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Ethical RecordThe Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society

Vol. 111 No. 5 £1.50 June 2006

THE LINEAGEby Paul Rattenbury

Our gods are born within us asProjections of the mind,They sleep deep in subconsciousness,Arch guardians of Mankind -

Lie dormant till we need them forProtection, help or care,Then instinct cries to conscious mindTo rouse them with a prayer -

With pleas for their assistanceTo save from harm or pain,With promise, if they'll intervenewell never doubt again.

Paul Rattenbury was the Betjeman Society's

Poet of the Year,2003

The easiest prayers are hymns we sing,Poetic roundelays,Since seeking no response ensuresNo trust can be betrayed.

All gods reflect the temperamentsOf those they oversee,They're vengeful, helpful, punishing,Forgiving or carefree.

The ancient Greeks had inklings ofThis lineage from Man's mind,Imputing virtues, strengths and faultsWhich they with gods entwined.

Thus codes and laws ascribed to godsEvince a human plan,Since though they're worshipped,

praised, revered,They are the sons of Man.

POPULATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT: THE GREATEST GOODFOR THE GREATEST NUMBER? Rosamund McDougall 3

AY RTON TO ZANGWILL: SOME GREAT MINDSIN THE GOLDEN AGE OF FREETHOUGHT Irene Cockroft 8

JESUS NEVER EXISTED Kenneth Humphreys 10

BOOK REVIEWTHE PATHOLOGY OF MAN: A STUDY OF HUMAN EVIL Suzette A. Henke 13

SHOULD WE RESPECT RELIGION? Barbara Smoker 15

NEWS FROM THE AMERICASA WALK ON THE WILD SIDE Ellen Ramsay 18

OUR NATIONAL IDENTITY:THE SEARCH FOR A NATION AND ITS ICONS Chris Bratcher 20

ETHICAL SOCIETY EVENTS 24

SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETYConway Hall Humanist Centre

25 Red Lion Square, London WC I R 4RL.

Tel: 020 7242 8034 Fax: 020 7242 8036

Website: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk email: [email protected]

Editor, Ethical Record: Norman Bacrac

Elected Officers

GC Chairman: Terry Mullins lion. Representative: Donald LiversedgeVice Chairman: Edmund McArthur Hon. Treasurer: Christopher Bratcher

Editor: Norman Bacrac

SPES StaffActing Admin Secretary: Miranda Perfitt Tel: 020 7242 8034Administrative Officer: Victoria Le Fevre MA.

Librarian/Programme Coordinator: Jennifer Jeynes io.sg. Tel: 020 7242 8037Hall Manager: Peter Vlaehos MA.. DMS

Lettings Assistants: Carina Kelsey, Lisa Tang Tel: 020 7242 8032Caroakerc: Eva Aubrechtova, Shaip Bullaku, David Wright Tel: 020 7242 8033Maintenance Operative: Zia Hameed

Obituary - Malcolm Owen Rees

We regret to report the death of the SPES archivist, Malcolm Owen Rees. He diedpeacefully aged 57 in South London. He had been ill for sonic time. A full obituary will be inthe next ER.

His Humanist funeral will be at Beckenham Crematorium, Elmers End Road,Beckenham, Kent at 15.45 on Friday 23 June 2006. The officiant will be Denis Cobell,President of the National Secular Society.

SPES 6 Week Evening Course

Visions of the PresentTutor: David Murray

Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn WC I Tuesdays 30th of May - 4th July 7pm-9prn

Tea/Coffee Served From 6:30pm

We will look at the following novels:

4) 20 June - Frederick Pohl and C M Kombluth's The Space Merchants

5)27 June - Stephen Fry's Making History

6) 4July - Retrospective

wwwiivejournal.com/users/presentvisions

Each class will begin with an introduction by David Murray, followed bydiscussion. Participants are strongly recommended to read each novel.

Photo Credit: Photos of the Free Speech Demo (April ER) hy Jenny Zhu EPA

2 Ethical Record, June, 2006

POPULATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT: THE GREATEST GOOD FOR THE GREATEST NUMBER?

Rosamund McDougall, Advisory Council, Optimum Population Trust Lecture to the Ethical Society 14 May 2006

Why are population projections important? Projections are scenarios only — but some

past population and environment projections have unfortunately already come true — just

look at actual frrowth in both population and carbon dioxide concentration levels overthe last decade. We have a choice over which, if any, of these future projections become

reality, and making these choices involves making ethical decisions.

Before we get to the facts and figures I'd like to tell a historical tale and raise the

question of why those who study environmental ethics appear to ignore the most basic

relationships between population size and environmental impacts.

I have never studied Ethics. Whether the concept of fatalism is fundamental to any

school of ethical thought I don't know, but the Utilitarian title for this talk is in sympathy

with the work of John Stuart Mill. with his proviso that 'the gmatest good' embraces

happiness for individuals and society rather than a collective self-sacrifice of all pleasure

to promote ever-greater numbers.

The Story Of Easter IslandMost of you will know the history of the population that destroyed itself by growingbeyond its environmental carrying capacity. In the 4th century CE a small group of

Polynesians discovered Easter Island. an isolated patch of land in the South Pacific. and

decided to settle there.

Over the centuries, they cut down their trees, partly for fuel, and they built the

giant totemic statues which remain there to this day. But as their numbers grew to about

10,000 and more and more islanders cut down more and more trees, the soil eroded, their

crops failed, new plants and trees could not grow, and they were left with nothing to

sustain them. By the 18th century the Easter Island population had collapsed in savage

tribal warfare, leaving little more than 100 inhabitants alive.

Fuel was necessary and the warmth of fires and cooking must have made Easter

Islanders happy. But would they have needed to sacrifice both happiness and survival if

they had been able to recognise the tipping point of environmentally sustainable

population numbers, beyond which the greatest happiness for the greatest number would

rum into the apocalyptic unhappinesses of famine, disease, war and death?

What was it about the Easter Islanders that prevented them from taking action to

curb population uowth? (They could have reduced their consumption of natural

resources, but this would only have worked as a short-term measure, ever negated by

rising numbers and smaller rations to the point at which the rations would have been too

small to allow peaceful co-existence to continue.) Could they have stabilised their

numbers at a level that would have saved many thousands of lives and ensured a future

for generations to come?

It's difficult to say. Given that the Easter Island civilisation was primitive, the

answer might be simply that there were no apparent reasons — social or individual — to

Ethical Record, June, 2006 3

exercise restraints on fertility; no beliefs or a system of governance that allowed them totake a collective and long-term view. With high infant mortality, and hands needed forlabour, there would have been the desire to have large families that still underpins highbirth rates in some developing countries today. An absence of contraceptives should nothave been the answer, because while some ancient societies controlled their numbers bythe desperate practice of infanticide, others were able to regulate their birth rates usingnatural methods.

Was it simply that they did not understand the concept of ecological carryingcapacity – the need for an ecologically or environmentally sustainable population?Animist beliefs such as those held by the Easter Islanders are attractive. In worshippingtheir bird-gods, they were closer to nature than those who worship mammon.

I spent part of my childhood in Bomeo, where animist tribes, from Dayaks toKayans and Kenyahs, would see the spirits of their ancestors in a mountain peak, a bird,a stream or a flower. It is interesting that the belief that we humans should share theplanet respectfully with other species is one upheld by a modern animist sect known asEco-Pagans. However, although primitive religions respected the wholeness,interconnectedness and power of the natural world – close to modem Gaia theory – theirunderstanding of nature was unscientific and overlaid by a ritualistic interpretation ofsigns.

While some primitive animist societies had a strongly protective bond with theirtribal land, most, as you know, resolved the problem of overshooting sustainability bymoving on to new territories – by hunting and gathering, and eliminating other tribeswho got in the way. In Borneo this was famously done by headhunting, in the belief thatthe trophy head of an enemy would bring good fortune to its winner. Your rivalheadhunter's head would be hung out to dry on a tree or scooped out and shrunk in sandfor a few days before slinging it on your belt or in the longhouse.

I suppose you could call this a method of population control, but I take it as readthat most ethical preferences rank peaceful life ahead of violent death. On Easter Island,there wasno other territory to move into, as the nearest large land mass was thousandsof miles away. So even if the concept of stabilising their population at a sustainable levelwas understood — it was not acted on, perhaps because to discuss it and to act on it wastaboo.

Our Collective Easter IslandHere we are in the 21st century with 6.5 billion people on what is our collective EasterIsland – a small planet called Earth. We may still have religious beliefs, but we havebeen through the Age of Reason and industrial and technological revolutions and we cansee how small our island really is from the distant viewpoint of outer space. We havedemocracy, free speech, rationalism, science and technology in abundance, yet thereremains a taboo on discussing population issues and policy that seems primitive indeed.In a brief search through online documents and discussion of environmental ethicsbefore this meeting, I could find no mention of the impact of rising numbers of people– the agents of environmental change – on the futurewell-being of the human species.

To disconnect the issues of population size and growth from environmentalsustainability is surely to deny the prospect of long-term human survival. World


population is expected to reach 9.1 billion in 2050, adding another 2.5 billion people to

an already environmentally stre.ssed planet. Ecological footprinting, which provides a

snapshot of sustainability, shows that the human race already exceeds the Earth's

biological carrying capacity by more than 20%.

Yet in all the thinking going into international and national environment policies,

the numbers of people using environmental resources and causing environmental

impacts are excluded from policy considerations. Population growth is slowing,

policymakers say — it's not a problem. Passive, predict-and-provide acceptance of

another 76 million people added to the planet every year. Don t worry about it. And why

does record population growth matter in the UK? (It is now growing by about 300,000

a year). It's just redistribution. Just pack us in more tightly, reduce our eco-rations year

by year and it'll all work out fine.

Will it? The graph of world population shows that world population has grown

explosively, from 25 billion in 1950 to 6.5 billion today. In the developed world, our

numbers are beginning to stabilise and decline, with birth rates already below

replacement level.

Yet there are still pensions economists calling for more babies to support ageing

populations — with the extraordinary assumption that these babies will somehow never

become pensioners themselves, in 65-70 years time. Then perhaps they will call for yet

more babies, and so on. A UN world population projection based on maintaining the

fertility rates of 1995-2000 shows where this birth rate revival might lead: 134 trillion

humans would be sharing a rather crowded planet by 2300.

Of course this won't happen. Climate change is already causing pressures on

populations in the less developed and dryer regions of the world to seek new habitats,

and today's migration movements may be dwarfed by future pressures to move from

these scorched earth habitats to ones that are perceived to be environmentally safer. It's

no good rushing for lifeboats and sinking them — the ship has to be steered away from

the iceberg. If we in the developed world reduce our consumption to modest green

lifestyles and reduce our population, and people in the developing world raise their

consumption to modest green lifestyles but reduce their population, we might stand a

chance.

The Situation In The UKNow let's turn to the UK, and look where today's passive, predict-and-provide attitude

to population size might take us by 2071, in the UK. The Govemment Actuary's

Department has projected them to 2074. Its Principal Projection, seen as the most likely

path, takes us from 60.2 million in mid-2005 to 70.5 million in 2071 — another 10.3

million, the equivalent of 56 towns the size of Luton (69.25 million in 2051). The High

Fertility variant takes us to 78.9 million (74.14 million in 2051), the High Migration

variant to 76.2 million (73.1 million in 2051), and all three projections show continued

growth after 2071.

Yet still our three main political parties have no policy to contain or reverse

population growth. No stated population policy at all, in fact. There appears to a black

hole in government when it comes to this fundamentally important issue. However,

within the last six months we have heani indications that the words 'population policy'


have entered the political vocabulary for the first time since the report of a government-appointed Population Panel in 1973 concluded that there would probably be no benefitfrom further UK population arowth. Our numbers have grown by some 4 million sincethat report was published.

We need to make ethical and political decisions, and we need to make them soon.There is another way. For Earth as a whole, there is much that can be done to help the350 million couples who do not have access to good family planning services.

For the UK, we could introduce population policies which allow a gradualdecline, of at least a quarter of a percent a year, without any coercion on family size. Thiscould be achieved by improving all reproductive health services, including education,and concentrating particularly on reducing our very hiah rate of teenage pregnancies. Ifmigration were also brought into numerical balance — this could allow quite largeinflows and outflows, but no net immigration, our numbers would begin to stabilise anddecrease to a more environmentally sustainable level.

The Natural Change Only variant, shows that with the most likely fertilityassumptions ( t FR) and genuinely balanced migration (no net migration — or a level ofmigration that contributes nothing to population change), our population would peak at61.3 million in 2025, then gradually decrease. In 2051 it would be reduced to 57.7million, a reduction equivalent to about a quarter of the population of London. By 2071it would be 52.09 million. 8.4 million less than today.

Imagine the environmental stresses which would be alleviated with a populationdecrease of 8.4 million at any given per capita level of environmental impact. At ahousehold occupancy rate of 2.25 people per household, we would need 3.7 millionfewer homes in 2071, without taking account of the demand caused by the futurehousehold fragmentation of today's population. Would we need to concrete over thecountryside? At a household waste production rate of about half a ton a year, therewould be 4.2 million tons less waste to dispose of. These simple sums can be applied toenergy requirements, greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental factors.

Why Does The UK Government Do Nothing?Why, when some developing countries are enacting policies to stabilise theirpopulations, have successive UK governments done nothing to reduce our high-consumption population to an environmentally sustainable level? A policy ofstabilisation and gradual decrease, with regular reviews to take into account advances ingreen technology and other factors that affect sustainability is vital, in the view of theOptimum Population Trust, with safeguards to ensure that population can stabilise at alower level without goina into an uncontrollable spiral of decline. But for years thosewho raise the question have not been listened to.

The reasons are many, but they start with a lack of understanding andcommunication between different areas of expertise — economics, climate science,bioloay, physics, and not least, simple arithmetic. Economic and business thinking nowhas an extraordinary dominance over other areas of knowledge. Political decision-making in the UK is strongly influenced by the Treasury and the demands of business,which are rightly seen as crucial to the nation's survival — but no economy can survivewithout healthy supporting ecosystems. Vested interests can help to push an agenda in


the wrong direction — for example, ienorance of demographics has allowed the pensions

industry to promote distortions, perhaps unintentionally, about economic dependency

ratios, and these have only recently been corrected. If analysed more closely, the pro-

population growth lobby's economic arguments crumble, even without die input of

environmental economics.

Few Have Lived Close To NaturePoliticians and journalists in the UK, like scientists, operate mainly within their own

discipline. Unlike scientists, perhaps, many do not have time to study deeply

interconnected long-term issues. Few of the bright young things who formulate 21 st

century policy have lived close to nature, studied science, or lived long enough to see

the effects of population growth and environmental degradation take plabe in front of

their own eyes.

Against this background of ignorance have been introduced highly emotional

feelings about migration. race, abortion and other population issues which have little

bearing on the issue of environmental sustainability, making it almost impossible to

conduct a rational and humane discussion about what is at stake and to think about

solutions. Environmental organisations have steered clear of difficult issues to avoid

offending their members, and become preoccupied instead with the popular issues of

poverty, social justice and human rights. The media has been short of population

research and proposals to report on, and those organisations willing to produce evidence

and uncomfortable conclusions have been easy to demonise.

If the UK is one Easter Island, Earth is another. The Optimum Population Trust

has suggested broad policies for stabilising and decreasing both UK and global human

populations to levels that might allow our species to survive and prosper on a planet

which has limited capacity to regenerate ecological resources, and for those interested

in taking the discussion further, these can be seen on the OPT website at

www.optimumpopulation.org. Email: [email protected]

We at OPT welcome the chance to discuss population and environment issues

with members of the Ethical Society - and others who are concerned about the failure to

address them.

SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETYRcg. Charity No. 251396

Founded in 1793, the Society is a progressive movement whose aims are:

the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism,

the cultivation of a rational and humane way of life, and

the advancement of research and education in relevant fields.

We invite to membership those who reject supernatural creeds and are in sympathy

with our aims. At Conway Hall the programme includes Sunday lectures, discussions,

evening courses and the renowned South Place Sunday Concerts of chamber music. The

Society maintains a Humanist Reference Library. The Society's journal. Ethical Record,

is issued ten times a year. Funerals and Memorial meetings may be arranged.

The annual subscription is 1.18 (£12 if a full-time student. unwaged or over 65).


AYRTON TO ZANGWILL: SOME GREAT MINDS IN THE GOLDEN AGE OF FREETHOUGHT

Irene Cockroft

A lively talk on the American freethinker Robert Green higersoll (1833-1899), byRobert Stovold at SPES on Sunday 5 March (see ER May 2006), has led to furtherrevelations regarding the early, diverse supporters of the Ethical Society andfreethought.

For example, it shed light on the reason why staunch London freethinker anddramatic actress Emily Evans Bell (c1839-1893) who was my great-great-aunt,visited Colonel Ingersoll in America around 1889. They shared a common interest ineffective public speaking. As Mark Twain said on hearing Ingersoll's oratory, "Whatan organ human speech is when employed by a master."

The same micht be said of the graveside address spoken by George JacobHolyoake when the body of Emily Bell was laid to rest in the Dissenters' BurialGround at Brompton Cemetery in 1893. "As a teacher of elocution, she more thanexcelled, she had inspiration.... In public life she recarded cood speech, well spoken,as part of the necessary defence of truth and right.... On her-American tour she visitedColonel Ingersoll, who had great admiration for her, and the words he spoke at thegrave of one like-minded we may say of Mrs Bell, ... She believed that duty was theonly good, reason the only torch, and love the only priest. ...'' (From records atBishopsgate Institute).

Women Of The DaySo publicly acclaimed was Mrs Bell in her time that she featured in Women of theDay, a biographical dictionary of notable contemporaries compiled by Frances Hays,pulilished in London in 1885. Mrs Bell's entry appears under her stage name of MrsFairfax. The entry tells us, "In her specialité she is unrivalled; (she) has lectured onthe subject (elocution) at the chief institutes in Great Britain, and has contributednumerous articles to magazines. In 1872 she published a very successful novel, AFirst Appearance, and has written several songs?'

Ingersoll also shared Emily Bell's passion for Women's Suffrage. From 1871,Emily and her husband Major Thomas Evans Bell, writer on the Indian Raj from thepoint of view of the Indian people, were members of the Central Committee of theNational Society for Women's Suffrage. Thomas Evans Bell was a long-standingclose friend and associate of radical MP, G.J.Holyoake. The Bells' daughter Tina(1871-1959), like her parents a member of the Ethical Society, accompanied hermother to the US in 1889. Tina was to become better known as an artist and suffrageactivist by her married name of Ernestine Mills.

When introducing the recent Ingersoll lecture, SPES librarian Jennifer Jeynesmentioned a public reading by acclaimed present-day actor Henry Goodman, from anovel written by Israel Zangwill in 1892, Children of the Ghetto. Zangwill's insightsinto the lives of nineteenth century Jewish immigrants domiciled in London's EastEnd are equally relevant to the modem Moslem community that has taken its place.Stresses common to humanity when confronting social upheaval, ttanscend race andreligion.


Jennifer's incidental mention of Zangwill was strange serendipity. I had come

to Conway Hall to learn about Robert Ingersoll. A revival of the literary reputation

of Israel Zangwill was an unexpected bonus. Zangwill slotted into the Bell family

saga. Major T.E. Bell and Emily died comparatively young, leaving Tina an orphan,

aged just 21. No doubt she was the recipient of much kindness and sympathy from

fellow members of SPES. Ernestine remained loyal to Freethought all her life.

In her mother's will. Tina was referred to the guardianship of Professor

William Ayrton and his second wife, Hertha (both physicists). Tina and William

Ayrton's daughter Edith had spent much of their childhood together and styled

themselves 'the twins'. Edith married Israel ZangwilL According to Edith's diaries

held at the Jewish Museum, she and Tina kept in touch and Tina's husband Dr

Herbert Henry Mills was consulted by the Zangwills on medical matters (although,

as the Zangwills moved to rural Sussex and the Mills family lived in Kensington,

Herbert was not their only doctor).

The Zangwillslsrael Zangwill became vice-president of the Men's League for Women's Suffrage.

He spoke at Women's Social and Political Union rallies, the Fabian Society and

gave the SPES Conway Memorial Lecture in 1917 entitled The Principle of

Nationalities. The Ethical Society's Dr Stanton Coit was another frequent speaker

on woman suffrage and other topics. at the Fabian Society. Ernestine sent her young

daughter Hermia to a primary school founded by Bertrand Russell, also attended

by the daughters of Stanton Coit.

Ernestine Mills painted an acclaimed portrait of Zangw ill in enamel on metal.

Its present whereabouts are unknown. Also unknown is the whereabouts of an

enamelled, allegorical work presented to SPES around 1960 by Dr Hermia Mills,

daughter of the late artist. In the words of Hermia the plaque represented "Christ

and Buddha all mixed up". There is no record of the size of the plaque but it is

likely to have been about 6 x 8 inches framed. Harold Blackham thought it was

passed on to the Unitarian Church in Manchester but that has since been

demolished and enquiries have failed to trace the plaque.

Edith Zangwill wrote an important book, The Call, dedicated -To all those

who fought for the Freedom of Women". Based on the experiences of a woman

scientist in the First World War, it reflects the life of her stepmother, Hertha Ayrton,

a militant Suffragette. In 1906 Hertha became the first woman to be awarded the

Hughes Medal by the Royal Society, for work in physics that was exclusively her

own.

Appalled by the effects on British infantry of enemy mustard gas attacks in

the First World War, Hertha Ayrton developed an anti-gas fan that could be used in

the trenches. Hertha carried out experiments in the Mills's back garden in

Kensington. To her anger and frustration, the War Office greeted her invention with

lethargy and opposition, thus condemning many more men to blinding.

In the Second World War bombing blitz on London, an enemy high explosive

destroyed the Mills' back garden and Tina's enamelling studio. Were there enemy

agents in the War Office?


JESUS NEVER EXISTEDKenneth Humphreys

Author of Jesus Never Existed Iconoclast Press, PO Box 62, Uckfield, Fast Sussex, TN22 IZY, UK

Lecture to the Ethical Society, 23 April 2006

If we step around the centuries of fabrication and glorification which informseveryone's perception of Jesus Christ and closely examine the two hundred yeargestation period of the current Lord and Saviour — that is approximately 100 BCE to100 CE — we can see a perfectly plausible and, indeed, convincing process by which,upon the legacy of earlier times and from piety and scripture alone, the Christian god-man emerged into the light. Beliefs created the man; the man did not create the beliefs.

In essence Jesus Christ is like every other ancient god, a personification ofPrinciples and Forces. More than anything else, the figure of Jesus symbolized andpersonified Just Law, Divine Punishment and Reward. The myth did not require thehappenstance of a genuine human life to get it going — which is one reason why, as ahuman being, the superhero is at best only partially formed, even after passing throughseveral revisions and re-workings.

Evolving Hero MythThe Jews, a repeatedly conquered people on the fringes of great empires, longnurtured hope for a deliverer. Such heroes of the people were a staple of their sacredliterature. During the period 1 st century BCE /1st century CE whilst the Herodianaristocracy happily danced to the tune of the Caesars, exploitation of the commonpeople intensified. Upon their backs now weighed the priesthood, the landowningelite and the Romans. The stage had been set in which rabbis and rebels could pitchsubversive ideas to the despised and exploited masses.

The Jewish religious radicals — militant patriots within Palestine and proto-Christians of the Jewish diaspora — contended for the future of Judaism. In the Levant,militant resistance to Rome had the upper hand until the final debacle of I35CE. Inthe diaspora, a repackaged piety centered on a personal saviour-god eventually gainedthe ascendancy, advancing with each successive reversal of belligerency and theattendant flood of refugees and captive slaves into the cities of the Mediterranean.

The early Jewish-Christian scribes drew most of their inspiration from thetraditional source - the vast stock of Jewish sacred writings, which were (and are) areiterating statement of lost piety, divine punishment and righteousness regained.

The earliest "Christ" reigned in Heaven at God's right hand. Nowhere was agenuine human life to be found. Only at the End of Days would he arrive to judge thequick and the dead. Only those who worshipped him, the Elect, would enter theKingdom.

Paganizing The Jewish MythJudaism in the Diaspora, for all its exclusivity, became Hellenized. It also attracted afollowing among pagans disillusioned with their arbitrary traditional gods. In the citiesof the eastern Mediterranean, this neo-Judaism fused a multiplicity of old Jewishthemes - Son of Man, Wisdom and Messiah, with ideas long familiar to pagans:


redemptive sacrifice, Son of God, Logos. The farrago made little headway against areorganizing rabbinic Judaism but found a ready ear among pagans long accustomedto syncretic gods.

Because heavenly existence remained unknowable, the handful of intellectualswho led the various bands of early proto-Christians spoke of their Christ by use of an

allegorical human life. Set in times past, present and future, it was a device by whichtheir Lord resolved ethical issues and uttered divine Wisdom. Each worthy tenet of ahigher morality, every pithy statement of priestly wisdom, was coupled to the majesticname of Jesus the Christ to give sanction and assurance of its heavenly origin.

A revised 'rabbinic' Judaism made an impressive revival in the Roman world in

the 2nd century. But by then the heresy now called Christianity had beencommandeered by gentile pagans who saw opportunity in a hybridized oriental cultwith a strong Jewish core. They took the stock of Jewish scripture, long available inthe Greek language, and set it to a new purpose.

Allegory Mutates Into 'Reality'The earliest works on the Christian god-man had been simple liturgical documents in

which the figure of Jesus had no discernible features, no true biography — merelyattributes befitting his messianic status, such as absolute assuredness and 'authority'.A new generation of ex-pagan scribes, convincing themselves that this Lord andSaviour had in reality walked upon the earth, set to work to thoroughly ground theirhero in an historical setting. They selected the reign of the most famous Jewish king— Herod — for his birth and the tenure of the most brutal Roman governor — Pilate —for his ministry. The activity of a genuine, pacifist prophet — John the Baptist — wasused as a prologue to their hero's own tale and useful historical detail was gleanedfrom the works of the Jewish historian Josephus.

Scavenging through the pious romances and holy heroics of Hebrew scriptureand Jewish history, the Christian scribes found edifying story lines and usefulcharacterization. Their intent was that, in the day-to-day struggle for a mass following,their Christ should match rival gods point for point, miracle for miracle. Even so,Christ's 'life' remained extremely thin. His 'ministry' and wonder-working filled only

eight weeks or so of 'biography' — and that included 40 days and nights in thewilderness. To make good the shortage of material, Christ's so-called 'life' was back-projected as the 'fulfillment of prophecy' — art imitating artifice. On the pretext 'ThatScripture Might Be Fulfilled' every utterance and pronouncement of the ancientJewish prophets was wrenched out of context and repurposed as a prefiguring of theChristian wonder-worker.

To those who already 'believed' it was the majestic design of an ineffable God,weaving the wondrous image of his only begotten son across several centuries ofJewish history. The misadventure and internecine strife of an entire people werereduced to the prologue for the Christian godman. The compendium that resulted —

ambiguous, inconsistent, improbable and impossible — though never intended as a'history', nonetheless masqueraded as such, underpinning the claims of the faith to aunique historical foundation. But any attempt to reconstruct the timetable or itinerary

of the 'ministry' of the Christian saviour is doomed to failure because the gospels are

both inadequate and contradictory. One moment Jesus is in the Decapolis, receiving


word of the death of John the Baptist, the next he is in Phoenicia expelling demons.One moment Jesus is 'transfiguring' on a mountain in Syria. the next he ispontificating in Samaria.

All A FraudEvery instance in the godman's career was nothing other than a set piece. templatedfrom an earlier source. Jesus the Christ, King of Kings. Light of the World, High Priestforever. Good Shepherd. Universal Judge and the Saviour of Mankind is nothing lessthan - nothing other than - an omnibus edition of all that had gone before, the finalproduct of ancient religious syncretism.

A 'life' conjured up from pious fantasy, a mass of borrowed quotations, copiedstory elements and a corpus of self-serving speculation, does not constitute anhistorical reality. It constitutes a myth, a hero-myth, in essentials no different from thelegends of champions that times of crisis called into existence in many cultures. JesusChrist, Lord and Saviour, is certainly the most convoluted and enduring of suchaccretions but its fabrication from simple elements is no less apparent than that of anyother west Asian salvation god.

If all this sounds shocking and difficult to accept, reflect on the following:

I . Absolutely nothing at all from secular history corroborates the sacred biography andyet this 'greatest story' is peppered with numerous anachronisms, contradictions andabsurdities. For example, at the time that Joseph and the pregnant Mary are said tohave gone off to Bethlehem for a supposed Roman census, Galilee (unlike Judea) wasnot a Roman province and therefore ma and pa would have had no reason to make thejourney.

Nazareth (let alone a city of Nazareth) did not exist during the first century.

Many elements of the Passion make no sense historically. For example, a trial forJesus, when suspected rebels were habitually arrested and executed by the Romanswithout trial'?

There is NO corroborating evidence for the existence of the 12 Apostles andabsolutely NO evidence for the colourful variety of martyrs' deaths they supposedlyexperienced. The Bible itself actually mentions the death of only two apostles, a Jameswho was put to death by Herod Agrippa and the nasty Judas Iscariot. The fancifulheroics were dreamed up to inspire generations of gullible Christians.

[For further information on the dark history of the Christian Church more than 100articles are freely available on the website: www.jesusneverexisted.coml

THE HUMANIST REFERENCE LIBRARYThe Humanist Reference Library is normally open for members and researcherson Mondays to Fridays between 2.00 and 600pm. It is best to let the Librarian,Jennifer Jeynes know in advance of your intention to visit the Library.

Tel: 020 7242 8037/4. Email: [email protected]


BOOK REVIEWTHE PATHOLOGY OF MAN: A STUDY OF HUMAN EVIL

by Steven James Bartlett, Charles C. Thomas Publishers Ltd., Springfield. Illinois. U.S. A.,

(360 pp.) ISBN 0-398-07557-3 (2005) Dr. Suzette A. Henke, Thruston B. Morton Sr. Professor

English Department, University of Louisville Louisville, KY, U.S.A.

Steven J. Bartlett's new book, The Pathology of Man, is a dazzling tome thatno contemporary humanist can afford to ignore. In the wake of terroristbombings in London on 7/7/05, Bartlett's analyses of the phenomenology ofhatred and the psychology of terrorism are all too applicable to 2Ist-centurysociety. Although scientists, philosophers, ethicists and cultural critics havebeen decrying the horrors of history for the past hundred years, Bartlett bringsan astonishing weight of scientific evidence and philosophical speculation tobolster his trenchant claims. Everyone has known for quite some time that allis not well in the state of Denmark. or anywhere else on the face of the globe;that the technology of warfare has escalated to frightening, unspeakabledimensions; that population has been increasing exponentially; and that thehuman race is in such dire straits that we had better change our behaviour as aspecies and change it quickly. Notable thinkers like Konrad Lorenz, AlbertEinstein, Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, Hannah Arendt, -Susan Sontag, andcountless scholars and scientists have warned of imminent perdition. "We mustlove one another or die", W. H. Auden pleaded at mid-century. Later, hesardonically noted that we are going to die anyway.

What Bartlett describes as 'human evil' may not have substantiallyintensified over the last century. (There are, for instance, grotesque figuresfrom the past like Vlad the Impaler). The crucial difference is that, for the firsttime in human civilization, we now have the technological capacity to blowourselves to smithereens and destroy life as we know it. Add to this danger thesimple fact that there are now more human beings on earth than ever before;that we continue to propagate ourselves, with little regard for strain ondiminishing global resources; and that, as a species, we have been thoroughlynegligent in our concern for ecology, appalling in our insouciance overenvironmental depredations_ and relatively callous in our treatment ofnonhuman species.

A Pathogen On The PlanetBartlett argues that the human race is literally a pathogen on the planet, as menand women blithely ignore the welfare of other people and other species,cherish a psychological addiction to violence and warfare, and refuse to altertheir behaviour to sustain life on a fragile planet whose stewardship and futurecontinuance are in jeopardy. A pathological addiction to aggression has become'normal' behaviour for contemporary humanity, and psychologists and ethicistsseem oblivious of the implications of the kind of moral relativism that woulddeny the power of violence in the world. We, as a species, seem hopelesslyaddicted to 'extreme' behaviours that offer specious pleasures in the form ofexultant biological charges and powerful adrenalin rushes.


Are Women Less Culpable?Are women less culpable in the war of all against all? To investigate the question ofwomen and war, one would have to consider a long list of feminist literature, essays,and theoretical writing - including Lysistrata, a male-authored text offering a strategyfor female conscientious objection to war; Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of theRights of Women (in response to Edmund Burke); Virginia Woolf's polemical essays,especially Three Guineas; Simone De Beauvoir's existential manifesto, The SecondSex; Eva Figes' Patriarchal Attitudes; androgyny studies by Sandra and Daryl Bemin the late 1960s; Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice (in response to LawrenceKohlberg); and Nancy Chodorow's Reproduction of Mothering. This list barelyscratches the surface and ends in 1978, when Chodorow, a social psychologist,suggested, perhaps idealistically, that greater male involvement in childrearing mightbe crucial to the reduction of social and psychological aggression in modem culture.

Feminist peace activists from Virginia Woolf to CND spokespersons in the 21stcentury have decried the patriarchal values and inequitable power structures thatimplement the human propensity toward murder and mayhem. As Bartlett is keen topoint out, however, the female of the species has often been as bloodthirsty as hermore bellicose male compatriots. Women have frequently participated en masse inthe support of national war efforts, and most have capitulated to the kind of masspsychosis and political brainwashing rampant during times of military conflict. Theauthor quotes diaries, journals, and interviews in which soldiers celebrate theexcitement and glory of combat, and female noncombatants nostalgically reminisceabout the meaning-making spirit of community prevalent during periods ofinternational strife. One might, of course, find corresponding evidence on the side ofpacifism and contempt for war in memoirs written by such diverse figures asSiegfried Sassoon, Vera Britten, Robert Graves, Hilda Doolittle, and RichardAldington. (Vide the central statue to Gandhi in Tavistock Square, as well as thememorial to the first conscientious objector who declined to serve in the Romanarmy). But none of these prescient thinkers has managed to prevail over the military-industrial complex now running rampant and thoroughly out of control in MiddleEastern centres of oil and (spurious) democracy.

Throughout the book, Bartlett seems to echo Nietzsche's philosophy of the'superman' while shrewdly revising it to connote the moral and ethical evolution ofmindfulness, empathy, and self-conscious moral responsibility. Like manyphilosophers and prophets before him, this formidable writer suggests the possibilityof social change contingent on a 'saving remnant' of intelligent individuals whopropel their own evolution in the direction of a social activism militantly opposed tothe manifestations of aggression in all its insidious forms, including addiction toviolent sports activities and spectacles, Schadenfreude, political powermongering,imperialism, terrorism, and most of all, warfare between nation-states.

Steven J. Bartlett has taken a Cassandra-like stance, warning from thebeginning of the book that potential readers are likely to dismiss him as amisanthrope. He hedges his bets throughout, but those who fail to heed such dire andwell-substantiated warnings do so at their peril. I admire this sttyy enormously andwould recommend it as compulsory reading for every man and c oman on the faceof the planet. It surely seems worthy of humanist consideration ' yid of the EthicalSociety's serious attention.

14 Ethical I:ecord, June, 2006

SHOULD WE RESPECT RELIGION? Barbara Smoker

Lecture to the Ethical Society, 28 May 2006

On 25 May I took part in the Oxford University Union Debate on the motion that "FreeSpeech should be moderated by respect for Religion". Needless to say, I spoke for theopposition. The chief speaker on my side was Hemming Rose, the Danish editor whopublished the controversial Mohammed cartoons. As there is a seven-figure bounty onhis head, the security arrangements for the debate were heavy, everyone being searchedon the way in.

In the days when, as President of the National Secular Society, I used to take partin a lot of university debates, mainly in the 1970s to 90s, I was almost invariably on thelosing side when it came to the vote, but this time we won by a good margin - 129 to 59.

Had the word 'religion' in the motion been replaced by any other abstract noun,we would have won by 188 to nil. Suppose the word was 'science'. The motion wouldthen have read "Free Speech should be moderated by respect for Science"; and noreasonable person would vote for that — least of all a genuine scientist. So why is religiongiven its unique privileged status? After thousands of years, it has become the norm, sono one ever thinks it needs justifying.

As I pointed out in the debate, the precept to respect religion is similar to theMosaic commandment, "Honour thy Father and thy Mother". But suppose your fatherand mother happened to be the serial child murderers Fred and Rosemary West? Shouldtheir children respect them? Should we respect religions, however undeserving?

So should we respect religiousfaith? Certainly not. Well, should we respectreligiouspeople? Yes — as long as they are not antisocial and don't aim to impose theirreligious views on others.

No Respect Due For BeliefsBut even if we respect them as good-living people, we cannot respect their beliefs. Faith,which means fimi belief in the absence of evidence, betrays human intelligence,undermines science-based knowledge, and compromises ordinary morality. If therewere objective evidence for its doctrines, it would no longer be faith: it would beknowledge.

We have to excuse the medieval sceptics who pretended to respect Christianityrather than risk being bumed at the stake, and likewise the apostate Muslims of todaywho pay lip-service to Islam in those Islamic countries where apostasy is still a capitaloffence; but we who live in a comparatively liberal society have no such excuse. In fact,it is all the more incumbent upon us to give our support to victims of religious oppressioneverywhere, by coming out of the respectful closet and speaking our minds. Free speech,not respect.

Scepticism is of paramount importance, because it is the gateway to knowledge;but unless the sceptical ideas are freely argued over, they cannot be assessed, nor can theensuing knowledge spread through society.


There can be no real freedom of religion without freedom from religion, which ispart of the whole concept of free speech.

As :IS. M i II wrote, no idea can be justified unless it is open to opposition — whichmeans free speech and free expression. And free speech must include the right to laughat absurd ideas. Indeed, ridicule — including satirical cartoons, which have recentlyprovoked terrorism — has always been an important element of the free exchange ofideas on everything, not least religion. Without that free exchange there can be noadvance in knowledge and no social progress.

Muslims, we are told, are sensitive, and are really hurt when their religion is jokedabout. Don't they credit their supposed creator god with any sense of humour? Didn'the actually invent laughter? And is he too weak to withstand a joke without somehumourless cleric rushing to his defence? Or is their own faith so weak that they fear itscontamination? Let them heed the old playground retort: "Sticks and stones may breakmy bones, but words can never hurt me." Claiming to be ultra-sensitive and really hurtby mere words or pictures is, of course, a way of gaining privilege. Everyone else hasto speak softly so as not to hurt you.

Violence Was Deliberately Stirred UpIncidentally, the violence provoked by the Danish cartoons was deliberately stirred upby Islamic extremists publishing exaggerated versions of them in Muslim countries upto four months after the originals were published.

I have discussed it with several moderate Muslims, and while they roundlycondemned the violent reprisals, they generally added "But people ought not to insultreligion". Why not? No-one would denounce the ridiculing of political views, which areopen to free debate. In fact, true respect for religion would allow it to be opened up inthe same way, relying on the truth emerging. But at present it is shielded from honestscrutiny. This suggests that the faithful realise it could not stand up to it.

The humanistic slogan, Live and Let Live, calls for practical tolerance withoutsmarmy respect, but it is never accepted by fundamentalist proponents of any locallypowerful religion. That is especially true of the three Abrahamic religions - Judaism,Christianity. and Islam. Known as 'the sibling faiths', they certainly exhibit innatesibling rivalry, eclipsed only by their shared hatred of outsiders, whether pagans oratheists.

. Totalitarian extremists, of whatever religion or sect, invariably put faith first andfreedom nowhere. Censorship, including insidious self-censorship, is then the order ofthe day, followed closely by violence. In a society where religious orthodoxy rules, thereis no freedom of religion. Though we must take care to avoid a native backlash againstthe mostly peaceable British Muslim community, succeeding govemments have carriedthe exoneration of Muslim villains too far in the past. For instance, as long ago as 1989,when, even on BBC television, imams were offering bribes for the murder of SalmanRushdie, they were never charged with incitement to murder. The word 'appeasement'is rarely used except in the context of Neville Chamberlain's deal with Hitler in 1938,but what about the present appeasement of Muslims in Britain?

Of course the law must protect people — in fact, that is basically what the law is


all about - and we have plenty of general laws for the protection of people, withoutspecial laws for the protection of ideas, of a particular kind.

It is obviously impossible to genuinely respect an ideology that our reason rejectsas superstition — let alone dangerous superstition; so what the precept to respect religionactually means is that we should pretend to respect it, for the sake of politicalcorrectness. At the very least, then, as I pointed out in the debate, the motion called forhypocrisy. So the final majority vote was for honesty, not hypocrisy. But hypocrisy is notthe worst of it.

When the ideologies we pretend to respect indoctrinate children, some of whommay even grow up to be suicide bombers because of it, hypocrisy becomes complicityin the mental abuse of children, in the oppression of women, in the obstruction of socialreforms, and even in incitement to terrorism. This has been exacerbated by our politicalrepresentatives, for the sake of votes, setting up state-supported schools to promoteindoctrination in a particular faith — though they themselves probably accept a different,incompatible set of superstitions.

We are told that Islam itself cannot be blamed for the terrorist attacks on NewYork, Madrid, and London, followed by widespread carnage in retaliation for thepublication of a few innocuous drawings. That is like saying that the horrors of theInquisition had nothing to do with Christianity.

Manic Denunciations Of DisbeliefIn the gospels, Jesus consistently identifies righteousness with believing in him; and inthe ages of faith the statement by Thomas Aquinas that "Unbelief is the greatest of sins"was incontrovertible. Hence the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the Christian burning ofwitches, heretics, and Jews — the flames being fanned by Christian faith. This use oftorture was not a case of bad people perverting a good religion; the persecution ofsceptics follows logically from the Christian correlation of faith with salvation, not tomention the scary notion that God could punish the whole of society for the disbelief ofa few.

Mohammed followed on from Jesus, and the Koran contains even more manicdenunciations of disbelief than the New Testament. Moreover, Islam has failed tomoderate its cruel practices to the extent that mainstream Christianity has done, in thepast couple of centuries.

The Taliban, Al-Qa'eda, and the Bath Corps, are certainly extremist, but they areorthodox — deriving logically from the Koran, which denigrates women and tellsbelievers to wage jihad against heretics and infidels. Moderate Muslims often try toexplain away this tyranny and violence as misinterpretation of the Koran. If that is so,why did Allah, or his Prophet, lapse into such ambiguity?

It is argued that, since the common-law offence of blasphemy in this countrysurvives, though only for the protection of the doctrines of the Church of England, paritydemands that the law be extended to protect other religions. But it is now practically adead letter, and the best solution would clearly be to abolish it altogether, as in fact theLaw Commission has recommended several times to succeeding governments. But nowthe concept of blasphemy has been given an independent lease of life by renaming it`disrespect for religious feelings'.


The present government has even endeavoured to criminalise such disrespect withanother change of name, 'incitement to religious hatred'; but fortunately, amelioratingamendments to the relevant Bill introduced in the House of Lords were finally acceptedin the Commons — by just a single vote. when Blair himself was absent — on the 3Ist ofJanuary this year. But the attenuated Bill then became law.

What About Atheism?On the 20th of February. Pope Benedict called for mutual respect for all the worldreligions and their symbols — though he failed to mention, of course, parallel respect foratheism. Anyway, how can the Pope sincerely respect Islam when it teaches thatbelievers in the 'blasphemous' Christian Trinity are destined to spend eternity in hell?

Pressurised by religious leaders sinking their differences in the common cause ofauthoritarianism, the Council of Europe is currently considering the introduction oflegislation in the European Parliament, and even the United Nations, to enforce 'respectfor religious feelings' internationally. Insertion of the word 'feelings' lends thistendentious goal a semblance of humane empathy. But religion cannot, in all conscience,be intellectually respected, if honesty is to prevail over hypocrisy — and giving it falserespect would not just be obsequious and dishonest: it could actually allow superstitionsof the Dark Ages to triumph, destroying the whole range of social and individualfreedoms courageously won over the past few centuries.

So, for the sake of liberty and equality as well as truth, we must resist theindefensible furtherance of hypocritical respect. Far from our agreeing to moderate freespeech in favour of respect for religion, we should moderate respect for religion infavour of free speech.

NEWS FROM THE AMERICASA WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

Book Review of Robert Pape's, Dying to Win, The Strategic Logic of Suicide Bombing

Ellen Ramsay

Tremendous changes have taken place in the publishing industry and especially inacademic publishing over the past two decades with the "publish or perish"mentality causing the production of half-researched pot boilers and publishersswinging books into print with barely an editorial glance. It was with interest, butdisappointment then that I read Professor Robert Pape's book Dying to Win, TheStrategic Logic of Suicide Bomlfing published by Random House in 2005. The topicseemed timely, but as it turns out Pape only spent two years on the research andpublication of this book with a team of graduate students at the University ofChicago in something called the "Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism". Despitethe rather rapid transition to print, Pape claims this book is the first 'universal' studyof the topic (p.3). Prior to this project he was teaching air strategy at the US AirForce's School of Advanced Airpower Studies. So say no more.

Professor Pape is an advocate of 'offshore balancing' which is a strategy ofsecuring US oil interests by building alliances with pro-western allies in the MiddleEast (chapter 12). In order to prevent further attacks on US interests he argues forthe withdrawal of land troops from the Arabian Peninsula but the retention of the


US navy coupled with a domestic strategy of building the 1,951mile SecurityBorder Fence across the Mexican border which he praises as a necessary physicalbarrier equivalent to Israel's Wall.

Peddled To Both Right And LeftProfessor Pape seems to have peddled his book to both the American Right and Leftpresumably with each side hearing what they want to hear. The 'offshore balancing'strategy is nicely contained in the concluding chapter and so it is possible that thepeace activists who have spoken to him forgot to read the conclusion.

For secular readers. Pape claims that between 1980 and 2003 there has beenno proved connection between suicide bombing and Islamic Fundamentalism. Hesays that of the 384 attacks he studied only 43% were religious and 57% weresecular, although he admits that religious rhetoric may be used to gain support forthe attacks. He argues instead that suicide bombing has emerged where traditionalstanding armies and guerrilla warfare has failed because the countries involved aremilitary 'weak players'. He says that the cause of the attacks is reprisal for landoccupation and that the suicide attacks continue because in seven of the thirteenmajor world campaigns since 1980 they have achieved some significant or limitedconcessions (pp. 64-65). He explains that this is better than the less than 30%success rate anticipated by traditional military campaigns.

Pape debunks the notion that suicide terrorists operate in isolation and claimsthat they work in teams with a profile similar to a traditional military with a strongcommunity base (p. 16). He terms the attacks 'altruistic suicide' because they resultfrom a high level of social integration and respect within the community (pp. 23,166); the individuals and recruitment centres arc actually well known to people butthe communities hide and protect the individuals, their Mmilies and networksbecause they support them.

The role of religion is discussed in further detail in Chapters 6 and 7(pp. 79-101 and 102-125). Pape says that while the battle is fought to regain occupied land.religion is sometimes a useful tool used by local elites to build support (pp. 22-23).He says that 'martyrdom ceremonies' are used to elevate the bombers. praise theirfamilies and ensure more walk-in recruits. Religion is only a minor preoccupationhowever in what are principally territorial wars (p. 130) because most religions haveproscriptions against suicide.

I don't recommend this book because I found many of its premises faulty orambiguous and because the author kept contradicting himself, especially around therole of religion. For those interested in graphs and charts and for history buffs whowish to read stories about Jewish Zealots, the Sicarii, Ismaili Assassins and JapaneseKamikaze fighters or the self-immolation of Buddhists and Monks then there mightbe some reason to look at this book, if only for entertainment. However, I doubtthere is much substance here for a serious study of the topic of suicide bombing. Itwould probably be more informative to take a look at the stock market results in theFinancial Times.

The views expressed in this Journal are not necessarily those of the Society.


OUR NATIONAL IDENTITY:THE SEARCH FOR A NATION AND ITS ICONS

Chris Bratcher Lecture to the Ethical Society, 5 February 2006

The Government has been trying to engage us in a treasure hunt for Britishness. InJanuary, Gordon Brown took to the pulpit at a mammoth Fabian Society conferencedevoted to the themes of British identity, integration and the celebration ofquintessential British values. This highly questionable exercise taps into a concern.

Melanie Phillips, chief columnist of the Daily Mail and Cassandra of MiddleEngland, has pronounced: "This country is consumed with anxiety that Britishness ishaving the stuffing systematically beaten out of it ... the integrity of this nation and itsvalues have been under sustained and relentless assault for the past six decades...Society has been socially, educationally and morally disembowelled .. [Our] nationalidentity has been progressively eroded, surrendered, mislaid, unpicked, underminedand destroyed." No wonder politicians felt it unsafe to doubt the notion and thedesirability of adding a holiday to celebrate it, lest they be labelled unpatriotic killjoysand suffer a media fatwa. So we must ask the questions.

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport set up a web-site, at project cost of10m, inviting suggestions as to what is most iconic of Englishness. [Which bit of that

Government amalgam has ownership of this inanity is a moot poinffi Waving our non-discrimination flags, we may ask why the exercise does not cover Scottish-ness andWelshness, and how Englishness relates to Britishness, and to being a United Kingdomcitizen, or a resident of, say, London. One may dismiss the whole thing as a desperateattempt to make Gordon Brown seem one of us; or as further evidence of policy-making reduced to an exercise in marketing by illusory participation; a 'feel good'game show where the audience and host applaud each-other's patriotic offerings in anunderstated British way. But a serious concern prompted the initiative, crass as itappears.

The Limits Of Diversity And The Mm Of The Game.The Government is rattled. The Commission for Racial Equality has said that pluggingtolerance of cultural diversity has done little to integrate immigrant groups into oursociety, and has possibly been counter-productive. Tolerance can just amount toresignation and detachment. Recognition of Diversity appears to countenance 'passiveapartheid', 'separate development', and ghettoes of functionally distinct communitieswith few allegiances in common. Common citizenship, legal rights and responsibilitiesare not enough. The French policy of deeming assimilation to have occurred becauseof them, has manifestly failed for those stranded outside its bourgeoisie. Hence an EUwide thrashing around to find yet another Third Way.

Gordon's admiration for things American is well known. He was stars and stripesgazing when he asked: "What is our Independence Day? What is our Fourth of July?Where is our equivalent of a flag in every gardenT The implication is that, if only wecould all cranlc ourselves into putting out more (and the same) flags, we would havesolved the integration problem. The theory is that America has done so by encouragingdual identities, that couple a racial, religious or ancestral country self-description withthat of being American. Hence the trying on of labels like 'British Muslims' & 'British


Asians', and the search for content to make the British element more than meregeography. But, to state the blindingly obvious, we are not America.

America is a typical settler nation, with an independence event to celebrate. Fromthe start, it needed to nation-build and mythologise the process. The Americanconstitution and Great Seal proclaim it to be one from many: "ex pluribus unum". FewBrits see themselves in the same way, and double-barrel labels emphasises difference,rather than a universal condition. The shrillness of American assertion of identity, andtheir socially demanded pledge of allegiance, is perhaps a sign that American-ness needsperennial reinforcement, now driven by insecurity in the face of economic decline andinward migration. Even the American self-image has failed to cope with the influx ofmigrant worker Hispanics. Flag-waving equips them no better to face this challenge thanthe old nations of Europe.

Otherwise, the big flag-waving nations are for the most part distinctive anduniform in race, language or religion, and have had little immigration because of thesebarriers; are ex-colonies, or have neighbours that have been prone to invade Denmark,where every summer-house flies a flag, is the classic case. ("All is not well" [Hamlet]even there, and its Government has been windy enough to emit lists of cultural icons.Burnt bacon, anyone?) Britain is at the opposite extreme. Gordon's Grail search begs thequestion of what is a nation, and what makes for an icon of one rather than another, andnot of something else entirely.

We can all identify things that we cherish in, or even about, Britain. TheGovernment would have us construe them as betokening a relationship, withoutexploring what sort of beast we are to mlate to. I love my country well enough, even if Ido not know quite what I am referring to (but certainly not as personified in agovernment's actions, right or wrong); but I have never been inclined to say that I lovemy nation, whatever it is. I more often cringe.

Our Problem In TriplicateCod heraldry is being proposed, when the conceptual shield to bear the aims, and themelting pot to which people are to adhere, is not one but a set of non-stick saucepans influx. We have overlapping concepts of England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdomand colonies. Candidate images slip from one frame to another, like the migratingportraits in Harry Potter's Hogwarts.

The United Kingdom is, for most people in Britain, a colourless legal concept, thatonly gets life when we need to claim the rights of passage and assistance on our passports.Such is the lack of UK name recognition, that our remaining shirt-making industry,which is sited in Ulster, is allowed to use the label "Made in Britain". We resist movesto have us compete under the UK label in sporting events. For immigrants, however, thestate is much more significant, as the source of legal rights of abode and to work. If theyattempt the Government's DIY nationalist construction, they have a different templateand object in mind than those of us who have inherited our national fumiture.

To say you are English, Scots or Welsh, unlike British, implies that any othernational identity is no longer in competition. These labels also do duty as a descriptionof race. Which bit of the social construct are we being asked to identify icons for? Thenotion of Britain, and being British, seems to me to be a piggy-in-the-middle; neither one


thing (nationiality) nor the other (state-hood). Therein lies its remaining utility. It is anidentity of default and a convenience store, approached from different directions byimmigrants and the rest of us. It is a conceptual staging post for the immigrant and hisdescendants, who may increasingly think of themselves as British (long before they maydo so as English). As they do, it is likely that racist Nationalists will consider themselvesless and less so, except when we turn out a Lions rugby team or show off our militaryhistory either post the act of Union, or prior to the Roman Conquest.

Shopping For IdentityEnglish may be thought to be an inescapable label for someone like myself, and to demuris to be in denial. But England's fractured identity between classes, and rural and urbanlife, each with its own range of totemic experiences, simply does not hold together to therequired degree. I don't have a purchase on the brand. Desperate marketing of it furtheralienates one from the whole shebang. In philosophical terms, there is no universal,because there are insufficient resemblances in common. For many urban sprawl dwellers,there may be no markedly English/ British experience with which to identify, other than,of course, the fortitude to exist there. A national identity is what philosophers call aportmanteau notion, or more prosaically, a mixed bag of sweets. In which sense is that,sir/madam, your bag, festooned with labels? Did you pack it yourself? Or are youtravelling light? We must first check in. before we give way to urging to fly the flag, beit of England at the World Cup. or that of British Airways.

The idea that there must be some things in common in everyone's trolley at thecheck-out, should we be constrained to buy into nationalist own brand goods, ismisconceived. We need not embrace the icons on special offer, even if we acquire theobjects. I do not wear a Harris Tweed jacket, or eat fish & chips, or go to the EnglishNational Opera, or favour the NHS, in order to feel British; or because they are inventedin, common in, or confined to Britain. I do so because I rate the product. I may feelpleased or proud that they originated, or are made or maintained here, but that issomething else.

One must start at the beginning to escape nonsense. Philosophically speaking,experiences do not have built-in intensional ity. They do not have to point in any, or a sole,direction; and direction depends as much on us, and our mood, as them. Think of whatwe experience on a walk in the English countryside. Surely we identify with it, even ifwe have never been there. Maybe not: the Council for National Parks engaged in aBrownian motion called the Mosaic partnership, to organise ethnic minority outings intothe hills and dales.

Where do we start? Read Femand Braudel, the great historian of what madeFrance. We identify with our patch, or terroir. Our empathies lie with localities,communities and their institutions, forms and ways of life, and the cultural icons thatexpress them. We bundle them as "my country". Suck the confections of memoryacquired in the course of our lives, and there is no reason to find the name of a nationrunning though their core. Bands of description thicken and fall by the wayside of life.

I now want to get back to this. What is an icon? Perhaps we should ask the religious[see my talk on Lost Icons two years ago]. Do you have to like or endorse, let alonevenerate, the object, or do we simply have to acknowledge its effect on other people? Icannot bear to sing the contents of Hymns Ancient & Modern, or recite the responses of


the Book of Common Prayer, much as I hate to.'see them revised. And how wouldMuslims buy into those? Motorway service stations and seaside guest-houses, Ken Doddand Benny Hill. have an unrivalled awfulness. They are all very British, unfortunately.Has it to be something unique to, or particularly present in Britain, or merely identifiedwith as our own, and perhaps falsely as nobody else's? A possession to show off seemspart of the presumed satisfaction.

Nationalist icons are, paradoxically, often common to several countries in all butdetail because they are copy-cat manufactures to that end. We exported many of them toour colonies. For those turned on by guardsmen wearing off-cuts of bears on their heads,the Trooping of the Colour may set the heart racing. What could be more British? Well,most of the countries that fought in the Napoleonic Wars still have squads performingquadrilles in front of their own (related) Queens' palaces. Military tattoos are only skindeep, and are transferable. I find nationalism passg, and undesirable, a confection spunout by a tourist or political industry. A Marxist way of expressing this is to say thatNationalism is born of a super-structure. As an English empiricist, I couldn't possiblycomment, and I put the idea to provoke discussion. It did not; unlike National virtues andtraits.

Department Of Misapplied EthicsWe should be immediately wary whenever someone invokes virtues. Departments ofApplied Ethics have become a vogue in universities. I would like to found a Departmentof Misapplied Ethics. Individuals, rather than nations, display virtues and have values,even though they may be socially conditioned and be capable of social analysis. That, inour culture, certain behaviours are recognised as virtues, rather than, say, pitiable, issomething else. Cases were made that, as a nation, we respect free speech, places inqueues and the nile of law, and that (leaving aside certain lapses in our history) we havegiven them to the world. I think you could be forgiven for thinking that an insular andinsufferable sense of superiority, along with the Monarchy, is the true vice anglais. Ofcourse we should identify with such virtues, but not, I suggest, as particularly, let aloneexclusively, a British possession.

Humour seems a more promising categoty. We have generated astonishinglydiverse but identifiably British modes, based on laughing at ourselves. But how can youprescribe the British sense of humour? If it doesn't translate, it can't be an object of theGovernment's exercise. Perhaps immigrants should try to laugh politely.

If we play the game, what might we choose? It's certainly not the contents of theBritish Museum. I'd make a case for postmen, milkmen, unarmed policemen; tea-rooms,caffs (as distinct from cafés) and pubs you can drink real ale and just about smoke in.Perhaps it is no accident that they are all under threat. As Hilaire Belloc put it, "Whenyou have lost your inns, drown your empty selves. For you will have lost the last ofEngland". However, the next generation will no doubt identify with somethingcompletely different. Which makes the hunt for icons such a Monty Pythonish cum DaVinci Quest.

If one had to make just one choice, it has, I think, to be something eccentric, as wellas not found elsewhere, and redolent of people and place. Discussions of our uniquelymutable weather, or Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, would do nicely, except that theWelsh will claim it. So it has to be SPES.


PROGRAMME OF EVENTS AT THE ETHICAL SOCIETYThe Library, Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC1R 4RL.

Tel: 020 7242 8037/8034 Registered Charity No. 251396Website: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk email: [email protected]

No charge unless stated

JUNE 2006Saturday 17 2006 PHILOSOPHY FOR EDUCATION RENEWAL LECTURE1015 Lookingfor Aims and Values in the Review of 14-19 Education

and Training. Prof. Richard Pring, Nuffield ReviewWrench Room. Overseas House, Park Place, St. James, W I

Sunday 181100 WILLIAM MacCALL (1812-1888):

Anarchistic, Individualist and Disillusioned UnitarianRon Heisler

1500 THE PRICE OF FEARFrancis Gilbert will speak with reference to his two recent books,I'm A Teacher — Get Me Out of Here and Yob Nation

Monday 19 CONWAY HALL JAZZ APPRECIATION GROUP1830 Sarah Vaughan and Jane

No charge but contributions for refreshments appreciated.

Tuesday 20 EVENING CLASS - VISIONS OF THE PRESENT 41830 Refreshments1900 The Space Merchants by Frederick Pohl and C M Kornbluth

David Murray

Sunday 25 ANNUAL SKENE LECTURE 20061100 'RELIGION IS ONLY NATURAL':

A Psychological Look at Strange PhenomenaProfessor John Radford (emeritus)

1500 SOME EARLY CREATIONISTS AND EARLY EVOLUTIONISTSDonald Rooum

Tuesday 27 EVENING CLASS - VISIONS OF THE PRESENT 51830 Refreshments1900 Making History by Stephen Fry

David MurrayJULYSunday 21100 CRITICAL THINKING: Bad and Fallacious Arguments

Jamie Whyte, Philosopher, Columnist and Author ofBad Thoughts, A Guide to Clear Thinking

1500 WHAT IS JAINISM?Kelly Seth

Tuesday 4 EVENING CLASS - VISIONS OF THE PRESENT 61830 Refreshments1900 Retrospective

David Murray

Published by the South Place Ethical Society, Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, WCIR 4RL Printed by J.G. Bryson (Printer) Ltd. 156-162 High Road, London N2 9AS ISSN 0014 - 1690

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