Atheist Mum

And while I'm in the mood…

2008-03-25T17:00:00.002Z

…did anyone read Giles Fraser's ridiculous piece in the Guardian a couple of weeks back, having a go at parents who use euphemisms when talking to their children about death? He takes issue with phrases such as 'gone away' and 'fallen asleep' while suggesting that it is only in church that children can expect to hear the truth about death — 'know that you are dust and to dust you shall return'.

Funny he didn't mention the euphemism most used to explain death — certainly while I was growing up — 'gone to heaven'.

It's sometimes difficult to believe that any of these loons are actually serious, and the whole thing isn't just a big spoof, no?

I know it's been a while…

2008-03-25T16:10:00.002Z

…but if anything was going to shake me out of my torpor it was probably this. Is it just me, or was anyone else flabbergasted by this little snippet in Saturday's Guardian Family 'things to do with your family this week':

Follow an Easter trail

Explore the story of the first Easter: Lickey Church is holding an inspired Easter Experience on Easter Monday. Set in the beautiful Lickey Hills Country Park, the interactive "trail" promises to involve all the senses and allow participants a chance to reflect creatively on the Easter story. There will be art materials, a tomb, a large cross (to bang nails in) and surprises along the way, and Lickey Church will be open all day.

To bang nails in? As if the whole thing wasn't gruesome enough…

Fancy dress?

2007-11-29T14:46:00.000Z

Nothing to do with atheism, but on the annual trawl of the internet for Yuletide gift inspiration this absolutely cracked me up. Can you imagine the look on the face of the kid who gets a barrister fancy dress costume? And how on earth are you supposed to dress up as an architect? Tempted by the suffragette, but only if you end up looking like the mum in Mary Poppins. Sorry, Raising Kids, you’re a great website, but I reckon someone might be yanking your chain. And if it is for real, please, please, can we know how many barrister costumes actually get sold?

Just a thought…

2007-11-23T12:21:00.000Z

I never miss Thought For The Day. Guaranteed to provoke outrage or mirth, usually a bit of both, it never fails to set me up for the day, and of course enhance my enjoyment of its witty counterpart Platitude Of The Day. This morning as I buttered my toast I found myself chuckling as the Reverend Roy Jenkins chuntered on, musing on how hysterically funny it is that a grown man can actually get on air to talk such absolute twaddle.

Then it occurred to me. The other thing I seem destined never to miss is I’m a sodding Celebrity, where I find myself chortling along with the rest of the nation at the bizarre New Age antics of PR guru and Ab Fab inspiration, Lynne Franks.

Now to me, the Rev and his mates and Ms Franks are as loopy as each other, but I bet there are a fair few among Lynne’s detractors who, at the very least, pay lip service to the invisible magic friend in the sky, if not buy the myth wholesale. Funny old world, eh?

It's been a while…

2007-10-24T16:33:00.000+01:00

I know. I'm afraid sorting out that boy of mine — my Aspie son — has been taking up all of my spare time and energy for a while now, so the blogging has taken a backseat while I get him sorted out. We've still a way to go on that score, but there's light at the end of the tunnel, and I thought I would dip my toe into cyberspace to celebrate the announcement that Mina Ahadi has been voted Secularist Of The Year. I saw her speak at an International Women's Day event last year, and was blown away. Read about her here.

2007-06-15T14:49:00.000+01:00

Fascinating piece here by Brian Whitaker. A suitable rebuff to those who seek to blame the death of Banaz Mahmod on almost anything but the people actually responsible — the male members of her own family.

Get this…

2007-06-13T17:20:00.000+01:00

…apparently poor Banaz Mahmod wouldn't have died if the British authorities hadn't been so 'culturally insensitive'. What a bloody nerve.

Who’s your dæmon?

2007-06-13T16:42:00.000+01:00

Fans of Phillip Pullman will know doubt be aware of the fact that the movie version of The Northern Lights, irritatingly changed to 'The Golden Compass' so as not to confuse our American friends, is due out next month. I gather (though admittedly I haven't heard it from him) that Mr Pullman is said to be happy with the script, which will come as something of a comfort to those of us who were worried that the plot would be stripped of it's anti-religious subtext by the Hollywood machine.

Even more exciting — if you pop across to the official website for the film you can answer 20 quick questions and claim yourself a dæmon! I was delighted to find that mine is a tiger called Thalius, daughter was slightly bemused to find herself teamed up with a grey whippet with an unpronouncable name, and son was not at all pleased to get a goose — he didn't care what its name was. Still, neither of them have hit puberty yet, so there's still time for their dæmon to change. The best thing about it is that you can bring your dæmon with you into cyberspace — just got to work out how you do something technical like that…

Cultural excuses won't do

2007-06-13T16:34:00.000+01:00

Excellent piece in today's Independent by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, which illustrates once again why justifying archaic practices on the grounds that they are 'cultural' or religious is so very wrong. It's terrifying to think that this sort of crime is on the increase.

Honest to Richard, I've been busy!

2007-05-30T12:29:00.000+01:00

As a rule I try hard not to do guilt, but I've been feeling the odd twinge lately about not contributing anything beyond a wistful thought or two to my blog, and when Chaucer's Bitch left a comment here the other day wondering what had happened to me, I thought perhaps I'd better find the time to share a few thoughts.

As luck would have it, there do happen to be a few things going on at the moment which are making me foam at the mouth.

Take the piece this morning on the Today programme about the grand opening of evangelical bampot Ken Ham's creationist 'museum' in Kentucky, complete with models of humans happily co-existing with dinosaurs and mock-ups of the grand canyon, which Ham claims appeared just 2,000 years ago in the wake of the great Biblical flood. Hmmm...

Of course it would just be funny were it not for the fact that — according to this morning's report — around 50 per cent of Americans actually believe that the account of the creation in Genesis is fact, and that Mr Ham has cunningly situated his monument to credulity within 'a day's drive of two thirds of the population of America'. And people wonder why Richard Dawkins and his pals get so upset.

Talking of whom, I went to the Hay Festival at the weekend to touch the hem of his robe, so to speak. My mum and my auntie Betty — living proof that there is a gene for atheism — came along too, and having limbered up with a very enjoyable talk from AC Grayling, we endured several hours of appalling weather — sideways rain and everything — as we killed time waiting for Dawkins and the main event to begin. As the rain beat down on the roof, threatening not only to drown out Mr Dawkin's replies to the gentle grilling he got from Rosie Boycott, but to bring the marquee down around our ears, it was hard not to muse on the fact that if there was a god, he might well have conjured up the weather specially.

And after all that stimulating, intellectual dialogue, what do you think my mum and my auntie had to say about their first real-life encounter with Darwin's rottweiler? "Oooh, isn't he dreamy!" I suppose I've only got myself to blame, encouraging them in the first place, and I rather think that they found the experience of being inside a large tent with almost a thousand gently steaming fellow non-believers a little over-exciting.

Later, having dinner in the excellent Old Black Lion Inn, and over-excited again because we'd had a couple of glasses of wine and Ian Rankin was at the next table, we had great fun musing on the fact that, godless though we are, we still insist on using phrases like 'honest to god', 'for god's sake', 'god almighty' as exclamations, and resolved instead to invoke the lovely Mr Dawkins. While 'honest to Dick' and 'for Dick's sake' had us howling with laughter, it didn't quite convey the dignified sincerity of our feelings (ha!), so once we had calmed down we decided it would be more respectful to use his full name.

Enough silly nonsense, and on to the much more serious issue of Cardinal Keith O'Brien's latest foray into politics. Furious at what he sees as the 'marginalisation of christian values in public life' he has now resorted to blackmail, declaring that pro-choice politicians should 'consider their stance on receiving communion'. No matter that MPs are elected to represent a constituency and that the people in that constituency might be overwhelmingly pro-choice, the hysterical cardinal is urging his fellow catholics to 'reject candidates who defend a social evil', equating abortions with the killing of children in the Dunblane massacre. The man really has no shame. And the Bishop of Paisley, invited onto Today to add his tuppence-worth, had the nerve to say that actually what the cardinal had said was a little more 'nuanced' than was being reported. Oh, really?

Finally, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry about the news that there is to be a theme park based on JK Rowling's creation, Harry Potter, but on balance I've decided to laugh. Not that I'm a big fan of the books (I don’t think I can be the only bedtime-reading parent who objects to the series simply on the grounds that the chapters are too bloody long), but I know that the news will get right up the noses of Ken Ham and Cardinal O'Brien.

2007-05-03T15:50:00.000+01:00

For all of you out there who think that we should leave other cultures to get on with it, that what people do in the name of their religion is their business, take a look at this. It makes me sick to my stomach to think that anyone can see this and stay silent without feeling thoroughly ashamed.

It is not racist to condemn religious violence

2007-05-01T15:52:00.000+01:00

Excellent piece by Johann Hari in yesterday's Independent, saying what really needs to be said. Too many of us are crippled by our liberalism, and by the fear that speaking out against cultural violence and abuse will lead to accusations of racism. It is not racist to object to abuse, even if it is abuse that is sanctioned by religion or cultural tradition. As Maryam Namazie says, we should respect human beings, not beliefs and traditions.

Here we go again

2007-05-01T15:23:00.000+01:00

Well, it's started. Just when I thought secondary school was going to be all about dealing with bullying and standing over Max with a big stick to get him to do his homework, home he comes with news of evangelists at morning assembly brandishing free bibles.

The usual suspects were behind it, of course — Gideon's International. "They come in every year," someone at the school tells me. "they don't do a hard sell, but leave them to decide whether to take a bible after assembly."

Oh well, that's alright then. Except… no it bloody isn't!

It's one thing to teach kids about other people's religions as a way of promoting tolerance and acceptance, but proselytising is another matter altogether.

Can you imagine the uproar if a mullah or a scientologist turned up at school looking to recruit members for their religions? Do you think the powers-that-be would cheerfully herd the whole school into assembly to hear the pitch, then smile on beatifically as copies of the Koran or Dianetics were handed out?

Doesn't seem very likely, does it?

So what's the bloody difference? Why are the christians still allowed to do it? They're always bleating on about respect. What's respectful about going into a multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-faith school and telling them that your's is the only true path? That's not respect, that's arrogance.

There is a funny side to it all this, though. Max and his mates skimmed straight through the little volume until they found a passage which, depending on how you wanted to interpret it (and remember they're all 12 year-old boys) seemed to suggest that jesus was a paedophile. Another of his mates (the son of an enthusiastic atheist mate of mine) tore the pages out one-by-one and ate them!

We must be doing something right!

2007-04-13T14:40:00.000+01:00

I've been on receive rather than transmit mode for a while, but I couldn't let this pass without comment. For all of you out there with a mild crush on the lovely Mr Dawkins, here's a chance to hear him say a dirty word.

Stop Backing Away From Necessary Confrontations

2007-03-12T15:37:00.000Z

Another excellent piece by Nick Cohen in this week's Observer. Something he said at the end, that 'backing away from necessary confrontations will have a disastrous effect', really struck a chord with me and will, I hope, with others.

It has to do with the increasing prevalance of muggings among schoolchildren — a hot topic at the moment if pieces like this in the Times are anything to go by.

My son Max was waiting at a bus stop outside his school the other day with a friend when another kid, in school uniform (!), approached him and asked him for all his money. Max told him that he didn't have any money — thanks to Ken Livingstone, kids don't need money to travel on buses in the capital — but the junior mugger wasn't to be put off, and attempted to search him, saying: "If you're lying, I'll beat you up". Max stood his ground and refused to let himself be search, implying that he would be prepared to punch his assailant if he had to. At this point the kid ran off, and Max's self-esteem, often brought low by bullying (he's one of the 40 per cent of children on the Autistic Spectrum who suffer regularly from bullying) soared.

Naturally, we reported the incident to the school, but not without some careful consideration. Since he started at secondary school we've been flabbergasted at just how much of this sort of criminal behaviour goes unreported because of the fear of repercussion, but Max was adamant that it should be reported. "If I don't report it, I could be standing at that bus stop in five year's time, and the same kid could come along and I'll have to give him my money, because he'll have a knife."

The school launched an intensive investigation to find the perpetrator, but despite hours of work, they were unsuccessful. Until…

Max was walking through the school playground the other day, saw a kid gesturing towards him and saying to his mate that that was the kid he "tried to mug the other day, but he got rude." The game was up. Max faced the kid up and reported him. We're not sure what'll happen now, but it's a good school, so with any luck the whole thing will be dealt with effectively, the would-be mugger's parents will be informed, he'll get a good lesson in the difference between right and wrong, and his fledgling criminal career will be over before it gets properly started.

With any luck. As a friend of mine who teaches in a rough state secondary told me: "It's probably the best thing that can happen for these kids. If their behaviour is brought to the attention of the school there's a chance they'll get the attention they need to nip it in the bud."

So, a good outcome, a necessary confrontation, on lots of levels.

What terrifies me about all this, and I'm sure it's terrifying lots of parents, even if not all of us gets the chance to shake our fists on national television like Richard Madeley, is the casual nature of all this. The way that Max's assailant was talking to his friend implies that it is as normal for the budding criminals to perpetrate these crimes and talk about them as it is for the victims to talk about them as a necessary rite of passage for kids growing up in most towns and cities across the UK.

Just as Jane Gordon in the Times points out, kids now refer to these incidents as 'stop and search', or talk about being 'taxed', all of which downgrades it to something which seems vaguely acceptable. There was a terrifying incident recounted in the Living With Teenagers column in the Saturday Guardian's Family section a week or so ago, where a teenager told his mum about being violently mugged, then begged her not to 'over-react'.

My husband works occasionally in a further education college, teaching some of the more disadvantaged kids, and he took the opportunity to ask why it is that kids pick on each other like this. According to his class, kids like Max — long-haired, grungy, into rock music — fall into the category known as 'neeks', who are the new geeks as far as I can gather. Neeks are easy targets, apparently, because they'll give up what they've got without a fight (presumably they've all got parents who tell them, quite rightly, that things are less important than people, and that sometimes it's better to hand stuff over rather than risk being hurt). That explains why particular kids are more likely to be targeted than others, but it doesn't even begin to explain what it is that motivates children to mug their peers. Where are they getting the idea that it's alright to do it?

Of course, when you ask that sort of question everyone cites cultural influences — violent themes in the sort of music and films popular with kids — but I'm not buying that. There are plenty of kids who are fed a diet of inappropriate entertainment who still know the difference between right and wrong. Broken families are blamed too, but again, there are plenty of kids from broken homes who set shining examples of how to behave to others. There are myriad reasons why kids do what they do, and a set of circumstances which might tip one kid over the edge into criminal behaviour might have quite the opposite effect on another. I'm sure plenty of kids just do it without thinking about the effect it will have on their victims and their families or what the consequences might be if their victims are brave enough to report them.

The only thing that is certain is that if children get away with this at such a young age (Max's assailant is in year 8, making him 12 or 13 years-old), it sends a message to other kids that they can get away with it. Standing up to bullies is never easy, but if kids insist on not reporting incidents, on telling their parents not to over-react and on using language which downgrades it to the level of minor playground scuffles, they have accepted it, and it ain't going away any time soon.

Of course, the government could help by ensuring that every child gets to go to a good school within walking distance of their home, but that ain't going to happen any time soon either. While they concentrate their energies on making sure that the children of christians can be educated with those of other christians, those of muslims with others from an islamic background and so on, ad nauseum, the situation can only get worse. And anyway, my kid goes to a good school which is literally a two-minute walk from home, and he still cops it.

Our children have a right to go about their business without worrying about whether they're going to be violently attacked between home and the bus stop, just as we do. Their language may make them seem blasé about it, but deep down? Trust me, they're terrified, and if we encourage them to back away from necessary confrontations, and back away from them ourselves, we are letting them down — badly.

Women of Courage

2007-03-09T14:58:00.000Z

This wonderful woman spoke last night at an International Women's Day event called Women's Rights, The Veil and Islamic and religious laws. Although she spoke in Farsi (the chair kindly translated for those of us unfamiliar with the language) her warmth, charisma and courage provoked an overwhelmingly emotional response from me and the pals I went to the do with. The other speakers — Maryam Namazie, Sonja Eggerickx, Ann Harrison of Amnesty International, and Taslima Nasreen, were equally inspiring, especially in view of the fact that most of these women have to live their lives under constant threat from the religions and regimes they criticise.

Never thought I'd say this…

2007-03-07T17:43:00.000Z

Excellent piece from the Times that I missed when it appeared at the end of Feb. Since he made the transformation from MP to meeja personality in 2005 Michael Portillo has appeared vaguely normal and quite compassionate. I find myself warming to the guy. Now there's something I wouldn't have believed I'd ever say back in the bad old days.

Platitude For The Day

2007-02-22T17:05:00.001Z

If you're reading this the chances are you're not a big fan of Thought For The Day — the anachronistic little god slot that persists in interrupting the perfectly good news and current affairs delivered to us each morning via the Today programme on R4. From Anne Atkins sanctimonious sermons to Rabbi Lionel Blue’s rather warmer and much more welcome pearls of wisdom, there's plenty for us godless to get worked up about, particularly since the BBC have declined numerous polite requests to include some more secular and humanist voices to their list of chosen speakers. Seems downright bloody rude, if you ask me, and tantamount to saying that you can't lead a moral, ethical existence unless you've read about how to do it in some old book or other or had it spoonfed to you via a pulpit (or faith school).

Given that the BBC don't look like they're going to be changing their minds any time soon, a couple of initiatives have been set up lately which might be of interest…

The first is the Think Humanist Thought For the Day — set up by the Humanist Society of Scotland. I'm a bit late in twigging on to this — they ran a series of podcasts from 12th to 17th February, coinciding with 'Darwin week' but relieved that they have a play again facility on the website.

The second is the excellent Platitude For The Day. Check it out.

A Sad Day

2007-02-20T14:50:00.000Z

Having been an avid reader of Muriel Gray's columns in the Sunday Herald for some time, my first click on a Monday morning has usually been onto the OP-ED section on the paper's website. Recently, however, my clicks have been more in hope than anticipation. Although my mum kept assuring me that the legend 'Muriel Gray is away' was still regularly appearing at the foot of each column that replaced hers in the print edition, implying that she would return one day, I was concerned.

Alas, it is not to be. Having popped up as a guest on Radio 4's Saturday Live a couple of weeks back, Muriel told Fi Glover that some bod at some function or other had had the cheek to refer to her as simply a journalist, failing to take into account all the many other strings she has to her bow, so she promptly rang up her editor at the Herald and resigned.

Well, whoever the bod was, I'd like to get my hands on him. And Muriel, please reconsider. I know you've got a lot on your plate, but your wise words and forthright common sense are sorely missed, by me and many others.

2007-02-20T14:35:00.000Z

Good for this guy. So much for the separation of church and state in the US, when a kid has to take the school to court to stop teachers from prosetylising. Makes me think of all the times my kids have had to put up with stick in the playground, just for being open about their lack of religious belief. Let's hope Matthew gets all the support he needs to sock it to the school board.

Give me strength!

2007-01-28T11:31:00.000Z

Parents evening at my son's secondary school. He's in year 7. Delighted to hear from his science teacher that he thinks creationism is as nonsensical as I do.

'I mean,' he says. 'The bible says that the earth is around 6,000 years old! What nonsense, when we have evidence that it is millions of years old.'

'Exactly!' I say. Husband and son commence groaning, heads in hands. She's off, they're thinking. They've heard it all before, and we've still got about 25 other teachers to see.

But then…

'Of course,' science teacher says. 'I was brought up to believe in God…'

Uh oh.

'So I think that maybe… a very long time ago… it was God who created the universe.'

Right then. Where's that maths teacher?

Never let it be said…

2007-01-24T15:39:00.000Z

…that I don't hold my hand up when I'm wrong. First, I should apologise to Steven Poole, for lumping him in with Theo Hobson and Dave Hill and inferring that he had accused Polly Toynbee etc of wanting to ban religion altogether. I had collected the url for a piece he wrote for the Guardian Comment is Free site, because of something else that he said, and I included it without thinking. I'm sorry.

Secondly, having been back to read the piece on the government proposal for creationism to be included in the RE curriculum, I note that there is also a proposal to include atheism, and that they will be encouraging students to read the texts of Richard Dawkins. So some small cause for celebration, although why atheism should be introduced to the curriculum only as the flipside of a crackpot theory like intelligent design I don't know, and still no mention of humanism.

What about us persecuted atheists and humanists?

2007-01-23T17:26:00.000Z

It might just be me, but has anyone noticed the distinct whiff of anti-secularism that's been wafting around lately? All the usual suspects have been at it, of course, the run-up to Xmas providing Archbishop Sentamu with the perfect opportunity to blame the prevailing secularism of the chattering classes for the spiritual decay in Britain, while north of the border Cardinal Keith O’Brien continues to work himself up into a veritable frenzy over what he sees as the increasing secularisation of politics in Scotland.

What he doesn’t seem to realise is that many of us Scots are proud of our Enlightened history, even if we do celebrate with the bizarrely superstitious practice of rubbing David Hume's toe. And there are many of us for whom the sight of the esteemed cardinal getting himself into a fankle is so gratifying that we would do almost anything to ensure that his distress is prolonged. It does make me wonder whether one who's been elevated to such a lofty position might occasionally stop to consider whether one's hysterical rants are actually having the opposite effect to that which is intended, but maybe that's just me.

There's nothing so surprising in all that though. It'd be kinda weird if the head of the clergy didn't have something to say about what they regard as creeping secularisation, after all. It's the amount of column inches that individuals from the supposedly sane, less extreme end of the religious spectrum have been devoting to trying to trash atheism that have got me a mite pissed off. People like Theo Hobson and Dave Hill, clearly irked by the commonsensical pronouncements of AC Grayling and Polly Toynbee, not to mention the runaway success of Richard Dawkins God Delusion, have been having a right go.

The thing is, they haven't really been able to find all that much wrong with what Grayling et al have had to say, and given that they all cloak themselves in reasonableness and leave the hysterical offence-taking to the extremists, they've had to scrabble around to find some mud to sling that they hope might stick.

And what’s the best they can come up with? That the brand of atheism that Polly and her chums subscribe to is 'a faith position' and that it is as fundamentalist as any other. Oh, and that we atheists would like to see religion banned altogether.

How pathetic. I may be missing something, but I'm reasonably well up on this and I don't remember any of the stars of the atheist firmament saying anything about banning religion. If pushed, I imagine they would stand up for religious freedom as much as for any other kind, as would I. What does exercise them, and me, is the idea that in the 21st century we should still be having to fight for freedom from religion, and to have our worldviews recognised as just as valid as religious ones.

It does seem incredible, in particular, that there is no statutory requirement for teaching about humanism and other non-theistic worldviews in the RE curriculum, in light of the fact that the government look set to make teaching about creationism compulsory. So if we seem to have taken up the fight against what we perceive as the creeping 'religionisation' of our society with something resembling missionary zeal, is it any wonder? I'm sure you fluffy christians out there wouldn't stay fluffy for long if your worldview was left off the curriculum in favour of lessons in the wisdom of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Judging by the amount of bleating and whining that we've heard lately, you guys are pretty familiar with what it's like to feel persecuted, and before you snort with derision about me daring to call myself persecuted, why don't you come and talk to my nine-year-old daughter about it. Ask her how she feels about being told by her classmates that she must worship the devil and that she doesn't know right from wrong just because she had the guts to say out loud that she doesn't believe in god.

As AC Grayling points out in this excellent piece, religious people like nothing more than a bit of persecution. There's nothing like it for getting their juices flowing. The funny thing about persecution is that it gets other people's juices flowing too.

Dancing Jesus, you have to watch the end of this video - Google Video

2007-01-21T12:54:00.000Z

Dancing Jesus, you have to watch the end of this video - Google Video

2006-12-14T14:26:00.000Z

Couldn't have put it better myself . Nice to know that when Muriel's not available, that someone's keeping up the good work at the Herald.

Get Santa out of Christmas too!!

2006-12-07T12:34:00.000Z

Talking of taking Christ out of Christmas, having been viciously verbally attacked last year by someone who called me a hypocrite for professing atheism but still letting my children believe the Santa Claus myth (something I was never comfortable with anyway, but I bowed to family pressure), I disabused my children of the whole notion earlier this year and while I was at it I killed off the tooth fairy and the easter bunny too. It doesn't seem to have resulted in any lasting trauma.

This year, for the first time, it'll be me who gets the credit for working and scrimping and saving all year to put presents under the tree, instead of some fat old codger in a red suit who drinks too much and eats too many pies.

More Anti-Christmas stuff — Yey!

2006-12-07T12:12:00.000Z

Must pay more attention to Jon Stewart

And the award for…

2006-12-04T17:10:00.000Z

the best rant I've read in ages. Keep it up Charlie.

Aah, Richard… the sequel

2006-12-04T16:53:00.000Z

He just keeps getting better and better. And nice to know I'm not the only one out there with a little crush.

Yuletide Revival

2006-11-29T15:17:00.000Z

Well, there's no getting away from it, Christmas is well and truly on its way, in all its mawkish glory, and the usual whingeing on about putting Christ back into Christmas is as loud as ever.

Not that he was there in the first place, of course, Yuletide celebrations having been going on for quite some time before the god squad got their sweaty paws on them. I can't tell you how amused I was to read in the National Secular Society pamphlet, Our Pagan Christmas, that all that stuff about the virgin birth, the manger, the shepherds, the wise men and so on was blatantly nicked from all the other religions knocking about at the time. That alone was worth the price of the pamphlet.

Of course, in the strictest sense, the christians are right. Christmas, as in 'Christ's Mass', is the celebration of the birth of Jesus. But, despite the fact that that's what I've called it all my life, Christmas is not what I celebrate on the 25th of December each year.

Sure, I decorate my front door with a wreath made from holly leaves and berries from the garden, but that's an ancient pagan way of celebrating the continuity of life, using evergreen plants. I drag a tree indoors too and hang baubles on it, but that's another tradition involving an evergreen that has very little to do with the nativity, and anyway, it only became popular after Queen Victoria stuck one outside Windsor castle in 1841, at the behest of her new husband. Oh, and I make mince pies. But as far as I can gather, apart from turning up at this time of year for centuries, there's nothing to link them specifically with Jesus' birth either. Christmas pudding, on the other hand, does have at least a passing aquaintance with religion — 'stir-up Sunday' having its provenance in The Book Of Common Prayer, but I've never been that keen on it anyway.

It's fair to say, then, that apart from a few early years during which my gran dragged me to Sunday school where I was made to sing Away In A Manger until I was hoarse, the baby Jesus hasn’t been any more of a presence at my mid-winter celebrations than the Persian god Mithra. Strikes me that given that I don't believe in either him or his dad, inviting him to join me and my family for Crimble these days would be as hypocritical as me getting married in a church, having my kids christened or sending them to the local faith school.

To say that I celebrate Christmas would be as accurate as saying I celebrate Saturnalia. Come to think of it, though, Saturnalia would probably be a much more appropriate name for the orgy of consumerism and gluttony that goes on each year around this time, as I'm sure some of you more pious christians out there might agree.

Of course, it's very fashionable among christians at the moment to bleat on about persecution, and the Royal Mail dumping the Christmas story off the festive stamps this year in favour of more secular imagery is being held up as proof of the fact that poor old christians are about to be banned from practising their religion and burned at the stake if they try. Setting aside the fact that historically when it comes to persecution christians wrote the book, a quick trawl through that book might enlighten today's whingers about what persecution really is. And if you want more contemporary examples of what it looks like, how about what's happening to the women of Afghanistan, or the general population in Zimbabwe or Somalia?

I'm sorry, but being told that you must abide by the law of the land and stop discriminating against homosexuals, and having to lick stamps with snowmen on instead of angels might add up to an affront, but persecution it ain't.

No, what this is all about is the fact that christians hate the thought of not being the big boss at this time of year. They can't stand the fact that there are people out there who might have other ideas abut how to run a yuletide celebration. As church attendance dwindles, the thought of losing the privileged position at the centre of public life that they have held for centuries is galling, to say the least. They might pay lip service to values of tolerance and equality, but deep down, they think that their religion is the right religion, that they are the chosen people and that everyone else is wrong. If they didn't, they wouldn't be so terrified of loosening their grip on public life — no matter that the disestablishment of the Church of England is the only thing that would lead to true equality. They won't even let poor deluded old Prince Charles change one word in his coronation address, for goodness' sake.

So, apart from the fact that it might be genuinely upsetting, not to say confusing, for some of the older generation when the local primary school kids turn up at the nursing home to sing a selection of 'winter songs' instead of Christmas carols, I don't give a toss what anyone chooses to call Christmas. If Christmas is what you want to call it — fine. If it isn't, that's fine too, and if British life as we know it is going to collapse just because a few local councils float the idea of using slightly more inclusive language to describe an international cultural event which means many different things to many different people, then it certainly isn't the tolerant place I thought I was living in. And frankly, anything that gets up the noses of those reactionary old (and young) tossers at the Daily Mail is fine by me.

Christmas gift inspiration?

2006-11-22T10:52:00.000Z

Been a little preoccupied to get much blogging done of late, but some things just can't be ignored.

Covered Women

2006-10-17T17:06:00.000+01:00

Like the rest of the population, it seems, I've been mulling over this veil malarkey and it seems to me it's rather a complex issue, no? I thought reading Snow, by Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk, about veil-wearing and suicide in a remote Turkish town, might shed some light on the subject for me, but enjoyable though it is, it isn't making things any clearer.

I mean, on the one hand, it's a potent symbol of women's oppression, and I find it difficult to look at a veiled woman without instantly thinking of her poor sisters (and mine) in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Palestine and all the countless other places around the globe where women’s lives get grimmer by the day thanks to the religious authorities that are in charge. The plight of such women is perhaps the saddest aspect of the increase in religiosity that we are witnessing in the world today.

But as one of the speakers on the Today programme last week pointed out that, after Jack Straw's pronouncement, it can also be regarded as a symbol of freedom. 'If I were in Saudi Arabia', she said, 'I would be campaigning for a woman's right NOT to wear the veil. Here I must campaign for her right to wear it.'

And she has a point. Setting aside the issues about communicating with someone whose face is invisible (I think it was the same speaker who noted, pertinently, that the discussion she was involved in was taking place in a radio studio), we do purport to live in a free country, and surely that should extend to what we choose to wear. If I wanted to walk to work everyday dressed up like Marie Antoinette, I'd expect to do it without being arrested, albeit getting some funny looks.

The difficulty comes in when people want to wear religious symbols in schools, colleges, hospitals etc, and if there is one tiny bit of pleasure that us secularists can glean from the current debate it's from watching government ministers tying themselves up in knots over what they can and can't tell people to do in state-funded institutions. How, after all, can they ask people to refrain from wearing symbols of their religion while supporting faith schools? The answer, you find, to many of the big cultural religious debates of our time, is the same. Ban faith schools, disestablish the church, end religious privilege.

It strikes me that Muslim women have several reasons for wearing the veil. Some wear it to show their piety, and others because it is expected of them. A few, however, are politically motivated, and I suspect that unless there is a radical rethink on the role of all religions in our society, resulting in religion being put firmly in its place — ie outside the door of public institutions — politcally motivated 'covered women' are going to keep on growing in numbers.

Aah, Richard…

2006-10-17T15:23:00.000+01:00

It's been a while, I know, but I've had more of the mum stuff going on of late than the atheist stuff, and I'm sure that those of you who tune in from time to time don't want to be bored with my domestic details. I know that it turns me right off if I log on in search of godless rants and find myself reading the ins and outs of darling little so-and-sos daily business, no matter how in tune with the parents' irreligious leanings I might be, so I'm not going to go there. If I feel like gushing on about what my children have been up to (or moaning about them), I'll set up another blog fit for that purpose.

I did manage to shuck off my domestic responsibilities one night recently and went with my mate Amanda to see Richard Dawkins at the Institute of Education. I have to admit to feeling a certain frisson of girlish excitement at the prospect, and there was even more excitement when we got there and realised how popular the event was. I suppose we shouldn't have been surprised, given the fact that The God Delusion is whizzing off the shelves and out of cyberspace at a pleasing rate. Amazon is still selling it for a tenner, by the way.

It was good to see some of the London Brights there too, and Andrew from the British Humanist Association, and very gratifying to see the forest of hands that went up when we were asked how many of us didn't believe in god, even if it meant that dear Richard would preaching to the converted — not the point of his book at all, although I don't reckon the sales would be doing quite so well without us.

Of course by far the most exciting part of the evening was the book signing at the end, although the girlish excitement turned to girlish nerves as we stood in the queue and tried to think of something a little less inane than 'we think you're great' to say when we finally got face to face with the great man.

It didn't feel all that different from those occasions not so long ago (well actually quite a long time ago, but we'll draw a veil over that) where I would queue up after concerts to meet and greet rock stars, an impression which was enhanced by the two geeky but trendy youths (and when I say youths I mean in the spotty, oily-haired sense of the word) in front of us in the queue. It occurred to me to offer him (Dawkins, not one of the youths) a body part to sign, but I decided against on the grounds that it would be a little undignified, him being one of the world's most eminent scientists and not the lead singer of the Lemonheads. Nothing, of course, to do with the fact that I couldn't think of a part of me that is still firm enough to sign, or the fact that these days I wouldn't be prepared to forego showers to protect the hallowed signature from wearing off, and that I'm definitely too much of a wuss to consider having it made permanent as a tattoo, though it did cross my mind.

In the end I decided to be selfless and get him to dedicate my copy of his book to my own atheist mum, but by the time we got to him we had been told he wasn't doing dedications — sorry mum, but if you could have seen the length of the queue you'd understand. And after all that worry all we managed were a few mumbled thankyous which I'm sure conveyed to him the depth and sincerity of our feelings.

Aah, Richard...

2006-10-03T11:49:00.000+01:00

Isn't it time for 'moderate' muslims to wake up and smell the irony? How much of this sort of thing will it take?

Scary Movie

2006-09-29T14:45:00.000+01:00

I am starting to feel really sorry for the beleaguered American liberal, and all those rational American families trying to bring up their children in a country where there's stuff like this going on.

Jesus Camp The Movie, coming to a screen near you soon, will cheer you or terrify you, depending on what side of the fence you sit.

Although it's not really fair to pass judgment until I've seen the whole thing, the fact that it was voted scariest movie at the Traverse City Film Festival says a lot. From the clips I've seen I don't know if I'll be able to watch it anyway — I tend to agree with Richard Dawkins that indoctrinating children constitutes child abuse, and even the clips make deeply uncomfortable viewing.

There is one thing that the founder of Jesus Camp, Pastor Becky Fischer, is spot on about, though. She says she is doing to the children of evangelical christians only what the mullahs are doing to the children of fundamentalist muslims in madrassas.

Funny, I seem to remember being told repeatedly throughout my childhood that two wrongs don't make a right. But then again, I was dragged up by heathens.

Not Quite The Dog's Bollocks, But Close Enough

2006-09-28T10:23:00.002+01:00

I feel sure that some of you out there will be interested in this.

Why The Rivalry?

2006-09-26T16:47:00.000+01:00

Went to my second London Brights meetup last night, and thoroughly enjoyed it, although I confess to feeling a little dismayed about the rivalry on display between members of the various organisations represented at the meeting, principally the BHA and the National Secular Society.

As a relative newcomer to all this, I am interested in both organisations, and indeed any and all organisations which have members who share all or some of my views. On a personal level, the BHA has proved extremely helpful and supportive in my dealings with schools, while the National Secular Society's excellent website, and in particular their 'What The Papers Say' feature, is invaluable when it comes to keeping me up to date with religious nonsense from across the globe. It's the first site I visit each morning.

I can't fathom why the National Secular Society wouldn't support the BHA and vice versa. I can't see where the conflict arises. It seems to me that — broadly, at least — we want the same things, and that it’s a monumental waste of time to argue amongst ourselves about who's going about it the right way.

And Another One

2006-09-26T15:11:00.000+01:00

Clicked through to this funny site from The Huffington Post. Don’t be put off by the name, and check out the piece they're running about how even the church that Bush attends is now protesting about the war in Iraq.

The Site We've All Been Waiting For

2006-09-26T11:54:00.000+01:00

Can't tell you how excited I am about this.

It Just Goes To Show…

2006-09-25T15:59:00.000+01:00

…you should never take what an 11-year-old boy tells you at face value. Turns out my friend's son copied his homework down wrong. The question should have read: 'Write down 10 religious things about your community'. Hey ho. Lucky I hadn't quite clambered up onto my high horse. I still think it's legitimate enough to ask whether non-theistic worldviews are being covered in RE though.

The school saga continues…

2006-09-21T12:45:00.000+01:00

Only this time it's not the primary school (you know, the one I've been tussling with since I started this blog). This time it's the secondary school my son started at at the beginning of this month.

Don't get me wrong, we're thrilled that he got in (there's no guarantee these days that your kids will get a place at any school, 'specially round our way), and thrilled with the way the school staff are handling his, er… quirks (he's just been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome). As usual, my concern is with the way they seem to be teaching RE.

To be fair, it's not anything that Max has come home with that has troubled me. His RE homework so far has consisted of covering his exercise book and filling in a questionnaire about his likes and dislikes. His mate, however, was sent home with the instruction to 'write down 10 religious things about me', much to his parents' chagrin.

Is it just me, or is the way that question is worded just a little on the presumptious side? Maybe it doesn't take for granted that the child in question is from a religious family, but I've been mulling it over for a good few days now and I'm damned if I can figure out another way to take it.

I know I'm not known for my calm, measured response to this sort of thing, but really, am I mad? There was me thinking that the RE syllabus would be a little more inclusive in secondary school, a little less focused on the baby Jesus and all that other nonsense, maybe a little more mindful of the fact that there are people out there (quite a few of us, actually) who are bringing their children up to be good people without recourse to dusty old works of fiction written thousands of years ago. I was even, foolish optimist that I am, hoping that in the secondary school environment my son would be able to talk openly about his godless upbringing without feeling like he's drawing a target on his back.

Guess he'll just have to dream up some interesting religious things about himself, if and when the homework comes.

Meanwhile, I can feel a tussle coming on.

2006-09-18T16:34:00.000+01:00

Haven't got around to reading Muriel Gray in the Sunday Herald this week, but my mum brought this piece by Ian Bell to my attention. Great stuff. Love the last two paragraphs.

He can't be that stupid. Can he?

2006-09-18T10:32:00.000+01:00

Honestly, what an eejit the pope is. Or is he? I mean, he couldn't really have been so stupid as not to know that quoting some 14th-century christian bampot slagging off Mohamed at a time like this would get up the noses of the muslim population and tip some of them over the edge into violent protest? Could he? After all, it's not like we haven't plenty of evidence to suggest that many muslims (come to that, many catholics, jews, hindus, sikhs…) spend a large part of their time sitting around waiting for the next affront to their beliefs so that they can take noisy offence.

I'm inclined to agree with Will Hutton, writing in yesterday’s Observer, however, who reckons that the pontiff knows exactly what he's up to. So it's not so much the stupidity of his speech that strikes me, as his complete lack of any sense of irony. That the leader of a church that presided gleefully over such abominations as the crusades and the inquisition has the nerve to lecture anyone about the perils of spreading religion by the sword is hard to credit.

Clearly, he’s had the same irony bypass as the perpetrators of the nasty little campaign running in Scotland at the moment and spearheaded by the catholic church, to stop the Scottish parliament from passing legislation that would allow same-sex couples to adopt. The thinly-veiled subtext, of course, being that same-sex couples who want to adopt are all paedophiles with dubious sexual motives.

I'm sorry, didn't I read somewhere that the catholic church stands accused of covering up one of, if not the, biggest child sexual abuse scandals in history? Or did I just dream it?

Horrorism

2006-09-14T17:19:00.000+01:00

Well, it's taken me half the week to chew my way through it, but Martin Amis' piece on Horrorism in last Sunday's Observer really was worth the effort. As a broadside on cultural relativism it's going to be hard to beat, and his conclusion, that the key to solving the problem of Islamism can only be the liberation of Muslim women, is blindingly obvious.

I have always felt deeply uncomfortable about the notion that we shouldn't criticise the customs and rituals of other cultures, even if those practices involve the mutilation of women and children. How can such abominations as female circumcision (and ritual male circumcision, come to that) be defended? The Chinese practice of foot-binding, which dated back to the 7th century, was banned in 1911, and today would rightly be punished as child abuse. What is the difference between that circumcision? Ritual circumcision is often - though not always, it's fair to say — motivated by religion.

Londoners unite against the faith menace

2006-09-12T12:48:00.000+01:00

According to a YouGov/Evening Standard poll, 44 per cent of Londoners think ALL faith schools should be banned. Hurrah! I would suggest getting Ken Livingstone on the case, but my optimism feels a little misplaced given his cosy relationship with the mullahs. Still, he's probably our best hope.

Back to school…

2006-09-12T10:32:00.000+01:00

Well, we're almost a week into the new school term and so far, so good. Only daughter at primary school now, her brother having moved on (and hopefully up) to secondary school. I am interested to note that at the primary school there are to be new lessons in 'values'. First up, honesty. No religious references in the blurb sent home to parents, so I'm optimistic that our input last term will have helped to ensure that the classes will be balanced and reflect the truly diverse nature of the school. We shall see.

They're all at it…

2006-09-06T14:18:00.000+01:00

Honestly, just because Jane Fonda’s got god, doesn't mean every erstwhile feminist icon has to jump on the bandwagon. Mind you, she's been certifiably bonkers for quite a while now, by all accounts.

Essential Reading

2006-09-06T11:52:00.000+01:00

Heard about this through Ms Magazine. Essential reading, I'd say, 'specially for Americans.

Bright? I Should Say So

2006-09-05T14:27:00.000+01:00

This blog has been streamed to Brights Online Blogs for a while now, but beyond occasional email correspondence with Bob Churchill, I had yet to meet or chat with any of my fellow Brights. So it was great last night to get a chance to do just that, at a meeting in the Pitcher and Piano in Holborn. It was surprisingly well-attended, possibly because of the presence of a Channel 4 film crew. Well, I say crew, it was actually just one bloke with a camera, filming for a documentary about atheism being made by Rod Liddle. Mr Liddle himself was not in attendance, which made me wonder a bit about how our little gathering will be presented in the finished film, but it will no doubt make for interesting viewing when it hits TV screens, sometime in October.

Thanks to speaker Martin Freedman I now understand a little more about what the Brights is all about — an online commmunity of individuals which, I was relieved to hear, does not intend to become another 'ism' — but which instead wants to concern itself with the 'marginalised situation of Brights (for Brights, or brights, read anyone with a naturalistic worldview) in the political and cultural landscape of world society'. A sort of civil rights movement for anyone who doesn't subscribe to supernatural nonsense. Or, as Martin put it, subnatural nonsense. Supernatural just gives it too positive a spin.

Reassuringly, though perhaps not surprisingly, much of what Martin had to say about the origins of the Brights chimed with thoughts and feelings I have had over the years, particularly the insistent use of negative terms to describe what, for me, is an extremely positive worldview. Regulars to this blog (I flatter myself that I have any regulars, but I live in hope) will know that the head teacher at my children's primary school really got up my nose at a meeting a while ago by repeatedly referring to 'non-believers, people without faith' and so on, ad nauseum.

Although the term 'bright' itself is not universally popular (one argument against it being that by self-identifying as a Bright you are declaring yourself smarter than someone who is not a bright — well, I say, if the cap fits…), there was general recognition of the need to claim a positive word to describe ourselves. Personally, I think that now that the movement is up and running and has a worldwide constituency, the aims are what's important, the name is no longer relevant. There are much more significant things we can spend our time discussing — if you don't like the name, get over it.

All in all, it was a very interesting do, although as one bloke pointed out: 'It's all very well us lot sitting here violently agreeing with one another. What are we going to do about it?'

Well, what? I suppose just staying interested and not losing hope is a start. What with so much superstitious nonsense still floating around as accepted wisdom and the rise of religious fundamentalism across the globe, it does often feel like us rationalists are swimming against a very strong tide. And that's without getting started on all the other rubbish — astrology, alternative medicine, feng shui, etc — which is replacing religion in the lives of many otherwise intelligent people who can't quite grasp the irony of swapping one set of superstitions for another.

I'm going to continue to blog, as and when I feel inspired (and have the time). And now that I've made contact with the London Brights (I fully intend to make it to future meetings — I wasn't just there to try to get my face on the telly, honest) I'm hoping that that will be pretty frequently. I've already got a few ideas milling around in the grey matter, more of which soon...

I must not let it grind me down, I must not let it grind me down...

2006-09-04T15:42:00.000+01:00

There are times when the religious madness that's sweeping the world makes you so furious it makes you want to spit. Times when the very idea of not venting your spleen feels like it's going to give you cancer. Then there are other times when the sheer weight of it all leaves you feeling so depressed you can't form the words to say how it makes you feel. Hence my relative silence over the past few weeks.

Oh, don't get me wrong. There has been plenty of provocation from the usual suspects. Ruth Kelly and her mad assertion that faith schools have no place in the discussion about integration in Britain, for a start — just the latest, of course, in a long line of bonkers pronouncements that have got to mark her out as borderline sociopathic, at the very least.

I mean, this woman's supposed to be intelligent, for goodness' sake. School, until recently, was the one place where you were guaranteed to have to mix with a rich and varied cross-section of the community we lived in. That was A GOOD THING. Separating children off to be educated exclusively with people from their own religious background (and we all know that usually means ethnic background) is A BAD THING. And if anyone out there reading this (if there is anyone out there reading this) feels tempted to point out that faith schools are going to be ordered to be 'inclusive' — don't bother. Read this instead, and then give me 500 words answering the question: "If faith schools are to be forced to be inclusive and open to everyone, what exactly is THE BLOODY POINT?'

Then there was the terribly sad story of the 11-year-old Colombian girl, raped and made pregnant by her stepfather, who was granted a legal abortion, only for the team who carried out the termination to be told that they were to be excommunicated from the catholic church. The cardinal who reportedly told the team they were to be excommunicated has now denied that he made the comments, but let's face it, was anyone surprised at the news in the first place? I certainly wasn't.

And what about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Rowan Williams declaring that gays are not welcome in his church unless they are willing to 'change their ways'? When you recall the optimism that greeted the appointed of the liberal, bearded, sandal-wearing one, it’s even more upsetting to think that he's now thrown in his lot with the religious right, and deeply, deeply depressing to think that of the boost that his announcement will have given the bigoted pastors preaching homophobic hatred as we speak, at a tabernacle near you.

And just how are the government going to react to all this? Well, we already know where they stand on faith schools, and Ruth Kelly seems to be on a career trajectory which has so far seen her in one job where she got to introduce dodgy legislation, and now she’s in another, which will see her consolidate that legislation. If, as I'm reliably informed by someone I know who works in the Home Office, she is in the frame for chancellor if or when Gordon Brown accepts the poison chalice that is the PM's job — bingo! She can fund the whole evil, retrograde project too. It's enough to make you weep with frustration.

As for the catholics… well, we all know where we would be if they got their way, so it was a relief to see that they got short shrift when they popped in for a cosy chat with Patricia Hewitt a couple of months ago. But let us not forget that they did get through the door, which is further than most secular special interest groups get. Let's hope it's not a revolving one.

Of course we're regularly assured by the government that the hard-won rights of gay and lesbian citizens are not under threat, but with so many religious nuts in charge, along with countless non-believers who are happy to keep paying lip-service to it all, how can we really be sure that this is the case, especially now that the nasty campaigns by so-called christians to maintain their right to openly preach hatred of gays have the backing of the Anglicans' high heid yin?

Well, it seems I've managed to shake myself out of my torpor and back into furious spleen-venting once more. Hallelujah! I'm off to meet the London Brights.

Macho Reverend Takes The Pink Pound

2006-08-24T16:17:00.000+01:00

This lot are news to me. Apparently the Scottish Christian Party, a fundamentalist organisation which is anti-abortion, anti-euthanasia, anti-stem cell research and virulently anti-gay, are fielding candidates in every seat in Scotland at the next election. Pretty impressive, eh? They can afford to do this, it seems, because in a previous incarnation their illustrious leader, the Reverend George Hargreaves, used to write songs. His biggest hit was Sinitta's So Macho — a gay anthem. Having come across this little snippet of gossip on Popbitch, I thought I should confirm it before passing it on, and lo — it checks out. What a larf.

It's Not Rocket Science

2006-08-24T14:38:00.000+01:00

Dear Ruth Kelly,

On the Today programme this morning you said you were looking for ideas on how to get children from diverse ethnic backgrounds to integrate.

I have an idea.

Abolish faith schools.

All of them.

Problem solved.

It's not rocket science.

The Life of Galileo

2006-08-18T14:14:00.000+01:00

Well, the kids are still away (hopefully learning some manners from their paternal grandparents), so the journey towards self-improvement that started last weekend with me reading newspapers for what felt like 48 hours straight, continued lastnight with a trip to the National Theatre to see The Life Of Galileo.

There was a time when prohibitive ticket prices would have given the likes of me an excuse to avoid such edifying, culturally elitist events, but that’s all changed thanks to the Travelex £10 ticket season, under which two thirds of the tickets must be sold for a tenner. Not sure who I have to thank (I suspect it might be Ken Livingstone), or indeed whether I should be thanking anyone — it was a bit of a marathon, and while the cheap ticket might have got my bum on a seat, it was a sore bum by the end of it.

Not that I didn't enjoy it. Anything about the battle between science and religion will usually grab my attention and hang on to it, and I was relieved to find that despite it being a play about a 17th-century scientist written by Bertolt Brecht and updated by David Hare, there wasn't much in it that went over my head. Then again, I quite often come out of these things under that impression, only to find out that I've missed the whole point, so I don't want to get too cocky.

What struck me most was that there was Galileo, making all his important discoveries, challenging the orthodox, religious version of how the world began and how we all got here, nigh on 400 years ago, and what are the papers full of now? Evolution versus creationism!

Linda, my usual theatre companion, who raised her eyebrows when I suggested it, but took a deep breath and agreed to come, was less struck by it. She said: 'You engage with all this stuff, I don't'. I told her about an article I had just read on Humanist Network News, about hasidic jews, who are reproducing at such a rate that their fundamentalist brand of judaism will be considered mainstream by the year 2075. 'Doesn't that scare you?'

'Not really' she said. Which made me wonder why it is that I do get so agitated about it all. Unless I live to the grand old age of 109 I'm not going to be around in the year 2075, so why do I care? Is it because I have children who will be around? It may seem ridiculous but though it must have been at the back of my mind, I hadn't really thought of it like that before. However I suppose that although I was brought up by atheists, it was only when I had to start answering my children’s questions that my interest in the subject was really fired up, so it must have something to do with concern for their future wellbeing.

Judging by the numbers of people crammed into the Olivier theatre’s 1,120 seats, and the range of ages (plenty of oldies but a girl along from us who couldn't have been more than nine) I'm not the only one, though I suspect from the warm but slightly weary applause at the end that, like me, most found it enjoyable and edifying, but way too long.

2006-08-15T15:30:00.000+01:00

Don't usually pass on this sort of stuff, but since so many of the cringeworthy album covers are for christian bands… Made me laugh

Let's All Have A Heated Debate

2006-08-14T15:37:00.000+01:00

It's always good to start the weekend with a heated debate, and on Friday night I came home from work to find that husband and mother (my parents, having kindly taken daughter off our hands for a week, were in London to deliver her back to us) had got stuck right into one, about the ongoing brouhaha about terrorism.

Mum, fervent anti-religionist that she is, argues that religion is at the heart of the problems we are currently experiencing, whereas husband maintains that it has more to do with Bush/Blair foreign policy — exactly the same debate that is being played out across the media, nationally and internationally.

Of course, having been brought up by one of them, and having lived with the other one for roughly the same number of years as I spent with my parents, I can see where both are coming from, which made my position an interesting one.

For what it’s worth, I'm inclined to think — especially having recently read Sam Harris‘s thoughts on the subject — that there has to be some pretty fervent dogma at work in the mind of a young British-born muslim to prompt him to strap explosives around his middle and head for the tube.

On the other hand, and in spite of Sam Harris’s rather forgiving stance on Western foreign policy, I can see how it has utterly failed the poor people of Palestine and Lebanon, and how it has left them feeling as if they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by taking up arms. In those circumstances, religion would indeed seem to be almost irrelevant.

It seemed to me that the only sensible thing to do was read everything on the subject that I could get my hands on and, the children having been whisked off to their other grandparents for the week, I had the opportunity to do just that.

So did I come to any earth-shattering conclusions that plonked me down on mother or husband's side of the fence? Well, no. But with the help of Nick Cohen, Andrew Anthony, Geraldine Bedell, Max Hastings and Muriel Gray, (okay, so mostly the usual suspects, and mostly writing in the Guardian and the Observer, but jeez, there's only so much a girl can take in over one weekend), I've come to the conclusion, unsurprisingly, that they're both right.

It is possible to believe that neither religion nor Western foreign policy is totally responsible for the mess we find ourselves in. While some terrorists will be motivated more by Bush and Blair's woeful double act than by what it says in the Koran about killing the infidel, others will be motivated more by the teachings of radical imams. Given the wide range of backgrounds that the bombers are drawn from, this can only be the case, and I suspect that there are few who aren't motivated by a bit of both.

In the same way, it is possible to feel violently opposed to Israel's policy in Lebanon while despising Hizbollah's methods and while feeling very afraid on behalf of the people in Lebanon if Hizbollah, Hamas or any other radical islamic administration ever takes over the running of the country. We know from reports coming out of countries such as Afghanistan and Iran that the plight of women, girls and apostates grows grimmer by the day.

One of the most interesting aspects of the current debate is there is no one ideology or political stance that any of us can turn to for an accurate reflection of our own views. Time was when you felt a certain way about a subject, did a bit of research on what the major political parties had to say about it, then voted and debated accordingly. That's all up in the air now — as New Statesman political editor Martin Bright's pamphlet for the centre-right Policy Exchange think tank, When Progressives Treat With Reactionaries: The British State's Flirtation with radical Islam illustrates.

In the circumstances, we have little choice but to arm ourselves with as much information as possible, and make up our own minds. Which is, of course, no bad thing.

I don't hold out much hope for it, but wouldn't it be good to think that the world events that are responsible for the current shake-up of ideas in the West might also encourage a shake-up of ideology within Islam and religion in general? Let's face it, it would be long overdue.

The Spirit Of The Enlightenment Lives

2006-08-08T12:38:00.000+01:00

Too depressed about the Middle East, too absorbed with Sam Harris’ The End Of Faith and too busy ferrying children here, there and everywhere while trying to work full-time (damn the school holidays) to do much blogging of late, but just thought I'd mention a jolly little encounter the other night, while I was visiting the lovely Isle of Arran with my dad.

It may be a little late in life for me to be learning such lessons (the trip was to make the arrangements for my 40th birthday — aargh!) but I have recently come to understand why it is that people say never to talk about religion or politics in the pub. Too many heated exchanges — usually with people who don't really believe anything much, but who cling on to what 'faith' they still have and defend it quite fiercely because… well, there has to be something else, don't you think? — have made me think, what's the point? People who are unfamiliar with the concepts of reason and rationality are unlikely to be coaxed over to my side of the fence just because a ranting Scots woman screeches at them for a couple of hours along a bar.

Okay, so if I'm honest the real reason is that there have been several occasions on which long-suffering friends and acquaintances, fed up with hearing me raving on about the same old stuff again and again, have rolled their eyes and told me to belt up. Either way, these days I find myself a little reticent about banging on too much about my pet subjects to complete strangers, and I now set off for nights out swearing blind that I'll stay off the subject.

Of course, that's all very well until you take into account the tongue-loosening effect of alcohol, and given that Saturday night's little soiree took place in an excellent pub which boasts the largest selection of malt whiskies in… Scotland? Britain? Europe? (I was too distracted by the Bruichladdich to care), I was entering dangerous territory. So it came as a welcome surprise to find that one of the locals was a kindred spirit, and we spent a very pleasant evening discussing faith schools, the rise of fundamentalism, the human rights act and lots of other stuff, while forming the London-Lochranza chapter of the Muriel Gray appreciation society.

It was my dad's comment the next day that made me laugh, though, as I was telling my mum about our evening, having already explained my new-found reticence.

"Aye, but he was singing from the same hymn sheet as us."

So sad

2006-07-20T12:42:00.000+01:00

Far be it from me to dip my toe into the morass that is the Middle East, but I'm finding this whole thing that's kicked off in Lebanon terribly distressing. To see so many innocent civilians — a third of them children, if the news reports are to be believed — being killed and injured, (on both sides, but it's the Lebanese who are bearing the brunt of it) is terribly depressing.

What's even more depressing is having to explain to my children that even in the 21st century people are still prepared to blow each other to bits because they have faith in a different set of nonsensical beliefs.

2006-07-18T10:25:00.000+01:00

Bob from The Brights wondered if I might be able to link through to the letter I had published on Saturday in the Daily Telegraph. The Telegraph website doesn't seem to want to let me get at the letter again, however — though I notice on today's letters page some more nasty, mean-spirited comments along with a letter supportive of the anti-discrimination legislation from a Reverend who seems a bit more au fait with what I thought christianity was supposed to be about.

Anyway, I kept a copy of my letter, which was short and sweet.

Sir - I wonder if the pastors writing on behalf of tens of thousands of black British christians are aware that the thousands of homosexuals in London have come here to experience the freedom of living according to their sexual orientation in the capital of a secular democracy?

I was tempted to rant on a bit, naturally, about what a bloody cheek anyone has coming to this country and then complaining that our values aren't up to scratch, and about the nonsensical notion that just because legislation is anti-homophobia it is also anti-christian, but I restrained myself.

Yey!

2006-07-17T17:10:00.000+01:00

Saturday's Telegraph printed my letter replying to those nasty gay-bashing pastors!

Women of Courage

2006-07-17T15:55:00.000+01:00

Feminists defending the wearing of hijab and other veils intended to cover up the female body has always made me feel deeply uneasy. It seems somehow deeply, intrinsically wrong for women to support such a blatant symbol of other women's oppression.

Of course, the argument goes that it's up to Muslim women themselves to decide whether they want to wear it or not, but really, given the consequences of not covering up in countries such as Afghanistan and Iran, can it actually be described as a choice?

I find it particularly infuriating when the reason for it — to prevent glimpses of female flesh, or hair, from inflaming male desire — is presented as legitimate. If men are such animals, surely it should be them who are covered up and kept off the streets, not the poor women who are the subjects of their uncontrollable lust.

Which is why I have been so pleased to hear what Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Fadela Amara, two Muslim women brave enough to stick their heads over the parapet, have been saying lately on the subject. Ayaan was talking on Radio 4’s Start The Week last week (you can still hear the programme by going here), and there's an interview with Fadela in today's Guardian.

A Dutch MP until recently, when controversy erupted over details on her application for asylum, Ayaan is famous for her outspoken views on Islam and for writing the film that lead to the Dutch film-maker, Theo Van Gogh’s brutal murder by an Islamist extremist.

Fadela, passionate about defending France’s secular democracy and ferocious in her fight against fundamentalism, has split with much of the feminist establishment in France over the 'cultural relativism' which allows them to defend the wearing of the veil — which she describes as an archaic symbol of the subjugation of women — on the grounds that it is traditional.

"…the first victims of fundamentalism are women." she says " I don't care if it's Islamic fundamentalism or American evangelism. A fascist is a fascist."

State-sponsored Hypocrisy

2006-07-14T10:57:00.000+01:00

Natasha Walter has a brilliant piece in today's Guardian , which highlights the divisive effects that faith schools (and the middle-class parents prepared to perjure themselves to get their kids into them), are having on our communities.

I have to admire the honesty of the woman who admitted to working out how much each visit to church would save them in school fees, but that fact alone should be enough to force a re-think on the whole issue. If snobby, middle class parents can't bear the thought of their little darlings mixing with riff raff, they are quite entitled to pay for private education. Why should they be allowed to create little white, middle-class enclaves within a system which is supposed to benefit all children.

Apart from the breath-taking hypocrisy of it all, what I can't get over is what a terrible example it's setting to children. Presumably if they are lying to vicars and head teachers about their motives for going to church, they will have to make their children complicit in the lies, or their cover will be blown.

They can, of course, console themselves with the thought that they are doing the best they can for their children and that that makes them better than parents who can't or won't make the same choices. Parents of children in private education have been doing so for years. But the fact that their choices are now having a detrimental effect on less well-off and downright disadvantaged members of our communities makes their position morally indefensible and frankly, pretty repugnant.

Christian Homophobia

2006-07-13T17:04:00.000+01:00

I know I'm not in the best position to teach anyone how to suck eggs, but I did get little bit of religious instruction as a child, and I seem to remember getting the impression that christians were supposed to be nice, tolerant people? It seems, though, that tolerance is something christians expect for themselves, not something they are willing to extend to other people. A case in point is this particularly nasty letter which appeared in today's Daily Telegraph. I wonder if the pastors writing on behalf of tens of thousands of black British christians are aware that the thousands of homosexuals in London have come here to experience the freedom of living according to their sexual orientation in the capital of a secular democracy?

Victory for an American Atheist

2006-07-13T17:00:00.000+01:00

Here's a great piece about the Smalkowski case, which has been exercising American athiests lately. I love the bit at the end about a tornado hitting the principal's house on the night of the verdict.

Muriel Gray

2006-07-12T17:16:00.000+01:00

A quick mention for my favourite columnist — come to think of it, she's one of my favourite people too — Muriel Gray, columnist for the Sunday Herald and grumpy old woman, who has been nominated as secularist of the year. Unfortunately we can't influence the voting. It's up to the National Secular Society's elected council and Michael Irwin, who sponsors the prize, to decide on the eventual winner, but supportive emails directed to research@secularism.org.uk can't do any harm.
For those not already familiar with her, Muriel writes regularly on matters of interest to secularists everywhere, bashing religionists of all kinds with her own particular blend of common sense and ire, which is, of course, all very commendable.
My highest praise, however, is for her warmth, compassion and humanity. During last year's election campaign, she wrote a column about collective responsibility that was so moving that just to think of it, even now, gives me goosebumps. At the time I was moved to tears, and found it difficult even to quote from it without choking up.
In a climate where people of faith increasingly characterise the irreligious as unethical and lacking in morals, she is an inspiration to us all.
I'm trying to track down a link for the article I've mentioned, but you can read her recent columns by clicking on the link in my sidebar.

Maybe the old codger wasn't so bad after all

2006-07-12T17:00:00.000+01:00

Here's a quote I stumbled across the other day that surprised me. Never thought I'd be wistful for the days of Reagan.
"We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate. All are free to believe or not believe, all are free to practice a faith or not, and those who believe are free, and should be free, to speak of and act on their belief. At the same time that our Constitution prohibits state establishment of religion, it protects the free exercise of all religions. And walking this fine line requires government to be strictly neutral."
—Ronald Reagan
The Quote Du Jour Archive. Ruthless Reviews

The Top Ten Power Brokers Of The Religious Right

2006-07-11T15:58:00.000+01:00

The separation of church and state may be enshrined in the constitution of the United States, but if this lot have anything to do with it, it won't be there for long. Given that they also have abortion rights, gay rights and a whole raft of other rights in their sights, these really are terrifying times.

More on the Order of Malta

2006-07-10T16:21:00.000+01:00

Hmm… murkier and murkier. I wonder whether the head teacher will still think it's a good idea to support the Order Of Malta when he knows that their proud history includes several hundreds of years of fighting the evils of Islam? Wonder what muslim parents would make of it all?

Haven't handed out the leaflets yet. Thought it was only fair to let the head know our views first and give him the opportunity to recant, so to speak. He was somewhat taken aback to get our letter this morning. Didn't see it coming, apparently. He's a lovely bloke, and a terrific head teacher — my only complaint about the school concerns all this religious nonsense — but I'm seriously beginning to wonder about his judgement.

Would you Adam and Eve it?

2006-07-10T16:05:00.000+01:00

Honestly, sometimes you just wish the Church of England could hear itself. A report last week in the Times Educational Supplement, which I was alerted to by the Newsline of the National Secular Society, talks of how taxpayers in this country could be asked to foot the bill for a doubling of the number of C of E chaplains in further education colleges.

The article reproduces quotes from a report which supports the idea, as follows: 'Many adults enter FE with the hope of a fresh start in their lives, sometimes as a result of a personal and spiritual crisis. FE chaplaincy offers a unique opportunity for the churches to engage with this generation of young people and adults at a time when many are vulnerable…'

…and ripe for the picking.

Read the whole article here.

And there's more

2006-07-09T23:21:00.000+01:00

It's worse than I thought. While the Order of Malta Volunteers may be a bunch of well-intentioned, dedicated young people, the Order of Malta itself is a dubious-sounding organisation which, amongst other things, claims to be 'the world's oldest continuously existing military organisation'. Check this out.

How Dare They

2006-07-09T22:40:00.000+01:00

I am livid. Fit to be tied. Rifling through the kid's book bags this morning, out flopped a sheet informing us that the proceeds from this year's 'non-uniform day' (the kids pay £1 for the privilege of turning up to school in civvies for the day) will be donated to, wait for it… The Order of Malta Volunteers, a catholic charity. Specifically, the money will fund a trip to Lourdes!!

Now, I'm sure that the volunteers do some excellent work, even if filling sick, disabled and terminally ill people with false hope and dragging them halfway across Europe in search of a miracle can hardly be counted as excellent work.

The fact that they are touting for funds in a non-denominational primary school is bad enough, but when that school is in South London and has pupils from as wide a range of ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds as the one my children attend, it is outrageous. That the head teacher has allowed it to happen is despicable.

Of course, we could exercise our right to withhold our contribution, and send the kids to school in their uniform as usual. That wouldn't exactly be fair though, would it? Talk about holding a gun to our heads.

Thankfully husband is just as pissed off as I am about it, so we've written to the head, asking that our contribution be donated to a non-denominational children's charity. We will also be handing out leaflets outside the school gates to make sure that our fellow parents know that they have the opportunity to do the same.

Talk to them now, before it's too late

2006-06-29T13:41:00.000+01:00

There's a hell of a ruckus going on about lad's mags at the moment. Labour MP, Claire Curtis-Thomas, who has a piece in yesterday's Independent , has called for them to be put on the top shelf along with all the other porn, while the editors of magazines such as Nuts and Zoo are tripping over themselves to get into tv and radio studios to defend their tawdry rags, claiming that they're not porn at all.

What a laugh. Of course they're porn. Although, of course, the definitions of porn are many and varied, depending largely on how you get your kicks, the last time I looked it was generally accepted that porn is material made with the explicit purpose of arousing your audience. Are they really trying to tell us that there's another reason for filling their pages with naked and semi-naked women? Maybe it's to help with GCSE biology revision?

We all know that the real reason — the only genuine reason — these guys have for crawling out of their caves to try convince us that what they're peddling isn't porn, is to keep them off the top shelf. Pushing them a few feet further up the newsagent's wall will put people off buying them. If people stop buying them, the publishers will close them, and if the publishers close them, certain editors won't have jobs any more. With their flash livelihoods at stake, it's hardly surprising that they're putting up a spirited defence of their chosen path, and if they can persuade a few members of the public that what they are doing is respectable, then so much the better.

As it stands, the mags are displayed down among the women's titles. (It has been claimed that they're often to be found nestling amid the Beanos and Dandys, but I'm a frequent visitor to that shelf and I can't say I've ever stumbled across anything untoward, unless you count the astronomical cover prices on the Simpsons comics.) This positioning lends them an air of decency, making it easier for your average bloke to buy them without embarrassment — end of story. To claim anything else is plain disingenuous.

And it's that disingenuousness that I object to, more than the mags themselves. Though undoubtedly crap and definitely degrading to women, they don't offend me any more than, say, page 3, or for that matter Cosmopolitan and Bliss. When it comes to deciding which offends me more — an image of a naked woman with her knickers dangling off her high heels and a staple through her navel or a skeletal model sashaying down a catwalk wearing clothes I'd need to remortgage my house to buy — I'd probably need to toss a coin. If we're going to get all hysterical about it (and plenty have) then there are lots of magazines that deserve to be elevated along with the lads' ones.

But… to paraphrase Voltaire, though I don't like what they do, I'd defend to the death their right to do it. Well, maybe not quite to the death, but you know what I'm getting at. They may not be lofty examples of what those of us who believe in freedom of expression are sworn to defend, but you either believe in freedom of expression or you don't.

It's not about what you and I think, though, is it? It has been said, ad nauseum, that the campaign to move the mags to the top shelf has been motivated by a desire to protect children. But let's be honest. Are our children really going to suffer irreversible damage if they catch a glimpse of Jodie Marsh's pubes before they're old enough to know what they are, or understand why she would want to get them out for the boys? I don't think so. And anyway, I've had as many awkward questions from the kids prompted by coverlines on women's magazines as I've had prompted by the Daily Sport.

The truth is, it's not really our children that we're worried about when we seek to protect them from images we consider obscene or inappropriate. If we were, we would be talking to them a bit more about the issues involved. I've heard plenty of adults chuntering on about all this, but apart from one short report on Radio 4 I haven't heard anyone actually asking kids what they think.

What 'protecting children' really translates into is protecting ourselves — from the embarrassment of having to talk to our children about what sex actually is. We're so screwed up about sex, so tied in knots by our religious and cultural baggage and repressed attitudes, that even the most liberal among us struggle to talk to our children about sex with any semblance of reason.

Oh, we're fine about telling them about the mechanics of sex. What periods are all about and where babies come from — some of us even manage to brief our boys about nocturnal emissions before their first wet dream, but it's when it comes to discussing the feelings and sensations involved we start coughing and spluttering, hoping that they'll get bored or embarrassed and drift off before we have to explain to them why, as an adult, you would actually want to do something so icky — for fun!

Yet the age when kids think sex is icky is the perfect time to tell them everything they need to know about sex.

Think about it — unless your child is being molested or is otherwise involved in inappropriate behaviour, the likely reaction to 'too much infomation' is EEEEUUUUWWWW!!! It certainly is in our house. And just because they collapse in a a giggling heap when they hear the word orgasm, that doesn't mean they're not taking in what you're telling them. Right now my daughter spends half her time quizzing me about sex, and the other half telling me how disgusting she thinks the whole business sounds. She's eight now, and though she won't believe me when I tell her, I know it won't be all that long before she's starting to have the feelings that will lead to her exploring her own sexuality. And, as anyone who has been an adolescent will testify, that's the point when all communications with her parents will cease, and information about sex and sexuality will come strictly via teen mags and — horror of horrors — her peers.

It is our duty as parents to use the precious years before that happens to cram their brains with as much sensible, positive information as possible before it's too late, then cross our fingers and hope for the best.

If we stopped being so bloody uptight about talking to our children about sex we wouldn't need to get our knickers in a knot about them getting their hands on a bit of soft porn here and there. Instead of howling with outrage and encouraging the government to bring in yet more censorious legislation, we should be talking to our children about the issues surrounding lad mags — how the people in them are portrayed, what they say about us as a society, and for that matter why the standard of sexually explicit, erotic material available in the UK is so lamentable.

We bleat on about the loss of innocence, yet for me innocence and naivity are two sides of the same coin. Naivity is what allows a young girl to get into a car with a gang of boys she vaguely knows and thinks she can trust. Naivity is what allows a young gay man walk alone across a deserted park in the small hours of the morning. Naivity is what allows a young women to trust her older lover when he assures her that having unprotected sex will be okay.

If innocence is naivity, knowledge is power. I'd swap innocence for knowledge any day of the week.

The Abortion Debate

2006-06-26T20:41:00.000+01:00

There's been a fair bit of rumbling here recently on the subject of abortion, with the catholics sensing that the time is right to start pressing for a lowering of the time limit from the current 24 weeks, and demanding the right to see health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, to talk about it. Muriel Gray had an excellent piece in last Sunday's Herald pointing out the absurdity of allowing religious interests have a say in anything to do with public health policy.

I've been doing a fair bit of rumbling myself, and got involved in quite a heated exchange on the Comment is Free website the other day, with a load of blokes who were adamant that they knew better than women who've had terminations how they felt about it. I eventually came to the conclusion that there really is very little point in trying to reason with people who take their orders from, as Muriel puts it, their 'supernatural, imaginary friend in heaven'.

I joined in the debate to support Ann Coltart, who wrote the piece that started the discussion, and who very candidly talked of the abortion she had in her early twenties. I too had a (very early) abortion in my early twenties, and I felt it was important to mention it by way of qualification. Although it was a difficult decision to make, I can truly say that I have not had one moment's regret, or guilt, which is why I was so furious to read that all women feel guilt and regret. Having had two children since, and knowing what I know now, I am even more sure that I made the right decision.

For my trouble, I was accused of being a catholic, or at the very least, a lapsed catholic, and told, amongst other ridiculous things, that you do not have to 'feel depressed' to 'be depressed'. You can't really top that can you? But then again what should I have expected from people who have never required evidence of any kind to justify their point of view?

Apparently I got a little rude at one point, using the words damn, and idiot, which pissed off one of the participants in the debate so much that he threatened to hop over to the other side of the fence and support the pro-lifers. Having spent the other night reading through some of the most extreme hate-filled invective I have ever come across on the Flying Spaghetti Monster website (see my previous post) that made me laugh. Having described himself both as 'ambivalent to the practice of abortion' and 'fundamentally pro-choice', I don't think he's any great loss to the cause.

I thought christians were supposed to be the good guys?

2006-06-21T12:26:00.000+01:00

Totally freaked myself out lastnight. In the absense of anything decent on telly (C4 having moved Lost back to 11 o'clock to make room for the morons in the Big Brother house to continue making arses of themselves), I didn't switch the thing on at all, and instead amused myself by surfing the net.

Among the many websites I have been promising myself I'd visit properly is The Flying Spaghetti Monster. At first glance it seems like just a well-designed spoof of intelligent design which has lots of excellent, irreverant funny stuff to buy. But I was thrilled to find out that it actually has a much more serious point to it, having been set up to challenge the ridiculous Kansas School Board decision to give the theory of intelligent design equal emphasis in the science curriculum. Yey! Click here for a surprisingly balanced overview of the site's history in Science & Theology News.

What freaked me out was the horrible hate mail the site's founder, Bobby Henderson, has been receiving, from so-called christians. He has kindly published it all, and it makes for sinister reading. Of course it's a long time since I've been naive enough to think that all christians are nice well-spoken polite people who love their neighbours, don't covet their neighbour's wives, or oxen, or whatever. And I know that somewhere along the line Jesus's words about it being harder for a rich man to get into heaven than to get a camel through the eye of a needle got scrapped. I mean, you only have to be moderately well-versed in the ways of the world to know that there are christians out there who are quite happy to kill for what they believe in, despite what their lord had to say on the subject. Even so, I was horrified and not a little disturbed by the sheer viciousness of the comments Henderson has been receiving.

I had been thinking about buying a t-shirt or two for the kids. It seemed like a fun way of getting them and their friends involved in the debate, but a chill went down my spine when I read the words of one christian defender of intelligent design: IF I EVER MET ONE OF YOUR BELIEVERS, I WILL KILL THEM WHERE EVER I MAY FIND THEM!!!! NO WARNINGS, NO MERCY! And that's one of the milder comments. Whatever happened to the meek inheriting the earth?

D'you know what though? These bastards can't be allowed to win even the tiniest of victories. Hope FSM ship t-shirts to the UK.

Faith Schools… Again

2006-06-20T14:46:00.000+01:00

It seems the major faiths have got their knickers in a knot (what's new) about whether they are going to be banned from teaching that homosexuality is a sin in faith schools once new equality laws come into force. I can't believe that this is even up for discussion. If these morons want to keep spreading their poison, they should pay for it themselves. It's not like they haven't got the money. At risk of sounding like a Daily Mail reader, is this what my taxes pay for? Of course, if we didn't have faith schools at all, this wouldn't be a problem. Makes you wonder how cynical it was of Blair to move Ruth Kelly from Education to Women and Equality in the last reshuffle. She spent her time in Education talking up faith schools and now she's in a plum position to make sure that they can carry on poisoning young minds with impunity. She's clearly got her eye on her place in heaven...

2006-06-20T12:36:00.000+01:00

Finally got around to reading this excellent piece by AC Grayling, which appeared last month on the Guardian's superb Comment Is Free site. Apart from talking sense throughout, he touches on the issue of what us godless should refer to ourselves as. He prefers the term 'naturalist' to atheist, and he makes a good case for it.

Incidentally, having recently got involved in a short online dialogue with a christian who, within a couple of posts began — politely, it has to be said — to try to convince me of the 'truth' of Intelligent Design, it struck me that for him to stumble across me (or any other atheists) in cyberspace, he must be looking for us. Which is fair enough. After all, many christians take the dominionist aspect of their faith very seriously and proselytize every chance they get. I wonder what the reaction would be to me seeking out christian blogs and trying to convert them to atheism, though? Just a thought...

2006-06-16T10:50:00.000+01:00

Check out this fascinating letter that I've found from an evangelical christian which eloquently puts the case for keeping religion out of public schools and events in America. If only we could use it to beat some sense in the powers-that-be in this country. Wouldn't it be better for our kids' sense of identity and self-esteem if schools stopped tying themselves in knots over how to cater to children's 'religious needs' and got on with the business of educating them? It is inevitable that christians in this country will become increasingly defensive and protective as more and more minority faiths are represented in school assemblies, just as it is inevitable that those from minority faiths will be offended each time they have to sit through collective worship which is 'wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character'. Get the whole lot out of our schools!

Common Sense For Kids

2006-06-13T16:55:00.000+01:00

The news that Stephen Hawking is to collaborate with his daughter to write a book for children explaining the wonders of the universe will be welcome to parents like me, who are keen to foster a sense of awe about the world and all its wonders in their kids.

Although I was interested in science at school, I confess I was a bit too distracted by all the usual teenage stuff for much of what I was taught in chemistry, physics and biology to stick in my head for long. I did manage to scrape a last minute pass in Anatomy, Physiology and Health but, come to think of it, being distracted by all the usual teenage stuff probably helped with that.

It is only now, having dabbled in Dawkins, so to speak, that my interest in science has once again been piqued, and I find myself frantic to inspire that sense of wonder in my own children before it's too late and they've skipped off down the path of hormonal destruction that I so happily trod.

Sadly, I have neither the knowledge nor the talent to do this with any great confidence, so it is a relief when an eminent scientist like Hawking decides to translate the seemingly impenetrable mysteries of science into a form that children (and maybe even me!) can understand. What I want to know is when Richard Dawkins is going to do the same?

One thing that did bother me slightly in the report of this upcoming book. Hawking says that the book is going to be 'a bit like Harry Potter' but without the magic. If it must (and why pick JK Rowling as a role model when surely Philip Pullman would be much more appropriate?), let's hope he makes the chapters short enough to get through in a bedtime reading session.

2006-06-13T12:22:00.000+01:00

"We agree that collective acts of worship are important to help promote tolerance and understanding among children and young people."

So say the Department of Education and Skills, in a statement issued today after a call from the senior figures in the Anglican, Catholic, Methodist and Baptist churches for more stringent observance of the law requiring state schools to hold acts of 'collective worship' on a daily basis.

What is wrong with just teaching tolerance and understanding to children and young people?

2006-06-06T17:17:00.000+01:00

How terrifying is this? The article, that is, not the website.

2006-06-06T16:23:00.000+01:00

Given America's reputation as a nation populated — and run — by an extraordinary number of religious fanatics, I find it both comforting (on behalf of secular Americans) and frustrating (on behalf of me and other secular Brits) to be reminded of the separation of church and state enshrined in the US constitution which keeps religion out of schools. Today it was this piece on Cleveland.com that brought it to mind. Love the last paragraph!

The Fightback Begins

2006-06-05T16:15:00.000+01:00

Interesting piece in the Guardian last week about those creationist academies Blair and his chums seem to regard as the future of education in this country. They'd be laughable if it weren't for all the people who have no choice but to send their kids there. Still, looks like the scales are starting to fall from parents' eyes now. Good luck to 'em.

Is My Loss Greater Than Your Loss?

2006-06-04T22:09:00.000+01:00

The grimmest, most tragic story to break last week was undoubtedly that of Laura VanRyn and Whitney Cerak, the two college friends involved first in a fatal bus crash and second, in a tragic mix-up which involved one family keeping vigil by the bedside of the girl they thought was their daughter Laura, who turned out to be her friend, Whitney. The pain and grief felt by both families is unimaginable, and anyone who has children and a heart must, like me, find it almost impossible to read the reports.

Read them I have, however, and what has struck me, apart from the tragic circumstances of the case, is the overwhelming emphasis that has been placed on the girls' beauty, blondeness and devotion to god. Granted, I have read only one newspaper today, but it was the Observer, and I have to say I was shocked and sickened by the tone of their coverage, which I imagine was echoed throughout the rest of the press.

The fact that these young women looked strikingly similar was clearly what caused the mix-up, and therefore the story. Because let's face it, thousands of young people are killed every day in tragic accidents and hardly make news at all, even at a local level.

But is the fact that they were devoted christians really relevant? Or that they were beautiful, smart, blonde, well-behaved, sporty?

Is it more tragic for devoted christians to lose a child than it is for people of other religions or of none? Do the parents of a beautiful child feel that child's loss any more keenly than those of an ugly child? Would I weep more for a straight-A student than I would for for a child who struggled academically? If a fat, sedentary child dies is he mourned any less than a slim, sporty one? Is a blonde-haired girl who can trace her ancestry back to Europe worth more than a dark-haired girl who can't?

By emphasising these characteristics what is being said is yes — to all of the above.

Shame.

2006-06-04T16:10:00.000+01:00

Didn't have a lot of time to blog last week, thanks to good old half-term and compulsory quality time with the young 'uns. We did have fun though.

Never one to pass up an opportunity to hammer home evolutionary theory, and given that my in-laws live a mere half-hour drive from Charmouth Beach in Dorset, I dragged husband and kids out fossil-hunting! Well, 'dragged' isn't strictly accurate — I generally find that mentioning fossils to men and children makes them as biddable as those humans with the funny earpieces in Doctor Who's last encounter with the cybermen.

Talk about 'bang-for-your-buck' children's entertainment! I tell you, it was up there with mackerel fishing (you know, where you do it off a boat which has a 'fish-finder' which electronically guides you into the middle of a shoal, you use a line that has umpteen hooks on it and you're guaranteed to catch at least six or seven fish).

Thanks to several recent cliff collapses, there are endless lumps of soft clay just lying around on the beach waiting to be prised apart — even by the smallest of fingers — to reveal amonites, belemnites and lots of other -ites that I'm not spoddy enough to know the names of. It seems bizarre to think that while you can be arrested for walking out of a public park with a stick in your hand, you're free to help yourself to as many fossils as you like from Britain's crumbling coastline, but the practice is positively encouraged — there are hammers for sale and hire at the beach.

Of course, guddling around on a beach is fun at the best of times, but when you have the added bonus of being able to find fossils 175million years old… well, it's difficult to beat. We had a fantastic time.

A word of caution, though. The cliffs really are crumbling, and if you don't follow the safety advice there's a real chance you might end up squashed under several tonnes of clay. Of course you might make a very interesting find for some kid 150 million years from now, but somehow I don't think knowing that will help.

Check out this website for some top tips.

The Separation Of Church And State?

2006-05-25T15:15:00.000+01:00

A few comments lately (here and on other blogsites) have alerted me to the scary fact that I am addressing a global audience (only a few people, I know, but from far and wide), and that our friends overseas, in America in particular, are confused about the relationship between church and state in this supposedly secular nation of ours.

I can't speak with any more authority than my status as an enthusiastic observer of these things lends me, but it seems to me that having quite rightly been on a downward spiral since reason and common sense started to kick in around the time of the Enlightenment, today religion is creeping stealthily back into our lives. From the fear of Bin Laden's bombs as we travel to work on the tube to the mild irritation of 'Thought For The Day' (a sometimes illuminating, mostly patronising religious slot) on Radio 4 each morning, religion touches every one of us, on an almost daily basis.

Unlike in the States, where I hear tell that the separation of church and state is enshrined in the constitution, here we don't even have a written constitution. Although laws start off as bills in the democratically elected House of Commons, they are sent for approval to the unelected House of Lords, where a selection of (some good, some bad) peers, there by merit of birth, political appointment or high office in the church, gets to debate each one and say yay or nay. Many think that the Lords is merely there to rubber-stamp decisions made in the other house, but make no mistake, if they want to stop a bill from passing into law, they can do it.

A strong, well-organised and extremely well-funded coalition of religions is represented in the Lords, which swings into action every time they are handed a piece of legislation that may displease whichever lord they take their orders from. They have their own agenda, which as far as I can gather has more to do with scoring points by saving souls for the next life than with helping humanity in this one. A few weeks ago, for example, they put the kibosh on the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill, legislation which would have allowed the terminally ill to die with dignity. They very cleverly played down the religious reasons for voting down the bill but you're not telling me that the thought of their all-seeing, all-knowing god catching them in the act of condoning sin wasn't what was truly motivating them.

As the government threatens to farm out the NHS to private companies, perhaps more worrying is the idea of them welcoming a suggestion put forward in the recent Faithful Cities report from the Church of England, that the provision of certain publicly funded social services be handed over to faith groups. Given that Tony Blair has already signalled the government's intention to get the voluntary sector — including faith groups — involved with the provision of social care, it looks like it'll be a shoo-in.

Of course, with two children at primary school (the eldest off to secondary after the summer - a whole new can of worms), education is the area with which I have the most personal experience. If you've read any of my previous posts you'll know that it's my pet subject. Although in theory the school that my children attend is not religious it, in common with all the other state schools in this country, is obliged to hold an act of collective worship each and every day of the school year. That's a religious asssembly in every school in the land, barring schools in the fee-paying, independent sector which make up their own rules as they see fit, but where you can usually be guaranteed a bit of non-commital Church of England hymn-singing will be thrown into the deal once you've written your several-thousands-of-pounds-per-term cheque. I have a suspicion that the devolved Scottish Parliament take a slightly more enlightened view, but as I haven't had a chance to check that out yet, I'll have to reserve comment for another posting.

'Collective worship' is what the law says, and fair enough, if you've got lots of children from different religious backgrounds (I refuse to call them religious children — it's not a genetic condition) in a school collected together in one big hall for an assembly it would seem a little harsh to focus on one religion over and above any other, although they're not so worried when it comes to the children of humanists, athiests and agnostics. What the law also says, however, is that the collective worship 'must be wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character'. Oxymoronic or what?

The reality is, of course, that most schools simply don't bother to comply with this nonsensical legislation. As I have discovered in my dealings with the head teacher at my kids' school, however, they are coming under increasing pressure to follow the rules to the letter, at pain of losing Brownie points come the dreaded Ofsted inspections, which can see a school's reputation peak or plummet, depending on how the middle-classes receive the results.

On a wider scale, Tony Blair and New Labour's 'radical' education reforms mean, amongst many other alarming things, that if you are an individual with a special interest, hmmm… let's say you're an evangelical Christian with dominionist leanings, for example, or maybe you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Invisible Pink Unicorn and you've got a few quid in the bank, all you need is £2million and you can set up your own school. Yes, bring just two million quid to the table, the government will put up the rest (a lot more than two million - all tax-payers' cash, of course) and you can be influencing the hearts and minds of our youngsters in the time it takes to throw up the building. And get this — you get to make a profit! That's some business start-up loan. Too fanciful to be believed? Check this out!

So there you go. I'm sure there are many more instances of religion interfering in our lives, but I'm sure I've said enought for now. If you've made it this far, pour yourself a large drink and let me know that you think!

The Crazy States

2006-05-25T10:13:00.000+01:00

Okay, so religion isn't specifically mentioned here, but you can't tell me the religious right isn't behind this. It's nuts! It's the first time I've tried to include a link, so forgive me if it all goes pear-shaped.

The Opening Salvo

2006-05-22T15:10:00.000+01:00

Well, the meeting with the head teacher… Hmm, what to make of it. His position was basically that the school doesn’t push religion nearly as much as other schools in the area, and that if there was to be an inspection of the school tomorrow, they would probably by pulled up for not complying with the government guidelines regarding collective worship. Alarmingly, he told us that there is to be an inspection next year, and he agreed that there will probably have to be an increase in the amount of religion in the school in preparation for it. Terrific.

That aside, he said that in his opinion were there to be a debate about religion within the school community, the likelihood was that when it was over we would end up with more religion in the school, rather than less. In other words, back off. If we push our point, he seemed to be saying, we’ll only have ourselves to blame if it backfires and we end up with more religion in the school — something he claims not to want any more than we do. He was at pains to stress that he is a public servant, just doing as he is told. (Mmm… only following orders? Where have we heard that before? It certainly seemed to strike a chord with my husband, who pointed out that we are living in volatile times, with fundamentalist religion causing huge problems across the world, that there are times when you need to stand up and be counted — maybe this was one of those times. And I thought I was the one passionate about all this). We said that whatever the outcome is likely to be, if there is to be a debate we want to make sure our views are part of it.

He was very resistant to the idea of holding a humanist assembly to counter-balance the fundamentalist assemblies our daughter has been subjected to, saying that it would not be the school’s policy to invite people in from outside the school to conduct assemblies. When we suggested finding someone from within the school community to hold such an assembly he was non-committal.

On the subject of RE we were bemused to find that he did not know whether RE lessons included anything about non-theistic worldviews, especially in view of the fact that I wrote to him some weeks ago on this matter and the meeting had been arranged for a good few days. He did say that he would find out, and although again he was non-committal, he didn’t seem to have an objection to such subjects being included.

Again, he was at pains to stress that the school has nothing to do with setting the syllabus for RE, that it is the responsibility of the local SACRE.

Where we feel we had more success was when we told him about the incidents in the playground. The school has a very good policy of using assemblies to discuss issues — bullying, racism etc., — which have come up in the playground, and he agreed that the incidents would fall into the category of things that might be dealt with in such a way, especially when we pointed out to him that if our children had been challenged about their religious beliefs, rather than just about their beliefs, the school would be very quick to deal with it.

What struck me throughout the meeting was the language used. Non-religious people were consistently referred to in the negative. They were ‘non-believers’, ‘those without beliefs’, ‘people of no faith’… Eventually it started to really grate on me. As parents, we have made a positive choice to bring our children up without religion, as atheists and as humanists. We do believe (though in scientific fact, not in the supernatural), we certainly have beliefs (humanist ones) and we most definitely have faith — in ourselves and in humanity. To continue to portray us in such a negative way is… well, at risk of sounding like some of the religious nuts who have had their knickers in knots lately… an insult.

Bit between my teeth

2006-05-16T21:50:00.000+01:00

Well, off to see the head teacher on Monday morning. He finally responded to my letter — I raised a number of points, apparently — and I have been summoned to discuss them. I'm going armed with a pack of infomation from the British Humanist Association, and my husband, who thankfully agrees with me, even if he doesn't get quite as animated on the subject. Wish me luck…

It's Just What You Do

2006-05-10T21:36:00.000+01:00

If there’s one phrase that makes me want to weep with frustration it’s ‘it’s just what you do.’ Trotted out to defend the indefensible, it has become the mantra of the British middle classes, determined to get little Julian and Jocasta into the school of their choice, and seeking to justify the breathtaking hypocrisy they know they are going have to employ to do so.

I usually hear it just after someone has told me that they’re going to have their baby christened.

‘Oh,’ I’ll say. ‘I didn’t know you were religious.’

‘Oh, I’m not.’ They’ll say.

‘So is your partner/husband/wife?’ I’ll say.

‘No.’ They’ll say. ‘It’s just what you do, though, isn’t it?’

‘Oh?’ I’ll say.

‘Well, you know, schools, that sort of thing.’ They’ll say.

‘It’s just what you do.’

NO IT BLOODY WELL IS NOT!!!!

Forgive me, but this makes my blood boil on so many levels. For a start, people trotting out this tripe are usually acquainted with the fact that I have two children of my own. If they care to cast their minds back over the 11 years since my first child was born, they won’t find any memories of looking on beatifically as my children were sprinkled with holy water. So where do they get off looking me straight in the eye and saying ‘It’s just what you do.’?

Who do they mean? Where is it ‘just what you do’?

Of course, historically, there have often been good reasons for baptism being ‘just what you do’, whether you were religious or not. I expect it seemed like a good idea in the Middle ages, say, or during the Reformation, when your religious affiliations, or lack of them, could get you burnt at the stake.

And of course there are countries today — Afghanistan, for example, where the penalty for apostasy can be death — where it’s probably wise to observe the traditions and customs of the dominant religion.

But here? Now? So I choose not to have my children christened. What’s the worst that can happen?

Of all the things that irritate me about this kind of attitude, it’s the implication that if you’re not prepared to perjure yourself, you’re somehow not as committed to your children as the next person. That you don’t love them enough unless you're prepared to sacrifice your own principles to get them into a nice little church school and away from the riff-raff.

It’s like when people say to you before you have children ‘Oh, you wait until you’ve got children yourself. Your principles will go out of the window then.’

What rot. My children are special, wonderful, talented, beautiful, clever… of course they are. What kind of a mother doesn’t think her children are all these things? But I’d have to be an idiot to think that just because they are special to me that they are special per se, or to anyone else.

In the grand scheme of things, every child is equally special, and if they’re not, then they should be. I could be wrong but didn’t Jesus have a few words to say on the subject? Oops, sorry, I slipped into thinking we were talking about sincere people for a second. I forgot it’s got nothing to do with whether you actually believe or not… it’s just what you do.

While those with enough money to move to a posh area and enough gall to stand up in church and make promises they have no intention of keeping block-book the good schools, the rest of population are left with schools that are rapidly turning into sink schools. The very children who need good schools most — the poor, the disadvantaged, the abused, those with parents who don’t care or who haven’t got the wherewithal to care… oh, and those with parents who still have a few principles and a vague sense of collective responsibility — are left to rot.

But that doesn’t matter. Precious little Julian and Jocasta will get their place at school, because mummy and daddy love them sooooo much that they're going to get up every Sunday for… ooh, three weeks and tell lies in a house of god. Yey!

And what’s our so-called labour government doing about it?

Don’t get me started.

Proud but perplexed…

2006-05-09T23:39:00.000+01:00

My son came home from school yesterday and told me he had been challenged in the playground by a girl who wanted to know if it was true that he didn't believe in god. He said yes, and she said: 'so you believe in Satan?'. He said: 'No, I don't believe in him either.' 'So that means you don't know the difference between right and wrong then?' she said. I was intrigued to hear what he had to say to that. 'I'm a humanist.' he said, 'and I probably know more than you do about right and wrong.' I was very proud to hear his reply, but also felt upset to think that his (supposedly good, Christian) peers seem to think (clearly they are being brought up to believe) that living without religion automatically makes you a bad person.

Literally Rubbish

2006-05-06T21:20:00.000+01:00

I've always had a bee in my bonnet about religion and the assumption that if you're British and your religion isn't obvious then the default position is Christian. Until the recent upsurge in the debate over creationism and evolutionary biology, however, I really didn't think that literal interpretation of the bible was something I was ever going to have to get exercised about. It seems, though, that since ever greater numbers of Americans have started shouting about how some guy in the sky created the earth in six days a few thousand years ago and then sat back to survey at his handiwork, British nutjobs with the same beliefs have felt emboldened enough to start shouting about them here.

Thanks to New Labour's woeful education reforms, all it takes is £2million to build your very own city academy — the government will stump up the rest of the cash — and when you've built it, you can dictate what is taught there. So far four — rich — evangelical Christians have jumped at the chance, and there are now four schools in Britain where creationism is taught alongside evolutionary biology and given equal credence. What is it they say about America sneezing and Britain catching cold?

Then there are the individual faith schools — C of E, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, etc., — where, although they have recently been instructed by the government to let a few infidels in along with children from other faiths, the history of the earth is doubtless being taught with a slant peculiar to whichever faith is in the driving seat.

All this, of course, will come as no surprise for anyone with more than a passing interest in the issues involved. It certainly hasn't surprised me. What has surprised me lately, however, is my eight-year-old daughter coming home from her non-denominational primary school and telling me that they have been having Christian assemblies where Old Testament tales are being taught as truth. So far they have had Noah's Ark and Adam and Eve. And if I was alarmed by that news, I was astonished by the the response my daughter got to the question she asked after one of the assemblies had finished.

'Why did god forbid Adam and Eve from eating the apple?'

'Oh, I don't know. It's like when your mum or dad tells you not to do something, and you don't know why you'renot to do it, but you know that you shouldn't because if you do they'll get cross.'

Lame or what? Okay, so I can undestand the woman not wanting to get into the whole original sin thing with an eight-year-old, but she started it! Of course, having done a little research on the subject I find that her answer was probably quite consistent with the belief that god did it simply to test Adam and Eve's (blind) obedience, but why so coy about just saying it was a test of obedience?

My first instinct was to have my daughter exempted from these ridiculous assemblies, but having taught both my children that when faced with something that seems incredible, you should check it out, do it again, look for the simplest expanation, etc., as per the rules of science, I decided to hang fire on that. Instead, I have written to the head teacher, asking for an explanation.

I don't object to my children being exposed to information about all sorts of different religions and creeds — within the context of religious education lessons — or even to them being taught that the basic principles of christianity (love thy neighbour, etc.) form a good, basic moral framework for life. What upsets me is when Christianity, or being religious in general, is presented as the only moral framework for life, the implication being that unless you are religious, you cannot be a good person and lead a moral life.

Bearing in mind the fact that if I was asking for my faith to be represented he would be bending over backwards to accommodate me, I've asked him to let me know what arrangements he has made to tell the children in the school about living a good life with a secular worldview. I've even volunteered to find a speaker.

That was over a week ago and so far, I've had no reply. Watch this space.

2006-05-05T10:07:00.000+01:00

Now, you see, that's exactly the sort of thing I mean. I've just checked out my blogger profile (I'm new to this, remember), and lo and behold, alongside all the usual info, there's my star sign and my sodding Chinese zodiac year. Automatically, without asking, it's been worked out and thoughtfully provided! I ask you! Harrrumph!

Here goes…

2006-05-04T21:22:00.000+01:00

Well, I'm new to this blogging thing. Didn't even know what it was 'til about three weeks ago, but as I seem to have bored everyone I know to death with my constant ranting about the evils of organised religion, religion in general, astrological guff and other assorted mumbo jumbo that comes under the loose heading of 'spirituality', I am glad to have found somewhere to vent my frustrations in a more, shall we say, contained way. I'm a little self-conscious about it, but hey ho, hanging around in the comfort zone's not really doing it for me at the moment. Let's try something new.

I've chosen the name Atheist Mum because it sums up who I am and what I write and talk about more than anything else. There's an American column called Agnostic Mom, and I suppose I could have just Anglicized the 'mom' bit, but — no offence to Agnostic Mom, her column's great, even greater when you take into account her Mormom background — for me the term Agnostic is just a little too polite. Okay, so we can't prove that there isn't a god… but, COME ON!

That said, I could equally have gone for humanist, secular humanist, freethinking, bright… I'm happy to be described as any or all of the above. In the interests of snappiness, however, and because I think there's never been a better… no, scratch that, there's never been a more important time to be out and proud about atheism, that's the moniker I've plumped for.

Just for starters — I have LOTS to say on this subject — I'm going to relate a little incident that happened just after I had my second child.

Libby was born at home after a three hour, straightforward labour, at around one in the morning. The next day I was up and about, tired but functioning, and by the following day I felt up to taking her for her first trip to the supermarket. Behind us in the queue there was a middle-aged woman who began cooing over the baby.

"Oooh, she's very new!" she said to me. "How old is she?"

I told her two days, and she was so surprised that I went on to explain about her having been born at home, all very straightforward, etc, etc... We chuntered on for a bit and then the woman beamed at me. "Of course, you know why you had a good birth? It's because you're a good Christian!"

I don't know what she was basing her assumption on, but in making it she placed me in one of those situations you read about in books about ethics and moral dilemmas. Do I let her think that yes, I will be joining her come judgment day, marching under the banner saying 'CHOSEN — SOUTH LONDON CHAPTER', or do I risk offending the old dear by disabusing her of the notion? Actually, I felt a little offended myself, and why not? Had I been Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, whatever, I would have felt I had a perfect right to feel offended by her assumption, and to put her right. Why should I feel less entitled to take offence because I'm atheist? Are my feelings less important than those of 'people of faith'? No, exactly, that's what I thought, and besides, I had just had a baby, I could say whatever I bloody well felt like saying.

"Actually, I'm not." Still smiling, I even managed to force myself to look a little apologetic.

She looked at me for a moment. A sort of searching look, I fancy, as she waited for me to explain, if I wasn't a Christian, what in heaven I was? I smiled again and got on with packing my shopping. When I looked up again she had moved, without another word, to the next queue along. What happened to 'Love thy neighbour'?

Now, I've told this story many times, and although I'd be hard pressed to find any true 'believers' amongst my friends, almost all felt that they wouldn't have disagreed with the woman. 'Paying lip service to a defunct religion' is how this sort of thing is often characterised, and to most, it seems like a reasonably benign activity. It is not, and it is something I'm sure will come up again and again in this blog, as I try to explain why not.

That's all for now. I've enjoyed doing this, and I'd be thrilled to think someone out there is interested in what I've got to say, so if you are… let me know.

N.B. Agnostic Mom can be found at www.agnosticmom.com. She also writes a regular column for the Humanist Network News, www.humanistnetworknews.org