May Meeting on Philosophy

At our next meeting on Thursday 10 May local philosopher Joe Fearn will lead a discussion on philosophical questions. This meeting is at our usual venue, the White Rock Hotel, from 7 to 9 pm.

The original subject ptoposed for discussion was the "Anthropic Principle" (see below) but in view of a new book by Sam Harris on "Freewill" (which he maintains doesn't exist), two new books on the History of Philosophy, attempts by at least two philosophers to redefine their subject, and claims by by various scientists that that "Philosophy is Dead", the discussion will certainly be more wide-ranging. If you have a favourite philosophical conundrum you would like to air bring it along!

The Anthropic Principle:

It has been claimed that the likelihood of life evolving on earth is similar to dismantling a Boeing 747 into its smallest componant parts, tipping it from a huge skip into a scrapyard, and watching the pieces randomly re-assemble back into a fully functional aeroplane. Religious people find this kind of statistic a compelling reason to prefer a Transcendent explanation for the FITTINGNESS of the universe to life on earth. (God as Divine Designer). Scientists generally prefer a naturalistic explanation. The Anthropic principle, however, simply states that these are obviously the odds we have beaten, and we may not legitimately infer any teleological design argument from these facts. The principle itself is very simple; there was, and is, obviously nothing antagonistic to life, or we would not be here. The obvious corollory of this, (the other side of the coin if you like) is that the universe must be fitting to life, and therefore there must be happy scientific facts, or universal constants, that 'conspire' to produce ourselves. science has found almost all of these (sometimes astounding) constants, and a theory of everything is close, they say. The anthropic principle points out that now the empirical evidence is all in, it is exactly what we would expect, i.e. the universe was indeed fitted to life, in that all the universal constants were such as to instantiate the conditions needed for life on earth. The principle is both simple and unproblematic: we cannot be legitimately suprised at states of affairs that are as we expected them to be; suprise is only legitimate concerning an anomally. Therefore we must adopt a position of a detatched agnosticism, and infer nothing from facts about the fittingness of the universe to produce ourselves. Stephen Hawking does not like this conclusion, and he regards the anthropic principle as something which leaves questions concerning the fittingness of the universe to life UNTOUCHED. Therefore he proposes a STRONG anthropic principle, (as opposed to the 'weak' anthropic principle just outlined) in which mankind is the centre of the universe, which, considering previous scientific efforts to prove otherwise, is rather ironic. Paul Davis prefers a multi-worlds interpretation of reality involving counterfactuals, in order to dismiss Transcendent design arguments, but still retains a naturalistic one; our particular universe is unique; it has significant objects in it, which alternative universes do not, as they are causally discreet. Therefore we are (yet again) the centre of the universe. William Lane Craig regards the anthropic principle as TRIVIAL and indeed merely platitudinous. he has recently tried to show that we may be legitimately suprised that states of affairs have conspired to facilitate our continued existence. The problem for humanists, is that, if this is the case, the careful thinker may legitimately infer a TRANSCENDENT sufficient reason for our existence. So reports of God's demise were premature.

Humanists Debate Education

The April meeting of the Hastings Humanists group will be devoted to a debate on education. The issues to be discussed include the continued introduction of Free Schools and Academies by the coalition government under the education minister Michael Gove, and the new proposals by the Church of England for a large-scale expansion of its influence as laid out in its new report “Church Schools of the Future” by Dr Priscilla Chadwick. The National Secular Society interprets the report as making clear that the Church intends to use its schools as a platform to evangelise throughout the community.

There are also existing issues such as the requirement for daily worship of a Christian nature in schools, the exclusion of Humanist representation on the East Sussex SACRE that determines the local curriculum for Religious Education, and the recent studies that show how “faith” schools exclude the poorest pupils, and the failure to provide realistic sex and relationships education.

Time will also be devoted to what Humanists see as the future of education in our fast-changing world. Can our existing education system cope with the coming technological advances? Can you name ten things that are vital for children to know, but are not taught at school? We would welcome anybody who would like to speak for 5 or 10 minutes on an aspect of the subject that concerns them.

The meeting is from 7 to 9 pm at the White Rock Hotel on Thursday 12th April.

Rationalists in Bishopsgate

Another day, another meeting. This time it was a gathering of the Rationalist Association in the Library of the Bishopsgate Institute. On show was a display of some items from the archives of the RA and its predecessor the Rationalist Press Association and its publication the New Humanist magazine.

Also in the programme were brief talks from Caspar Melville, the RA chief executive, who looked back at the history of the Association, from Laurie Taylor, the RA President, who introduced the main speaker and mused on his own rationalism, and lastly David Aaronovitch, the journalist who had been invited to speak on "Why I am a Rationalist" but turned out to be more of a Sceptic. It seems that he is as bemused to find himself recognised as a Rationalist, as much as he is to be recognised as a Jew (he contributes to the Jewish Chronicle) without ever stepping inside a synagogue.

Finally Jim Herrick was given an award (a first edition of George Orwell's Essays) for long service to the cause of rationalism in all of the UK organisations devoted to freethought (RA, NSS, Freethinker magazine, BHA, SPES).

I was disappointed that there was no opportunity for a question and answer session with the speakers. The lack of such a session is a serious failure in any rationalist meeting in my view.

Much of the evening was devoted to networking or mingling among those members attending. Besides Jim Herrick and Bob Churchill (who is now working for IHEU) I spoke to representatives of West London Humanists and a Philosophers in the Pub group in Saffron Walden.

The work of Charles Albert Watts, who was the main founder of the RPA in 1899, and his publishing company which produced the series of cheap reprints known as the Thinkers Library is worth remembering. The RA however now has a presence more on the web than in print. Where it goes from here no-one can foretell. No mention was made of who might be its next President.

Humanists in Canterbury

I visited the East Kent Humanists today. It's straight-forward to get to Canterbury from Hastings by train, one change at Ashford. Their meeting place is on the University of Kent Campus, which is a longish walk from the station, although buses are available. Fortunately it was a beautiful sunny day. I should have taken a camera - there is a good view of the Cathedral from the hill.

Julian Baggini was speaking to the group about ideas from his , Heathen's Progress series in The Guardian, which he says will be ending soon with a sort of Manifesto. He thinks atheists and religious people have to some extent been "talking past each other" without connecting.

There was the usual discussion of names we use for ourselves, such as atheist, humanist, bright, naturalist, rationalist. etc, and asking which aspect was the most fundamental. I would have thought it was obviously reason and evidence. However one member of the audience, evidently a postmodernist philosopher, argued at length that foundations were elusive.

I was surprised that Prof Baggini brought up the argument that we may not have evolved to be "optimal" for truth detection, i.e. that reason is an evolved capacity and may not be reliable. I take the view that logical reasoning is just a matter of step by step argument from simple assumptions, and we could not have evolved to reason in any other way.

The chair at the meeting, no doubt to stimulate debate, suggested that since Humanists are always on about God and Religion, and some people get their kicks from reacting to Thought for the Day, that we are parasitic on religion. In my response I suggested that it is religion that is parasitic or like a virus, and we are the antibodies.

The question was raised of whether reason is sufficient to make people happy or moral. Clearly not, since happiness is not necesarily a good thing (e.g. in situations where painful decisions are needed), and what is moral is often not at all clear (e.g. since we may not be able to calculate the consequences of our actions).

So, a stimulating day out. Thanks to the group for allowing my involvement.

Our March Meeting

The Biological Basis of Morality

This is the subject for the Hastings Humanists next meeting,
at The White Rock Hotel 7 to 9 pm, Thursday 8 March,
presented by Stephen Milton.

If our sense of morality was not handed down to us in tablets of stone from
an omnipotent God, then where did it come from?

Stephen will argue that we have developed principles for co-operation
over millennia because they gave us a survival advantage. Through a process
of Darwinian natural selection they have become embedded as an intrinsic
part of our human and social makeup and this forms our moral code. We
‘instinctively’ value fair play, have a strong sense of right and wrong, and
a host of other rules for living in a community.

Some of the recent science that explains these processes:-

· Games Theory suggests that collaboration works better than outright
competition,
· Oxytocin which NeuroEconomist Paul Zak calls the ‘moral molecule’
· Mirror Neurones and their role in enabling us to feel empathy

But what might it all imply for ideas of criminal responsibility, social
organisation and or even economic fairness in society???
The normal lively debate will follow.

There should also be a report of the East Sussex SACRE meeting due to be held on 29 February at which a Hastings Humanist observer will be present.

Newsnight Debate

Here is a youtube version of last night's Newsnight discussion between Richard Dawkins, ex-Bishop Nazir-Ali and Ruth Gledhill:

Newsnight

The Bishop's claims are just the sort of rewriting of history that was the subject of my talk at our February meeting. His claims that christians were behind the reforms such as the abolition of slavery and improved work conditions in industry ignores the plain fact that many christians, including many churchmen also argued for the opposite causes. The fact that the spokespeople for these causes in parliament were anglicans was due to the fact that until 1828 only anglicans were allowed to stand as MPs. Often the reforms would have happened much earlier if the recommendations of reformers like Tom Paine and Robert Owen had been followed.

Our @HastingsHumanists twitter account responded to quite well last night shortly after the broadcast (there are three of us posting at present).

I have now put a version of my talk onto my webpages:
Rewriting of History by Christian Apologists

Free Speech Rally

The PodDelusion has a recording of all the speeches given at the Free Speech Rally on Saturday in London: poddelusion Essential listening for anyone who couldn't get there.