I put the incident behind me, but only four days later at an all-boys grammar school, the same thing happened—except social media stardom was replaced with professional gaming and esports. In the space of five days, I had sat with some of the brightest young minds in STEM from my town, yet their ambitions lay elsewhere.

I shared the stories with my wife, wondering how this could happen. The incidents jarred me tremendously, sapping much of my energy and causing me to consider stepping away from education.

It is a fact that we do not produce enough scientists or engineers in the UK. We also have an NHS shortage, relying on overseas recruitment of doctors and nurses. Compared to China and India, we do not prioritise or glorify STEM as a noble career—or at least not in the same way. If anything we glorify the opposite, sending a message of ‘be who you are’ rather than ‘imagine what you could be’. We celebrate the individual in such a way that no one can tell anyone that they are wrong, that their dreams are too small, or that it is their responsibility to contribute meaningfully to society.

There is far too much that can be said on this issue than space affords me. We have serious issues of science scepticism, mistrust of expertise, conspiracy theorising, echo-chamber thinking, ideological capture, and religious fundamentalism. All contribute immensely to an unprecedented level of anti-science bias that I see in students, reflecting society as a whole.

But how can we stop the next generation of engineers and scientists from quitting young? Briefly, let me discuss what can be done in five areas of concern.

We must generate more excitement about research

When addressing grammar school students on behalf of the Mars Society or the Genetics Society, I typically find that most of them are passively moving towards medicine. This is to be applauded to an extent, and we certainly need more doctors. However, these students attend my talks because they are excited about science in general; they have taken a path towards medicine seemingly by default. We must generate passion for research in young minds.

Research needs to be emphasised as an exciting career path. Living on the frontiers of discovery is a wonderful place to be, although not glamorous and sometimes mundane. Collaborating with others around the globe to answer problems, probe the unknown, and push the boundaries of knowledge is a wonderful way to live your life. Problem-solving and critical thinking need to make a strong comeback in schools where students can now ask ChatGPT to do their homework and Google the answer to everything.

Science bodies need to recruit under-18s

I am amazed at how many of the science societies, including those I belong to, act as if life begins at university. Recruitment to bodies is made at university fairs, and for all of them, one can only become a member at 18. We must start recruiting under-18s as opposed to just university students.

When I ask science bodies why recruitment starts at 18 the response is usually blank, as they have never been asked the question before. What if we allowed students to join at 16 instead? It could revolutionise the pursuit of STEM careers for students if they could join science and engineering societies before they apply to university.

It could also guide young people into careers in niche sciences rather than relying on chance. For example, many biology students will have little exposure to genetics as a career option in high school, so genetics bodies must hope that students accidentally stumble onto their discipline and decide for themselves on a future there. This is not a winning strategy.

Generate more inspiration

Many schools would love to do more to engage and inspire in STEM, but the staff have neither the time nor the budget to do more. Inspirational programmes have the most potential to radically change a child’s future.

The finest example of such programmes is the International Space School Education Trust’s Mission Discovery programme, which sees 13-18-year-olds work in teams alongside astronauts, professors, researchers, and NASA personnel for five days to design an experiment that fits strict parameters. The winning team has their experiment flown to space by SpaceX to be performed on the International Space Station by astronauts in their research rotation. Everything about the programme is life-changing for the student.

I run a program in my town called ‘Frontiers’, which simply brings inspirational researchers to the schools of Aylesbury to speak to students in the hopes of exposing them to the possibility of a STEM future full of excitement and discovery.

If we can pump our schools full of STEM inspiration, then we could see a huge uptick in those who dream of shaping the future of science and technology. Ultimately, young people rely heavily on inspiration for their future. They need their imagination to be captured, as most (especially the boys) are not proactive in thinking about their futures unless prompted. I meet very few dreamers (although I meet more and more idealogues), but the ones you do meet you never forget. When it comes to a brighter STEM future, we shall only reap what we sow.

Combat useless, ideological courses

One outstanding student I met two years ago was on track to study medicine at university off the back of incredible STEM A-level results. She came to a Mars Society event and I asked her about her plans. ‘I’m planning on studying medicine, hopefully at Oxford or Cambridge…’ she started, before shyly adding, ‘but I’m thinking about doing gender studies too.’ This caught me off guard, and I asked her to strongly consider picking medicine.

Sitting with a foot in both the sciences and the humanities, the differences are starkest at academic conferences. I try to be fair and objective, but while sitting through humanities lectures, I often find myself quietly asking, ‘How does this contribute to knowledge?’

It is more than fair to advise young people to avoid a gender studies degree. Two of the top jobs that graduates go into are schoolteacher and HR professional. These jobs are open to students from any other degree. The practical applications of STEM degrees stretch far beyond their discipline, and graduates are highly sought after across the vocational landscape.

Furthermore, many humanities courses are now ideologically laden and far from objective. Someone can earn a PhD in STEM or off the back of an ideological reflection on Shakespeare, and both will end up with the title ‘Doctor’ before their names. One researcher commented to me in June that she felt this cheapened her PhD and left her feeling despondent. We must sell truth to our students, and push them to push themselves, for everyone’s sake.

Show young students an exciting future rather than a depressing one

Recruiting STEM students and avoiding the drift away from these essential disciplines will require building excitement for the new world, rather than anxiety about the current one.

Space entrepreneur and activist Rick Tumlinson has condemned the message so often pushed on young people these days that all they have is a mission to save a planet we have screwed up. Instead, they should be inspired to build an exciting, spacefaring future. I agree. We have sold our students short by not providing an adventurous, inspiring vision. Instead, we present a depressing one.

Young people must hear the rallying call to a glorious future of green, renewable energy, space-age technology, and interplanetary travel. They need to hear about the potential of genomics and genetic engineering for maximising nature’s gifts and the possibilities of personalised medicine. There has never been a better chance than right now for humanity to realise a future brighter than any that has come before—and yet so often our young people are distracted by the flash and dazzle of social media and made anxious by dystopian visions.

We can retain our brightest minds in STEM and inspire a host of students who may never have conceived of themselves having a future in STEM fields by presenting young people with a better vision than what they are currently being sold. When we do this, perhaps we will also lose fewer minds to fundamentalism, conspiracy theorising, political nonsense, and fruitless ideologies.

Related reading

80 years on from Schrödinger’s ‘What Is Life?’, philosophy of biology needs rescuing from radicals, by Samuel McKee

The post Rescuing our future scientists and engineers from quitting before they start appeared first on The Freethinker.

For many of us working in science, philosophy, and education (or a combination thereof), ‘intelligent design’ (ID)—the pseudoscientific theory that purports to be an alternative to evolutionary science and which has been unkindly but not unfairly described as ‘creationism in a cheap tuxedo’—has been out of the picture for the better part of the two decades since the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial in 2005 ruled that it was not science and thus could not be taught in US high school biology classes. In short, ID was of historical interest but not to be taken seriously.

Recently, however, its champions have been making noise and turning heads. Stephen Meyer, one of the original faces of ID, has been featured on The Joe Rogan Experience and Piers Morgan Uncensored and has even dialogued with Michael Shermer. All of this new publicity has been used by ID advocates to prove that it has never been more relevant. And that is the goal of the movement: to fight for relevance and be taken seriously by academics and those in authority.

Everyone who has ever met Dr Meyer says he is a warm, genuine, nice man. He may be mistaken in his views but is respectful and courteous to those who disagree with him (something that cannot often be said for the movement as a whole). As Meyer’s newest book gave the claims of ID more media attention, this May saw the return of the claim that ID is leading a revolution in biology. On an episode of Justin Brierley’s podcast, Meyer repeated the long-since debunked claim that ID had successfully predicted that junk DNA was not junk at all and argued that this gives further credence to ID’s capabilities as a scientific theory. Listen to the key figures from the Discovery Institute (the ID-promoting think tank which Meyer helped to found) and they will tell you that scientists are leaving evolution behind in droves—and that the honest ones are beginning to catch up with what ID has been saying all along.

If one did not know better—and many podcast listeners and church attendees may not—you would think a scientific revolution was underway à la Thomas Kuhn. But this is far from the case. The halls of biology remain silent on intelligent design. There is nothing to see here at all. The ID revolution is complete fiction.

When I was an undergraduate at Cambridge, ID was mentioned twice. The first time was during an evolutionary biology lecture when the bacterial flagellum came up in discussion, and our lecturer asked if anyone knew why it had gained political fame (I knew the answer—Kitzmiller v. Dover¹—but only one other student had even heard of ID). The second time was in a genetics class. We were observing what one might call ‘bad design’ and my professor remarked that if nature had a designer, this was a case where they had done a poor job. That was it—in my postgraduate studies, it never came up at all.

In June, I asked a friend of mine, a world-class virologist, if—whether in her student or professional career—ID had ever been mentioned. Perplexed, she said not once. And this is the case with everyone I have ever asked. ID is not leading any revolution, and no scientist or academic I have ever met can ever recall it coming up. It could not be less relevant right now.

But two years ago, in a debate during an episode of Premier Unbelievable? entitled ‘Is Intelligent Design advancing or in retreat?’, the Discovery Institute’s Casey Luskin claimed that the movement was advancing, gaining new converts, and had never been stronger. He mentioned a conference in Israel on evolutionary genetics that he had attended when marshalling his evidence. My first thought was ‘Why is a geologist attending an evolutionary genetics conference?’ My second thought was that one of my best friends had been there, so I asked him about it. His response was that ID was not mentioned once during the event.

Something is amiss here. The data does not add up. On the one hand, ID proponents claim that biology is about to overthrow Darwinian evolution and that scientists are turning to ID by the truckload. But in science itself, it is very much business as usual, and not a sound about ID is to be heard.

But it is actually worse than that for ID, because in biology an actual revolution is underway. The biological sciences are arguably seeing the greatest boom period since the molecular biology revolution of the 1950s. Consider that since CRISPR-Cas9 burst onto the scene in 2011, genetic engineering has undergone an extraordinary transformation, becoming cheap, easy, and accurate. Even since the Nobel Prize was awarded to Jennifer A. Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier in 2019 for discovering this revolutionary gene-editing tool, base and prime editing have made it even more precise.

Then there is cancer immunotherapy, which since 2018 has transformed the landscape of oncological treatment. It may well be the future of all cancer treatment as soon as costs come down, which is inevitable. Meanwhile, molecular biology has been transformed again by AI, with the CASP competition to build systems that accurately predict protein structure from sequence data alone seeing extraordinary success from AI-based entries. AlphaFold brought the accuracy of predictive results in line with experimental data from x-ray crystallography and cryo-EM, and AlphaFold3, along with its competitors, is set to transform the prospects of personalised medicine.

Gene sequencing itself has become quicker, cheaper, and more accessible every year since the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003. In fact, in 2016, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins sequenced the genome of microorganisms on the International Space Station using a handheld device, showing just how far the field had come. Genomic analysis can now be done cheaply in the field, with a handheld sequencer, on any organism, and the results can be expected back in mere hours.

And what is the word from ID proponents on these extraordinary developments in the landscape of biology? Nothing. The Discovery Institute promises transformational research (yet has no laboratories), boasts predictive science (yet has published none), and claims that science is now looking to design and purposiveness as explanations for biological phenomena instead of leaning on evolution—but seems not even to be aware of what is actually happening in biology during one of its most transformational periods ever.

This is not tremendously surprising, given that a glance at the Discovery Institute’s list of fellows shows that it is full of philosophers and theologians. Even among its scientists, some have published little or nothing. On the whole, ID is dominated by people who have never done a day’s scientific work in their lives. They speak of the ‘scientific community’ but rarely engage with scientists in world-class research. This is, sadly, only the tip of the iceberg, as ID continues to overstate its credentials and overplay its hand.

Do they have a case when they call evolution a theory in crisis? Not in the least. ID proponents could not be more mistaken in articulating evolutionary biology as a science that is rigid and stale. When I was an undergraduate, modern evolutionary biology was described to me as the ‘fastest growing science’ due to the advances in genomics and molecular biology and their associated data revolutions. It is very much a predictive science today, testable and measurable.

Besides, convergent evolution (something ID never talks about) is very much a grand unifying theory in biology, applicable to everything from genetics to medicine at every level. It is still as Theodosius Dobzhansky said over half a century ago: ‘Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.’ Dobzhansky himself was a Greek Orthodox Christian, but because he was an evolutionist, ID advocates pay little attention to him. Dobzhansky is just another uncomfortable obstacle passed over in silence by ID proponents.

It is interesting to track those whom ID proponents acknowledge and those that they do not. ID arguments have not changed since the 1990s, no matter how many times they are debunked or how little serious attention they get. This is partly due to the distance between ID and real science, and partly due to ignorance. When proponents discuss ID on any platform, the same names are always trumpeted, as if being read from a script. First, the latest scientist with any publications who has joined their ranks (Günter Bechly will be named dropped a thousand times), then Thomas Nagel, Antony Flew, and anyone else remotely famous who has ever said anything nice about ID in the past 30 years. In doing so, ID advocates reveal that their arguments are empty veneers, utterly lacking in real substance. If the Discovery Institute was actually putting out research, had an active program, or was doing real science, then these appeals to authority would not be necessary.

As someone with a doctorate in philosophy of science, Meyer is certain to know the demarcation criteria which mark the scientific off from the non-scientific. Thus, great pains are taken by ID advocates to talk about active research and publication in journals (even if it is their own in-house journal BIO-Complexity, which they eagerly pitch to outsiders to publish in) while holding conferences and collaborating wherever possible. Falsifiability remains a problem, however. Whenever the latest example of ‘irreducible complexity’ is knocked down like their old favourite the bacterial flagellum was, advocates don’t seem persuaded of the falsehood of ID. Put simply, ID is not scientific.

There is also the matter of picking their battles. There is a reason why Meyer would talk to Michael Shermer: he is not a biologist, and he has a large platform. When asked why serious scientists don’t engage with their ideas, the responses usually boil down to conspiracy theories. ‘They’, the ‘scientific community’, are locked into ‘Neo-Darwinism’, and the powers that be, with their materialist agenda, are controlling science to their own nefarious ends: those masters at the gates control education and are trying to keep their dogmas alive. In reaching for conspiracy, ID evinces the dogmatism it accuses others of holding.

Recently the Discovery Institute opened a brand-new site outside Cambridge. When I discussed this with a biology professor at the university, he laughed and noted that businesses often try and build their sites in the area to benefit from the association with the university and its heritage. Artificially manufacturing illusory respectability by being a ‘Cambridge’ institute is further evidence of what is really going on here. If ID was really leading a revolution in biology, then none of this would be necessary. I have spoken with several religious scientists in Cambridge who are less than thrilled at ID moving into the neighbourhood. For them, it only makes their lives as researchers harder.

The picture is even uglier than this. In Hinxton, near Cambridge, you have the Wellcome Sanger Institute, home of the UK arm of the Human Genome Project. Next door is the European Bioinformatics Institute, home of AlphaFold and the finest of its kind on the planet. Over the motorway is the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology. All of these house dozens of Nobel laureates and pump out thousands of publications in major journals every month. And this is not to mention every other university-affiliated centre in the city, all home to scientists young and old who are changing the world. The Discovery Institute’s new site, rather than giving off an air of world-class credibility, exposes the contrast between ID and real science. Surrounded by giants, ID is revealed to be a pygmy.

To sum up: intelligent design has nothing to say about modern biology, and modern biology is certainly not talking about intelligent design.

1. The bacterial flagellum was cited in the trial as something ‘irreducibly complex’ and therefore in need of the ‘intelligent designer’ hypothesis to be explained. For more on ‘irreducible complexity’ and the bacterial flagellum, see Kenneth Miller’s detailed refutation of this old argument, once a favourite of the ID crowd before it was exposed by Miller during Kitzmiller v. Dover. ︎

Related reading

Linnaeus, Buffon, and the battle for biology, by Charles Foster

The Highbrow Caveman: Why ‘high’ culture is atavistic, by Charles Foster

Consciousness, free will and meaning in a Darwinian universe: interview with Daniel C. Dennett, by Daniel James Sharp

‘An animal is a description of ancient worlds’: interview with Richard Dawkins, by Emma Park

What I believe: Interview with Andrew Copson, by Emma Park

Bad Religious Education, by Siniša Prijić

White Christian Nationalism is rising in America. Separation of church and state is the antidote. By Rachel Laser

The post Is ‘intelligent design’ on the cusp of overthrowing evolutionary science? appeared first on The Freethinker.

As editor of the Freethinker, I would like to invite you along to Conway Hall’s Freethought History Festival, which is being held from Friday 30th August to Sunday 1st September.

On Saturday 31st August, I will be on a panel discussing the Freethinker alongside my predecessor as editor Emma Park and Professor David Nash. Other speakers will include Freethinker contributors Bob Forder, Eoin Carter, Maddy Goodall, Frances Lynch, Clare Stainthorp, and our resident radical cartoonist Paul Fitzgerald. Graham Smith, head of the campaigning group Republic, will launch the festival on 30 August, while 1 September is a free family fun day. Bob Forder will also be conducting his Books, Bones, and Blasphemy walking tour on the Sunday.

The festival is sponsored by the Freethinker, and it would be lovely to meet some of you there. You can find out more and get tickets here. Use the code FREETHINK!25 for a 25% discount.

Related reading

‘I do not think you are going to get a secular state without getting rid of the monarchy’: interview with Graham Smith, by Daniel James Sharp

Bring on the British republic – Graham Smith’s ‘Abolish the Monarchy’, reviewed, by Daniel James Sharp

Daniel James Sharp’s Freethinker articles

Emma Park’s Freethinker articles

Charles Bradlaugh and George Jacob Holyoake: their contrasting reputations as Secularists and Radicals, by Edward Royle

Is all publicity good publicity? How the first editor of the Freethinker attracted the public’s attention, by Clare Stainthorp

Britain’s blasphemy heritage, by David Nash

The rhythm of Tom Paine’s bones, by Eoin Carter

Morality without religion: the story of humanism, by Madeleine Goodall

Freethinker cartoons and articles by Paul Fitzgerald

Megan Manson’s Freethinker articles

Celebrating Eliza Flower: an unconventional woman, by Frances Lynch

The post Invitation to the Freethought History Festival at Conway Hall, 31 August – 1 September appeared first on The Freethinker.

The UK that goes to the polls on 4 July will be the most religiously diverse in election history. Less than half the population of England and Wales describe themselves as ‘Christian’. Most people in Scotland are now non-religious. And there are now more Catholics than Protestants in Northern Ireland, but even here we are seeing more and more people turning away from religion.

This sustained shift in demographics demands a radical response from the state. Entrenched Christian privilege and a laissez-faire approach to social cohesion are ill-suited to a religiously diverse, pluralistic population. That’s why the National Secular Society is calling on the next Government to seriously rethink the role of religion in public and political life.

Here’s what we want to see from the incoming Government.

Secular, inclusive education

Schools play a key role in shaping future generations and fostering a culture of tolerance and understanding. But faith schools build division into the system.

A third of all schools are faith schools. This isn’t sustainable. Already, the prevalence of religious schools means many nonreligious families have no choice other than a faith-based education for their children. This needs to be addressed.

Dividing children by religion leads to ethnic segregation, too. The next Government should commit to phasing out faith-based education to better encourage integration and ensure that every child can receive a secular education.

The calling of the election means that the outgoing Government’s plans to abolish the 50% admissions cap in faith-based academies hit the buffers. The Conservative manifesto revives plans to lift the cap and allow faith schools to apply 100% religious selection, paving the way for yet more discriminatory faith schools.

Worryingly, Labour didn’t oppose plans to scrap the cap and will come under pressure from regressive religious groups to reinstate this policy. They should resist.

Religious selection means faith schools are not only less religiously and ethnically diverse; they admit fewer children from poorer backgrounds, children in care, and children with special educational needs and disabilities. Any government interested in tackling unfairness and discrimination in education can’t afford to ignore the pernicious effects of faith-based admissions. That’s why it is alarming that Keir Starmer has said a Labour Government would be ‘even more supportive of faith schools’ than the current Government.

In all state-funded schools, even the two-thirds without a religious character, daily acts of ‘broadly Christian’ collective worship are required by law. This law, dating back to 1944, has no moral or educational basis. Teachers don’t support it and many schools flout it. Imposing worship in schools undermines children’s freedom of religion or belief and opens the door to evangelism in schools. We will encourage the next Government to support its repeal as soon as possible.

England’s outdated model of religious education dates back to a similar era. Labour’s plans to modernise the school curriculum must not shy away from reforms to liberate this subject area from the inappropriate control of religious interest groups. All children and young people should have an equal entitlement to an objective and critical education about worldviews, citizenship, and ethics.

We will also push for new legislation to boost Ofsted’s powers to crack down on unregistered religious schools operating illegally. The creation of a register of children not in school is a key part of this. During their time in office, the Conservatives made plenty of encouraging noises but ultimately failed to tackle the problem. The required legislation for a register was in the Schools Bill which was ditched by the Sunak Government in 2022. The Tory manifesto promises to revive the register plans.

Labour’s manifesto makes no such commitment, but the Shadow Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, has previously signalled her support for a home-school register to deliver better oversight of home education, which in too many cases leads to children being indoctrinated with fundamentalist dogma in unsafe and illegal schools. She also says she wants ‘every child to receive a world-class education’. To achieve this, the next Government will need to stand up to religious lobbyists who impede attempts to protect the educational rights of children in independent and unregistered religious schools by spuriously claiming that such attempts violate religious freedom.

Free speech

For all its faults, the Conservative Government has shown willingness to protect the right to free expression. It was slow to do so when Islamic fundamentalists descended on a school in Batley in 2021. But after a parent was left pleading for mercy after her son was involved in the scuffing of a Quran in Kettlethorpe last year, the Home Secretary robustly asserted: ‘We do not have blasphemy laws in Great Britain, and must not be complicit in the attempts to impose them on this country.’

A recent recommendation for the creation of guidance to better protect schools and teachers facing blasphemy accusations should be adopted and implemented—as should the recommendation from Sara Khan, the Government’s Independent Advisor on Social Cohesion and Resilience, to create a special unit tasked with responding to ‘flashpoint incidents’ such as blasphemy protests.

The next Government needs to find ways to address anti-Muslim prejudice in ways that don’t impede the freedom to scrutinise and criticise Islamic beliefs, ideas, and practices. It needs to be clear that there is no right not to be offended—and no legal obligation to be reverent towards any religion.

In opposition, Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National Party, and the Greens have all shown a worrying disregard for free speech by uncritically adopting a definition of ‘Islamophobia’ proposed by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG)  for British Muslims. The concept of Islamophobia unhelpfully conflates hatred and discrimination against Muslims with criticism of Islam. This blurring is intentional. The silencing of scrutiny, criticism, mockery, and anything deemed ‘offensive’ has been a long-term aim of Islamist groups, some of which have been too close to Labour for comfort. Labour has promised to reverse the Conservatives’ decision to downgrade the monitoring of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate incidents that fall short of criminality. There are also fears that a Labour Government will seek to incorporate the APPG definition into law.

Hindu groups have jumped on the bandwagon, calling on the next Government to criminalise ‘Hinduphobia’. Any attempt to do so will be met with fierce opposition from secularists and free speech campaigners. Resisting the politics of competitive grievances and sectarianism is something the next Government needs to do if Britain is to avoid becoming increasingly fraught with ethnic and religious tensions.

Towards a secular democracy

It makes no sense for one of the most diverse and secularised nations in the world to retain an established religion.

One manifestation of the Church of England’s established status is the twenty-six unelected Anglican clerics sitting as of right as legislators in the House of Lords. In 2022, Keir Starmer called the Lords ‘undemocratic’ and ‘indefensible’. He launched plans drawn up by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown to replace the upper chamber with an elected Assembly of the Nations and Regions. The plans would bring a welcome end to reserved seats for bishops.

Despite originally suggesting the plans be implemented within the first five years of a Labour Government, the party is now promising a much more incremental approach. Replacing the House of Lords with an alternative second chamber remains the goal, but the manifesto commits only to ‘immediate modernisation’ of the Lords by introducing an upper age limit of 80 and scrapping hereditary peers. Secularists will be arguing that any immediate modernisation must also include the removal of the archaic, unfair, and undemocratic bishops’ bench.

But we need to go further. A state religion is incompatible with a democracy in which all citizens of every religion and belief are equal. The announcement of the election unfortunately spelt the end of a bill backed by the National Secular Society to disestablish the Church of England.  But we’ll urge the next Government to engage with this long overdue democratic reform to transform the UK into a fully secular democracy, free from religious privilege.

A new administration will bring fresh hope for other necessary reforms, such as assisted dying, making wedding law fairer for all, outlawing caste discrimination, removing the advancement of religion as a charitable purpose, and effectively protecting children from abuse in religious settings.

Ultimately, Britain needs a new political framework to foster unity and keep religious fundamentalism in check by balancing religious freedom with other fundamental human rights. Secularism offers such a framework.

That’s why we’ll be urging the next Government to adopt secularist principles and policies which move us towards a freer and fairer society, where people can live by the creed they choose but where no particular religion or belief is privileged or imposed.

Related reading

Faith schools: where do the political parties stand? by Stephen Evans

Secularism and the struggle for free speech, by Stephen Evans

Religion and belief in schools: lessons to be learnt, by Russell Sandberg

The case for secularism (or, the church’s new clothes), by Neil Barber

Three years on, the lessons of Batley are yet to be learned, by Jack Rivington

Secularism is a feminist issue, by Megan Manson

Blasphemy and bishops: how secularists are navigating the culture wars, by Emma Park

Bad Religious Education, by Siniša Prijić

Silence of the teachers, by Nath Jnan

The perils of dropping a book, by Noel Yaxley

Britain’s blasphemy heritage, by David Nash

Cancel culture and religious intolerance: ‘Falsely Accused of Islamophobia’, by Steven Greer, by Daniel James Sharp

‘This is not rocket science’: the Disestablishment of the Church of England Bill 2023, interview with Paul Scriven by Emma Park

The post What secularists want from the next UK Government appeared first on The Freethinker.

Young people are fed up with the often prudish, vague, and incomplete information about sex and relationships that they are getting from their teachers—and parents. So they are turning to often explicit TV series, and even online pornography, to get answers. Not a good move.

During my school talks on human rights, more than half the pupils describe their lessons about sex as ‘poor’, ‘inadequate’, and ‘out of touch’. 

Little wonder that millions of young people are entering adulthood emotionally and sexually ill-prepared. Too many subsequently endure disordered relationships, ranging from unfulfilling to outright abusive.

The result? Much unhappiness—and sometimes mental and physical ill-health. We need to change that.

One problem is that a lot of Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) classes still concentrate on the biological facts of reproduction and on using a condom to prevent HIV. Relatively little teaching is actually about sex—or feelings and relationships.

Also, RSE frequently starts too late, after many young people have become sexually active and adopted bad habits such as unsafe sex. These are harder to reverse once established.

While RSE should not encourage early sex (it is best if young people wait), it should prepare them for a later satisfying, safe sexual and emotional life.

What, then, needs to change in order to make RSE more effective?

Young people’s health and welfare must take priority over squeamishness and embarrassment about sex. Political, religious, and cultural sensitivities cannot be allowed to thwart mandatory age-appropriate RSE in every school, from the first year of primary education onwards.

It is time that RSE is revised radically. Based on listening to young people’s own ideas during my talks in schools, here are some suggestions.

Mandatory High Quality Lessons in Every School

RSE is now mandatory but for some schools its provision smacks of a tick-box exercise, with the lessons offered being infrequent, inadequate, and not meeting pupils’ needs. This is not good enough. Sex and relationships are a very important part of most adults’ lives. That’s why high-standard education about them should happen in every school, with no opt-outs for religious schools and independent schools outside the state sector. The aim should be to prepare young people for adult life by ensuring they are sexually and emotionally literate.

RSE lessons should be at least monthly throughout a child’s school life—not once a term or once a year. And the lessons should be LGBT+ inclusive.

Education From the First Year of Primary School

RSE needs to be age-appropriate. It should start from the first year of primary school by talking about love and relationships, including non-traditional families (such as single-parent, extended, and same-sex families).

It should also discuss the correct names for body parts and the physical changes that occur at puberty. To tackle abuse, grooming, and inappropriate touching, children should be taught the difference between caring and exploitative behaviours.

One reason for starting young is that many children now begin puberty between the ages of eight and twelve. Long beforehand, they need to know about the physical and hormonal changes they will undergo, like body hair growth and erections in boys and menstruation in girls. Keeping them ignorant threatens their happiness and welfare.

Sex Is Good for You

RSE lessons should acknowledge the risks and dangers of sex, but from the age of 16 they should also recognise its pleasures—and that sex is good for us. It is natural, wholesome, fun, and (with safe sex) healthy. Quality sex can have a beneficial effect on our mental and physical well-being.

Young people also have a right to know that sex is not essential for health and happiness. Some people are asexual. They get by without sex and that’s fine. However, pupils should know that most people find that regular, fulfilling sex lifts their spirits and enhances their lives and relationships.

Overcoming Sex Shame to Tackle Abuse

Sexual guilt, most of it religious-inspired, causes immense human misery— it leads not only to frustrated, unhappy sex lives but actual psychological and physical ill-health. It also helps sustain child sex abuse.

Adults who sexually exploit youngsters often get away with it because the victims feel embarrassed or guilty about sex and are therefore reluctant to report it.

RSE needs to encourage young people to have more open, positive attitudes towards sexual matters and to teach them how to accurately name their body parts, in order to effectively report abuse. Pupils who are knowledgeable about their bodies and feel at ease talking about sex are more likely to disclose abuse and report their abusers.

How to Have Sexual Fulfilment

Good sex isn’t obvious; it has to be learned. In the absence of sufficient practical information from parents and teachers on how to achieve shared sexual pleasure, many young people are turning to pornography, with its unrealistic and often degrading images.

To ensure happier, more fulfilled relationships in adulthood, RSE for pupils aged 16-plus should include advice on how to achieve mutually fulfilling, high-quality sex, including the emotional and erotic value of foreplay; the multitude of erogenous zones and how to excite them; and the various methods to achieve pleasure for oneself and one’s partner. This is particularly important for boys who often know little about female sexual anatomy and how to give a female partner fulfilment.

Ethical Framework: Mutual Consent, Respect & Fulfilment

It is important that RSE acknowledges diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, and relationship types, while also giving teenagers guidance on their rights and responsibilities—including teaching about consent and abuse issues.

A positive ethical framework for sex can be summed up in three very simple principles: mutual consent, reciprocal respect, and shared fulfilment.

The great advantage of these three principles is that they apply universally, regardless of whether people are married or single, monogamous or promiscuous, heterosexual, bisexual, gay, lesbian, trans, or intersex.

Promoting Safer Alternatives: Oral Sex & Mutual Masturbation

If schools are serious about cutting the incidence of teen pregnancies, abortions, and HIV and other sexual infections, they should highlight to pupils aged 16 and older the various safer, healthier alternatives to vaginal and anal intercourse.

Oral sex and mutual masturbation, for example, carry no risk of conception and a much lower risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

The most effective way to persuade teenagers to switch to these alternatives is by making them sound and look appealing, glamorous, and sexy. Teachers need to explain that they are not a sacrifice or second best; that they can also be sexually fulfilling. It’s time to talk up and emphasise their advantages over intercourse: no worries about unwanted pregnancies, reduced HIV risk, and no need to use the pill or condoms.

While mutual masturbation is very safe, young people should be made aware that oral sex is safer than intercourse but not entirely risk-free.

Lessons ought also to include the advice that if young people become sexually active it is recommended that they get vaccinated against HPV and hepatitis. These vaccinations should be offered at every school.

Sexual Rights Are Human Rights

RSE should be based on, and espouse, the principle that it is a fundamental human right to love an adult person of any sex or gender identity, to engage in any mutually consensual, harmless sexual act with them, and to share a happy, healthy sex life.

These are the sexual human rights of every person. Everyone also has the human right not to have sex if they do not wish to do so.

Hetero, Homo, and Bi Are Equally Valid

When based on the three principles of mutual consent, respect, and fulfilment between adults, all relationships with persons of any sex are equally morally valid.

While schools should not promote any particular sexual orientation, they should encourage understanding and acceptance of heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual, and pansexual orientations—and transgender and intersex identities. This is vital to ensure self-acceptance by pupils with such orientations or identities, and to help combat prejudice, discrimination, bullying, and hate crime.

The Right to Sexual Self-Determination

The principle ‘It’s my body and my right to control it’ should be promoted in every school to ensure that young people assert their right to determine what they, and others, do with their bodies—including the right to abstain from sex, say ‘no’ to unwanted sex, and to report sexual abusers.

This ethos of sexual self-determination and the ‘right to choose’ is crucial to thwart people who attempt to pressure youngsters into sex, abusive relationships, and risky sex.

Live & Let Live

Human sexuality embraces a glorious diversity of emotions and desires. We are all unique, with our own individual tastes. People are emotionally and sexually fulfilled in a huge variety of different ways.

Providing that sexual behaviour is consensual and between adults, where no one is harmed and the enjoyment is reciprocal, schools should adopt a non-judgemental ‘live and let live’ attitude when teaching RSE.

Advice on Internet Safety

Widespread access to the internet and social media has exposed many young people to pornography and sexting and the risks of grooming, abuse, and online harassment. These issues, and how to stay safe online, need to be a cornerstone of RSE lessons, so that teens can be aware of the dangers and protect themselves.

Pornography

Porn is ubiquitous and easy to access. Most young people have watched it. There needs to be frank discussions about the issue: young people need to be told that it is unrealistic to expect from a partner the sexual acrobatics and hours-long sex of porn stars. Also, the often abusive and humiliating and violent nature of pornography needs to be challenged; it should be explained that this is not the right way to treat a partner and will not lead to a happy, healthy relationship. And it should be made clear that sexual violence is against the law and carries severe penalties.

Respect for Sexual Diversity

Our desires and temperaments are not the same. There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach when it comes to sex, love, and relationships. If these fall within the ethical framework of adult mutual consent, respect, and fulfilment, it is not the business of RSE to promote sexual conformity or to neglect the reality of sexual diversity.

Give Pupils All the Facts

Sex education from the age of 16 ought to tell the whole truth about every kind of sex and relationship—including sexual practices that some people may find distasteful, like rimming and bondage.

The purpose of such frankness is not to encourage these practices but to help pupils deal with them if they encounter them in later life. This includes advising them of their right to refuse to participate in sexual practices that they dislike or object to.

Restricted Parental Opt-out

We don’t let parents take their kids out of science or history classes, so why should a parental opt-out be permitted for RSE? Removing pupils from such lessons jeopardises their emotional, sexual, and physical health.

Parents who want to withdraw their children should be required to come to each lesson and physically remove their child, and then bring them back in good time for the next lesson. This way the parental opt-out option is retained but the actual opt-out rate is likely to be reduced.

Conclusion

Most young people say they want earlier, more detailed, and franker RSE lessons. We should listen to their concerns and ensure that schools give them the information they need to protect themselves and their partners. Over to you, Education Secretary.

The post What should schools teach young people about sex? appeared first on The Freethinker.

Introduction

In common with other members of my family, I love books. Not just their contents (which are, of course, very important) but their appearance, smell, and feel—the older, the better. Their associations with events and people never cease to fascinate me.

My family’s book addiction goes back to my great grandfather, Robert Joseph Forder, who was secretary of the National Secular Society (NSS) throughout most of the heroic Bradlaugh years (1866-90; for more information on Charles Bradlaugh and the history of the NSS, see my video lecture series) and who then became a publisher of freethought literature until he died in 1901. His premises were at 28 Stonecutter Street, which was also the headquarters of the NSS and the birthplace of the Freethinker. In those days, being a freethought publisher carried a high status, following as it did in the heroic footsteps of Daniel Isaac Eaton, Richard Carlile, Henry Hetherington, and James Watson, to name but a few (more on Eaton and Carlile below). I think Robert Joseph’s importance as a publisher of birth control literature is often underrated or ignored.

Robert Joseph’s son, Robert William, became a bookseller and ran bookshops on Charing Cross Road in the interwar years, sometimes aided by his son (and my father), Robert Edwin. After the war, Robert Edwin became a teacher but spent most of his Saturdays at jumble sale book stalls or in second-hand bookshops. He was rarely seen without a book in one hand, and he built up a small but interesting collection of freethought publications. I inherited these when he died, far too young, in 1973.

I became a teacher and, following a chance school staffroom encounter in 1983, I made the acquaintance of Kit Mouat. Kit was a feisty woman, a one-time Freethinker editor and author who was ill and knew she was dying. She had issued freethought book catalogues and persuaded me to take over, selling me her stock. Over the next few years, and until the advent of online bookselling, I issued fifteen catalogues, each with around 400-500 items, and sold thousands of items all over the world. The US was always the largest market. I occasionally look back at the catalogues and blanch when I see the asking price of what are now regarded as antiquarian rarities. It is an unfortunate characteristic of the bibliophile bookseller that each sale brings regret.

My part-time career brought me into contact with many of the leading freethinkers and freethought institutions in the English-speaking world. The most memorable conversations were with Madalyn Murray O’Hair, founder of American Atheists. Madalyn and I had lively telephone exchanges laced with foul language (on her part). At the time she was endeavouring to build up a library and archive in Austin, Texas and was on the hunt for material of the type I was selling. She thought I should offer everything to her first, ahead of other customers. In 1995 I issued a catalogue but heard nothing from Texas. Only later did it transpire that Madalyn with her son and granddaughter had been murdered and their bodies dismembered and hidden. It wasn’t until 2001 that their remains were recovered, with Madalyn being identified by the serial number on her hip prosthesis.

Other memorable acquaintances included Dr Gordon Stein, editor of The American Rationalist and a bibliophile and author, who compiled some important freethought bibliographies along with other works. Gordon had a huge library, now in the hands of the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, New York, which includes many books I sourced. He once visited our home and told me that he had collected every edition of Thomas Paine’s freethinking classic The Age of Reason he could get his hands on, as this was the surest way of identifying every publisher sympathetic to freethought.

Other customers and acquaintances included Jim Herrick, David Tribe, Nigel Sinnott and Bill McIlroy (all former Freethinker editors). I have fond memories of them all.

On the purchasing front, I once made a journey to Yorkshire on the strength of a phone call from a vendor of what were once euphemistically called ‘top-shelf magazines’ who had somehow come into possession of some titles containing the word ‘freethought’. He also mentioned some familiar authors’ names to me. It turned out that he had purchased a huge pile of freethought journals, pamphlets, and books, which he had had trouble disposing of—until he contacted me. I will never be entirely clear on how he got hold of the collection, but there was mention of clearing a loft in Stretford, Manchester. We negotiated a price and loaded everything into my Lada Estate (I anxiously watched on as the suspension flattened).  There was a complete run of the Freethinker from the first copy in May 1881 until the 1930s, together with a mountain of pamphlets. From some pencil notes and names on the items it became apparent that I had bought the library of the Manchester branch of the NSS.

I found it impossible to part with everything I handled, hence my large and ever-growing freethought library (not good business practice, I grant). In truth, when I started, I did not really understand the significance of many items. Who would have guessed, for example, that The Fruits of Philosophy and The Elements of Social Science are titles of Victorian birth control pamphlets? However, book dealing is a much better educator than it is a wealth generator, which brings me to the purpose of this introduction. 

Knowledge of freethought literature is not common, even among booksellers, and over the next few months, I shall endeavour to share my observations on some of the books, pamphlets, and journals in my collection. Some description of what they contain will be essential, but it will also be my aim to explain each publication’s historical significance and the events it was associated with, as well as the importance of the author and sometimes also the publisher.

There is only one place to start: with the freethinking hero Thomas Paine (1737-1809).

The Age of Reason

In a recent Freethinker essay, Eoin Carter credits Thomas Paine with writing three ‘era-defining texts’. The first two were Common Sense (1776) and Rights of Man (two parts, 1791-2). The third was The Age of Reason (three parts, 1794, 1795, and 1807), which dealt with his views on religion. Although these views may have been implicit in earlier works, now they were overt and unambiguously stated, with serious implications for the way posterity was to regard its author. The first part was written under the shadow of the Jacobin Reign of Terror while Paine was living in France, having been driven out of England after the publication of Rights of Man. The Age of Reason represents a shift in his revolutionary focus from the hereditary privilege enjoyed by monarchy and aristocracy to what he saw as the related nonsense and tyranny of revealed religion.

My copy of the first part is dated 1794 and acknowledges the printer as Barrois of Paris, with the seller as D.I. Eaton of the Cock and Swine, 74 Newgate Street, London. Considerable mystery surrounds the first 1793 French edition, of which only one incomplete copy survives. The Joel Barlow edition of February 1794 probably also predates the Eaton version. Further confusion stems from Paine’s frequent early textual revisions, but it was the Eaton edition that sold in large numbers and attracted attention. And what attention it got.

Daniel Isaac Eaton (1753-1814) was one of an extraordinary band of radical, freethinking publishers whose courage still astounds. By the end of 1794 the authorities had already unsuccessfully tried to prosecute him for sedition twice. His premises in Newgate Street (now adjacent to St Paul’s Underground station and in the shadow of the Cathedral) were called the Cock and Swine. This was a provocation in itself: the cock represented French republicanism and the swine was an ironic reference to Edmund Burke’s use of the term ‘swinish multitude’ as a descriptor of the general population in his anti-revolutionary Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Eaton also issued halfpenny tokens decorated with images of a cock and swine to be used as currency (see an example here).

Although Eaton avoided imprisonment to begin with, in 1796 he had to flee to America to remain a free man. He returned to England three years later only to have his person and property seized and to be imprisoned for fifteen months. In 1812, he was again imprisoned, this time in Newgate Gaol, which effectively became a university of radicalism with inmates discussing, reading, and even publishing radical works. Part of Eaton’s sentence included his standing in the pillory for an hour a day. This is how his fellow radical William Cobbett described the scene:

‘An immense crowd of people cheered him during the whole hour: some held out biscuits…others held him out glasses of wine, and others little flags of triumph and bunches of flowers. While the executioner and officers of Justice were hooted!’

Cobbett went on to suggest that this backfire led to the end of pillory punishment in London.

Of all Paine’s works, it was The Age of Reason which provoked the most enduring hostility, reaching its apotheosis when Theodore Roosevelt referred to Paine as a ‘filthy little atheist’, all three words of which are inaccurate. As he makes clear at the outset of The Age of Reason, Paine was a deist, not an atheist: ‘I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.’ Nevertheless, his evisceration of organised religion is absolute. He argued that it was ‘set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.’

And then there is the famous short paragraph which, to my mind, says it all, and gets right to the heart of what freethinking means:

‘I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.’ (Emphasis added.)

It is not surprising that The Age of Reason became one of the most prosecuted, if not simply the most prosecuted, works of all time. This repression was successful for a while, and it doubtless reduced the number of copies in circulation. But due to the heroism of a small band of radical publishers, of whom Richard Carlile (1790-1843) is possibly the finest example, it was to become the most famous, or infamous, freethought book ever published. We will hear more about Richard Carlile throughout this series.

There was nothing particularly new about Paine’s criticism of religion. The likes of David Hume and Edward Gibbon had already made their scepticism clear. But they used mannerly language to express themselves and their ideas were politely discussed in fashionable coffeehouses. Paine was groundbreaking in his polemical, militant, witty, and plebian style.  Such a lack of deference and respect shook the aristocratic and religious establishment to its core.

For all the reasons mentioned above, The Age of Reason achieved the status of a seminal work in freethought circles. As Chapman Cohen (1868-1954), second editor of the Freethinker, often remarked, the various editions would fill a good-sized room. The Bradlaughite secularists of the late nineteenth century celebrated Paine’s birthday on 29 January each year at the Old Street Hall of Science in what was a kind of freethinkers’ Christmas. Finally, although he never used the term ‘secularism’, the coining of which awaited George Jacob Holyoake (1817-1906), Paine’s conviction that the separation of church and state is a necessary condition for true freedom lies at the very heart of liberal democracy.

Further reading

Image of the week: ‘The world is my country, to do good my religion!’ by Bob Forder

Introducing ‘Paine: A Fantastical Visual Biography’, by Polyp, by Paul Fitzgerald

Freethought and birth control: the untold story of a Victorian book depot, by Bob Forder

Christopher Hitchens and the long afterlife of Thomas Paine, by Daniel James Sharp

‘There is nothing easy or empty about humanity and reason’: in memoriam Jim Herrick (1944–2023), by Bob Forder

From the archive: ‘A House Divided’, by Nigel Sinnott

Image of the week: ‘Wha wants me’, a caricature of Thomas Paine by Isaac Cruikshank (1792), by Daniel James Sharp

The rhythm of Tom Paine’s bones, by Eoin Carter

The post Books From Bob’s Library #1: Introduction and Thomas Paine’s ‘The Age of Reason’ appeared first on The Freethinker.

A judge citing the Bible and referring to God dozens of times in a court decision that limits reproductive health care. A nonbinary teenager dead after months of bullying in a state where public officials are advancing anti-LGBTQ+ policies. Public school boards agreeing to hire religious chaplains in place of mental health counsellors. A nationally televised prayer service sponsored by members of Congress, attended by the President of the United States, and held in the seat of American government. 

All these incidents happened recently and within the space of about a month in different locations across the United States. They may seem unrelated, but all serve as potent examples of how white Christian Nationalism is ascendant in the U.S.

White Christian Nationalism is a political ideology and cultural framework rooted in the dangerous belief that America is—and must remain—a Christian nation founded for its white Christian inhabitants, and that our laws and policies must codify that privilege. Christian Nationalists deny the separation of church and state promised by the U.S. Constitution. They oppose equality for Black and Brown people, women, LGBTQ+ people, religious minorities, and the nonreligious because their goal is to retain traditional power structures and turn back America’s steady progress toward her goal of equality. Through a well-funded shadow network of organizations, allied politicians and judges, and other political power brokers, Christian Nationalists are marshalling the power of the state to impose their beliefs on all Americans.

Take reproductive freedom. In February, the Alabama Supreme Court issued a theology-infused opinion that human life begins at conception and therefore frozen embryos harvested for in vitro fertilization should have the same legal rights as living, breathing children. The court’s chief justice went a step further by writing a 22-page concurring opinion in which he cited the Bible five times and mentioned God or “the creator” nearly 50 times.

It was far from the first time that public officials have cited religion to justify the restriction of reproductive rights. In Missouri, legislators repeatedly voiced their religious beliefs when they passed the state’s current abortion ban; they even wrote religion into the law itself, proclaiming, ‘Almighty God is the author of life.’ My organization, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, along with the National Women’s Law Center, is in court on behalf of 14 clergy from seven different faith denominations challenging Missouri’s ban, which went into effect when the U.S. Supreme Court’s ultra-conservative bloc abolished the nationwide right to abortion in 2022. During the oral argument before the Supreme Court in that case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called out Mississippi lawmakers’ religious impetus for banning abortion: ‘How is your interest anything but a religious view?’

Christian Nationalism is also behind much of the vile persecution of LGBTQ+ people. Americans United and its allies have demanded the ouster of a religious extremist state politician who is pushing his anti-LGBTQ+, Christian Nationalist policies to the extreme. Ryan Walters, the superintendent of public instruction for Oklahoma, is on a crusade to infuse religion into the state’s public schools, from personally praying to a classroom of elementary school students to writing a suggested prayer for all of the state’s schools to supporting the creation of what would be the nation’s first religious public school (Americans United is also challenging that school in court).

Walters also advocates the teaching of a whitewashed version of American history and demonizes LGBTQ+ people. It was in this toxic atmosphere that a 16-year-old nonbinary student named Nex Benedict died. Nex, who was of Native American heritage, died on 8 February after being beaten in their Oklahoma high school restroom by other students. This came after months of bullying. Nex’s death was ruled a suicide; state and federal officials continue to investigate the circumstances around their death. But what is clear is that Walters created the environment that drove this child—whom he was supposed to protect—to a place of hopelessness and despair. After Nex’s death, Walters doubled down on his anti-trans rhetoric: In a New York Times interview, he said: ‘There’s not multiple genders. There’s two. That’s how God created us.’

The attack on public schools and students that Walters is waging in Oklahoma is a microcosm of what we are seeing across the country. Christian Nationalists are on a crusade to impose their religious beliefs on public school students even as they continue to divert ever more public funding to private religious schools. Right now, Americans United is tracking more than 1,300 bills in states across the country that impact church-state separation; nearly half of them involve public education.

Following in the path of Texas, at least 14 state legislatures have proposed bills that would allow public schools to replace qualified counsellors with religious chaplains. Lawmakers in various states have also proposed bills that would require public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments, allow public school teachers to pray in front of and even with students, and allow for the teaching of the Bible or intelligent design creationism in public schools. At the same time, religious extremists are advancing schemes that force taxpayers to fund tuition at private, religious schools that can indoctrinate and discriminate; last year alone at least 17 states expanded or created new private school voucher programs.

There are so many other examples I could give of how Christian Nationalism is invading our lives and threatening our rights and freedoms. One vivid example was, while waving the Christian flag and ‘Jesus saves’ banners, Christian Nationalists drove the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on 6 January 2021, as election deniers sought to keep former president Donald Trump in power.

Recent polling by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) shows that about 30% of Americans are adherents to or sympathizers of Christian Nationalism; a majority of Republicans and a supermajority of white evangelical Protestants espouse these views. PRRI also found that Christian Nationalists are more likely to have racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and patriarchal views. And the survey not surprisingly found a correlation between Christian Nationalism and a penchant for personal and political violence and authoritarianism.

This is not the first time the U.S. has experienced a resurgence of Christian Nationalism. In the 1950s amid the Cold War, Christian Nationalists were behind Congress creating the National Prayer Breakfast, adding ‘under God’ to the Pledge of Allegiance that schoolchildren recite every morning, and establishing ‘In God We Trust’ as the national motto. They were also behind the rise of the religious right in the late 1970s and 1980s, as religious conservatives opposed to the desegregation of Christian universities coalesced into an anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ rights, anti-feminism political movement.

America’s changing demographics and the fear this is engendering are spurring the current rise in white Christian Nationalism. In 2014, white Christians ceased being the majority in America. As their numbers have declined, the number of religiously unaffiliated people (the ‘nones’) has grown to about 26% of the population, according to PRRI. The U.S. has elected the first Black president and the first multiracial and female vice president. Same-sex couples now have the right to marry nationwide. There have been great strides in the movements for racial justice, women’s rights, and LGBTQ+ equality.

Now we are seeing the backlash: White Christian Nationalists are raging against the dying of their privilege. They were emboldened by Trump, who tapped into their insecurity and gave them unprecedented access to the White House and influence over federal policies. The Trump administration weaponized religious freedom as a license to discriminate in social services, health care, employment, education, and other aspects of American life.

During a 2018 state dinner at the White House with prominent evangelical Christians, Trump bragged: ‘The support you’ve given me has been incredible, but I really don’t feel guilty because I have given you a lot back—just about everything I promised. And, as one of our great pastors just said, ‘Actually, you’ve given us much more, sir, than you’ve promised,’ and I think that’s true in many respects.’

Through a shadow network of organizations and political allies working to pack the courts, lobby politicians to rewrite laws, and empower book-banning, curriculum-scrubbing school boards, white Christian Nationalists are wielding outsized power. And they are taking a wrecking ball to the wall that separates church and state. They know church-state separation is the antidote to white Christian Nationalism. They know that this bedrock principle, an American original enshrined in our Constitution, protects freedom and equality for all of us. They know that it is foundational to our democracy. And they know that it is incompatible with their agenda of securing power and privilege for a select few.

The good news is that America has faced waves of white Christian Nationalism before and battled it back. That, combined with the reality that we have the power of the people and the American Constitution on our side, gives me hope for the future. Americans United for Separation of Church and State has been around for 77 years and the organization is thriving. Every day, we are bringing together growing numbers of religious and nonreligious Americans to fight in the courts, in Congress, across state legislatures, and in the public square for freedom without favour and equality without exception. What could be more American than that?

Further reading

Reproductive freedom is religious freedom, by Andrew Seidel and Rachel Laser

Secular conservatives? If only… by Jacques Berlinerblau

Faith Watch, February 2024 and Faith Watch, March 2024, by Daniel James Sharp

The post White Christian Nationalism is rising in America. Separation of church and state is the antidote. appeared first on The Freethinker.

Animal lovers the world over are mourning the loss of Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl who escaped from the Central Park Zoo on 2 February 2023 following an act of vandalism on his enclosure. New Yorkers avidly followed his movements and celebrated his success in the urban wilds for over a year, breathlessly posting photographs of him perched on buildings while he feasted on rats and pigeons. Indeed, his adaptability to the hostile Gotham environment was remarkable, especially given the fact that he had been born in captivity in 2010. He had never had to forage for himself until that fateful night, but millennia of genetic programming kicked in almost immediately.

It was, if simpering media coverage was to be believed, an inspirational tale of resilience and the desire of wild things to be free. This reaction is an understandable one. Many of us find ourselves conflicted about the ethics of keeping animals in captivity, deprived of outlets for their instincts and constrained by enclosures a tiny fraction of the size of the territories they would patrol in their natural environment. Zoos can undoubtedly educate the public about wild animals and have done admirable work in breeding threatened and endangered species for reintroduction into restored habitats.

At the same time, even the best of them are morally repulsive sideshows. Go to any zoo and watch how people interact with the animals. How many do you see thoughtfully observing their behaviour and reading the carefully crafted signage? And how many do you see pounding on the glass and loudly chattering and generally treating the animals as curiosities, caged for the visitors’ amusement? In my experience, the latter form the majority of zoo-goers.

Flaco’s enclosure was indeed miniscule. It is unclear how much he was offered in the way of behavioural enrichment. If there was any at all, it would have been a morsel of what he would have experienced in the forests of Europe and Asia, to which his species is native.

I, too, couldn’t help but cheer a little at his cleverness, his proof that captivity does not equal domesticity. But that naive moment of joy was quickly replaced by a sense of dread. Even if he was able to find food, it struck me as extraordinarily unlikely that he would survive the novel threats of a large city for long. Reflective glass—a major killer of migratory birds. Poisoned rodents—a major killer of raptors everywhere. Incessant traffic—need I say more?

As inspiring as Flaco’s escape was, a fatal accident seemed all but inevitable. Yet, weeks later, after he had evaded multiple traps, the zoo ceased trying to recapture him. This was clearly a dereliction of responsibility. Still, his continued freedom was cheered by a populace whose Disneyfied view of nature led them to view this as a victory. It wasn’t.

A more informed populace might have put pressure on the zoo to resume its efforts—and to improve his captive conditions once he was safely in hand. Instead, a gormless and myopic view took precedence. He was a fantasy come to life, a living, breathing instantiation of a ubiquitous platitude: spread your wings and fly.

That he did, for over a year. But ultimately, he flew right into a window and died. An autopsy revealed that he was full of rat poison—unsurprising to anyone who follows bird-of-prey conservation. Rodenticides kill countless hawks, owls, and other birds of prey each year. One study of dead raptors in New York City found that 84% had rodenticides in their systems. And, perhaps even more disgustingly, Flaco was found to have a raging herpes infection contracted from pigeons that he had eaten.

That such a magnificent animal should have met his fate crashing into a building ought to serve as a bloody rejoinder to the insipid and vacuous moral landscape of the middle and upper classes.

The term ‘pathological altruism’ describes the tendency to privilege the perceived welfare of a certain group or entity over any potential consequences that might ensue from that perception. Violent, mentally ill criminals are given light sentences or allowed to roam free prior to trial because of their backgrounds or their unfortunate circumstances. Discipline in schools is foregone due to the fear that punishment might make things worse—for the perpetrator. Delusions of all sorts are allowed to go unchecked—even if they result in unfairness for others—due to a reluctance to offend the deluded.

Just as institutionalising dangerous, mentally ill people or punishing kids who are disruptive and behaviourally disordered as a result of their fractured upbringings are less than ideal, so too would have been recapturing Flaco. It would have been sad to see him again confined to a dreary enclosure, feeding on white mice and unable to fly more than a few feet. But at least he would have been alive. And we could have worked to improve his circumstances.

I too mourn the loss of this spectacular creature. But I also fear that, like him, we may find ourselves flying toward a reflection that seems like an infinite, promising landscape—a portal to a new and better world—but is instead an unyielding pane of glass. And we too may break our necks.

The post Flaco was a victim of pathological altruism appeared first on The Freethinker.

The culture of intolerance that has grown over time in the UK has undermined the ethos of British schools. As Islamist zealots grow stronger in influence in our society, a number of schools known for their secular, inclusiveness and apolitical approach, such as St Stephen’s Primary School, Parkfield Community School, Batley Grammar School, Kettlethorpe High School, and Barclay Primary School, have been caving into their demands one after the other.

There has been an attempt by Muslim fundamentalists in the UK to politicise educational institutions, in order to gain clout in social and political sphere.  And now these nefarious elements have come out in force to assert their intolerant beliefs under the pretext of religious freedom. They use religious identity and political grievances to subvert the secular democratic system. Unfortunately, innocent school children seem to have become pawns in their hands.

What happened outside the gates of Barclay Primary School in East London late last year illustrates this state of affairs. As reported in the Telegraph, children and parents had been in conflict with the school over its policy of being ‘apolitical’ and monitoring comments in parents’ WhatsApp groups, as well as not allowing the children to wear pro-Palestinian clothing. In December, the school was forced to close early for Christmas by a pro-Palestine protest in support of a boy who arrived at the school wearing a Palestine badge on his coat and refused to take it off. The boy’s mother was from Gaza; his father accused the school of ‘Islamophobia’. Yet neither parents nor protesters seem to have acknowledged the school’s interest in avoiding extremism and safeguarding for all students – or its claims that staff and the school itself had been threatened by ‘malicious fabrications’ and ‘misinformation’. Since then, the school has received threats of violence, arson and a bomb threat.

Given this toxic situation, it was only a matter of time before the Michaela Community School in north London was added to the list of schools singled out for their secular principles and inclusiveness.

Michaela was founded by headmistress Katharine Birbalsingh in 2014. The school, known for its outstanding academic results, is facing a lawsuit for maintaining its longstanding secular character by banning prayers. It is a sad state of affairs that a school known for its excellence has become the target of unfounded charges of prejudice. Among certain religious zealots, particularly Islamists at present, the attitude seems to be that those who defy their dictates must be punished pour encourager les autres.

The manner in which the Michaela case has been framed, with the accusations of victimisation and discrimination against Muslim pupils, demonstrates that Islamists will stop at nothing to bully people into compliance. They use the language of human rights to assert their supremacist beliefs. They attempt to use English legislation pertaining to religious freedom as leverage to force the schools to comply with their requests.

The issue of discipline within the school premises has now turned into a question of whether Muslims have the freedom to practise their religion on their terms. The Muslim author of an article recently published in the Guardian, Nadeine Asbali, castigated Birbalsingh’s supposedly ‘dystopian, sinister vision of multiculturalism’.

But this was not merely a case of students offering prayer in the school. As reported in The Standard, Birbalsingh said that her decision came against a ‘backdrop of events including violence, intimidation and appalling racial harassment of our teachers’. At one point a brick was even hurled through a teacher’s window. There was also allegedly intimidation of some Muslim pupils by others. The Muslim pupil who sued the school was reportedly suspended for five days in 2023 for threatening to stab another pupil. This suggests that children were being influenced by an extreme Islamist ideology, which cannot but harm the wellbeing of the whole school. Birbalsingh’s intervention was arguably a matter of safeguarding, as well as of fostering inclusion and cohesion among the student body.

Concerningly, the threat posed by religious extremists remains present and has often gone unnoticed. The Commission for Countering Extremism has reportedly revealed that research on radical groups is ‘skewed’ towards the far right. Consequently, Britain has ‘substantial gaps’ in its understanding of Islamist extremism, which has been ‘systemically under-researched’. The CCE also warned that Islamist radicals are attempting to dissuade researchers from writing about them by threatening legal action. This is just like the lawsuit being pursued by the unnamed Michaela student against her school: she may claim that the ban on prayer is discriminatory, but in fact, she, or whoever it might be speculated is behind her, is arguably attempting to exploit human rights law to enforce the sowing of division in the school, against the better judgement of its headmistress.

A highly polarised society where differences are valued more than similarities is a breeding ground for extremists. Parallel legal and educational systems based on extremist religious beliefs are operating in plain sight, contributing to further division in society. Disproportionate emphasis on religious freedoms has given minority ethnic or religious groups too much leeway to live according to their own cultural and religious norms, in disregard of the law, human rights principles and British values. Unfortunately, the main culprits at present are the Islamists.

The Michaela lawsuit and the threats and violence out of which it comes ought to be a wake-up call for progressives. They should acknowledge the perils of being in denial about the threats which Islamist extremism poses to the sort of peace, fair treatment and mutual harmony which are encouraged by a code of school rules that is universally applied, with no exceptions. In a modern secular society, it is surely in everyone’s interests if religion, like politics, is kept out of the classroom.

Asbali argues that the Michaela School prayer ban implies ‘the bleak and frankly insulting assumption that, in order for all of us to live harmoniously, we must become robots with no beliefs or ideas of our own’. But this arguably misrepresents the case. It is not a question of what pupils believe – that is, of course, their own business, as Birbalsingh would surely allow. It is a question of their public actions while in school, where a multitude of different considerations may apply, and headteachers must not be unduly shackled by religious demands.

Freedom of belief is one thing – but freedom of manifesting a belief is another. Article 9, paragraph 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights itself makes this plain, stipulating that ‘Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society’ for various reasons, including to protect ‘public safety’ and ‘the rights and freedoms of others.’

It may also be that, as Asbali says, some Muslims believe that the five-times daily prayer ritual ‘will be one of the first things we will be questioned about by God after we die.’ However, is at least questionable whether children are obliged to fulfil this ritual. More fundamentally, it is open to debate whether points of religious doctrine like this one, which are based on nothing but ancient traditional authority and faith with no evidence, should be allowed to take precedence over concerns for the wellbeing of a mixed group of children in the here and now.

The Michaela case is but the latest in a string of incidents at schools in the UK to pose the question of how far religious exceptionalism should be allowed to interfere with the good running of a school and the wellbeing of its whole community. The High Court will have to decide whether Birbalsingh’s policies have struck the balance fairly. In the meantime, the question remains how many other schools and headteachers will have the bravery and tenacity to stand up against the threats of litigation, or worse, from religious extremists. As things stand now, the storm of threats looks to be a long way from abating.

The post The Michaela School and religious exceptionalism appeared first on The Freethinker.

Fanatics in all the wrong places

On 26 January, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) announced that it had received allegations from Israel that twelve of its employees were directly involved in Hamas’ attack on Israel last October. These employees, some of whom are alleged to have participated in massacres of Israelis, have now been sacked, are dead, or are under investigation by UNRWA. Israel has also accused 190 of the UNRWA’s Gaza employees of being operatives of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

This is not the first time that the UNRWA, founded in 1949 to aid the 700,000 Palestinian refugees created by the first Arab-Israeli War, has been accused of lax hiring practices. Last November, one of the released Israeli hostages claimed he had been held in an attic by a UNRWA teacher.

Now, a slew of countries, including the UK and the US, have stopped their funding for the UNRWA. Combined, these countries contributed over 60 per cent of the UNRWA’s budget in 2022. Whether this is a fair response or not (after all, the UNRWA is now more than ever a lifeline for besieged Palestinians), the allegations are worrying. What hope can there be of a just and stable settlement to this interminable conflict if even the aid agencies of the UN are harbouring violent extremists?

Speaking of fanatics popping up in unwelcome places, Dr Wahid Shaida was suspended by NHS England last month for being the head of Hizb ut-Tahrir in the UK. Hizb ut-Tahrir was itself proscribed as a terrorist organisation shortly before Shaida’s suspension. But just why the head of a woman-hating, homophobic, Islamist outfit, who had openly celebrated the stabbing of Salman Rushdie and the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, was allowed to practise medicine in the first place is puzzling. One ought not to persecute others for their private beliefs, however distasteful, but it strikes me that such bigotry and fanaticism might have an adverse effect on a doctor’s ability to treat his or her patients fairly – particularly the female, gay, and Jewish ones. In any case, with the proscription of Hizb ut-Tahrir, Shaida’s suspension is certainly justified; though he is still, for some reason, registered with the General Medical Council.  

And then there is Mike Johnson, Speaker of the US House of Representatives and second in line to the presidency since last October. Johnson seems to be an avowed Christian nationalist and his pre-Speaker career highlights include advocating for the criminalisation of gay sex and helping Donald Trump’s demented and spurious legal attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 US presidential election. Read about all this and more in a white paper released by the Congressional Freethought Caucus on 11 January.

It is a sad, sad irony that the very nation founded upon Enlightenment ideals by a group of secularists and freethinkers, including the two great Toms (Paine and Jefferson), is home to some of the world’s most backward and most powerful Christian fundamentalists.

Modi’s triumph and the decay of subcontinental secularism

Meanwhile, India’s great secularist tradition continues to decay under Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist rule. On 22 January, Modi officially opened a new temple to the Hindu god Ram in Ayodhya, proclaiming that ‘After years of struggle and countless sacrifices, Lord Ram has arrived [home]. I want to congratulate every citizen of the country on this historic occasion.’

With elections on the horizon, Modi’s fulfilment of a long-standing Hindu nationalist dream was obviously a vote-getting ploy. Little, of course, was made of the fact that the temple’s site was once home to a centuries-old mosque destroyed by a Hindu mob in 1992. The mob were convinced that the mosque had originally been erected by Muslim invaders over an earlier temple where Ram had been born. (Leave it to the religious to desecrate the sacred sites of their rivals.) Riots provoked by the destruction of the mosque killed thousands.

So: communal strife, destruction of ancient buildings, the death of thousands—and all thanks to religious fantasy. And now the vandalism and horror of 1992 are being erased because Narendra Modi wishes to stir up his supporters. In doing so, his assault on India’s rich secularist history reaches new heights. Here is the triumph of Modi.

And this prompts a further reflection: from Israel and Gaza to the US and India—not to mention the bloodstained steppes of Ukraine, where Orthodox-inspired and supported Russian troops are trying to destroy a young democracy—religion, in various forms, remains one of the world’s greatest threats to democratic and secular ideals, and to the ideals of peace and freedom. How far we secularists still have to go! And perhaps it really is not too much to say that ‘religion poisons everything.’

The Navajo Nation vs NASA

On 6 January, one of the great crises of our time arose. The White House hastily convoked a meeting, attended by officials from NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration among others, to meet the crisis head-on. For a commercial lunar mission, Peregrine Mission One, was due to launch in a couple of days—and its payload contained human remains which were to be buried on the Moon.

What, you might ask, was the problem with that? It has been done before, and the Moon is quite a beautiful final resting place. Many people, myself included, would feel honoured to be fired out into space to rest forever on the Earth’s closest fellow orb. Allow the Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren to explain:

‘The moon holds a sacred place in Navajo cosmology… The suggestion of transforming it into a resting place for human remains is deeply disturbing and unacceptable to our people and many other tribal nations.’

Yes, really! This is no different from Catholics or Muslims imposing their religious beliefs on others. The only surprising thing is that it was paid such heed. The only proper response to this sort of thing is: Who cares? Or, perhaps, Too bad!

Of course, the reason no such firmly secularist response was given in this case is because the Navajo are a minority and they have faced terrible oppression. Guilt-ridden liberals who would happily scoff at, say, Catholic calls to ban homosexuality, are unable to do the same when it comes to indigenous people staking their own arrogant claims to religious privilege. This is an act of unintentional bigotry. It suggests that indigenous people cannot be held to the same standards as others and that their superstitions, which they are clearly incapable of throwing off, must be indulged.

But as citizens of democratic nations, nobody has the right to make special claims for themselves based on religion, let alone impose their beliefs on others. That is the essence of secularism. It does not matter whether the demand for privilege comes from a powerful bishop or an oppressed minority.

The Navajo case is representative of a more general trend: the indulgence of indigenous superstition in the name of inclusivity. Other instances include the adoption of such superstitions in American museums and the credence given to ‘indigenous science’ or ‘indigenous ways of knowing’ even in such august journals as Science. In New Zealand, meanwhile, where the embrace of ‘indigenous ways of knowing’ (in this case, Māori ways of knowing) has gone the furthest, a Māori local district councillor defied the secularist mayor during a meeting and recited a prayer.

If Narendra Modi and Mike Johnson are examples of the religious right flaunting its power, are the claims of the Navajo and the Māori examples of the religious ‘woke’ left in action? At least, the ‘woke’ left tends to support these claims. As ever, the only solution is the secularist one of fairness: nobody, however powerful or oppressed, gets a special pass for their beliefs, nor do they have the right to impose those beliefs on others.

Muslims v Michaela

The legal case currently being pursued against Katharine Birbalsingh’s Michaela Community School by fundamentalist Muslims angry at the school’s restriction of Muslim prayer has stirred up something quite unusual, but also very heartening: an outpouring from across the political spectrum of sympathy for secularism. But, as Megan Manson of the National Secular Society notes, this sympathy is somewhat shallow, given its ignorance (or ignoring) of the UK’s deeply anti-secular education system – never mind its overtly religious political system. Still, who knows? Perhaps the intimidation meted out to Michaela by aggrieved fundamentalists and the wave of public sympathy for the school will inspire the country to finally cast off all the vestiges of theocracy.

Postscript: the Conservative MP Mike Freer has just announced that he will stand down at the next election. Why? He is scared of the Islamists who have been intimidating him for years. He is, in fact, lucky to be alive given that he was in the line of sight of the Islamist who murdered Sir David Amess in 2021. As Rakib Ehsan writes in The Telegraph, ‘Freer’s decision to walk away from British politics for fear of his personal safety is yet another example of the Islamist-inspired erosion of British parliamentary democracy.’

An irreligious king?

On a related note, talk of Prince William’s irreligiousness compared to his father and grandmother caused some speculation that he might cut ties with the Church of England upon becoming King. Alas, such rumours were quickly dispelled, but not before they provoked some amusing grumbling from Peter Hitchens in The Mail on Sunday.

Alongside some thin guff in place of any serious reasoning about the truth of Christianity (never Hitchens’ strong point, and something he usually and wisely avoids), there was one point with which I found myself agreeing: ‘If this stuff is not true, or is marginal, or if we do not really believe it, then there is no purpose in having a King, or a Prince of Wales. We might as well have a President in a nice suit.’ Indeed—and huzzah!

The resurrected exorcist

The Daily Star, citing ‘a recently unearthed interview with [an] obscure Spanish magazine’, says that the Pope’s former exorcist Gabriele Amorth (who left this vale of tears in 2016) believed that the Devil is responsible for political evil and corruption. Even Hitler and Stalin, according to Father Amorth, are to be explained by old Nick’s seductive whisperings. Spooky!

But come now. Aside from its obvious foolishness, this is an abdication of moral and intellectual responsibility. Never mind the hard and necessary work of bothering to explain the evil of a Hitler or a Stalin in rational terms, so that we might understand and stop such men from gaining power ever again. No, no: it was the Devil! Just pray and obey our ancient and constipated moral teachings and all manner of thing shall be well.

Remember: this was the Pope’s exorcist. So, quite apart from the fact that the Pope still believes in exorcism like some medieval peasant, until quite recently his exorcist was a plain idiot. But what do you expect from the Catholic Church? And millions, if not billions, take the Pope’s pronouncements very seriously. The human species is still, clearly, very immature.

Some more wisdom from Father Amorth:

‘I tell those who come to see me to first go to a doctor or a psychologist… Most of the time there is a physical or psychological basis for explaining their suffering… The psychiatrists send me the incurable cases. There is no rivalry. The psychiatrist determines if it is an illness, the exorcist if it is a curse.’

‘I work seven days a week, from morning until night, including Christmas Eve and Holy Week. Everyone is vulnerable. The Devil is very intelligent. He retains the intelligence of the angel that he was.

‘Suppose, for example, that someone you work with is envious of you and casts a spell on you. You would get sick. Ninety per cent of the cases that I deal with are precisely spells. The rest are due to membership in satanic sects or participation in séances or magic.

‘If you live in harmony with God, it is much more difficult for the devil to possess you.’

Well, there you go: harmonise your aura with the Lord above, then that rascal Lucifer won’t be able to get you, and there’ll be no evil in the world! Because, of course, no evil has ever been committed by godly men…

Enter Russell Crowe

Apparently, Father Amorth was the subject of a (highly dramatised) movie starring Russell Crowe last year. According to the summary on Wikipedia, ‘[Amorth] learns that a founder of the Spanish Inquisition, an exorcist, was possessed, which let him infiltrate the Church and do many evils. Amorth also finds the Church covered this up…’ This does not, so far as I know, represent anything done or claimed by the real Amorth, but it does chime with his comments given above—and what an easy escape for the Church! All its many crimes throughout history were just a satanic aberration. It was the Devil all along! Thank the Lord for that. Let us never trouble ourselves again about the Inquisition, or Galileo, or Giordano Bruno, or the Crusades, or child sex abuse, or…

So much for mea culpa, never mind mea maxima culpa, then.

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Further reading:

The Israel-Palestine conflict

Bloodshed in Gaza: Islamists, leftist ideologues, and the prospects of a two-state solution, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Religion and the Arab-Israeli conflict, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Is the Israel-Palestine conflict fundamentally a nationalist, not a religious, war? by Ralph Leonard

Christian nationalism in the US

Reproductive freedom is religious freedom, by Andrew Seidel and Rachel Laser

Secular conservatives? If only… by Jacques Berlinerblau

Indian secularism and Hindu nationalism

Religion and the decline of freethought in South Asia, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

‘We need to move from identity politics to a politics of solidarity’ – interview with Pragna Patel

Campaign ‘to unite India and save its secular soul’, by Puja Bhattacharjee

British Islam, secularism, and free speech

Free speech in Britain: a losing battle? by Porcus Sapiens

Secularism and the struggle for free speech, by Stephen Evans

British Islam and the crisis of ‘wokeism’ in universities – interview with Steven Greer

Monarchy, religion, and republicanism

Bring on the British republic – Graham Smith’s ‘Abolish the Monarchy’, reviewed, by Daniel James Sharp

‘I do not think you are going to get a secular state without getting rid of the monarchy’ –interview with Graham Smith

The post Faith Watch, February 2024 appeared first on The Freethinker.