"The world is divided into armed camps ready to commit genocide just because we can't agree on whose fairy tales to believe." -Ed Krebs, photographer (b. 1951)
"The average (person), who does not know what to do with (her or) his life, wants another one which will last forever." -Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (1844-1924) ____________________________________________________________________________________
Cities deep in Christian country are well-known for their vocal proselytizing, but when your viewpoint veers off the God script, watch out. That's what atheists in Fort Worth, Texas, are discovering, as a new non-godly ad campaign on buses is being attacked by local believers. According to the New York Times, clergy members and others are trying to take down ads saying “Millions of people are good without god,” even as a majority of religious-related campaigns tout Christianity in that city.
But the reaction from believers has been harsher than anyone in the nonbeliever’s club expected. Some ministers organized a boycott of the buses, with limited success. Other clergy members are pressing the Fort Worth Transportation Authority to ban all religious advertising on public buses. And a group of local businessmen paid for the van with the Christian message to follow the atheist-messaged buses around town.
But the little war in Fort Worth is just a larger indicator of a trend playing across the United States, says the Times. Billboards in various other cities have invoked similar opposition and even vandalism, even in outwardly liberal Manhattan:
“In New York City, a large billboard promoting atheism at the entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel, which a local affiliate of American Atheists paid for, has generated controversy. (The message: “You know it’s a myth. This season, celebrate reason!)”
The religious ad-space stand-off is particularly acute at this time of year, when atheist groups take out ad space to help non-believers feel not-alienated around Christmastime. Read more at the Times.
By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd
Posted at December 14, 2010, 7:17 am
Almost every December, I make a donation to the pediatrics department of a hospital in the San Francisco Bay Area. This year I chose the Valley Medical Center (VMC) in San Jose.
After some inquiries, I learned that the pediatrics department at VMC prefers to receive cash, as opposed to toys, so that they could purchase items which could be used by all kids (for example a new TV).
As I had done last year, I asked the Humanist Community to join me in this effort. I am happy to say that in early December, a total of $560 was sent to the VMC Foundation from:
a. San Francisco Bay Area Humanists - $100
b. Humanist Community in Silicon Valley - $460
Thanks to all for helping make a positive impact locally!
In the first half of a two-part interview the author, journalist, public intellectual and fierce atheist Christopher Hitchens talks to Lateline about living with cancer and not seeing any valid reason to change his religious beliefs close to death.
Transcript
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Last week I travelled to Washington to interview author, journalist and public intellectual Christopher Hitchens.
The interview's in two parts. We'll screen it over the next two nights.
Hitchens was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year while on tour promoting his memoir Hitch-22.
Tonight's interview deals with how he responded to the illness and whether facing death has softened his fierce atheism or caused him to modify his belief that "religion poisons everything".
Here's the first of our two-part special.
It's very good to see you.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, AUTHOR & JOURNALIST: Tony. Nice of you to come to DC.
TONY JONES: It's a pleasure to be here, although the circumstances aren't great. And the question that most are going to want to know is how are you at the moment? How are you feeling?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: If this had been yesterday - I was wondering in fact yesterday if I could do this today.
That's because I've just had a kill-or-cure dose of venom cocktail mainlined into me, and in the first few days after that, you feel very compromised, very nauseated, very weak, very demoralised. And that's on top of knowing why you have to have it, which is I have a tumour in my oesophagus which has spread. So it's called stage four.
The thing about stage four is that there is no stage five, so I'm finding out how this can be managed, whether I can live with it, whether it can be - I doubt curable. I think the word "curable" doesn't really apply, but it can be treatable. What kind of life and how much of it I have is my big preoccupation now.
TONY JONES: Are the treatments working? Do you know?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, the tumours were shrinking with the first round, but they've stopped doing that. They're having to try something a bit stronger now and I may be a candidate for radiation therapy, which is a very tough thing. You've got to be quite strong for it. I have quite a decent constitution in spite of all my abuse of it and my advanced years. I'm still quite robust.
TONY JONES: We wouldn't say advanced years.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, I'm in my 60s now. I finally look it, I think. People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.
TONY JONES: So are you actually up for a long interview about life, death, the universe and everything?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Oh, yes. I mean, my interest in all the large questions hasn't dimmed at all. In fact, it's quite a good way of concentrating the mind.
TONY JONES: You've talked and you've written about the cancer right from the very beginning and people have been following your account as you put out your monthly pieces in Vanity Fair. You've talked about crossing a border into the land of malady. What is that like?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, for me personally it was a bit like being deported, in that I woke up in New York, having gone to bed feeling more or less OK during a very gruelling book tour, and I woke in the morning thinking I was actually dying.
The whole liquid sac, the pericardium, as it's called, around my heart had just filled up. It was if my whole chest (inaudible) had been crammed with wet cement. I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe. And I managed to call the emergency services and these wonderful New Yorkers arrived, very heavily armed with cuffs and torches and boots. And I remember thinking idly as they loaded me into the ambulance, "Why do they need all this for one stricken civilian?"
It was a bit like being arrested and deported. And in fact, in their kindly way, they were escorting me across the frontier from the land of the well into the land of the very ill indeed. And, well, it's not a transition you can ever forget making and of course it's not one you can ever fully make back again either. However well I respond to treatment, I'll never be able to feel the way I did the day before.
TONY JONES: What does it actually mean for your day-to-day life because we see you continually out there writing, doing interviews like this, taking on, as you said, lectures, debates? I mean, how hard is it to actually get yourself out of bed in the morning to continue the life of a public intellectual?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, I don't get out of bed much before 11 these days and I go to bed much earlier than I did, so I can do about half, I suppose, of what I was doing before. I can continue to write as well. That's my big test.
There were a couple of days when I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to write, and that terrified me very much because being a writer is what I am, rather than what I do. It's my - without sounding I hope too affected, it is my raison d'etre, and as well as being terrified of the thought that I wouldn't be able to do what I'm supposed to do, I was afraid that it would diminish my will to live.
I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn't write? But that fortunately hasn't proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.
TONY JONES: Being a writer, you actually personified or personalised the cancer. You call it a blind, emotionless being. You know, that is a pathetic fallacy; you've acknowledged that yourself. But does it feel like that: that you've been invaded by something?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, obviously it can't have emotions and as far as we know it can't see. It is a being. The thing is, it can't have a life of its own, but it is an alien and it is - it is alive as long as I am. Its only purpose is to kill me. It's a self-destructive alien.
It's like the absolute negation, I suppose, of being pregnant, having something living inside you that is entirely malevolent and that wishes for your - doesn't wish for, but is purposed to encompass your death. And keeping company with this is a great preoccupation. Once you think about it like that, it's hard to un-think it.
TONY JONES: How do you feel about the people who are praying for you, because there are some, there are some who are praying for to you go to hell?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Yes.
TONY JONES: There are many more in fact who are praying for you to be cured and some who are praying for you to be converted?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: That's right - or converted and cured, to be fair to them. Well, to the people who pray for me to not only have an agonising death, but then be reborn to have an agonising and horrible eternal life of torture, I say, "Well, good on you. See you there," sort of thing.
I don't feel I'd be very much obliged to engage with them. For the people who ostensibly wish me well or are worried about my immortal soul, I say I take it kindly. I mean, it's a show of concern, it's a show of solidarity, which is a very important word to me. It's a kindness. If it doesn't do any good, and I'm sure it doesn't, it doesn't really do any harm.
The only objection I have is one I touched on a moment ago which is it seems to me a bit crass to be trying to talk to people about conversion when you know they're ill. The whole idea of hovering over a sick person who's worried and perhaps in discomfort and saying, "Now's the time to reconsider," strikes me as opportunist at the very best and has a very bad history in the past.
There've been false claims made by people who bothered Thomas Paine while he was dying or - and published reports later that he'd recanted on his death bed. Even tried that on Charles Darwin; there was an attempt at a false story of that kind. This I think is shameful, and to the extent that it reminds me of that, I resent it.
TONY JONES: The New York Times says your illness has actually spurred one of the most heated discussions that they can remember of belief, religion and immortality. It's almost inevitable, isn't it, when a famous atheist faces death, that this will happen?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Yes. Yes, it's an occasion and people never tire of saying when - as they do, many people write to me or email me, including perfect strangers, readers, well-wishers, sometimes former students or people who know me a little bit, they all, one way or another, make the point that, "OK, I won't pray for you, don't worry," or, "Perhaps you won't mind if I do."
They are all doing as if they're doing it for the first time. It's rather touching. But as I say, the argument's about immortality, the supernatural, the last things - death, judgment, heaven and hell - are or are not valid quite independently of my mental or physical state. And so there's something fishy to me in the suggestion that, "OK, now that your system is breaking down, wouldn't it be a good moment for you to repudiate the convictions of a lifetime?" Again, there's something about the underlying assumption there that I want to resist.
TONY JONES: More than 20 years ago - you mentioned Thomas Paine - but more than 20 years ago, the Oxford philosopher AJ Ayer wrote about being drawn to a red light when he'd had a near-death experience and that was interpreted by a lot of people as a suggestion that it actually changed his views of a lifetime. Are you worried this kind of thing could happen to you?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: There are two great - well, Freddy Ayer's dead now. He died not long after that. But there have been in the recent past two great humanists and atheist thinkers: himself and Professor Daniel Dennett, who've come very, very close to death and in a semi-conscious state, enough to allow them to speculate about consciousness independent of the brain and other things that fascinate all of us.
But both of their conclusive essays on this matter are in my collection The Portable Atheist, because they both, having undergone, so to say, that test, came out with their convictions unaltered.
TONY JONES: Not entirely unaltered in Ayer's case. I mean, he did conclude the experience weakened his conviction that death would be the end of him. So, he had a - not a conversion, but at least a doubt thrown in about his pure atheism.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, we can't say any more than we can say there is no god, there is no after-life. We can only say there is no persuasive evidence for or argument for it.
But I think I'd be much more willing to say there's no evidence at all that any human being can tell you how you qualify or what's meant by seeing some bright light at the end of the tunnel or coming towards you, or that if you'll only make the right propitiation or right incantation or join the right church, they can tell you about how things will be after you're dead.
I'm quite sure there's no human agency that can do that. I like surprises. If there's to be a second look around with somehow not me and not my brain, but some kind of consciousness, well, that would be more fascinating than many days I've spent in real life.
TONY JONES: It would indeed. These debates have been going on for centuries, though, and ...
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Yes, and I think will persist.
TONY JONES: You quote Blaise Pascal, who talked about a wager that could be made with a god that would actually allow you at the very last minute to make a deal with him, ...
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Yes.
TONY JONES: ... to believe for a brief period and that wager would be that, "What have you got to lose?"
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well it's rightly called a wager 'cause there's something rather hucksterish about it. And I'm not a Christian, let alone a Roman Catholic Christian as Pascal was and I'm also not a theorist of probability as he was. He was a great mathematician.
But I say hucksterish for this reason: his wager assumes two things: one, a very cynical and credulous god; in other words, a god who would say, "Well, I can see your mind working and I know that you're wagering on me because what have you got to lose, so naturally I'll reward you if you say you believe in me." Why does that follow? Why wouldn't you think, "That's not a very good reason. It's not very good reasoning. It's not a very good (inaudible)."
You might just as well be a god; in fact, you should perhaps prefer to be a god who would say, "Actually, I've more respect for the person who couldn't bring himself to believe and certainly wouldn't claim to do so in the hope of getting a favour."
TONY JONES: Yes, we're talking now logic, and of course, ...
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, not just logic; I think there's a moral tinge to this.
TONY JONES: Well, exactly, because there's an argument that the jealous god who would consign non-believers to hell is actually immoral, so why would you follow him anyway?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: There's actually a Sufi prayer from the Middles Ages that is addressed to the creator and says, "Master," or however these things are addressed, "If I pray to you in the hope of getting heaven for myself, you should deny it to me. And if I pray for you only in the fear of hell, you should send me there."
These would be bogus forms of belief, they'd be simply behaviourist, reward and punishment stuff, conditioned animal reflexes, coercive and they'd require a slave mentality, which is my second objection to the Pascal wager: it demands of us that we think of this god as a cynical, rather credulous, rather capricious opportunist, easily flattered, and of ourselves as the raw material for a pretty cruel and meaningless experiment.
Now, often we un-believers are accused of being nihilistic and not seeing the lovely deeper meanings of life. Well, what could really be more negative, more pessimistic, more cynical than the attitude I've just described?
TONY JONES: Let's go back to those people who are praying for you, because if you are in fact cured, then they'll take credit for it to some degree and perhaps even describe you as a miracle. Are you a bit nervous about that?
Because, for example, we've had two cases of spontaneous remission from terminal cancer that allowed very recently the first Australian saint, Mary MacKillop, to become St Mary of the Cross. It only happened a month ago. But the idea of intercession by prayer has certainly not disappeared in the 21st Century.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, no, it hasn't and nor will it go away as long as our fear of death persists, which I rather think that it will. We are the only mammals, we are the only primates who do know that we're going to die, and we're the only ones who have made the attempt to award ourselves, under certain conditions, an afterlife. And it's a very tenacious illusion and it's very unlikely to be dispelled.
(Coughing). Sorry. This sometimes happens. How far back should I go?
TONY JONES: That's alright.
I'm wondering have you softened at all and are you prepared to concede anything at all to the faithful that there may be some value in it. I mean, the comfort that religious belief for example gives to people who are in the same position as you?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Tony, as with a lot of this argument, looking death more closely in the eye, as I have been doing, doesn't teach you much that you didn't already know, surprisingly enough. It focuses it, brings it into quite a sharp relief, but it isn't as if I didn't already know that some people, whether they're sick or whether they're well, derive great comfort from the thought that they have a saviour, that they're a member of a flock, for example.
I mean, I personally am incapable of describing myself as a member of a flock for reasons that I hope are self-evident. I'm not a sheep. Some people like to be called sheep and think that they'd like to have a shepherd. And if that makes them feel happy, I must say I think it's a rather contemptible form of happiness, but doesn't bother me as long as they keep it to themselves. As long as they don't try and make me believe it, as long as they don't try and have it taught in schools, as long as they don't want the government to subsidise it, as long as they don't want to block scientific research in its name or because of it, then that's fine.
As Thomas Jefferson said, "I don't mind if my neighbour believes in one god or 15 gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." As long as he or she leaves me alone. I don't want to even have to know what they think. But will they requite this bargain? Of course not. Of course not. They - it doesn't really make them happy. They can't be happy ‘till everyone else believes it too, and that's sinister, in my opinion, and creepy.
TONY JONES: You've grown to distrust the idea of a utopia.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Yes.
TONY JONES: I presume actually you would imagine a world without religion would be utopian. But, let me ask you this: what do you think a world without religion, without all the cultural side-effects of it, would actually look like? I mean, would it be verging on pure commercialism and materialism? I mean, would it take people away from any spiritual side of themselves at all?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, no, that wouldn't be it because as we know from bitter experience, materialism and commercialism are unusually inordinately compatible with religion. That's why there've had to be so many successive affirmations, because the religious life goes so well with greed and accumulation and acquisition.
When asked where they really want power and influence, this world or the next?, they tend to think rather the same as the more crass materialists (inaudible) do. That doesn't make it any easier to imagine a world without religion, and it's not that I don't think that I have too little imagination to imagine that, it's just that I think it cannot in fact be imagined.
Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.
All of them very crude and all of them long-since transcended and left behind, but respect for tradition alone makes it, I think, necessary for me to say that someone who doesn't know about religion or doesn't take an interest in it is only quasi-literate.
TONY JONES: I want to ask you what you think about Martin Amis' idea that writers like you must actually believe in some form of life after death because not all of you, not all of the parts of you are going to die because the printed words you leave behind constitute a form of immortality. I mean, is he just being kind, or do you think that there's a truth to that?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Littera scripta manet - "The written word will remain". That's true, but it won't be that much comfort to me.
Of course I do write - I've always had the sense of writing, as it were, posthumously. I once wrote an introduction to a collection of my own essays. I stole the formulation from Nadine Gordimer who said you should try and write as if for post-mortem publication because it only then can screen out all those influences: public opinion, some reviewer you might want to be impressing, some publisher who might want to publish you, someone you're afraid of offending. All these distractions, you can write purely and honestly and clearly and for its own sake. And the best way of doing that is to imagine that you won't live to see it actually written, then you can be sure that you're being objective and you're being scrupulous.
I think that's a wonderful reflection, but it doesn't - it isn't the same term as immortality at all.
TONY JONES: As you say in your memoirs, you've written for decades day in, day out - I think you said at least 1,000 words a day for many, many years - despatches, articles, lectures, books - in particular books. Doesn't it give you some comfort that your thoughts, and indeed some version of you, is going to exist after your death, is imperishable?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, if you want to know - because I try to avoid the blues when talking about all of this, but if you want to know one of the most sour reflections that I have when I think that I'm 61 now and I might not make 65 - I quite easily might not.
One of the bitter aspects of that is, well, I put in 60 years at the coalface, I worked very hard. In the last few years I've got a fair amount of recognition for it. In my opinion, actually, rather more than I deserve. Certainly more than I expected. And I could have looked forward to a few years of, shall we say, cruising speed, you know, just, as it were, relishing that, enjoying it.
Not ceasing to work, not resting on the laurels, but savouring it a bit and that - I was just getting ready for that, as a matter of fact. I was hit right at the top of my form, right in the middle of a successful book tour. I'm not going to get that and that does upset me. So that's how I demarcate it from immortality.
Similarly, I'm not going to see my grandchildren - almost certainly not. One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That's how the human species has done as well as it has.
The great Cuban writer Jose Marti said that a man - he happened to say it was a man - three duties: to write a book, to plant a tree and to have a son. I remember the year my first son was born was the year I published my first real full-length book, and I had a book party for it and for him - Alexander, my son - and I planted a tree, a weeping willow and felt pretty good for the age of, what?, I think 32 or something.
But, the thought of mortality, in other words of being outlived, is fine when it's your children, your books or your trees, but it doesn't reconcile you to an early death. No, it doesn't.
TONY JONES: Is it only people outside of your existence then who can actually romanticise this idea of the immortal Hitchens?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, people write to me - and it does - I will say this having, sorry, surrendered briefly to the blues there, but I don't want to put on any false front. I mean, in the same way, by the same token there are people who write to me and say that what I've done or written has meant something to them, that I haven't wasted my time, that I've - my life's been worth living. That's very nice too, but I'd like to have hung around to get more such letters.
TONY JONES: It's interesting you say that because that's actually where I plan to end this part of our interview, because I do plan to give my sons Letters to a Young Contrarian, and I really hope that they then pass it on to their children. And to me, whatever that means to you, that's a kind of immortality, but it's something that only people who've been following you for years can actually do.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Well, you couldn't have said a nicer thing and I hope you would have said it - I'm sure you would anyway. And I have to have - I'm afraid, they're the same response. I would like to have heard even more people say that. And even met some of their grandchildren and seen if it worked for them too. And this I won't get, but I've - look, I've lived longer than I used to think I probably would.
I've written and published more than I thought I would. It's been better received than I expected, and without being falsely modest, in some cases better than I think I deserve. So don't mistake this for self-pity, but I'm not going to resort to any kind of bogus joviality either.
TONY JONES: Christopher Hitchens, we'll leave you there for now. In the way of things, we're going to come back to you again tomorrow. We thank you for ...
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: If I'm spared. Inshallah.
TONY JONES: And tomorrow night in part two of our interview with Christopher Hitchens we talk about some of the extraordinary events in recent history that prompted his controversial shift away from the politics of the left.
Paul Harris in Toronto
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 27 November 2010 09.38 GMT
Staunch atheist wins over audience in debate with Catholic convert over whether religion is a force for good in the world
Former British prime minister Tony Blair (left) and author Christopher Hitchens before their debate on religion. Photograph: Mark Blinch/Reuters.
In theory it was not an event that should have created a stir: a philosophical debate on the moral merits of religion. In an age of reality TV drama and Hollywood blockbusters loaded with special effects it would seem hard to get the masses to flock to witness such an old-fashioned, high brow spectacle.
But when the two debaters are the world's most famous recent Roman Catholic convert in the shape of Tony Blair and the charismatic yet cancer-stricken sceptic Christopher Hitchens suddenly it becomes easier to sell tickets.
Two thousand seven hundred tickets to be precise. For that was the size of the crowd that packed the space age-looking Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto late last night to watch the two ideological foes – when it comes to religion – spar and trade verbal blows.
The occasion was part of the Munk Debate series, organised by the Aurea Foundation group, and the motion was simply: "Be it resolved, religion is a force for good in the world".
Both men were unabashedly stalwart in their positions. Hitchens, one of the leading "new atheists" and author of the hit book God Is Not Great, slammed religion as nothing more than supernatural gobbledegook that caused untold misery throughout human history. "Once you assume a creator and a plan it make us subjects in a cruel experiment," Hitchens said before causing widespread laughter by comparing God to "a kind of divine North Korea".
Blair, perhaps not surprisingly, was a little less forthright. On the backfoot for much of the debate he kept returning to his theme that many religious people all over the world were engaged in great and good works. They did that because of their faith, he argued, and to slam all religious people as ignorant or evil was plain wrong. "The proposition that religion is unadulterated poison is unsustainable," he said. Blair called religion at its best "a benign progressive framework by which to live our lives".
Throughout the 90-minute debate Hitchens seemed to have the crowd's sympathy. That might have been to do with his ill appearance due to cancer, but was far more likely to be down to the sharpness of his verbal barbs and the fact that 57% of the audience already agreed with his sceptical position according to a pre-debate poll, while just 22% agreed with Blair's side. The rest were undecided.
But the true winner of the debate was most likely the organisers. The high-profile debaters and controversial subject matter ensured not only a packed hall but an overflow location where people who could not get tickets were able to watch it on TV monitors. Tickets sold out weeks ago and were selling on eBay for several times their cover price. The debate was also trailed on the front pages of some Canadian newspapers and covered by local television.
It even attracted a small but vocal knot of anti-Iraq war protestors accusing Blair of war crimes. Demonstrators unveiled placards that read "Arrest Blair" and "War criminals not welcome here", proving that, as with the merits of religion, some arguments are unlikely to ever be settled with a single night's debate.
BBC - 26 November 2010 - (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11843586) Former UK prime minister Tony Blair is to take on columnist Christopher Hitchens in a televised public debate for and against religion.
Mr Blair, a Catholic convert, will argue that faith is a force for good.
Mr Hitchens, terminally ill with cancer, is expected to argue it is the world's "main source of hatred", as he did in his 2007 book God is not Great.
A 23-country poll paid for by the debate's Canadian organisers suggests the world is evenly split on the issue.
Some 48% of the 18,192 people questioned by Ipsos took the view that "religion provides the common values and ethical foundations that diverse societies need to the thrive in the 21st Century".
Fractionally more - 52% - supported the view that "religious beliefs promote intolerance, exacerbate ethnic divisions, and impede social progress in developing and developed nations alike".
Rich countries were less likely to see religion as a force for good than poor countries - the main exception being the United States, where 65% said it had a positive impact.
Ahead of the debate, which will take place in front of a sell-out audience of 2,700 people in Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall, Tony Blair said: "The good that people of faith all over the world do every day, motivated by their religion, cannot be underestimated and should never be ignored."
It could, and should, be a force for progress, he said.
Christopher Hitchens - who has described Christianity, Judaism and Islam as the "real axis of evil" - has continued his outspoken attacks on religion in interviews as he is treated for cancer of the oesophagus.
He is scathing about those who suggest his illness might lead him to retract his atheism.
In a BBC Newsnight interview to be broadcast on 29 November, he says he is not afraid of death, but regrets the fact that it will cause distress to friends and family.
In comments released by the debate's organisers he said it was "bizarre" that Mr Blair, a Catholic since 2007, had converted "at one of the most conservative times for the Catholic Church, under one of the most conservative popes".
Both men have recently published autobiographies.
Tickets for the debate - the sixth in a semi-annual series of Munk Debates - sold out within hours of going on sale.
The event will also be available to watch online, on a pay-per-view basis, on the Munk Debates website.
The Ipsos poll, conducted in September, found that Europe was the region most doubtful about the benefits of religion, with just 19% in Sweden agreeing that it was a force for good.
At the other end of the scale, in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, it was seen as a positive force by more than 90% of those questioned.
Within North America there was a pronounced divide. In Canada only 36% agreed with the positive view of religion whereas 64% saw it as a negative force - figures almost exactly the reverse of those in the US.
By MARINA KAMENEV / SYDNEY Marina Kamenev / Sydney Tue Nov 23, 8:25 am ET
Seven years ago, Simon Longstaff, the executive director of the St James Ethics Centre, was approached by a small group of parents. Longstaff's not-for-profit organization in north Sydney usually teaches businesses about making ethical decisions, hosts debates on topical issues and provides free counseling for people wrestling with ethical dilemmas. The parents were hoping he could extend his services to their elementary-school-age children.
In public schools across New South Wales, children have an optional one-hour lesson of special religious education - usually Christian Scripture - every week. Those who don't go participate instead in activities that Longstaff describes as ranging from "punitive to vaguely useful." Depending on the school, some children spend an hour collecting litter, some do homework, some watch videos, and still others sit outside the principal's office with a book. "The parents felt that what their children were required to do at the school during this time was meaningless," recalls Longstaff. "They wanted [them] to have access to something that other children had access to, but without the religious component." (See what makes a school great.)
Getting a religion alternative into the classroom took time. In 2003, Longstaff asked Philip Cam, an associate professor at the University of New South Wales, to design a secular-ethics curriculum for elementary-school students. He also approached the state's then minister for education, Andrew Refshauge, with the idea. Refshauge didn't believe it could garner sufficient support to be successful, nor did his successor, but eventually Longstaff proved that his idea had enough backing for it to go mainstream. Cam's curriculum was tried out this year in 10 primary schools with children ages 11 to 12. Volunteer parents trained by the St James Ethics Centre taught the program, and classes were only made available to those that weren't enrolled in special religious education.
Australia is not the first country to wade into this controversial territory. In 2008, Quebec installed a compulsory ethics-and-global-religions course across the Canadian province. This June, a landmark court hearing ruled in favor of a Catholic school in Montreal seeking to be exempted from teaching that curriculum on the basis that the school disagreed with presenting ethical and religious perspectives as morally equivalent to each other. In Germany, ethics classes have been compulsory in Berlin's public schools since 2006, after the honor killing of a Turkish woman by her brother. A referendum in April 2009 to give religious classes, which are optional, an equal status confirmed that no one wanted to change the status quo. Only 14% voted to make religious education compulsory. (The rest of Germany's public schools give students an option between studying ethics and religion.)
In Australia, the ethics pilot program has also been met with mixed response. Sue Knight, a lecturer from the University of South Australia in Adelaide who was commissioned by the New South Wales Department of Education to write an analysis of the curriculum, said the classwork was effective in making children more aware of ethics in everyday life. The state's Education Minister Verity Firth is expected to announce by Christmas whether Longstaff's proposal will be adopted in every public school in New South Wales next year. The classes would be available only to those who have opted out of Scripture, but Longstaff hopes the contents of the secular-ethics curriculum will eventually be made available to everyone: "Those teaching [religion] can use whatever part of the curriculum that they find helpful." (Read "Australia: Inquiry Sparks Push to Fix Child Protection.")
Religious groups, however, feel the program is, by design, exclusionary. Make a Stand, a website run by the Australian Christian Lobby, has more than 50,000 signatures on their "Save Our Scripture" petition to ban the new ethics program from schools on the premise that it's unfair to make a child choose between Scripture and secular ethics. This belief was reiterated by the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in September. He said Christians were excluded from the course: "It's the same as if you were offering reading at one time and sport at the same time, therefore forcing parents, and children, to choose between two good things." (Comment on this story.)
The national debate that has sprung up around the course has come as a surprise to Longstaff, but he is pressing ahead. The curriculum, which references a range of philosophers from Socrates to Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill, covers topics like lying, fairness and the abuse of animals. "Our job is not to provide answers but to rib students into thinking about the questions," says Longstaff, who says parents have particularly commented on the dinnertime conversations that follow the classes. "[Parents] like the battle between compassion and honesty. The question of 'What do you do when grandma knits you a sweater for Christmas and you don't like it?' was very popular."
Within the Humanist movement, there is a belief that political and economic ideologies should not and cannot be addressed via the Humanist philosophy because Humanists can differ widely from one another in their political views. What exactly does this mean and how does it affect what we do (or don’t do)?
Many Humanists support and sometimes even actively participate in organizations that have political clout and resources, and can influence changes that they deem important. But the one thing we don’t do is to organize as Humanists to make changes under the Humanist banner, unless it is in response to the Religious Right or about our favorite subject, separation of religion and government.
What I would like to do in this essay is to discuss (as provocatively as possible) the subject of Humanist involvement in politics.
As Humanists we have the Affirmations of Humanism, the Humanist Manifestos I, II, III, and 2000, the Amsterdam Declaration, and the Neo-Humanist Statement of Secular Principles and Values: Personal, Progressive, and Planetary. What can we do to make Humanism more than just a set of impressive manifestos, affirmations, and declarations?
The claim that political and economic ideologies should not and/or cannot be addressed via the Humanist philosophy leads one to think that these various affirmations, manifestos, and declarations don’t play a meaningful role in the lives of Humanists; it’s as if there is no alignment between these Humanist documents and the lives of those who claim to be Humanists and that these documents are irrelevant to the worldview of Humanists and unable to inform their actions. Worse than that, the downside of this is that Humanists cannot agree on any issue that is politically significant; this means that they are not able to take on an issue that will lead to significant social change and perhaps make Humanism relevant in the real world.
Even a cursory look at a couple of these documents shows why these arguments are false.
The manifestos, affirmations, and declarations can and do inform our actions - actions that could guide us socially, politically, and economically. For example, the Amsterdam Declaration says, “Humanism supports democracy and Human rights.” The Humanist Manifesto III says, “We seek to minimize the inequities of circumstance and ability, and we support a just distribution of nature's resources and the fruits of human effort so that as many as possible can enjoy a good life.” Clearly, these are supportive of political and economic rights, as well as civil and human rights. Furthermore, Humanism can provide a common framework for people all over the world. But for Humanism to be more than just a set of manifestos, affirmations, and declarations we need to do more than just talk; we need a pragmatic Humanist activism based on the ideas and ideals in these numerous manifestos and affirmations to give life to what are now merely words on paper.
This means that we need to articulate a coherent social, political, and economic vision of a more reasonable world and have our voices represented in the political arena. Otherwise, we’ll be doing what we are very good at doing, and that is, complaining that the Religious Right has too much voice and power.
What do we need to overcome? What are some of our challenges?
It appears that we Humanists prefer to keep to generalities because we can agree on those. It is often said that we should have an open-ended approach to issues; we also have a tendency to steer clear of social or political action, unless it is one of our favorite targets. This is one of the challenges that we need to overcome.
Our current approach allows many controversies to go without resolution within most Humanist groups, which provides a false appearance of ideological unity. We fear that getting into details will trigger conflict and cause the group to fall apart. This is why we are not able to have a unified public voice that articulates a Humanistic position on important and relevant issues of the day to counter the irrational voices that have taken over; this is why we are not able to apply Humanistic thinking to real world problems; and this is why, unlike most other groups, we have not been able to produce political leaders representing our Humanist philosophy.
One of the implications here is that we value our individualism and personal freedom to the point that to be inclusive we can only focus on generalities. One of the problems with this is that the inclusion and equal treatment of the range of views creates an environment where Humanists work against each other. This leads us to more debate and conflict, as opposed to compromise and action. But to take public positions on issues, we need to articulate a clear and unified position that is informed by our affirmations, manifestos, and declarations. If we are not able to do this, it would follow that our Humanist philosophy is more suited to private than to public life.
I think the notion that we need to stay with generalities to be inclusive is totally false, destructive, and irrational. First, it squelches reasoned and rational discourse on significant issues. Second, there are many specifics that we can all agree on under the broad generalized statement in our various Humanist documents because ultimately we agree on things that are basic human decencies and are reasonable. And third, those who believe we can only agree on the generalities, but not the means, show a lack of imagination, for there is a spectrum of means that are reasonable and possible only if we seek them.
I would like to address this fear that taking positions will lead to arguments and conflict, and be an alienating experience for those whose positions are not adopted by either their local Humanist groups or by more nationally organized groups, and that this will cause people to leave these groups and even cause groups to fall apart. Since the beginning of time, even in the simplest hunter and gatherer societies, humans have used political processes to manage dissent and slowly move discussions, debates, and negotiations toward a kind of closure that could serve as the basis of action. This type of closure is arrived at through consensus, compromise, or majority opinion. This simple human ability to use a political process to come to closure on issues that then guide our actions is what allows us to survive as humans. It provides the big tent under which we are all able to coexist. When we become ideological to the point that we are not able to do this, we have moved away from the Humanist position of rational and critical thinking; this should be a more serious concern than the group falling apart.
Another major issue that is commonly brought up when it comes to Humanists taking action: Being a Humanist or a non-religious person is a hurdle that prevents most Humanists from entering the world of politics. In other words, the “god thing” matters.
Although the god thing may matter, we have successful politicians, such as Pete Stark, who are atheists. So the god thing is not the only thing that matters. There are many other things that prevent Humanists from successfully entering the world of politics.
We need to learn to separate the private from the public. During an election debate with Bush, Kerry was told that Catholic archbishops stated that it would be a sin to vote for a candidate who supported unlimited stem-cell research and a woman’s right to choose. Kerry’s response was, “I can't legislate or transfer to another American citizen my article of faith. What is an article of faith for me is not something that I can legislate on somebody who doesn't share that article of faith. I believe that choice is a woman's choice.” This is not just a respect for our Constitution, but a separation between the private and public domain of Kerry’s life. We Humanists need to learn to do this.
Also, we need to learn to become part of a team. Our individuality will not disappear if we set aside our individual opinions and work toward a fusion of ideas that might better reflect a humanistic view as opposed to our own private view. Individuality and self-centeredness are two different things.
More importantly, getting involved in politics doesn’t mean that we need to vote for any candidate who publicly declares that he or she is an atheist. Our focus should be on the vision of the candidate. A good Humanist candidate is one who supports humanistic economics over corporate capitalism, who supports religious tolerance, and who is willing to change social structures in a way that would increase self-reliance and safeguard the dignity of human beings. In other words, he or she subscribes to the various Humanist values enshrined in our numerous documents.
Furthermore, what may prevent Humanists from successfully getting involved in politics is, what I call an attitude problem: We believe that we are the world’s best skeptics. In my opinion, we do not hold a monopoly on skepticism, and we sometimes misuse it and are confused by it. Ordinarily, healthy skepticism provides the basis for examining commonly held beliefs, questions the accuracy of certain ideas, and brings the structures that support inaccurate ideas into the limelight for closer scrutiny. This is a good thing. But if skepticism is used to ridicule most of the ideas that give meaning to people’s lives, without providing compelling alternatives, then it is destructive.
Conclusion:
In an issue of The Progressive, in an article entitled “Winning Isn’t Everything,” Steve Cobble, who worked on Kucinich’s campaign, said the following: “Sometimes, … politics is changing the landscape. … [S]ometimes politics is about changing the behavior of a major party. Or... strengthening a constituency that a major party can then adopt or co-opt. Sometimes … politics is about bringing new blood into a stagnant system, training a new cadre of organizers, changing the rules of the game. And sometimes … politics is about poetry as well as prose, offering a new way of thinking about America, challenging the power structure head-on, giving voice to the voiceless.”
I know that not everyone is a politician, nor does everyone want to be one. But I think the majority of us are involved in the democratic process one way or another, because we believe that even the little we contribute today creates an opportunity for someone to build on tomorrow. It allows us to speak truth to power and make others more seriously consider the issues; it keeps significant issues alive. We do this either though various organizations or individually.
Let me ask the question that I asked at the beginning of this essay: What can we do to make Humanism more than just a set of impressive manifestos, affirmations, and declarations?
I think one answer to this question is that we should practice Humanism and not just speak about it. Our Humanist philosophy - as stated in our manifestos, aspirations, declarations - is our guide to social, political, and economic action. We should get over the barriers that we have created for ourselves and start practicing our ideals, as enshrined in our Humanistic documents, for these will allow cultural changes, which will in time support a much more secular and dignitarian society, where the welfare of human beings comes first.
We should be leading this effort because it’s the Humanist thing to do. As they say, “Let us be good ancestors.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------- Armineh Noravian was a member of the Board of Directors of the Humanist Community in Silicon Valley between 2007-2010, where she served as Vice President in 2008 and President in 2009 and 2010. She was also President of the Silicon Valley Chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and state from 2005-2006, and a member of the Board of Directors of the ACLU, Santa Clara Valley chapter from 2006-2008. She holds a M.S. in Engineering and a M.A. in Applied Anthropology (cultural).
