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ri 0— qCUD 0The Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society

Vol. 115 No. 1 £1.50 January/February 2010

EDITORIAL - NATURAL DISASTERS AND THEODICY

Once again a natural disaster, this time a major earthquake with huge loss of life,has caused thoughtful religious people to question their avowed beliefs. God issupposed to be good, perfectly good, all powerful and all knowing. Yet hundredsof thousands of apparently innocent people died horribly. The Lisbon earthquakeof 1755 seems to have been such an event; it may have contributed to the moodof religious scepticism that spread in the eighteenth century.

The earthquake could have been avoided if God had just made a fewadjustments, by stealth, to the underground rocks. The creator of the universecould surely have managed that and managed to cover his tracks. Any merelyhuman but all-powerful being would want to have done that.

Possible answers one hears from the religious range from the superficiallyreasonable - don't live on a geological fault-line or in a flood-plane - if you dothen you have to expect the consequences. At the other extreme we hearpreachers mouthing the biblical-sounding notion that the disaster is a legitimatepunishment from God for a sinful population.

None of the above reasons carries conviction among most believers, so theeffect must be to sap belief in the long run. Nevertheless one is struck by theillogicality of popular religion, When, as always happens after a natural disaster,a few lucky survivors are found, there are always those who proclaim this as amiracle. The press is happy join in here. A hundred thousand dead, a handfulalive and this is a miracle.

The most perverse excuse theologians have devised is that the disaster isworthwhile, even necessary, as it gives everyone else a chance to becompassionate!

FELIX MENDELSSOHN, RELIGION AND US Sheila Hayman 3

RAC'IST ANTURACISM:- Book ReviewA review of Strange Fruit by Kenan Malik Mazin Zeki 13

VIEWPOINT: Albert Adler , 15

AUBREY BOWMAN (1918-2009) John Jordon it Anne Schuman 16

ALAN LORD (1937 - 2009) Sue Mayer 19

DARWLVS DETRACTORS: An Exhibition at Conway Hall, Jan-Feb 2010 21

ETHICAL SOCIETY EVENTS 24

SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETYConway Hall Humanist Centre

25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL.Tel: 020 7242 8031/4 Fax: 020 7242 8036

Website: www.ethicalsoe.org.ukChairman: Giles Enders Ron. Rep.: Derek LennardVice-chairnian: Terry Mullins Editor, Ethical Record: Norman Bacrac

SPES StaffChief Executive: Emma J. Stanford Tel: 020 7242 8031/4 [email protected]: Catherine Broad Tel: 020 7242 8037 [email protected] Co-ordinator: Ben Partridge Tel: 020 7242 8034 [email protected] Officer: Linda Alia Tel: 020 7242 8031/4Athnin. Assistant: Angela KeatingLettings Officer: Carina Dvorak Tel: 020 7242 8032Lettings Assistant: Marie AubreehtovaCaretakers: Eva Aubrechtova (i/c); Tel: 020 7242 8033together with: Shaip Bullaku, Angelo Edroeo, Alfredo Olivo, Rogerio Retuema, Cagatay Ulker, David WrightMaintenance Operative: Zia Hameed

The Society congratulates Shaip Bullalcu and his wife Nexhmije on the birth of their second son, Almir, on 139.09.

ObituaryWe regret to have to report the death of Alan Lord. An obituary appears in this issue.

SPES Holding TrusteeChristopher Bratcher was elected as a Holding Tmstee at the 2009 AGM.

If you would like to receive regular news and programme updates from SPES viaemail, please contact [email protected]. Similarly, if you have any suggestionsfor speakers or event ideas, or would like to convene a Sunday afternoon informal, get in

touch with Ben Partridge at the above address.

THE HUMANIST REFERENCE LIBRARYThe Humanist Reference Library is open for members and researchers onMondays to Fridays from 0930 - 1730. Please let the Librarian, Catherine

Broad, know of your intention to visit. The Library has an extensivecollection of new and historic freethought material.

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

SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETYReg. 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, andthe advancement of research and education in relevant fields.

We invite to membership those who reject supernatural creeds and are insympathy with our aims. At Conway Hall the programme includes Sunday lectures,discussions, evening courses and the Conway Hall Sunday Concerts of chambermusic. The Society maintains a Humanist Reference Library. The Society's journal,Ethical Record, is issued monthly. Memorial meetings may be arranged.

The annual subscription is £20 (f 15 if a full - time student, unwaged or over 65).

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

2 Ethical Record, JanuarylFebruary 2010

FELIX MENDELSSOHN, RELIGION AND USSheila Ityman

Based on a pre-concert talk to the Conway Hall Sunday Mendelssohn Concert,November 2009.27 January is Holocaust Memorial Day.

Earlier this year I made a film which was shown on BBC Television called'Mendelssohn, The Nazis, and Me'. Felix Mendelssohn was my 4 x great uncle,and it was his bicentenary this year, but the seeds of my interest in this story go backmuch further — back, really, to my childhood, which was characterised by ageneralised sense of 'not belonging' that was about more than having a father witha thick accent, and an old dead German composer as my only currency forplayground barter. I knew my father had had to leave Germany because he wasJewish — except none of us had ever been near a synagogue, nor did we have anyfriends who were observant Jews.

At this point my father has been, in his life a Jew — though he didn't find thatout until he was ten, which is all part of the story — a Lutheran as a child inGermany, an Anglican as a refugee schoolboy in England, a Quaker after he metmy mother at university, a Moslem after he married his second wife, and he hasnow reverted to Quakerism, having married for the third time a lapsed Catholic — Iguess Lapsed Catholicism is not a religion you can join.

It sounds like a joke, until you think what it means — a life's journey throughthe world's religions, looking for a place to belong. Luckily, along the way, hediscovered the world of mathematics, which is no respecter of religion or anythingelse apart from brains and imagination. And he has fitted in there very well.

Felix — Preternaturally Talented And PrecociousI'm more and more convinced that our forebear, Felix Mendelssohn, hoped thatmusic could be a similar unifying element for otherwise separated people. But inthe case of his own work, at least, that wish was never allowed to come true.

If you were to tell the story of Felix Mendelssohn's life, it would gosomething like this: beloved elder son of loving, prosperous parents.Preternaturally talented and precocious, yet somehow still beloved by all. (WheriFelix and his two sisters and bnither played chamber music as children, Felix wasalways made to play the instrument at which he was least accomplished. If heended up on the piano, they made him play with his hands crossed). Early successin Germany crowned by worldwide fame in his thirties. Happily married, father offive children. Sadly, died rather young, but universally mourned and beloved.

My own interest was a story, vaguely remembered and only half-understood,told me by my German grandmother about her sister, my great-aunt Lotte, who hadapparently taken on the might of the Nazi Party's legal machine, argued her casefor seven years, and eventually won, saving several members of the familyincluding herself, her mother and her sisters from the gas chamber. I only met nlyGreat Aunt Lone once, but she was clearly a formidable woman; anybody who

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could argue for seven years deserved respect. But when I started to go into herstory, that too turned out to be all about confused identity — going back to Felix. Orin fact, to Felix's grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn.

Moses is still, in Jewish scholarly circles, more famous than his grandson. Infact Abraham, sandwiched in between the two, used to complain that he'd gonestraight from being • the son of his father, to the father of his son. MosesMendelssohn was born in Dessau in 1729 and went to Berlin in 1743, entering bythe only gate open to Jews (and cattle), the Rosenthal gate.

Moses turned out to be extremely clever — in later life he beat Imanuel Kantin an Imperial essay competition based around some gnarly question about logicand metaphysics. But his outstanding quality was his humanism. I've said he taughthimself, and this is partly because, according to Jewish religious law at the time,Jews were not supposed to read anything, except Jewish religious texts in Hebrew,or speak any language but Yiddish. Of course, Yiddish is pretty close to oldGerman, and of course Jews ended up having conversations with Gentiles, if onlyin the course of business. But the Jewish cultural world was very circumscribed,and Moses saw this as a limitation on the development of his people.

So he devoted all the energies of his giant brain to finding a way in whichPrussian Jews could enter more fully into society without betraying their religion.And he finally persuaded the elders of the community that it was possible to be aGerman in public life, but a Jew in one's private devotions. That is, he separatedthe religious from the cultural or ethnic element of Judaism.

Who Is A Jew?And ever since then, of course, nobo'cly has been able to decide who is a Jew. ToOrthodox Jews, you're Jewish if your mother was. Sartre said, " A Jew is he whois thought to be a Jew by others'. Goering, following an earlier mayor of Vienna,famously said "Who is a Jew, I decide." I asked Rabbi Julia Neuberger, and shetold me, 'if you say you are, you are.' And even Hitler was never able to definewhat he meant by a Jew. As we shall see.

Moses became a celebrated and beloved figure in German national life, anda founder of the German enlightenment. But that didn't give him civil rights.Frederick the Great, who always needed money to fight some war or other, oftenused his Jewish population, as other monarchs did, as cash cows. He took delightin coming up with inventive ways of milking them, and one of the more inventivewas a porcelain tax. Every time a Prussian Jew had a child, or wanted to marry ormove house, Frederick made them purchase a certain amount of porcelain from hisImperial Porcelain Works. And not any porcelain they wanted — not something thatmight have been marginally useful, like a dinner service. They had to buy whateverwasn't selling to anybody else, but at vastly inflated prices.

So it was that, at a family gathering in 2004, my interest in this story was re-kindled by walking along behind my father and his cousin Ria daughter of thefamous Great Aunt Lotte, who were muttering 'There were twelve!"No, a


hundred!"How can there have been a hundred — they'd never have fitted in!!' Itturned out that Moses' enforced purchase was the disputed number of almost lifesize porcelain monkeys — so he and his wife Fromet started their married life withan unwelcome menagerie that had cost Moses £25,000.

Things didn't improve much by the time Abraham was bringing up hischildren. As Jews, none of them would be allowed to hold any public office, teachin any university — basically, do any job except for some sort of business. Nor werethey citizens. And travelling anywhere was fraught with uncertainty as to wherethey could go, and whether they'd be allowed back . A bit like asylum seekers today,in fact. But Abraham could see that Fanny and Felix — especially the latter — hadworld class talents. If he could not travel beyond Prussia, how would those talentsfind their proper audience?

At that time — the very early years of the 19th century — Enlightenment ideaswere fashionable, and Jews and Christians, at least those sufficiently padded withmoney, mixed freely in liberal intellectual salons. Abraham may not have managedthe intellectual distinction of his father, but he and his brother Joseph had made alot of money in banking. Nothing stood in the way of his children's progress excepttheir religion. And after all, as Ria said to me, `What's the difference between beinga non-practising Christian and a non-practising Jew?'

The Argument For ConversionIt's not easy to know what Abraham's own beliefs really were. But he certainly putup a very convincing argument for conversion in his letter to my 3 x grandmotherFanny, his oldest child:-

'There are in all religions only one God, one virtue, one truth, one happiness.The outward form of religion your teacher has given you is historical, andchangeable like all human ordinances. Some thousands of years ago the Jewishform was the reigning one, then the heathen, and now it is the Christian... We haveeducated you in the Christian faith, because it is the creed of most civilised people,and contains nothing that can lead you away from what is good.'

Whether this was what he really believed or just a good line, Abraham hadall four of his children converted to the Lutheran form of Protestantism, in Berlin'sgrandest church, in 1816, when Felix was seven. (Interestingly, his own baptismhappened much more discreetly, in Hamburg, four years later — it may be that hehad Jewish clients whom he didn't want to offend).

So the boy genius Felix, grandson of the Enlightnment's most famous Jew,became a Christian. But to him, from the start, it was not a matter of expediency.Felix developed, early on, a deep Christian faith. He inscribed all his manuscriptswith a prayer. And, of course, he rediscovered Bach.

It's not true that Bach had been totally forgotten in the fifty years since hisdeath — certainly in Mendelssohn's family his music was known and loved. Indeed,one of the first comments on the infant Fanny was that she had `Bach player's

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fingers'. And it was Felix's grandmother — an orthodox Jew — who gave him,probably for his fourteenth birthday, a copy of the St Matthew Passion that she hadhad specially made for him.

Felix opened it, and read it like a boy his age now might read Harry Potter.He drank it in, hearing the music unfold in his head. At that time the work hadn'tbeen performed in Germany for decades. Bach was thought old fashioned, cerebral,formanlow — unlistenable. But what Felix read and heard made him determinedto give it back to the world. And six years later, in March 1829, he famously didso, starting a revival of interest that saved Bach's music for the rest of us.

Mendelssohn wrote very little about himself and his beliefs, and his ownfeelings about the conflict between the religion of his famous grandfather and allhis forefathers, and that which he himself had so passionately espoused, can onlybe guessed at. But the final piece of my own investigative journey came with thearrival one day of a fat package, signed only with the name `Christopheros' inGreek letters, containing a PhD thesis which had discovered clues to Felix'sattitude to religion in the music itself — particularly his two oratorios, Paulus andElijah.

The author, Jeffrey Sposato, saw them both as attempts to reconcile the twofaiths: Paulus is, of course, the story of the famous conversion of the Jew Saul onthe road from Jerusalem to Damascus. Elijah is a reworking of the story of theprophet, that presents him very much as a precursor of Jesus Christ. Paulus waswritten when Felix was twenty-six, and completed as Abraham was dying. Felix'sfather pored over every line of the libretto, which Felix himself painstakinglycomposed from the words of the Bible. Its harshly critical portrait of the Jewsmakes very clear that Felix, under his father's shadow, was trying hard to distancehimself from his grandfather's religion.

But Elijah, written ten years later, when Felix's international reputation wasassured and perhaps his father's long shadow dimmed, is much more ambiguous,and seems to be trying to read the text as sympathetic to Jews and Christians alike.Perhaps Felix really was trying to do honour to his grandfather's legacy by findingcommon humanity between peoples. But Moses' medium was ideas; Felix's wasmusic.

Shakespeare's InfluenceOne other great figure from the past had a lifelong influence on Mendelssohn.William Shakespeare's plays were little known in Germany until their translation,by August Schlegel in the last years of the 18th century. Schlegel happened to bethe brother of Felix's uncle, and whether this brought the plays into the householdor not, the four children were enraptured by them from an early age — and one inparticular, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Here is Fanny's son, Sebastian Hensel,describing its place in their lives in his book, The Mendelssohn Family:

'The tragedies, but even more the comedies, and especially the MidsummerNight's Dream were the joy of the Mendelssohn children. The summer of 1826 was

6 Ethical Record, JaimarylFebruary 2010

like one long midsummer dream...full of poetry, music, games, practical jokes,disguises and representations. In that very garden in that year 1826, favoured by themost beautiful weather, they themselves led a fantastic, dream-like life.'

Lticky children, with a beautiful house and garden, a big airy salon made forperformances, and nothing to do all summer long but play, and write, and dream upmusic. Felix's first Midsummer Night's Dream overture dates from this year. It wasthe first work to make him famous, and its successor, the Suite, twenty years later,contained the Wedding March that's probably the only work of his that almosteverybody in the Western World would recognise. There's even a ragtime version.It was given a useful helping hand by Queen Victoria's eldest daughter, who firstwalked down the aisle to it in 1862.

It was also the piece that was to cause the greatest difficulties to the Germanauthorities, trying to decide what to do about Mendelssohn ninety years later. Bywhich time Shakespeare had assumed his place in German national culture, as oneof the many foreign artists who clearly ought to have been German had he had theopportunity, being unappreciated in his own country and only properly treasured inGermany.

In a parallel way, Felix in his lifetime came to be considered here as anhonorary Brit. It's well known that he made several visits to Buckingham Palace,playing lieder with the young Queen and admiring the organ playing of hiscompatriot, her husband Albert.

The Advent of Richard WagnerBy the time he died, he was famous around the world, and his death was aninternational tragedy. But only two years later, Richard Waobner published —pseudonymously The Jew in Music. Wagner had once submitted a symphony toMendelssohn at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, only to have it turned down —Mendelssohn, for all his warmth, was brutally honest in his musical judgements —and Warmer had also suffered in Paris from the then-reigning composer, alsoJewish, Meyerbeer.

Wagner's thesis was, roughly, that people from 'alien' racial or culturalgroups could never authentically express the experience and emotional truth of apeople. So Jewish composers, marginal as they inevitably were to the heart ofGerman cultural life, could never produce more than clever — in Mendelssohn'scase, he conceded, extremely clever — imitations of real art. At the time, the essaydoesn't seem to have had much effect, and even when Wagner re-published it underhis own name some years later, it was still a minority voice.

It coincided with the nascent nationalism that accompanied Germanunification. Unification demanded images, metaphors for the infant state, and anexternal enemy to unify the internal elements. So, in the last years of the 19thcentury, there arrived what you might call tiopolitical rhetoric' — the use ofmetaphors of the body politic, striving to grow strong and pure, and free itself frompollution by bacteria and cancers. The idea of 'infection' either by alien racial

Ethical Recard, JanuarylFebruary 2010 7

groups or 'genetically inferior' ones, the core theses of eugenics, helped give itcredibility. So 'racial science' was all ready to become the foundation of Hitler'sideology in the 1930s.

When Hitler came to define 'Jewish' in his Nuremberg laws of 1933, beinga Jew was based not on religion but on this notion of 'race' — though if you stop tothink, you realise it's nonsense, as all the evidence of 'race' comes from synagoguerecords, which are about religion. Evidently Hitler didn't stop to think.

So, suddenly in 1934, Felix Mendelssohn, beloved national treasure of theGerman people, was discovered to be nothing of the sort, but an impostor, a tenthrate plagiarist, all the more infuriating for having hoodwinked so many for so longwith his facile charms. Mendelssohn's music could not be published or performed,recordings were smashed, all public reference to him was suppressed. When SirThomas Beecham visited Leipzig with the Halle Orchestra in 1936, he went to laya wreath on the Mendelssohn statue outside the Gewandhaus, only to find it hadbeen smashed down the day before, and replaced by some potted plants. The mayorof Leipzig had strenuously resisted the desecration of the statue, but had made themistake of going on holiday at the crucial time. Shortly afterwards, he resigned.

Mendeissohn DisappearedSo Mendelssohn disappeared from public life — at least, to the Aryan population ofGermany. The Jews, however, were not deprived. Music, like everything else, wasdivided between 'Jewish' and 'non-Jewish'. Jewish music was allowed to beplayed, but by Jews only.

The Jewish Kulturbund, or Cultural League was founded in the aftermath ofthe 1933 Laws for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, whichdismissed Jews from all public jobs, including those in orchestras. A producer atthe Berlin Opera had the idea that as the Jewish musicians were being dismissed,there was an opportunity to create an organisation for them. The idea was that itwould be supported by membership dues — a sort of self-help organisation. Thoughit's not clear how they were supposed to pay these dues if they'd all lost their jobs.

The Nazis thought it was a good idea, partly because it was good propagandafor the outside world. They could publish photographs of Kulturbund concerts tothe world's press, and persuade them that the Jews were being well treated. Maybea more sinister reason was that of social control; it gave the Jews some hope, andseduced them into compliance with what was happening around them.

The concerts were only allowed to be played to Jews (though Claus Moserremembers the presence of Brownshirts scattered in the audience) and therepertoire was very tightly controlled. If Jewish musicians played works by non-Jewish composers, even to other Jews, they'd be 'polluting the repertoire'. Theywanted to keep non-Jewish music 'pure'.

The censoring process was very complicated: from the start, no Strauss,Wagner or Brahms could be played in 1936. Beethoven was banned in 1938. With


the Anschluss, all Austrian composers came onto the banned list, so no Mozart,Haydn or Handel — though he had been 'compromised' in Nazi eyes by spendingso much time in England.

Whatever the Kulturbund's inadvertent role as a tool of the Nazi state, there'sno doubt that it provided enormous comfort to the frightened and beleagueredJewish population of Berlin. Claus Moser remembers Kulturbund concerts as beingthe only bright spot in the bleak and terrifying life he lived as a schoolboy there,and the music that was allowed to live on in it may well have survived as a result.

Mendelssohn was the most played composer in the Kulturbund. He was theperfect compromise figure: the Nazis liked his presence because they thought hewas Jewish, but the Kulturbund members liked him because they thought he wasGerman.

Of all the Kulturbund's repertoire, the most performed was Elijah, to thepoint where there were periodic grumbles about how it had been overplayed andoverexposed. One of the most famous performances was in Berlin's NeueSynagogue in 1937, where a packed and threadbare audience crowded in before thedoors and windows were shut tight, to prevent the 'Jewish' music from seeping outinto the pure 'Aryan' air outside. Whatever Mendelssohn's intentions for it, Elijahhad, by now, been firmly given back to the Jews.

What To Do About Musical InterludesHowever, the Nazis' determination to rid German cultural life of the pollutingbacillus of Mendelssohn had one rather embarrassing consequence. I've alreadytalked about the place Shakespeare had as a beloved honorary German. And thishad only been consolidated in the 1930s. as more and more native Germanplaywrights were condemned as depraved or decadent. In the end, WilliamShakespeare was deemed one of the very few to embody true German values.

Unfortunately, Shakespeare's most popular play in Germany was AMidsummer Night's Dream, which was never performed without musicalinterludes. So, suddenly, the authorities found themselves with a large hole in a vitalelement of national culture. They had to replace it. But how?

There's only one person, so far as I know, who has catalogued all forty-fourattempts to do so. Richard Strauss and Hanz Pfizner, the leading Germancomposers of the day, prudently refused, Strauss declaring he could never hope toequal Mendelssohn's accomplishment. But forty-four others stepped up to theplate, the last being Carl Orff. On the eve of its premiere, in 1944, the FrankfurtOpera House was bombed, and the Nazis finally gave up. Needless to say, none ofthe copies was as good as the original. But the repeated attempts probably served,if anything, to keep Mendelssohn's music alive, as every time a new performancewas reported, the critics, normally too timorous to speak out, would raise theirheads above the parapet just far enough to remember that there had been rather agood piece of music to accompany this play, but they just couldn't quite rememberwho had written it...

Ethical Record, January/Februacy 2010 9

A similar amnesia came over the opera singers of Germany when the Reichdecided to purge another German composer of his dubious associations. After theAnschluss in 1938, Mozart became a German composer. But not only was hislyricist, da Ponte, Jewish — the standard translations of the opera lyrics into Germanhad been written by a Jew. So they had to replace them all.

Then a very odd thing happened. The singers of the Staatsoper foundthemselves mysteriously unable to remember any of the new words. To the pointwhere no fewer than two hundred rehearsals were required for the premiere of thenew production of Don Giovanni. You have to give them marks for perseverance.

So that was the fate of Mendelssohn's music. But meanwhile, what of thefamily? Thanks to Moses' and Felix's fame and Abraham and his brother's money,they'd done very well. Fanny's son, my great-great grandfather Sebastian, built ahotel in Berlin of such surpassing splendour that the Kaiser was heard grumblingthat its bathrooms were a lot better than anything he had. The building later becamethe headquarters of the Prussian parliament.

The Family AssimilatedThey may have been Jewish bankers, but very few kept their religious observance,and without that, there was no reason for them to marry other Jews. Felix andFanny both married the children of Protestant pastors, and the rest of the familyconverted, intermarried and assimilated too, to the point where, a hundred yearsafter Moses' death, only four of his fifty-six direct descehdents were practisingJews. They certainly knew they were Mendelssohns, and to that extent the adultsat least must have known they were Jews. But the children of my father'sgeneration, growing up in the adventure of the Glorious Reich, were in for a terribleshock.

This is how my father told it to me. 'Growing up in Cologne,' he told me, 'Iused to sit on my nanny's knee, hearing these terrible stories about these peoplecalled the Jews, and the dreadful things they did. "What awful people they mustbe!" I thought to myself. Then, when I was ten, I found out I was one of them.' Forhim, who by blood was almost entirely Jewish, this meant a swift escape, a boy oftwelve, all alone, to England and the future home as a mathematician I've touchedon. En route, he managed, by a combination of nerve and charm that's entirelycharacteristic, to get his parents out too, almost certainly saving their lives.

But for his cousins left in Germany, his more mixed-up cousins, it was astrange and frightening time. Ria, his first cousin, had a mostly-Jewish mothermarried to a famous writer who was not Jewish. Ria found out she was Jewishwhen she was told she couldn't compete in swimming galas any more. Until then,swimming had been one of her favourite things. Not any more. Meanwhile hersister was desperate to join the BDM, the girls' equivalent of the Hitler Youth. Hadshe been fully Aryan, in fact, she would have been obliged to join it. As it was, herfiercely anti-Nazi father yelled at her, spoke to the school, and it was never raisedagain.

10 Ethical Record, JanuarylFebruary 20'0

Other cousins tell equally strange storids of sitting sewing BDM badges ontheir clothes, while at the other end of the sofa, a grandmother was attaching ayellow star to hers. These children and adolescents had no idea where theybelonged; their parents were constantly worried, reading the newspapers andtalking in low voices.

There weren't that many 'mixed-race' part-Jews in Nazi Germany, but theycaused the authorities endless problems and hand wringing. For a regime thatprided itself on the logic and scientific rationality of all its edicts, these messy caseswere a nightmare. Much more time was expended at the Wannsee Conference(1942) talking about the so-called `Mischlinge' than working out the Final Solutionfor the rest of the Jews. The problem, as they saw it, was the so-calledBlauteinschlag, the Taint of Blood, polluting the good German blood in themixture. What they could never decide was the point at which the blood was sopolluted as to be not worth saving — and its bearer, just another blood vessel in thebody politic, better destroyed for the good of the whole. When was a Jew actuallya Jew?

A Matter of Life And DeathSo, for all the part-Jews, establishing how many Aryan ancestors you had became'a matter of life or death. All over Germany, genealogists were hotly in demand, aspart-Jews travelled the country in a desperate real life game of 'Who do you Thinkyou Are' — with no computers or faxes or photocopiers to help, and under,increasingly severe constraints.

•This was how my great-aunt Lotte,Ria's mother, had to spend her time. Lotte

was the youngest of five children, of whom my grandmother Ruth was the oldest.They had, as far as it was then known, one fully Jewish parent, Gertrud, and onethree-quarters Jewish parent, Kurt. So they were dangerously close to being fullJews, by blood.

Lotte began to do her own genealogical digging, to research the familyhistory. And three generations back, she found the story she needed to jam the firstspanner in the machine. Lotte's great-grandmother, Fanny von Adelson, had beenfound as a baby outside the house of a rabbi in Konigsberg. The baby came withno letter and no identification, but a large sum of (Russian) money. The Rabbi,being a charitable man, took the baby in — no doubt quite unaffected by the silver- and in due course she grew up, met and fell in love with Jacob von Adelson. Sofar, so Jewish.

However, at the orphan's wedding there appeared from nowhere a porcelaindinner service for 24 persons, with the Imperial Russian crest. That was enough togenerate a family legend that Fanny was the illegitimate child of 'parents belongingto the higher Russian nobility'.

Lotte's first stroke of genius was t6 realize that how much truth there was inthis barely mattered. The main thing was to cast a seed of doubt. As I've said, the


Nazis' whole enterprise was propped up on the ideological justifications of"science" and "legality". If there were any imprecision in a case, as Lotte realised,they could not act on it, and nobody could be deported.

She also realised that not only she and her sisters, but also every otherdescendent of Fanny and Jacob, could potentially be saved by this plan. So all ofthem were encouraged to make their own submissions, on the same grounds.

"It is barely possible to describe how much thought, research,correspondence and attempted contact with higher Nazi authorities in matters ofrace and genealogy was required," Lotte wrote later. "We were dealing withcriminals, and the outcome of our case might depend on whether they had sleptwell that night. We never let slip the slightest chance of influencing their decision."

Family members were writing back, asking questions, seeking a resolution.At some point Lotte had her second stroke of genius. Resolution was, in fact, thelast thing they needed. What they needed was more unresolved mysteries, not justRussian dinner plates, but anything to keep the bureaucrats shoving the decisionfrom one desk to the next. So long as there was a question mark on the file, nobodyin the fariaily could be touched. Or so they hoped. By late 1942 there were 33documents in the official dossier, including profile portraits displaying the family's'Aryan earlobes'.

No DNA`Racial hygiene examinations' had been carried out at German research institutessince the 1920s. Before the arrival of DNA testing, the only way to resolve disputedpaternity cases was by evaluating physical similarities between the child and theparent. On the arrival of the Third Reich, with its obsession with science, it waseasy for these institutes to pick up extra income evaluating dubious cases for theReich Family Office.

In late 1944, in the panic over the first bombing of Berlin, theReichsippenamt was hurriedly evacuated, all the papers were lost, and the caseagainst the family was abandoned.

The Nazis had one last try. A few months later, Lotte and Mariechen, despitetheir 'protected' marriages, were summoned to the 'Organization Todt' for forcedlabour. Now, for the first time, Lotte's children saw the effect of her long struggle."My mother was crying terribly," said Danda, who was only a child, frightenedhimself to see his tight-lipped, self-controlled mother in despair. "That was the onlytime, right at the end, that I realised how she was afraid."

All this time the children had been told nothing; no parent would riskconfiding anything to a chattering child. So Ria had no idea why her mother wasalways preoccupied, bad tempered and unavailable. In the end, the Mendelssohnname was not a death sentence; the only family members who were killed hadchanged their name, vainly hoping to save themselves. In some cases it seems tohave helped, where the authorities turned a blind eye. The government may have


wanted to eradicate all mention of Felix from Germany, but the people stillremembered his music.

hi Midsummer night's Dream things are put to rights and it all ends happily.Let's hope the last lines of the epilogue come true for Felix and Moses, as they didfor Shakespeare's lovers:

'All shall be well, nought shall go ill... give me your hands if we be friends,and Robin shall restore amends'

RACIST ANT1-RACISMA review by Mazin Zeki of Strange Fruit by Kenan Malik

One World Publications, Oxford 2008. £18.99 34Ipp

Kenan Malik is a man on a mission. He wants to revive the ailingEnlightenment project and has located some of the culprits involved. 'Anti-racism', he rightly observes, has become the new racism, in alliance with somereactionary dogmas which utilise progressive vocabulary.

Strange Fruit continues the narrative of Marek Kohn who in Race Gallety(1995) explored the oriuins and the 'return of 'racial science'. The Enlightenmentproject may have gone wrong but the ideology of racism was clearly in tandemwith the expansion of colonialism.

The best chapter, 'The end of Utopia', lays out in stark detail the collapse ofthe ideology of rnulticulturalism and its implications for the future. Thedesperation of the creed was based on making a virtue out of a series of accidentswhich began in the chaotic aftermath of WW2.

The first Unesco Statement on Race in 1950 was in itself an attack onscience, as it sought to establish in advance what conclusions science shouldreach. It is intereSting to note that this was contemporaneous with the height ofLysenkoism in the Soviet Union. The Satement was denounced by leadinggeneticists including Dhobzhansky and was revised by a second declaration whichmodified the earlier positon.

Retreat From Denying RaceThe damage done by Ashley Montagu, the main inspiration for Unesco, and othershas still not been fully elaborated. At the heart of this is the contention thatsomething 'cannot be true' even if the evidence for it were to be found andindicated, if not definitively proved. In the past Malik has correctly described thisprocess as the 'fall of Unesco Man'. Such a statement would not be proclaimedtoday. Indeed the period since then has been a retreat from denying race to tacitlyadmitting possible race difference but denouncing racial prejudice.

Essentially the argument is that the lid on discussing it has been blown off bysteady if uneven scientific advance. When 'anti-racists' cannot get their way theytry to attack or suppress science. Malik is particularly scathing about thecontradictions of 'anti-racism' which on the one hand denies difference, whileconstantly almost feverishly, emphasising it. This essentialising of difference is the


root cause of the growing obsession with identity politics which is eroding .everything progressive, because it is primarily a vehicle for artificial grievancesand demands.

Malik hints but does not explicitly state that multiculturalists and byextension 'anti -racists' do protest too much and are secretly racist. The need tofrenetically prove 'anti-racism' may have deep psychological causes notsusceptible to rational argument. This is my view also; there is something quiteneurotic in the attempt to prove their 'anti-racism'. Of course there are manytroubling aspects of multiculturalism which are not based on the biology of race atall, but in the self-serving ideology of the public sector which spawned it..

There are however some real gaps in the detailed narrative. It is also marredby a number of errors concerning Jensen and the history of intelligence. Too easilydismissive of Rushton and Jensen and the debates around intelligence, Malikignores altogether Rushton's main work. It is a fact that societies are becomingmore segregated by intelligence with serious long term implications. In theintelligence studies community however his work is properly recognised and theannual magazine Intelligence was devoted to his work. Debates around differencesin intelligence are not based on whole populations but on group averages.

The 'One Drop' RuleMeanwhile the obsession by multiculturalists with promoting difference hascreated a new nonsensical taxonomy in which difference in itself becomes dile'supreme value. Multiple identities may be the fashionable genre but they seem to-be subordinated to the primary `racial' one. And the census ethnic categories arethemselves the result of lobbying by pressure groups not by biologists. According -to the 'one drop rule' anybody with one drop of black blood is classified as 'black'.This view, itself redolant of 'blood and soil' is welcomed by the same 'groups whoadvocate such categories as 'mixed heritage'. When the term `race' is being usedit is not clear what is being meant.

Nowhere is this more evident than the conflation, sometimes lazy,sometimes deliberate and sinister, of faith and ethnicity. This conflation is indulgedby 'anti-racists' as well as 'racists' but is not sufficiently challenged by secularistswho need to rediscover the courage of their convictions. Indeed the conflation offaith and ethnicity is being used to roll back all secularist gains of the past. The twoare clearly discrete but have been confused as overlapping, proclaimed not asbiological categories but as cultural traits which are equally unchanging.

As Malik explains it, the practice of 'anti-racism' comes self-consciously toembrace irrationality as a political strategy in order to create or entrench grouprights, precisely based on difference, as against universal humanism. In some casesit has been used to advocate affirmative action with very unimpressive results.Indeed it India it has led to a political earthquake.

Genomic and biological advance will determine the reality and extent ofdifferences and their real significance. The DNA sequence can locate probableethnic or geographical origins and this has often disproved imagined roots basedon a fictional identity. It is in health differential outcomes that race is re-emerging,


not as the focus of resistance but of demands for medicines targetting specificethnicities.

Malik's book is of importance (the bibliography and references are veryuseful) to all those who are concerned with the decay of progressive thought. Heseeks to reclaim the Enlightenment project, with its possible faults, as central tohuman progress and liberation. Unfortunately secularists cannot cover themselveswith glory because many took a leading role in creating the ideology, themisshaped rotten fruit, of multiculturalism and the constant emphasis on differenceand the dominance of subjectivity and identity over rational objective facts. Forthat reason alone his work should be warmly welcomed as a vital tool in thisdebate. However by claiming that 'both sides are wrong' in the race debate, he doesnot elaborate what the final position could be.

It is dispassionate scientific inquiry which is the sole arbiter of what we are,which may not be what ideological activists would like us to be.

VIEWPOINT

On The Relationship Between Body And MindLooking through an old copy of the Ethical Record for December 2005 myattention was caught by an article (on page II) by Alfons Grieder entitled, On theMind-Body Problem where he writes, 'I want to pick a flower in front of me; myarm stretches out and my fingers grasp it — it all seems so natural — until we try tounderstand how such collaboration (between body and mind) is possible andcomes about.'

I felt that I should like to make my own attempt to throw light on the problemwhich had been raised (i.e. the relationship between mind — or consciousawareness — and body — or action — which led me to the following thoughts. Itoccurred to me that if we are to understand the relationship, this collaborationbetween mind and body (that is to say between our becoming aware of a situationand our consequent undertaking of some action) we should start by considering,not the intention to act, but with the earlier stage (i.e. what was it that determinedone to want to engage in the action).

I would suggest that that determination or intention was created in the firstplace by the arousal in the mind of an awareness of the possibility of that action,eg flowerpicking and that this in turn arose from the effect on one's senses of whatwas then being perceived, namely a flower which was experienced as beingdesirable; in other words, what we have is the creation or the evocation of anappetite which was deemed to be both gratifiable and to warrant the execution ofan action. The senses or the imagination proposes and the body, on sufficientassurance of its being accomplishable, moves to translate appetite or desire intoaction; the body taking the steps which are deemed necessary to realise or gratifythat appetite. There is no question here of the mind making a quite arbitrarydecision or act of will and imposing it on the body but rather of its experiencingthe world either directly (as by the perception of an entity, in this case a flower) orindirectly (as by the associative evocation of a flower) inducing or arousing anappetite by way of a chain of associated memories which leads one to take the


action necessary to gratify that appetite.

The point to be appreciated here is that the awareness of any entitynecessarily invokes the body's memories of the nature of its previous experiencesin connection with that entity (or of similar entities) which are stored, as traces,within the associated neurons. Hence memory (and behaviour) is based on arecollection of the totality of one's previous sensual experience rather than being apurely mental phenomenon. In the beginning was the sensual impact!

Memory then is made up a linkage of sensual experiences which have as itwere left their mark engrained on our bodily sensitivities, on our physical reactionto our previous experiences. Hence our mental evaluation is created by ourprevious experience of a phenomenon and it is the recollection of theseexperiences which determine the nature and desirability (or otherwise) of thepossible action to be taken that will enable us to execute our intentions.

Albert Adler - London

AUBREY BOWMAN (1918-2009)President of Birminuham Clarion Choir

Vice President Workers' Music Association

John Jordon, President of the WMA Writes:In 1942 the WMA Singers started, first conducted by Arnold Goldsborough, thevery famous harpsichordist, then the well-known conductor David Ellenberg, thenthe great composer Dr. Alan Bush, then the composer John Miller. In the late 1960sthe Singers fizzled out. In the summer of 1976 Anne Gilman and Alan Bushdecided to start the choir again and asked John Jordan to conduct them. The firstmusic the choir performed was "The Mother" by Brecht and Eisler. At that timeAubrey sang with the tenors and was an excellent sight singer. We were then atWestbourne Park, our premises.

On 10 September 1976, a decision was taken to reform the WMA Singerswith John Jordan as conductor and Aubrey as pianist, great sight reader that he was.Anne Gilman and Alan Bush were the deciders and together we chose to perform"The Mother", a song cycle by Hans Eisler; the venue was to be Bath University.Written by Bertold Brecht, the German words were translated by Nancy Bush, andthe first performance was at Bath University. A difficult piece but Aubrey managedhis piano part with ease.

On 30 April 1977, the WMA put on what composer John Miller described asone of its best concerts, an "Evening of German Music". The guest of honour wasMr. W. Klötzer, Cultural Attache of the Embassy of the GDR. In the first half of theconcert Hans Eisler's cantata "The Mother" was again performed, with MyriamMason and John Webb as soloists, the WMA Singers sang the choruses, PierreMosonyi and David Silkoff were the two pianists, the conductor was John Jordan.The second half included a composition by Aubrey: "Einer ist immer schwacher alsviele", Here we see Aubrey in some illustrious company indeed.


Ray Pecg wrote of a visit to the GDR in July 1977 in which the Birmingham

Clarion Choir sang folk songs, music by Purcell, Handel, Vaughan Williams, AlanBush and Aubrey, plus some Chartist songs, also Brecht and Eisler's "UnitedFront" song. The choir also paid a visit to Buchenwald.

In 1984, the year George Orwell said our world would end, which must haveamused him, Aubrey took over as conductor of the WMA Singers and took thechoir to dozens of different venues. At some of them the MP Jeremy Corbyn waspresent. When Aubrey took the choir to the Marx Memorial Library, in December

1994, Jeremy again being present, the choir raised £270.00 for Cuba, and this wasnot the only venue where Aubrey and the choir raised money for Cuba.

In 2001, Aubrey's music was performed at Conway Hall, "The Worth of aLife" (Anne Schuman). At the WMA Christmas Concert in 2003 at Conway Hall,

Aubrey played his "Variations for piano". In December, 2004 at the dear oldConway Hall again, a round "No More Iraqs".

Sadly in 2008, Aubrey was obliged to go to hospital to get treatment for adamaged Achilles' tendon. However, after six weeks he was able to leave thehospital and, gallantly he managed to come to the WMA Summer School and hearhis "March of the Workers" sung by the big choir conducted superbly by Jane

Scott, who also teaches and conducts the Birmingham Clarion.

Aubrey also came to the 2009 WMA Summer School at Wortley to offer hisexpertise and knowledge to any student who requested it. A great manycompositions by Aubrey show his long and devoted service to good causes,

especially the gallant struggle for peace for all on our beautiful earth.

For several years, Aubrey had been slowly losing his sight and was now using

a white stick. Even so, by feeling where the keys were he was still able to play the

piano, which he did on the 10 December when the WMA Singers held their end of2009 term celebration, which I was delighted to attend. Tragically, just two dayslater, Aubrey, white stick in hand, was attempting to cross the road when he was

knocked down by a vehicle. Going in and out of consciousness, Aubrey was takento hospital where he died."No Slaves At Beck and Call, nor Life by A Master's Grace" [Berthold Brecht.]

Anne Schuman, Chair WMA, Secretary WMA Singers, writes:-My personal recollections of Aubrey began in the early 1980s when, as a John

Horrocks' Memorial Scholarship student I first attended the WMA Summer Schoolat Wortley Hall, in the year of the Miners' Strike.

Shortly after returning home, Aubrey telephoned to persuade me to join-theWMA Singers, and I told him he was knocking at an open door, and I thus began

what was to be a long and fruitful journey with the WMA the Singers and the

WMA Summer School.

As a person, I found Aubrey to be gentle and kind, always willing to explain

Ethical Record, January/ February 2010 17

in considerable detail and at leneth, whatever subject was under discussion at thetime. I attended his conducting course at the Summer School on two or threeoccasions and am certainly grateful for his many lessons in understanding music atvarious levels. He expected everyone to broaden their horizons with newexperiences — and was generous with encouragement and even occasional praise.Although he must sometimes have been frustrated if singers appeared unable toproduce the hoped-for presentation of a song or part, he never lost patience, butwould take the time and trouble to persist in his attempts to reach out to the singeror singers until success was achieved.

He had decided to retire from conducting the Singers at one point and JohnJordan was recalled, and conducted the choir for some time, withdrawing only toallow himself time to complete his opera "Dic Penderyn" and so Aubrey again tookup the baton, and was still making the weekly trip from Finchley to Red LionSquare, until his untimely demise in his 92nd year.

Aubrey wrote many songs especially for the Singers, some of which werecomposed particularly for singing on demonstrations, and he was alwaysdetermined that we would sing in Clerkenwell Green at the May Day gathering,bringing a loudhailer with him, in an effort to be heard over the sounds of thejubilant crowds of banner-waving and chanting demonstrators.

A particular aspect of Aubrey with which I was frequently involved was hismore recent song and article compositions as his failing sight made it difficult forhim to write. This exercise displayed his patience with a student — we might takeseveral sessions of two or three hours to complete a document. He would travel upto two hours each way on London's public transport system from his home inFinchley to my home in Bell Green, South London, staying for perhaps three orfour hours, until the work was completed to his satisfaction — and sometimes evenafter it had been finished, sent away for publication, he would still find room forimprovements. On one occasion at Summer School the SS Chorus was still beinggiven amendments to a piece, right up to the point when the decision was'taken asto which of the songs in their folder would be sung at the final concert — and therebylost out in the vote.

The Singers are by now used to this constant searching for perfection, andtake the amendments to the songs in their stride. A couple of years ago, in anattempt to attract new members into the Singers, Aubrey agreed to hold a shortcourse in Conway Hall, on composition. He used the first session to attempt todemonstrate how sounds are made, using the strings of the piano exposed for hisexamples, and we learned about sympathetic strings and sound wavelengths.

By the end of the course, the students together had, with Aubrey's guidance,set to music an old carol "Money, money, now Hey, Good Day!" and to open theproceedings at the 2009 WMA Singers' Solstice party Aubrey sang the refrain,solo, with his fine tenor voice.

Because we all felt it appropriate to today's financial climate, the Singers

18 Ethical Record, January/ February 2010

concluded their formal presentation with the full version. It was a fitting end to theproceedinobs, even though we were unaware it would be our last meeting withAubrey, who will be sorely missed by us all.

We shall miss his little anecdotes, his stories of incidents which befell him onhis travels with the Ballet, his phenomenal memory. We have been privilegedindeed to have had the chance to know him.

A Memorial meeting for Aubrey Bowman will be held in the Library of ConwayHall in the afternoon of Saturday 15 May 2010.

ALAN LORD (1937 - 2009)

Sue Mayer writes:-Alan was a gentle man, a kind and loving father, friend and guide to our childrenand my husband of 46 years. He was my partner, mentor and teacher who I admiredand loved and I cannot adequately express how much we will miss him.

But more than that he was a modest man with a huge intellect and a passionfor fairness in society. He was an atheist, an egalitarian, a socialist and an anti-racist through-and-through who had a passionate hatred of superstition andsectarianism. He never missed an opportunity to attack prejudice anddiscrimination from wherever it came, but never attacked ideas on other than anintellectual basis.

He was born the second of three brothers in a poor family just before WW2,and he learned his first and lifelong attitudes in the turmoil of family life on acouncil estate in South London in post-war Britain. There, in the 1940s and 50s heenjoyed the best aspects of the scout movement from which he was only alienatedin his teens by its demand for allegiance to god and the queen that he would notsatisfy.

It was there that he first showed his willingness to throw his active supportand participation into any cause or activity in which he was involved, becoming aleader and helping to organise and run activities including Xmas Pantomimes —introducing following generations of scouts to a love of nature, self reliance andcamping — and to what was for him a life-long love of the countryside, wildlife andwalking. This enthusiasm was carried on into his full and active participation inStreatham Rugby club, for which he played for many years, not just for the boozyfim of the game, but also oraanising school liaison and training programmes foryoung players.

He started work with the PLA in the London Docks at a time when there wereplenty of jobs as young people left school. Throughout his life he devoted much ofhis working and free time to the improvement of the living and working conditionsof the people around him through politics, education and trade union activities forwhich he suffered materially in the private sector when he was made redundant inmid-life. In work and out, he spent years studying to a Masters degree level,politics, philosophy, industrial relations, management and training at severalinstitutions, including the LSE and Birkbeck. During the Thatcher years and


before, he worked tirelessly for the 'Labour Party as an organiser and as a localcouncillor for New Addington using his best efforts to mitigate some of the worstproblems of those he represented and to improve public services for everyone.

Along with many other supporters of a fair and compassionate society, builton equality, a co-operative ethos, evidence and reason, he was furious at thesubversion by elitists, and all those who use their privileges of wealth andinfluence to put their own private interests before the interests of society as awhole. He had deep knowledge of labour history and the sacrifices made.

His life was blighted by the class-ridden, racist attitudes of Christian Britishsociety. As a strong, athletic, clever, working class boy he suffered the endemicElitism of a private school forced to open its privileged doors to 'scholarship boys'.Because of his darker than usual colouring, even as a white person he experiencedthe racism and abuse of white Christian Britain during his life.

As a strong atheist and secularist, Alan contributed to the secular humanistmovement locally and nationally for some 40 years. He served the NationalSecular Society as Treasurer for several years, during a critical time in itsdevelopment. He was enormously proud of the promise, at last, of theestablishment of an Atheist Society in Britain to promote a truly secular society andAtheism as the only wise and reliable ideology for a democratic country. Sadly hewill miss seeing this step come to fruition.

Despite his willingness to work publicly with others, he was an intenselyprivate person, highly intelligent, deeply thoughtful, an incisive and analyticalthinker, able to get straight to the nub of, or flaws, in an argument. He was wellread, had a deep love of literature and he spent much of his time in retirementworking in the U3A, where he started and participated in several groups. Awordsmith, he enjoyed studying history, language and the classics; his first lovewas the study of Greece and Rome, and other early civilisations. He startedcrossword groups and started, organised and ran a philosophy group for ten years,and had just started a second philosophy group for beginners.

The Atheist and Secularist movement has lost a man of great courage andintegrity from whom many members could learn a lot and draw inspiration.

The Conway Hall Jazz Appreciation Groupmeets on the third Monday of each month, except August, to listen to,discuss and enjoy jazz music in a relaxed atmosphere. We gather at 6.30pmfor a 7.00pm start and the sessions are about two hours long. Events are

usually free, with donations accepted for light refreshments.

The ETHICAL SOCIETY presents an Exhibition ofEVOLUTION: THE FOSSILS SAY YES!

Fossils selected and arran2ed by MikeHowgate - Open now - View any time


DARWINS DETRACTORSAn Exhibition at Conway Hall, Jan-Feb 2010

Quotations supplied by Elizabeth Lutgendotif of Birkbeck University

Hugh Miller (1902-1856). Scottish geologist, evangelical ChristianThe salvation of man is a far higher object than the progress of science: and we haveno hesitation in maintaining that if in the judgement of the church the promulgationof any scientific truth was more likely to hinder man's salvation than to promote it,she would not only be justified in her efforts to suppress it, but it would be herbounden duty to do her utmost to suppress it...The truth ultimately can do no harm,although, temporarily, injury may follow from an unreasonable application of it.Dublin Review, 44, (1859)

We regard this theory, which seeks to eliminate from the universe the immediate,ever-present, allpervasive action of a living and personal God, which excludes thepossibility of the supernatural and the miraculous...as practically destructive of theauthority of divine revelation, and subversive of the foundation of both religion andmoral ity.Methodist Recorder: (31 Aug 1866)

It is impossible to over-estimate the magnitude of the issue. If our humanity bemerely the natural product of the modified faculties of the brutes, most earnest-minded men will be compelled to give up those motives by which they haveattempted to live noble and virtuous lives, as found on a mistake...our moral sensewill mrn out to be a mere developed instinct...and the revelation of God to us, andthe hope of a future life, pleasurable daydreams invented for the good of society. Ifthese views be true, a revolution in thought is imminent, which will shake societyto its very foundations by destroying the sanctity of the conscience and the religioussense.Edinburgh Review, 134, (1871)

Samuel Wilberforce, 1805-1873, Bishop, Church of EnglandWe cannot, therefore, consent to test the truth of natural science by the Word ofRevelation. But this does not make it the less important to point out on scientificgrounds scientific errors, when those errors tend to limit God's glory in creation orto gainsay the revealed relations of that creation to HimselfQuarterly Review, 108, (1860)

Horace Bushnell, 1802-76, Congregational clergyman and theologianWhat is science, anyhow, but the knowledge of species? And if species do not keeptheir places, but go a masking or really becoming one another, in strangetransmutations, what is there to know, and where is the possibility of science?....Ifthere is no stability or fixity in species, then, for aught that appears, even scienceitself may be transmuted into successions of music, and moonshine, and auruoralfires. If a single kind is all kinds, then all are one, and, since that is the same asnone, there is knowledge no longer. The theory may be true, but it never can beproved, for that reason if no other. And when it is proved, if that must be the fact,we may well enough agree to live without religion"Science and Religion" Putnam& Magazine, (1868)

William Dawson, 1820-1899, Canadian geologist


It removes from the study of nature the ideas of final cause and purpose; and theevolutionist, instead of regarding the world as a work of consummate plan...approaches nature as he would a chaos of fallen rocks, which may present forms ofcastles and grotesque profiles of man and animals, but they are all fortuitous andwithout significance.The Story of the Earth and Man (Montreal: Dawson Bros., 1872)

Louis Agassiz, 1807-1873, paleontologist, glaciologist and geologistA scientific mistake, untrue in its facts, unscientific in its method, and mischievousin its tendency.Harvatd Library Bulletin XII, (1874)

Karl Ernst von Baer, 1792-1876, German biologist...This control could have been initiated only by a spiritual entity. This entity is ofcourse the Creator. The precise determination of the essence of this entity and howHe produces such a multiplicity of forms will never be decided by means ofscientific investigation.Ausburger Allgemeine Zeitung, (1873)

Annual Addresses of the Victoria InstituteRev. Robert Main, 1875With regard to The Descent of Man, undoubtedly many valuable facts have beencollected relating to the continuity of structure of the mammals, and to the habitsand instincts of the inferior animals as compared with man; but with regard to itsconclusions, which derive man's decent from the ascidian and more recently fromthe ape I, for my part, consider them as an example of the imperfect kind of use ofthe inductive philosophy, which is so frequent in the present day. The student ofnatural philosophy is, in my opinion, quite justified, on philosophical grounds, indeclining to accept the ancestry here offered to him and to rejoice still in theassurance that he was made after the moral image as his creator, who breathed lifeinto his nostrils the breath of life.

Rev. Aubrey L Moiree, 1883(Evolution in its relation to the Christian faith)[But the Catholic] knows that whatever else may be true or false, his religion isinfallibly tme ... And if in any point they should seem to clash and contradict eachother, the Catholic cleaves to that which is certain - his religion, and leaves it to timeand inquiry to clear up the difficulty.The Dublin Review, 1858

Only let our scientific friends show the people, who are quick to learn, that therewas no Adam ... that nothing certain is known, and then that chaos which set induring the lower Empire of Rome will set in here; we shall have no laws, noworship, and no property, since our human laws are based upon the Divine.Family Herald, 1861- 2

We regard this theory, which seeks to eliminate from the universe the immediate,ever-present, all-pervasive action of a living and personal God, which excludes thepossibility of the supernatural and the miraculous ... as practically destructive of theauthority of divine revelation, and subversive of the foundation of both religion andmorality.


Methodist Recorder, 1866

It is impossible to over-estimate the magnitude of the issue. If our humanity bemerely the natural product of the modified faculties of the brutes, most earnest-minded men will be compelled to give up those motives by which they haveattempted if to live noble and virtuous lives, as founded on a mistake ... our moralsense will turn out to be a mere developed instinct ... and the revelation of God tous, and the hope of a future life, pleasurable daydreams invented for the good ofsociety. If these views be true, a revolution in thought is imminent, which will shakesociety to its very foundations by destroying the sanctity of the conscience and thereligious sense.Edinburgh Review:5' 1871 review of Darwin's Descent of Man

Society must fall to pieces if Darwinism be true.Family Herald, 1871

The danger which to many observers appears to threaten the Christian cause moreseriously than any other arises from the application to it of the methods and resultsof modem science.British and Foreign Evangelical Review, 1871

FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY- OF CHARLES DARWINBy further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any saneman believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported - and that the morewe know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become, - thatthe men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almostincomprehensible by us, - that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been writtensimultaneously with the events, - that they differ in many important details, far tooimportant, as it seemed to me, to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses; - by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least noveltyor value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianityas a divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over largeportions of the earth like wildfire had some weight with me.

Disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate wasso slow that I felt no distress.

The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemedto me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered.We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell musthave been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. Thereseems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the actionof natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.

That there is much suffering in the world no one disputes. Some have attemptedto explain this with reference to man by imagining that it serves for his moralimprovement. But the number of men in the world is as nothing compared withthat of all other sentient beings, and they often suffer greatly without any moralimprovement. This very old argument from the existence of suffering against theexistence of an intelligent First Cause seems to me a strong one; whereas, as justremarked, the presence of much suffering agrees well with the view that allorganic beings have been developed through variation and natural selection.


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

Tel: 020 7242 8037/8031/4 Registered Charity No. 251396Website: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk email: [email protected]

For programme updates, email: [email protected] charge unless stated

JANUARY 2010Saturday 30 Joint CFI-SPES event: TRICK OR TREATMENT: alternative medicine on trial1045- Simon Singh, author of Trick or Treatment. Andy Lewis, runs Quackometer1500 Prof John Garrow of "HealthWatch" for proper testing of the health claims of

all therapies, alternative or orthodox. £10 on the door. Free to Friends of CFI UK,PLUS GLHA, SPES, BHA, NEW HUMANIST subscribers.

Sunday 311100 ECONOMIC INEQUALITY AND SOCIAL WELLBEING.

Prof. Richard Wilkinson on his thesis about inequality

FEBRUARY7 Sunday1100 THE ADOLESCENT BRAIN,

Sarah Jayne-Blakemore, UCL Department of Cognitive Neuroscience

1500 ATHEISM FROM ABOVE OR BELOW? Discussion

11 Thursday — SPES in association with BHA1800 DARWIN AND HUMAN EVOLUTION, Prof. Chris Stringer, Natural History

Museum (£12/£7 members) Book through BHA

1900 Book Club. Ground Control by Anne Minton

14 Sunday1100 VARIETIES OF LOVE: Interpreting Human Sexualities using Bioepisteinic

Evolution, John Hewitt

15 Monday1900 Jazz Apreciation Group

17 Wednesday — SPES SPECIAL EVENT1830 Prof. Raymond Tullis on his new book Michelangelo's Finger: An exploration qf

everyday transcendence, afterwards conversing with Brendan Larvor(University of Hertfordshire), followed by a Q and A with the audience.

21 Sunday1100 THE SELFISH GENIUS: Dawkins and the Misuse of Darwin,

Fern Elsdon-Baker, Head of the. Darwin Now project

1500 WHAT'S WRONG WITH HUMANISM Discussion

28 Sunday1100 PHILOSOPHY FOR A BETTER WORLD: A Plea for Ecohumanism,

Floris van den Berg, Utrecht University Department of Philosophy and VicePresident of Dutch Free Thought Association

1500 SCIENCE IN THE COURTROOM: An Examination of the Role Reason Plays (orDoesn't Play) in Modern Law, Derek Araujo, Vice President of CFI, USA

SPES's CONWAY HALL SUNDAY CONCERTS6.30pm Tickets £7; under 18 £3

Full details on: www.conwayhallsundayconcerts.org.uk

Published by the South Place Ethical Society, Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square. WC I R 4RLPrinted by JO. Bryson (Printer) Ltd. 156-162 High Road, London N2 9A5. ISSN 0014 - I690

society theodicy few - conway hall€¦ · the damage done by ashley montagu, the main inspiration...

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