societies had their roots in the American Ethical Culture movement, which had begun in 1876 with Felix Adler’s New York Society for Ethical Culture. This society’s ethos had been encapsulated by its motto of ‘deed not creed’: an active morality which did not require its members to subscribe to any theological doctrine. In America, this first New York Society, along with the wider Ethical Culture movement that it spawned, still exist, and are linked to but distinct from the American Humanist Association and other atheist bodies. In the UK, however, the Ethical movement became the humanist one, and the sibilant ‘ethicists’ encompassed by the term ‘humanists’. The Union of Ethical Societies became the Ethical Union (1920), the British Humanist Association (1967), and has been known since 2017 as Humanists UK.

The word ‘freethinker’ emerged in the 1700s to describe someone who, quite simply, thought for themselves. The freethinker accepted nothing, particularly religious dogma, on authority, or perhaps was one of those ‘Atheists, Libertines, Despisers of Religion and Revelation,’ as Jonathan Swift put it in 1708. As his words suggest, the term ‘atheist’ had by then been around for close to two centuries, and was used to define someone who did not believe in a god, or who lived as though they owed no obligation to one.

The concept of the ‘secular’, as opposed to the sacred, had also long existed by the time George Jacob Holyoake coined the word ‘secularist’ in 1851. In so doing, he associated the term with action and a wider philosophy, the ‘secularist’ being one whose ‘province of human duty … belongs to this life’ – with emphasis on ‘duty’. Holyoake was well aware of the stigma attached to ‘atheism’; this was clear in his own elaboration of the secularist philosophy, and in the defences of him by others. He had begun his career as a lecturer for the socialist Owenite movement, many members of which subscribed to Robert Owen’s secular ‘rational religion’. This was, as Holyoake’s secularism would be, rooted in achieving happiness through purely human means. In the same decade as Holyoake’s coining of ‘secularist’, the word ‘positivist’ first began to be used in English to describe the secular philosophies of Auguste Comte, translated and popularised by Harriet Martineau in 1853.

In the next decade, the scientist T.H. Huxley – perhaps best known as ‘Darwin’s bulldog’ – would invent the term ‘agnostic’ to describe the position of not claiming to know anything which one does not have evidence to support. Stalwarts of evolutionary theory, including Charles Darwin himself and physicist John Tyndall, went on to adopt ‘agnostic’ to describe their own position with regard to religion. Today, humanists would typically describe their own stance as one of atheism or agnosticism.

Throughout the 19th century, thinkers like Holyoake and Huxley offered a new vocabulary for a radically transformed landscape of belief, in a Britain that was in the process of assimilating an ever-increasing volume of scientific knowledge. Today, a fresh focus on the humanist tradition can draw together anew the many contributions made by ‘free thinkers’ to human progress through thinking for themselves and acting for others. In doing so, our picture of the past becomes a more diverse and a more accurate one, and the claim that atheists were necessarily immoral or amoral can be firmly refuted.

In addition to celebrating the history of Humanists UK, the Humanist Heritage project also aims to unearth, explore and map a tradition of thought and deed that can arguably be described as ‘humanist’ and which had existed in the UK long before the 19th century’s rational religionists, secularists, positivists, and ethicists appeared on the scene. Indeed, a ‘humanist’ tradition of non-religious ethical thinking long predates Christianity. Throughout history, there have been people asking questions about where we came from and why we are here, what is right and wrong, and how we might best be able to live with each other. And throughout history, across the globe, many have arrived at answers which reflect aspects of a worldview that we could now describe as ‘humanist’. Whether they have rejected gods or ignored them, where their decisions have been rooted in earthly action, based on human reason and compassion for other people, they are, we would argue, part of the humanist tradition.

All of this is why we have decided to include figures in the Humanist Heritage project who did not, or could not, identify as humanists, in many cases because the word in this modern sense did not exist. These include ancient philosophers such as Epicurus, who grounded their philosophies in the one world they could be sure of; heretics like Thomas Aikenhead, who risked their lives to challenge doctrine they could not accept; 18th-century freethinkers who sought to bring reason to bear on so-called revelation, including those, like the deists, who did not dispense with god altogether; and Owenites and ‘Rational Religionists’, such as Frances Wright, who sought radical societal reconstruction for the benefit of everyone. All of these people, we would argue, have helped to pave the way for the flourishing of humanist ideals, or exemplified them.

This long and rich history has been explored in a number of key texts. Many of these emerged from the 1950s onwards, when the organised humanist movement, by then self-identifying as such, was working to define itself. From 1957–1960, The Humanist magazine (now the New Humanist) ran a series of articles charting ‘The Humanist Tradition’. This series was perhaps inspired by their own renaming in the previous year to The Humanist from The Literary Guide. As Julian Huxley wrote, in support of the name change:

‘Humanism seems to me to express better than any other single term the attitude of the numerous group of people who are unable to accept irrational theories and authoritarian dogmas. It implies attaching importance to all essential human attributes and values— morality as well as science, art as well as reason.’

The first article in ‘The Humanist Tradition’ was written by H.J. Blackham, known today as the architect of the modern humanist movement. He presented an overview of humanist history which he intended to inform the movement’s next steps. ‘Humanism has a future,’ he wrote, ‘not merely because it has a past but solely in so far as humanists care for their tradition enough to learn from it what they want to do always and what they want to do next.’ Those raised in a religious faith may be under the impression that no alternative exists, or has such an established tradition, but this was a misconception easily challenged. ‘It is possible,’ Blackham argued, ‘to reject the tradition in which one is brought up and to look back and pick up, so to speak, a tradition which one has not yet received, which one chooses for oneself because it offers roots and a home.’

Challenging misconceptions and illuminating the rich history of humanist thought would also underpin the creation of psychologist and humanist Margaret Knight’s Humanist Anthology in 1961. Anticipating it in 1960, Hector Hawton wrote of his hope that ‘if our more vocal opponents consult a sourcebook of this kind they will refrain from making silly statements about us … I am tired of being told that humanism – the goal of which is the development of the whole man – is indifferent to emotion and imagination. The charge that we have no basis for morals also crops up with monotonous regularity … History,’ he added, ‘plainly shows that humanists have been in the forefront of social reform.’ Margaret Knight’s introduction to the anthology, first published in 1961, is worth quoting from at length, covering as it does not only the broad sweep of humanist thought but a consideration of the word itself:

‘ “The meaning of a word,” said Wittgenstein, “is the way in which it is used”: and the meaning, thus defined, of the word ‘Humanist’ has changed appreciably since the turn of the century. Today, to describe someone as a Humanist does not usually imply that he has been educated in Literae Humaniores. Rather, it implies that he sees no reason for believing in a supernatural God, or in a life after death; that he holds that man must face his problems with his own intellectual and moral resources, without invoking supernatural aid; and that authority, supernatural or otherwise, should not be allowed to obstruct inquiry in any field of thought …

‘Though the terminology has altered, there is of course nothing new in these doctrines. Humanism derives from a far older tradition than Christianity. The great classical civilisations of China, Greece and Rome were rooted in Humanist values; and though these values were obscured in Europe during the long night of the Dark Ages, they shone forth with renewed brilliance at the Renaissance, and have gathered fresh strength today in alliance with the mighty power of Science.’

Another humanist anthologist, Bet Cherrington, would put it more simply still in Facing the World: an Anthology of Poetry for Humanists (1989): ‘humanism as a philosophy for living is as old as human thought and as widespread as the human race.’

The year the Humanist Anthology was published also saw The Humanist Frame, edited by Julian Huxley and with contributors including Bertrand Russell, Barbara Wootton, and Stephen Spender. While his grandfather, T.H. Huxley, had coined ‘agnostic’, Julian Huxley settled on ‘evolutionary humanism’ to describe his own philosophy: one in which ‘human knowledge worked over by human imagination is seen as the basis of human understanding and belief, and the ultimate guide to human progress.’ As well as being founding Director General of UNESCO, Huxley would also become the first President of the umbrella organisation, the British Humanist Association, formed from the Rationalist Press Association and the Ethical Union in 1963. The 1960s also produced Hector Hawton’s The Humanist Revolution; The Humanist Outlook, edited by the philosopher A.J. Ayer; and the British Humanist Association’s Towards an Open Society. All of these works contained an exposition of the humanist approach and examined its implications for living.

But it had not taken works like these, and the many others which followed, to prompt centuries of earlier ‘humanists’ to work unstintingly for progressive social and political change. Indeed, the very definitions of those earlier terms contained within themselves an impetus to activity: whether it was the secularists with their emphasis on political reform, the ethicists with their focus on ‘well-doing’ alongside ‘well-being’, or even those self-identified ‘heretics’, whose heresy classicist Jane Ellen Harrison had described as a ‘reaching out to grasp … a studious, zealous pursuit’ of something better. George Jacob Holyoake’s activist daughter Emilie described her father’s belief in the ‘piety of usefulness rather than the usefulness of piety’ – a characterisation which, as a trade unionist and humanist organiser, might just as easily have been applied to her. The Union of Ethical Societies, which both father and daughter actively supported, were rooted in Adler’s ideal of ‘deed not creed’. The casting aside of gods had always placed the responsibility for a better world squarely on the shoulders of humankind. Where there was negation, there was forward movement too. As American anarchist and humanist Lucy Parsons had put it in 1889: ‘We have heard enough about a paradise behind the moon. We want something now.’

The Humanist Heritage website seeks to chart the way that convictions like these have contributed to a freer and more tolerant world. Such contributions are too often assumed to have been the sole preserve of the religious, but this notion is all the more galling in view of the fact that, throughout history, undue religious influence has frequently had to be countered for progress to be achieved. This was certainly the case in the centuries of activism by humanists or their intellectual predecessors against the blasphemy laws, for press freedom, and for the right to affirm rather than swear an oath; in the tireless campaigning by individuals like May Seaton-Tiedeman, Dora Russell, and Dorothy Thurtle for the right to self-determination in matters of marriage, divorce, and reproduction; or across well over 100 years of campaigning for a more inclusive education system. Frequently, humanist activists of this kind have fought a double battle, challenging the status quo while at the same time being derided for their atheism.

Some humanists or those with arguably humanist values, motivated by nothing beyond their own reason and humanity, have played leading roles in efforts to counter racist ideologies, for women’s rights and suffrage, for international cooperation, for LGBT+ rights, for universal healthcare, for higher education, and for peace and nuclear disarmament. Such individuals, and the organisations they have supported, have long worked to meet the needs of those of all religions or beliefs, as well as pioneering services for the non-religious in those instances where they were underserved. For two centuries, for example, some humanists, secularists, and freethinkers have been providing non-religious ceremonies to mark major moments in people’s lives and their ending in ways which are meaningful to them. The Humanist Housing Association, the Agnostics Adoption Society, and the Humanist Counselling Service (a forerunner of today’s Non-Religious Pastoral Support Network), were all spearheaded by humanists during the 1950s and 1960s.

There are many things that such individuals and organisations have done to change the world for the better. As Hector Hawton wrote in his editorial for the newly renamed Humanist magazine: 

‘A thing is what it does. Humanists, rationalists, freethinkers, do not differ because they wear different labels. They are members of a movement that is influencing society in a certain way. As individuals, of course, they do not always come to the same conclusions. Yet, despite this diversity, the general effect of combining is to create a current of opinion in a very definite direction.’

Historically, humanists, secularists, rationalists, and freethinkers have played leading roles in campaigns for civil liberties, for internationalist ideals, and for the rights of women and minorities. All of which is to say nothing of the immeasurable contribution of individuals with humanist values to the arts, science and popular culture. Today, in the spirit of their intellectual predecessors, some humanists continue to work for a society which better represents everyone, of all faiths and beliefs: one which sees the non-religious justly acknowledged, but no one privileged or discriminated against. Even now, non-religious people still face severe persecution in many countries. In the UK, state-funded schools can still select children on religious grounds and teach a religiously skewed curriculum; bishops still sit in the House of Lords; blasphemy remains a crime in Northern Ireland; and the government has failed to protect LGBT+ people from so-called ‘conversion therapy’. At this point in our history, efforts to counter religious privilege and create a kinder, more tolerant society remain as vital as ever.

The post Morality without religion: the story of humanism appeared first on The Freethinker.

I met Copson in his office in the Humanists UK headquarters, in the basement of 39 Moreland Street, Islington. His dog, Juno, lay quietly on his desk in her tartan blanket until she was picked up by his husband. The feet of occasional passers-by could be glimpsed through the windows. A poster hung above the desk with the motto ‘WORK HARD & BE NICE TO PEOPLE’.

Copson read Ancient and Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford. He graduated in 2004 and started working for the British Humanist Association in 2005, becoming its Chief Executive in 2010 at the age of 29. The organisation changed its name to Humanists UK in 2017.

Over the last decade, Copson has become one of the leading advocates for modern humanism. His published books include Secularism: A Very Short Introduction; The Little Book of Humanism (with Alice Roberts); and The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Humanism (co-edited with A.C. Grayling), to which he contributed a chapter on ‘What is humanism?’

In this interview, we discuss the origins and various meanings of humanism, its relationship to policy-making in Humanists UK, and whether it is legitimate to label all sorts of thinkers ‘humanist’ in a modern sense even though they lived before the nineteenth century.

The conversation also touches on the culture wars, Brexit, the pandemic, and the scientific method, as well as why, from a humanist perspective, free thought and free speech are inextricably linked – and what limits there should be to the latter. Finally, Copson reminisces about the ‘atheist bus’ movement, and reveals the books he turns to for humanist inspiration.

Freethinker: There are different things which different people mean by humanism. We may think of Renaissance humanism, or humanism in the classical world. But what is the idea of humanism represented by Humanists UK?

Andrew Copson: You’re right that, just like secularism, there are multiple and contested definitions of humanism that have operated at different periods in the past, and also different definitions that operate in different parts of the world. Ever since Humanists UK has been an organisation, including its predecessor organisations, the ‘humanism’ that they have meant is that attitude that combines a naturalistic approach to the universe with a human centred approach to morality and questions of meaning and purpose.

So people like Harold Blackham at the start of the BHA, Margaret Knight, Hector Hawton, who kickstarted the organisation in the mid 20th century, were happy to talk about the humanism of the ancient Mediterranean world, the humanism of classical China, or the humanism of ancient India and the humanism of the modern West as the same type of thing. And that non-culturally specific range of attitudes and values that has appeared perennially in different human cultures at different times is the sort of humanism that Humanists UK are talking about.

Freethinker: So a human-centred morality and non-religious attitudes?

Copson: Yes. It’s very difficult to put into a potted definition, because there are long books of many volumes that are written about what humanism is, but, in brief, that’s the humanism that Humanists UK– and in fact, international humanists or humanist organisations around the world – use. The other uses of the word are not so common, especially in languages other than English. The word ‘humanism’ is sometimes glossed as being like humanitarianism. And then there’s the use of humanism to refer to a particular historical scholarly movement, like Renaissance humanism, that rediscovery of pre-Christian literature and ideas in Europe. And then, in US English, humanism sometimes refers to the modern discipline of the study of the humanities. But humanism for us is that non-religious worldview.

Freethinker: How would you distinguish humanism from atheism, scepticism, freethought, and so on?

Copson: I would say they’re all different things, doing a different job. Atheism is a lack of belief in god, it’s a specific word to describe a specific attitude on one particular question. Scepticism is a wider intellectual attitude. It’s a certain approach to knowledge, how you find things out and how you react to other people’s truth claims. That sceptical approach is part and parcel of the humanist view. ‘Freethought’ feels to me a historically specific thing. I think of freethinking as being a nineteenth-century phenomenon – a very nineteenth-century word.

Freethinker: To what extent does your idea of humanism involve positive values? I mean definable values more than just the attitude that you have been talking about.

Copson: I think that humanism is an approach, an attitude, a framework for making sense of things and understanding your own place and the place of people generally in the universe and in our own societies. I would never say that it had prescribed content. So if by positive values you mean some sort of manifesto or platform – certainly humanist organisations have manifestos, platforms and agendas where they try to apply humanist values and approaches in their own specific contexts and in the domains we operate, whether it’s the political sphere, the provision of community services, social movements and so on. But I wouldn’t say that humanism itself had, as it were, eleven pillars of humanism, or ten rules in that sense.

But it is a positive attitude. If you want to say that it’s not a negation of something in the way that atheism is a negation of the idea that there should be gods – atheism is quite a Christian concept – to the extent that it’s not about negating things, the humanist approach to life is positive. It’s saying we accept the evidence that we can see around human origins, the nature of the universe and everything else. The humanist approach is affirmative in terms of human choice and freedom, and in our responsibilities to each other and in the attaching of value to human lives and to our own experiences. And it’s positive in the sense that a humanist approach to life and to other people is affirmative of them, not just of humanity generally and of one’s own freedom of choice, but of others. For a given value of positive, I would say that a humanist approach is positive, proactive and affirmative. And that’s not just a way of saying I like it and it’s a good approach to life – I think there is something inherently positive about it.

Freethinker: Looking at your Little Book of Humanism and other humanist materials, it seems that you do want to develop quite a specific approach to morality, which is this human-centred approach. Would it be fair to say that concerns with human-based morality have been part of humanism since 1896 at least?

Copson: I use the word ‘humanism’ as the people who started humanist organisations did, to describe a certain approach to life that does exist, and existed before the word ‘humanism’ was coined. The people I talked about a moment ago as being amongst the founders of the modern humanist movement in the mid-twentieth century, they didn’t think they were making this stuff up. They thought that they were discerning a real tradition of thought that has existed in different societies and different places in disconnected ways, but that was increasingly widely held in their own time. They tried to give form and to describe the content of this attitude, but they didn’t think they were inventing it.

They weren’t like American humanists who would write a humanist manifesto and claim to have invented humanism. The founders of British humanist organisations were more likely and are still more likely to claim that humanism is a pre-existing thing, and the word ‘humanism’ a post-hoc coinage to describe something that already exists – a perennial philosophy that pops up now and again. So we’re not trying to develop a certain content for humanism, or that it was a belief-based organisation which needed to flesh out its policies. But I would agree with the characterisation of a humanist approach as being human-centred in this way. Once you start thinking in that way, some things follow from it. The things we talk about in The Little Book of Humanism are just the outworkings of that attitude.

Freethinker: Hence why you can justify calling all sorts of people who lived in so many centuries before the nineteenth century ‘humanists’.

Copson: Yes. It’s an almost sociological, descriptive use of the word, just as you might argue that Spartacus was a socialist. Today, everyone is obsessed with identity, and there’s an allergic reaction to the idea that you might apply an adjective to someone if they didn’t apply it to themselves. But I think that is a basic misunderstanding of language.

Freethinker: Is there a risk that calling all these people humanists in the ‘attitude’ sense might be confused with calling them humanists in the sense of sharing the values, campaign aims and policies of an organisation like Humanists UK?

Copson: I don’t think so. Not every humanist would agree, for example, with all the policies of Humanists UK.

Freethinker: You could argue that anyone who thinks that morality starts with human beings and has a non-religious world view would count as humanist. How is it that Humanists UK can justify labelling any particular policy as ‘humanist’, if this is such a general term?

Copson:Today we organise ourselves under the broad platform of freedom of thought, expression, choice. The idea being that it is a distinctively humanist idea that the individual human being has one life, and that if human development, flourishing and happiness is going to occur, it can only occur then. This idea of human flourishing, which is based on distinctively humanist foundations, dictates the sort of policies that Humanists UK promotes – for example, legal protections for freedom from discrimination; reform of school curriculums and school structures so that they better promote freedom of thought; and removing obstacles to individual freedom of choice, whether it’s outmoded law, religious strictures, social conformity, the government’s poking of its nose into things, prejudice or discrimination, or the way that your circumstances might limit your freedom of choices in life.

So that’s the way policy is developed by Humanists UK. And then we apply those principles to the political, social and legal environment, and see where the barriers are to the realisation of those human development aims.

Freethinker: To what extent would you characterise Humanists UK as a political organisation?

Copson: Humanists UK is many types of things. It’s a community service provider, a movement for social change, and an organisation that seeks to elucidate particular values to people. But it is also a platform for political change, as well as legal and social change.

Freethinker: Where would you describe Humanists UK on the political spectrum, in terms of the political philosophies or the political change you’re advocating?

Copson: I think it’s ‘humanist’. I think there’s an obvious sympathy between humanist political positions and liberal ones. When Bertrand Russell was talking about discerning humanism, as it were, through the ages, he almost made it inherent in the humanist position. So he was talking about the reliance on science, a certain attitude towards moral judgement and towards questions of meaning and purpose in life, and a certain liberal political attitude.

I think that’s probably right. If you think that human development has an importance in the mortal context that we’ve just been talking about, then you’d probably best pin a humanist approach today, at least in Britain, to a liberal approach. In the twentieth century in particular, some humanists have been very strong advocates of socialism – meaning different things by that.

Freethinker: And some who weren’t.

Copson: Exactly. So I think liberals and socialists probably have a good claim to be humanistically inspired. But then if I think of political Conservatives that I know who are members of Humanists UK or members of the Parliamentary Humanist Group, they also mount a human development, human freedom-based argument for their political principles. So I think they would typically say something like, it’s more likely that more people will be happier and have more freedom if we give greater protections to personal property, greater incentives for self-improvement. A socialist humanist might say, well, it’s far more likely that more people are going to have greater freedom of choice and dignity in their lives if we make more standardised provision for everybody.

Freethinker: But Humanists UK wouldn’t come down on the side of a particular political party?

Copson: No. It would be unlawful.

Freethinker: Because you’re a charity.

Copson: Yes. But even if we weren’t a charity, I don’t think that would happen, because there are humanist groups in all the political parties: there’s the Conservative Humanists, the Labour Humanists, the Humanist and Secularist Liberal Democrats, the Green Party Humanists.

Freethinker: Is there a UKIP Humanist group?

Copson: No. Is there a UKIP? When the Brexit referendum happened, we commissioned six blogs on our website, three by humanist Remainers and three by humanist Brexiters.

Freethinker: So it can cut across those sorts of divides.

Copson: Definitely. I think what a humanist attitude is incompatible with is a small ‘c’ conservatism. To be hidebound, to put a value on tradition that is weighed in itself against other values and priorities, is probably incompatible with the idea that we should think from first principles about things, be free, be self determined, try to maximise human development.

Thinkers who have opposed humanism, like Roger Scruton or Edmund Burke, these are the sort of people who have said, we don’t want individuals to be rational actors, we don’t want the state to be a social contract – we want something more ethnic, more organic, more rooted in timeless things that you can’t question.

Freethinker: You’re not saying that tradition is automatically bad?

Copson: No. But the attitude that put it above everything else dogmatically as a point of principle would be bad.         

Freethinker: But the aim you have in mind is human flourishing – individually and –

Copson: And en masse.

Freethinker: Presumably there will be times when individual human flourishing and the flourishing of society more generally are in conflict. How does humanism deal with that?

Copson: The moral principle that a human has recourse to then, which has become quite deeply encoded in human rights law, is the John Stuart Mill idea that your rights or entitlement to the maximum possible flourishing you can have, should be limited only by the rights of others. That’s a pretty good tool. I’ve never, in my 15 years here, seen a political discussion, a conflict of rights, a clash of individual or social aims or group versus group that couldn’t be resolved by that sort of mechanism. Doesn’t mean the answer is obvious.

Freethinker: And you want to argue that you need to look not just at ‘freedom of religion’, but ‘freedom of religion or belief’.

Copson: Absolutely. I think we’d far rather talk about ‘freedom of thought and conscience’.

Freethinker: You said before that humanism was more of an attitude. Perhaps it doesn’t easily fit into the idea of ‘belief’?

Copson: No. With the definition of ‘belief’ as it is now in human rights case law, it does fit. But that’s not because of anything obvious about the word itself, or the normal usage of the word.

In French, the translation is convictions, and in German, Weltanschauung, ‘worldview’, – both of which are much clearer. In English, they inexplicably put ‘religion or belief’, where ‘belief’ has a common usage which has all sorts of meanings. But ‘belief’ as a term in equality law and human rights law, as legislators have intended it to be defined, and as case law has continued to define it, is a humanist attitude. And the ideas of humanists fit into that very clearly. But you wouldn’t use that word if you were having a commonsense conversation.

A lot of humanists react poorly to the idea that a lot of the things they think could be described as beliefs. If you think that human beings are the product of natural processes like evolution, you would not want to say it was a belief, but accepting the evidence. If I was writing it down, I would say that I accept that human beings are the product of natural processes. I do not believe it in some sort of convictional way. I just accept it because I can see the evidence for it.

Freethinker: Would that also entail a certain amount of reservation, just in case you might be wrong?

Copson: Exactly. I accept that evidence for now, with the implication that that is the current view, that is where the evidence currently is. I don’t know if I really have any ‘beliefs’.

Freethinker: But you’ve done a whole podcast series on ‘What I Believe’.           

Copson: Yes, but that’s a historical reference back to essays by Bertrand Russell and E.M. Forster.

Freethinker: How did the rise of the humanist movement in Britain relate to humanism in other countries?

Copson: When we think about our movement, like all history, it is difficult to mark the clear points. Do you want to tie our history into the history of the man who goes up in front of the magistrate in the seventeenth century, because when he was drunk in the tavern he said he did not believe all this nonsense anyway and why did the priests have so much power?

Freethinker: Let’s take 1896 as a starting point.

Copson: 1896 is probably the least important. Organisationally that’s when we began. We were founded as the Union of Ethical Societies, which had a slightly different ethos from humanist organisations today. But the word ‘ethical’ in ‘Ethical Union’ does not refer solely to morals – it was almost like the way we use ‘humanist’ today. It describes both the intellectual approach to things and a set of values.

Freethinker: If freedom of thought and freedom of speech are two sides of the same coin –

Copson:They are inextricably linked.

Freethinker: And absolutely essential to a humanist or non-religious worldview –

Copson: Yes.

Freethinker: Does Humanists UK find itself taking a position in the culture wars, or do you try to stay above them? Let’s say all the topics that are controversial at the moment: transgender theory, definitions of race, Brexit, the pandemic, religious freedom, how far one should criticise Islam, pulling down statues…

Copson: I don’t think we do. There are about 47 policy areas within our policy remit, but we have six campaigns at any one time. At the moment, they are assisted dying, humanist marriages, the RE curriculum across the UK, the blasphemy law in Northern Ireland, collective worship across the UK, and working to get the UK government to be more active on behalf of humanists persecuted abroad. We select these campaigns because they are the areas we judge to be of high social importance, or where other people are actively arguing against the position that we would promote, or where we think success might be more achievable in the shorter term – but they are all focused on achieving specific legislative changes.

So, for example, when we are asked questions like, do we have a view on what a woman is  – we don’t. We have a long-standing view on the need for people who are undergoing gender reassignment to have equal treatment and for the human rights of trans people to be respected and upheld. That’s a specific legal, political, human rights question. But then on the wider question of what’s a woman, what’s a man, it is not the sort of thing on which an organisation would take a view. The important thing for us is that people should always discuss these things and be open-minded, and there should be a space for freedom of thought and freedom of expression on these issues.

Freethinker: So you would say that Richard Dawkins, for example, is entirely entitled to discuss gender issues in whatever way he wishes.

Copson: I would hope he would do so in a way that respected other people’s dignity and everything else. We have got certain values as an organisation, which we we could expect our own people, our own staff, to abide by. You would not expect everyone to abide by this, but I would hope everyone wanted to treat other people with respect, listen to different opinions, express themselves in a way that did not undermine other people’s dignity or rights or threaten them in any way.        

Freethinker: What about satire? Is there still a space for that in the humanist worldview?

Copson:Yes. A lot of our patrons are satirical comedians.

Freethinker: Where do you draw the line between legitimate satire and not respecting people’s dignity?

Copson: This is one of those questions that cannot be answered in the abstract. I do not think that the causing of offence is a harm. I feel quite strongly about that. Some of the problems that people get into today are because they say, ‘if I’m offended, I’m harmed,’ and that because it is right to limit other people’s freedom in order to avoid harming others, this is an example of where their freedom should be limited.

That is wrong, because offence is not a harm – it can be a great benefit. I have been offended in the past and as a result, changed my mind about things on reflection. Martin Rowson, the Guardian cartoonist, is highly offensive in a lot of his material. He gave a talk at the 2014 World Humanist Congress called ‘Giving the Gift of Offence’, where he made an argument based on anthropology, sociology and history, to say that one of the most important things you can do is to offend people.

If you’re offended, agitated in your opinions, vexed about something in your mind, that can stir thought, change, and all sorts of positive developments. I think, for example, about the cases involving the cartoons of Mohammed, for example in the Batley case, I would have probably said that offence actually has educational value. It stimulates thought.

Freethinker: So cartoons like that or blasphemous cartoons should be capable of being taught in school?        

Copson: Absolutely. I went on the Sunday programme and said that. I had an interesting discussion with a Muslim teacher at the time – we sort of agreed.

To come back to your question, where does the dignity of a person begin, that is a genuinely difficult question, because it is contextual. We can all understand that if you are shouting abuse into someone’s face, you are violating their rights, their dignity. That is why we have a concept of harassment in the law – you are harming them, threatening them, intimidating them, they feel that way and you have crossed the line. If you imagine pulling that person back from that other person’s face further and further, how far do they need to go before it is not violating the dignity of the person they are targeting? There is a good case for saying that any targeted criticism of that sort could begin to meet a definition of being a violation of person’s dignity. It would depend what they were saying, how they were saying it, and who was saying it.

Freethinker: What about individuals versus groups? You might accept that targeted hatred or harassment against particular named individuals would cross the line. But what about specific groups? What about if you were criticising Christians or Muslims in general?

Copson: It depends on the context. Are you asking what sort of things should we morally disapprove of, or what sort of things should be legally sanctioned? I think there’s a high bar for legal sanctions because you want to maintain the maximum space for the exchange of views and individual agency.

The Rabat Plan of Action [on the prohibition of advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence] is good in relation to hate speech because it lays out a series of principles which you might apply to find out whether or not you have reached a threshold to be treated as the incitement of hatred.

I do think that there is scope for laws that criminalise the incitement of hatred, not just the incitement to violence, because I think it is better than allowing hatred to be incited that makes large groups of people’s lives difficult, precarious, vulnerable or limited in some way. It is prudent to cut off hatred before it turns into violence and persecution, but with a very high bar. Intention has got to be an important part of it, the vulnerability of the group or class that you are stirring up hatred against.

I would not say that landlords should be treated in the same way as gay people in concepts about incitement of hatred. If you are having a demonstration to say that there should not be any landlords because they are ruining the economy, obviously that is different from saying there should not be any gay people.

Freethinker: But look at what happened to landlords in communist Russia and China. 

Copson: Again, that’s why context is important. That’s a long way from happening here. Were it to be a possibility, then I might easily be persuaded that you would have to protect that class of people in some way.     

Freethinker: Moving onto a topic which is related to free speech in different ways: science. Scienceor the scientific attitude seems to be an important part of modern humanism. Do you agree?

Copson: Yes. A lot of scientists came into the humanist movement in the mid-twentieth century. There were some early on, but not quite as many. In the twentieth century, the sort of people who came in who in the nineteenth century might have more naturally fitted into the Rationalist Association. For example, the scientist T.H. Huxley was a rationalist in the nineteenth century, and his grandson, Julian Huxley, was the first President of the British Humanist Association. Francis Crick was another; Jacob Bronowski was the most famous one because he was so involved – he was not just a scientist, he was a patron and activist for humanist organisations.

Freethinker:  If we think around the turn of the millennium, we have the New Atheism movement, in which Richard Dawkins, A.C. Grayling and Christopher Hitchens were the ‘big three’. Richard Dawkins has arguably made a big impact on the status of science in humanism – would you agree?

Copson: Arguably, the humanism that we have had since the twentieth century has been the ethical people plus the rationalists. Although the Rationalist Association exists as a separate organisation, there was a huge influx of everyone into the British Humanist Association. Humanism was seen as a coming together of the ethics on the one hand and the ‘rational’, scientific people on the other. Throughout the twentieth century that has been the keynote.

What might have been new by the end of the 20th century was that more biologists were involved. And that was because of the totemic importance that human origins had assumed in the wider humanist movement – both because it is an important part of being self-aware to know where our species has come from, what we are not and what we are, but also because there was an increasing contrast with the biblical literalism of some of the bigger religious groups at the time, not just Biblical literalism, but Quranic literalism, any sort of scriptural creationism.

The great stimulus to growth in the beginning of the twenty-first century for humanist organisations, both here and elsewhere in the world, was the threat of creationism in schools, creationism as a phenomenon being exported from Turkey or America. So probably scientists and biological scientists in particular assumed a greater importance within the things we would talk about.

Freethinker: How important is the scientific method to humanism?

Copson: It has always been very important. For example, Harold Blackham, when he talked about reason and experience, was really talking about the scientific method that applies to everything.

Freethinker: When we talk about the scientific method, are we talking about something like verification or falsification or trying to get the best possible understanding through empirical evidence?

Copson: Yes. The important concepts are observation, experience, open-mindedness, and thinking critically. The scientific temper, the attitudes that go with the application of the scientific method are probably just as important.          

Freethinker: Presumably people in the humanities too can (sometimes) reason critically?

Copson: Exactly. When I was studying history, I used to have long conversations with a friend about whether or not history was a science, whether or not I was engaged in scientific work when I was evaluating sources or looking back in the past. We have consciously divided the world into disciplines, but they are not really separate from each other. They are all the application of our minds to certain problems and questions. So I suppose there is great crossover in the skills that you would use – if you think the history is about finding out the truth about the past. Some might say history is about telling a nice story –

Freethinker: Or just one damn thing after another.

Copson:Exactly.

Freethinker: Is there a risk that science can be valued too highly, or that, in non-religious movements, science can be put on a pedestal and seen as almost infallible, like a quasi-religion or a religion substitute?

Copson: There is a great line in the Amsterdam Declaration about this, which is that science provides the means, but human values must provide the ends. That is very important to remember. There is a risk that we lose sight of the purpose of any human enterprise, and science is a human enterprise – a very important one, but nonetheless, it is there for us to decide what to do with it. It should not set the agenda. We need to understand, especially when it comes to technology and the results of science, that it is not necessarily scientists who should be saying why things should be done, or what should be done.

Freethinker: So while Plato said philosophers should be kings, you would not necessarily say that scientists should be kings?

Copson: Definitely not. Well, I don’t believe in kings. I think there should certainly be more scientists in Parliament. But I do not think they should rule the roost.

I declare an interest, which is that I am not particularly interested in science personally. This is an area where there will be rampant disagreement between humanists of different persuasions. But we need to set the ends, and science only provides the means – although science can be part of a happy existence for the individual scientist who is pursuing it.

Do we risk losing sight of the fact that the answers of science are provisional, that scientists disagree, that there is an ongoing conversation by which, hopefully, we will move closer to the truth, but we are not there yet? Yes, that should be borne in mind. It would be better if that were taught about science a lot more. When I look at the children of friends, the way they learn about science at school is as if it provided the answers.

Freethinker: Humanists UK did not take a position on Brexit because you had humanists on both sides. Did you take a position during the pandemic on policy-related matters – things like lockdown, health restrictions, masks?

Copson: No, we did not. I personally was a member of the Department of Health’s Moral and Ethical Advisory Group during that period, together with people from different religions and beliefs, but also medical ethicists and other practitioners. We were providing often different ethical frameworks as to how the government might see these things, the balance between freedom and safety. But Humanists UK did not take a position. It would almost have been impossible to know how to have done so, because things changed so quickly, and the evidence was often so contested or unavailable.

The approach that I took on the Advisory Group was to remember that there was an ethical balance to be struck, and that public health, in terms of avoidance of the spread of that particular disease, had to be weighed against all sorts of other public health outcomes, and other human developmental and human satisfaction outcomes. For instance, is it acceptable to limit some spread to prevent a partner of fifty years from holding the hand of their dying partner? It is not automatically clear what the right answer is.

Freethinker: Is it acceptable to close schools?

Copson: All those sorts of questions. As an organisation, we were just too busy with other things to take a position on it, but if we had done, I think we would have confined ourselves to process. The process argument would have been to urge policymakers to explicitly weigh up these different things that they were balancing against each other. Because it is not just public health at any cost: there are other costs. We have seen the costs on people’s mental well-being, on relationships, child development, social solidarity – we saw the cost everywhere. That would have been our contribution, I think, but we did not make it, apart from in my personal capacity.

Freethinker: On your website, you have encouraged people to get vaccinated against Covid.

Copson: Yes. That is a no-brainer. We did not support making it mandatory.

Freethinker: Would you ever support making Covid vaccinations mandatory?

Copson: I think that is possible. We have taken positions on various other public health measures, for example, the addition of folic acid to flour, along the lines of, where there are interventions, weigh the costs. I do not know whether we would have supported mandatory vaccines. We have not discussed it and I do not just make up policy on my own – we have got policy and research staff that develop policy, and we have a process involving our Board. But what we did very strongly believe is that it was right for us to seek to persuade people to take up the vaccine, on all sorts of moral grounds. The most obvious one is one’s responsibility to others, but also that so much misinformation was being spread that was unfounded. The polling we did showed clearly that vaccine uptake amongst humanists was something like 97%.

Freethinker: How did you decide that the vaccines had been sufficiently tested to be reliable?

Copson: We took advice from people who are our patrons, scientists, and we spoke with the people who developed them – we had a lecture from Professor Sarah Gilbert, the Oxford Project Leader of the AstraZeneca vaccine. And the policy team formed a view on it.

Freethinker: Did any humanists disagree with you?

Copson: Yes, you always have one or two, but it was not a significant number.

Freethinker: How big is your membership at the moment?

Copson: 103,000 members and supporters in the UK, including members of the Humanist Society Scotland, of whom about 30% are members and 70% are supporters.

Freethinker: I am looking at the poster behind you on the wall with the notorious atheist bus quote: ‘There’s probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’ Were you involved in that?

Copson: Yes, I was one of the team of four.

Freethinker: What was the idea behind it?

Copson: It started off as a joke. There was a bus campaign running in London by a Christian church, which everyone has now forgotten about, which basically said, ‘you’re going to hell, God is coming back, so watch it.’ Ariane Sherine, the journalist and comedian who had the idea, wrote an article in 2008 in the Guardian saying, wouldn’t it be lovely if instead of this ‘God is coming’ message, we could have a cheery one saying, there isn’t a god, so don’t worry about that and enjoy life? She asked us if we would set up a crowd-funder for it, and we did. And then it became the biggest crowd-funding campaign in history at that point, in the early days of the internet. It was JustGiving. They set a £3,000 target, and it eventually reached £180,000. Quite an embarrassing amount of money. So we put posters on buses, on the tube, and by the end of it, we were just desperate to find places to put them all.

It got a lovely reaction – people found it positive. It was probably in the last days of the New Atheist wave, before people had, as they perhaps have now, got beyond that. It was almost like the punchline after ten years: people were on a high, they enjoyed it. Of course then others started criticising it, because most people who saw it had never even heard of the campaign that it was a reaction to. So they started saying things like, what has there being no god got to do with enjoying your life and not worrying? But actually it was also a message that stood on its own, because there are people who, when they were raised in religious backgrounds themselves, were very frightened, and have been taught to worry and be afraid of what was coming afterwards.

It was a feel-good campaign, really. And it was emulated all over the world. An academic book has been written about the atheist bus campaigns around the world. I was the press officer – it was the easiest press ever. Everyone wanted to cover it; it just hit the right moment. It was the most press coverage we’ve got for anything apart from our ‘Protest the Pope’ rally in March 2010. It boosted our membership enormously – it was a big step up at the time.

Freethinker: You say we’re over the New Atheism wave now…

Copson: Well, I don’t like to say that too much. It’s a different society from 20 years ago, it’s a long time ago.

Freethinker: Where is Humanists UK going now?

Copson: The lesson of Humanists UK so far has been continuity over change. I do not think that we have changed very much in terms of where we are going. Last year was our 125th anniversary, and we looked back quite a bit. What was quite striking was the consistency through time of the sort of things we do. We have always been a community service provider, and while today, it is ceremonies and pastoral care and support for apostates, whereas once it was counselling and housing associations and adoption, that function is still the same. We have always been a campaigning organisation, and by and large the motivating principles are the same as well. We have always been an organisation that promotes humanist ideas into the Zeitgeist. That is what we continue to do. There is no great change of direction, just hopefully a never-ending expansion.

Freethinker: Do you have any specific aims?

Copson: Reach more people, do more ceremonies, provide more pastoral care, speak to more children in schools, achieve more policy changes, increase the number of people we are in contact with, and scale up what we are doing all the time.

Freethinker: Final question: do you have any favourite humanist or philosophical books that give you inspiration?

Copson: I like the novels of George Eliot for humanism – it’s the best place to go. And the novels and essays of E.M. Forster – and the novels of Zadie Smith, and of James Baldwin. Go to your novels for humanism, that is my motto. 

The post What I believe: Interview with Andrew Copson appeared first on The Freethinker.