Category Archives: In The News

Excluding Humanism is Illegal

Government Broke the Law

In a landmark judgment handed down in the High Court today, a judge has ruled in favour of the three humanist parents and their children who challenged the Government’s relegation of non-religious worldviews in the latest subject content for GCSE Religious Studies. In his decision, Mr Justice Warby stated that the Government had made an ‘error of law’ in leaving non-religious worldviews such as humanism out of the GCSE, amounting to ‘a breach of the duty to take care that information or knowledge included in the curriculum is conveyed in a pluralistic manner.’ The British Humanist Association (BHA), which was responsible for bringing the case and has supported the three families throughout, has welcomed the landmark decision.

Read the report by the BHA

Religion and Morality

Children from religious families are less kind and more punitive than those from non-religious households, according to a new study.

Academics from seven universities across the world studied Christian, Muslim and non-religious children to test the relationship between religion and morality.

They found that religious belief is a negative influence on children’s altruism.

“Overall, our findings … contradict the commonsense and popular assumption that children from religious households are more altruistic and kind towards others,” said the authors of The Negative Association Between Religiousness and Children’s Altruism Across the World, published this week in Current Biology.

“More generally, they call into question whether religion is vital for moral development, supporting the idea that secularisation of moral discourse will not reduce human kindness – in fact, it will do just the opposite.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/06/religious-children-less-altruistic-secular-kids-study

 

 

Meeting Cornwall Humanists

On 3rd September 2015 the West Briton newspaper published an article entitled,
“Meet the Cornwall Humanists”
Photography student Chris Smith interviewed and photographed members of the Cornwall Humanists for a university project.
Read the full article on the West Briton website here, or without adverts, below the photographs on this page.


Meet the Cornwall Humanists
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125 Schools “Opt Out”

125 schools opt out of Christian Worship.

More than 125 schools have applied over the past three years to be exempt from the legal requirement to hold collective worship of a “wholly or broadly Christian character”.

Information released to Schools Week following Freedom of Information (FOI) requests shows 127 schools have requested a “determinations” from their local Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (SACRE) board.

Determinations allow schools to amend their collective worship from being “wholly or broadly” Christian in nature.

A full determination allows a school to change to a different religion – for example, a school with a largely Muslim population could hold Islamic worship. A part determination allows different acts of collective worship to suit different faiths within a school, including atheists and agnostics.

Read the full article.

Remembering 7/7

A message to the terrorists from Ken Livingstone,
Mayor of London 7/7.

Ken Livingstone

Finally, I wish to speak directly to those who came to London today to take life.

I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others – that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail.

In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential. Continue reading