All posts filed under: Secular

Atheism

‘The Courage to Follow the Evidence’

‘The Courage to Follow the Evidence’

From the Richard Dawkins Foundation Newsletter. Subscribe here. Hello! The UK’s National Health Service recently released The Cass Review, an independent report intended “to make recommendations on how to improve NHS gender identity services, and ensure that children and young people who are questioning their gender identity or experiencing gender dysphoria receive a high standard of care, that meets their needs, is safe, holistic and effective.” Dr. Hillary Cass’s final report is important for many reasons. First, it highlights the lack of sound science and evidentiary support for many common approaches to gender transition treatment for minors and raises serious questions about how and why the medical establishment has so “utterly failed” so many young people. It also provides at least a partial answer: the debate over transgender care has been so politicized and toxic that medical professionals have been “afraid to openly discuss their views” for fear of being vilified and bullied online. Dr. Cass has been rightly lauded for having “the courage to follow the evidence.” We have made the point repeatedly: good outcomes …

Read Our 2024 Humanist Haiku Contest Winners

Read Our 2024 Humanist Haiku Contest Winners

TheHumanist.com is pleased to announce the winners of the fifth annual Haiku Contest, this year held to honor National Poetry Month in April. The contest requested entries of haikus about humanism and humanist values. Submissions were required to be in the form of a haiku, a seemingly simple form of poetry in three lines: five syllables on line one, seven syllables on line two, and five syllables on line three. We received over one hundred entries, and our judges chose ten of their favorites. A huge thank you to all of the poets who submitted their haikus. And another big thank you to our panel of judges: Peter Bjork, Lily Bolourian, Nicole Carr, David Reinbold, Meredith Thompson, Becca Ray, and Isabella Russian. The below haikus appear in alphabetical order by author name. Afforded one life,together working for goodacross time we thrive. —Todd Battistelli   Science is to ask:What are the pieces of thisbitter fruit meant for? — Seráh Blain   You must know this truth:Your laughter fulfills the dreamsyour ancestors had.  — Samuel Fishman   …

Minnesota – A Model for Building Strong Political Relationships

Minnesota – A Model for Building Strong Political Relationships

I was delighted to be invited by Suzanne Perry of HumanistsMN (a chapter of the American Humanist Association) to be a featured speaker for their 2024 National Day of Reason Breakfast and Reception at the Minnesota State Capitol. I first learned of the event from Sarah Levin of Secular Strategies, a consultant for the Center for Freethought Equality, after she spoke at their 2022 event. Sarah excitedly told me about the great turnout and the strong relationships between the elected officials and the humanist and atheist community. She thought that Minnesota was ripe to form a state secular caucus modeled on the national Congressional Freethought Caucus. Sarah organized Zoom meetings to explore the idea with HumanistsMN activists and elected officials and soon the Minnesota Secular Government Caucus was established. Today, this Caucus has thirty state legislators from a variety of religious and non-religious traditions. This May, I saw first-hand the strong relationships that have been built between our community, religious allies, and Minnesota elected officials. There were over ninety participants at the event—up significantly over …

NSS asks minister to correct statements on faith school cap

NSS asks minister to correct statements on faith school cap

The National Secular Society has asked the minister responsible for faith schools to correct the record after she inaccurately represented plans to remove the cap on faith-based admissions at free schools. During a House of Lords debate, minister Diana Barran claimed plans announced last week make “no change whatever to existing schools”, and that the “6,700 faith schools that exist today” will “not be affected”. However, consultation documents for the plans explicitly state that part one of the proposals is to “remove the 50% cap on faith admissions for new and existing free schools”, and that planned changes would apply to “all free schools designated with a religious character, including open schools”. The changes would mean that almost one hundred existing free schools with a designated religious character in England would be eligible to apply for a change to their funding agreement, allowing them to select 100% of their pupils based on faith when oversubscribed. Writing to the minister, the NSS said it was “important that Members of Parliament are not misled into thinking that …

Tell Your Senators to Support the Access to Birth Control Act

Tell Your Senators to Support the Access to Birth Control Act

Photo by Kyle Mills on Unsplash Tell your Senators to cosponsor and support the Access to Birth Control Act! Contraception is safe; access to it should be protected as both a fundamental right in the United States and a critical component of an individual’s agency with regard to their sexual and reproductive health. Unfortunately, patients seeking contraceptive medication over-the-counter in 24 states and the District of Columbia have had their access to contraception obstructed by pharmacists who have taken it upon themselves to refuse to provide these medications based on their own personal feelings. The Access to Birth Control Act (S. 4223) would require pharmacies, as part of their normal practice, to provide customers with FDA-approved contraceptive medication in a manner that is informative and efficient. The Act prohibits the pharmacy’s employees from intimidating, threatening, and harassing a customer for their request to obtain contraception, and prohibits employees from interfering with, misrepresenting, and breaching confidentiality as it relates to a customer’s access to the medication. Read the bill here. Urge your Senators to cosponsor and …

Bible Classes Are Coming to a Public School Near You

Bible Classes Are Coming to a Public School Near You

It seems to happen every time a law or policy that privileges religious belief is passed, it gets exploited to be used as a sword against those of us who don’t believe or who support separation of religion and government. A ten-year-old Ohio law created to allow students to get high school credit for religious lessons is now being used to inject bible classes into public schools. Leading the charge to convert public school children is LifeWise Academy and they are planning on coming to a public school near you. To be clear, the current prohibition on having religious classes in a public school still exists but LifeWise is trying to get around settled law by exploiting another US Supreme Court case—ZORACH v. CLAUSON, 343 U.S. 306 (1952)—that decided released time religious instruction policies and laws didn’t violate the constitution. Released Time Religious Instruction (RTRI) is where, with parental permission, a student can leave school to attend a religious activity. In my public school days, RTRI was used, for example, by students of the Catholic …

Lords raise alarm on 100% religious discrimination in all state-funded faith schools

Lords raise alarm on 100% religious discrimination in all state-funded faith schools

Today in the House of Lords, Baroness Burt, Vice-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group, questioned the UK Government’s plans to remove the cap on faith school admissions in England. The move will allow all religious schools to discriminate for 100% of their places. Baroness Burt asked ‘what assessment it has made on the impact of removing the admissions cap on state-funded faith schools on community integration and cohesion.’ The response gave no indication that there had been any such assessment but reiterated the Government’s stance that faith schools are inclusive. Humanists UK reported last week that the Government has started a seven-week consultation on the proposed 50% cap removal, commenting that the plan was a backwards step that risks increasing division and inequality. Showing that position has cross-party support, former Conservative Education Secretary Lord Baker commented in the discussion today that ’It has never been Tory policy to advocate 100% religious schools’ – calling it ‘an absurd proposal that should not feature anywhere in the manifesto of the Conservative party’. Lord Storey, Liberal Democrat …

The Greek government will once again waste taxpayers’ money on a medieval scam.

The Greek government will once again waste taxpayers’ money on a medieval scam.

(Article in Greek below / Το άρθρο στα Ελληνικά ακολουθεί) The Greek government will once again waste taxpayers’ money on a medieval scam. According to recent publications, the Greek government will send a government plane to Jerusalem taking additional security measures. Is this planned in terms of some diplomatic effort to stop the genocide in Gaza? Maybe for humanitarian aid?No, this is to transfer the so-called ‘holy’ fire to Greece. At the same time, in ᾽Τransparency᾽ (website for publicity of government policy and administrative activity), municipalities are identified to be preparing to spend public money for its reception e.g.: Hydra municipality, Leros municipality.Only god knows (pun intended) how much more will be spent in carrying this lantern without been published in ᾽Τransparency᾽. All this in a bankrupt and impoverished country (again according to a recent report by the Financial Times). The ‘holy’ fire (or ‘holy’ light in Greek) is medieval trickery invented by Western Christian monks (Catholic) and then used by the Eastern ones (Orthodox) to whom the exploitation of the so-called ‘holy’ lands had …

Revealed: Schools seeking opt-outs from obligated Christian worship

Revealed: Schools seeking opt-outs from obligated Christian worship

Seventy schools have been granted exemptions from the legal requirement to provide Christian worship since 2018, new research has found. An investigation by Schools Week revealed that in place of an act of Christian worship, some schools now teach pupils about “looking after the planet” and mindfulness instead. Other schools are replacing Christian worship with multifaith assemblies. State-funded schools are required by law to hold daily acts of collective worship, which must be “wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character”. However, under Department for Education guidance, schools may also apply for a ‘determination’ – an exemption from the requirement that collective worship be of a Christian character. Headteachers may apply for a determination if they judge this mandated character of collective worship to be in conflict with the family backgrounds of pupils. When granted, determinations last for five years, but schools must still provide an alternative form of collective daily worship. In a letter to the National Secular Society this year, Academies Minister Baroness Barran confirmed this means it is “not permissible for an …