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‘There are no atheists in foxholes’: How this humanist approaches Remembrance Day

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How do remember the dead?

How do we remember the dead? Matthew Hicks argues for an inclusive approach to remembrance.

Death is something I think about a lot. For any serviceperson or family member of a serviceperson, it is impossible not to. We are currently leaving a decade long period where friends, colleagues, brothers, sisters, mums, and dads have been repatriated injured or in boxes on a weekly basis. My job as a nurse within my current specialism requires exposure to a lot of people who are face terminal illness or are so ill that they might not respond to active treatment. That doesn’t make me an expert on dealing with death as a person. Indeed a friend recently suggested rightly or wrongly that I might have seen too much.  I honestly couldn’t tell you what the best way to deal with death is apart from talking about it as much as possible and prior planning if at all possible. What I do know however is there are ways not to deal with death and there is a phrase which comes back to haunt me numerous times which provides the perfect example

‘There are no atheists in foxholes.’

The following response to this statement is not a flag flying-exercise for atheism or indeed for Humanism as such. There are enough flaws in this statement to make it unsuitable for those even of faith as much as those who have none.

I don’t actively tell people that I subscribe to a humanist way of thinking. In my work, to do so would be inappropriate. I’ve sat and held the hands of a lady who was days away from dying who felt the compelling need to tell someone about her faith in God.  I’ve had to inform a wife that her husband didn’t make it and then listen and comfort her when she said God didn’t listen to her prayers. I have met Wiccans, Pagans, Hindus, and non-religious patients who have all faced their own journey. My overwhelming feeling as someone who has regularly nursed at the bedside of the dying is that, most of the time, people experts in their own passing. That is, with the right support, most people meet their end with dignity and wisdom in a similar way that many mothers meet childbirth: with a kind of default, inbuilt instinct. That is, of course my opinion and not something that I can verify by statistics or evidence. My viewpoint is that all people are naturally spiritual (for want of a better word).  That is: we all have a developed tendency on a lesser or greater level to consider and respond to the universe around us creatively and meaningfully. To encourage someone to be more spiritual is like trying to persuade a squirrel to be more squirrel-like. Often when people approach death, the barriers, inhibitions, and social expectations that get in the way of addressing that issue are no longer present. To that end, many of these people gain an approach to their situation that those of us who are left behind cannot even begin to comprehend or touch. Sometimes we are left behind before the loved one has even passed away.

It is for this reason alone that I have an issue with the title statement. I have heard it many times. I have heard it from (thankfully only) one hospital chaplain. I have heard it from many people who have asked me outside of work, how I think about death as someone who doesn’t believe in an afterlife. I have heard it from members of various faiths who seem to think it is evidence for the existence of ‘God’.

The issue here isn’t whether or not there’s a god. The issue here isn’t who does or doesn’t think about a god when they are faced with the end, either suddenly or protractedly. There may well be research that shows that many people do turn to God. I deliberately haven’t studied these things because for every person who finds a way to express themselves by turning to God there will be someone somewhere who expresses themselves without doing so. Everyone has the right to approach their end in whatever way they wish without those around them making assumptions about the need for faith that serve no other purpose than to ease the nerves of the person making them.

Arguably religion or ‘faith’ is a matter of language more than belief. In the UK, the stock, standard way (over the last millennia at least) has been to ponder one’s existential circumstances through prayer to a personal god. Until very recently it has been the standard for teaching children to understand their place in the universe. Many young people growing up will adopt a faith, but, increasingly these days, many will not. Some people may only adopt the language of faith, without the belief bit, out of a fondness for its narratives and conventions. Either way, it is quite understandable then that some people, when faced with a sudden realisation of likelihood of death or danger, might try to make sense, or find easy comfort, through the impossible. Fearing the inevitable, they might even pray. And yet, many atheists in foxholes will experience no such ‘reversion to type’. They are settled and comfortable in their understanding of what death really means. For many humanists, it is this same knowledge which has given meaning to their lives. The language of religion isn’t just unappealing to them; it is empty, devoid of explanatory or consolatory power.

These days, more and more people grow up without exposure to religious traditions. More and more people are making sense of their place in the world without religious faith or language. Many people even find faith in beliefs, religions or traditions that sit outside of traditional theistic belief structures. For all intents and purposes these people too can be considered atheists. To assume that everyone, in the face of danger, will turn to a god is almost like assuming people will begin speaking in French. It is an unrealistic and very unhelpful assumption.

For many people therefore, confronting death isn’t a trigger for turning to religion. God is no longer the ‘default’ cultural setting, after all. That goes not only for those who are dying but for those who are left behind. Many people will bow their heads quietly on 11 November against the white noise of a prayer from a representative of a faith they do not belong to or affiliate with in any way. During Remembrance, or an occasion which reminds us of loved ones who are dead, we sit in our own personal or collective foxholes. Each one of us whether religious or non-religious has the right to negotiate with the cultural and philosophical resources we have grown up with, or have adopted, without being made to feel that our approach somehow falls short of a gold standard.

Wouldn’t it be something if we could find a common language through which we could collectively remember the fallen, one which fulfils and refuses to compromise with our need to honour loved ones in a personal way?

Matt Hicks is a nurse in the Royal Navy as well as being one of the RN Service Representatives for the Defence Humanists. In his spare time, Matt can be found touring Devon with a bag full of songs and his ukulele. He blogs at The Wooden Duck.

 

The art of ‘losing faith’

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Where does one find meaning when they have lost their faith? That is a question that has been posed to me on numerous times as someone who was once a fully signed up member of an evangelical church who now lives within a non-religious, humanist spiritual setting.

It is only as I approach my fourth decade of life, 20 years after leaving the church that actually I realise this question has a lot wrong with it. So much so that it has possibly contributed to my taking so long to get comfortable within my own skin as a human being without a god.

The problem with the term ‘losing faith’ is that it originates from where you have come and from those whom you have left.  It is all too easy to make the assumption that this is an adequate description of someone whose previously deep belief system has been rocked and shattered to the point of non-existence. It is a term which potentially prolongs the bereavement process that a person goes through when they leave the structure of their religious community; their friends, and sometimes family, along with an underlying belief structure. A term that focusses on loss and distracts from the fruits gained.

The big misunderstanding here is that both parties i.e. those leaving and those who are being left behind, put faith in the notion that he or she who leaves religion is abandoning a bedrock of holistic security to jump into a chasm of chaos on every level. The ‘stray sheep’, ‘prodigal son’, or ‘fallen’ has left behind meaning, a moral compass, cosmic stability. Often the feeling that is ingrained in someone leaving a religion is that they are disobeying the laws of the universe itself and are therefore no longer allowed to play a part in it.

This however is just not the case on many levels. Doubt in a belief or a theory or anything you rely on is not unhealthy. It is not a sign of lack of faith but of intelligence and spiritual maturity. When someone who has come from years of adopting their parents’ faith suddenly wake up one day to find they do not believe it, it doesn’t mean they have been cosmically neglected. It means they are entering into a realisation that to continue in life with someone else’s projection of the universe is unwise, unreal, and dishonest.

My point is that faith actually is not ever lost in this process. Faith is a tool we use to gauge personal surety of the things we trust. When we redefine the parameters of what deserves our faith, when we scrutinise what we know and how it can be applied to the universe around us, we are actually tending to ‘faith’ in a diligent and mature way. We are certainly not losing it.

The other assumption is that when you leave a religion, you have to leave everything behind. A bit like leaving your company and all the bonuses and perks right down to your beloved stapler.  Leaving religion doesn’t work like that because no religion, regardless of what it professes, holds the monopoly on morality, ethics, kindness, or truth. Indeed it is only on leaving some of these groups that it becomes clear that they have little grip on any of these things.  Often people leave the faith of their birth because they realise that they cannot fulfil the full extent of their sense of compassion towards their fellow humans or indeed animals. Religion doesn’t give you your license to be kind or be compassionate. In fact should there be a god, then surely your existence at his/her hand is authority enough for you to promote kindness without needing to use their name to do so. Surely you are already an expert in compassion if you have been made, as some beliefs profess, in the image of an all compassionate being.

Often one leaves their religion because it’s a coat that just doesn’t fit any more. That may be because of what you do or don’t believe, but often it is simply because you are no longer able to respond to the language of that faith.

Sat here now, I honestly cannot recall the time I stopped believing in God. I suspect I never believed in one. Rather, I realised gradually that the language used to portray god and respond to the universe was a human construct and not a cosmic or divine one. Man makes his god in his image. It is never the other way around. Islam in part recognises this by not allowing images of Allah; Judaism recognises this by restricted the names given God. I didn’t stop believing in God so much as the language and the concept surrounding God merely became impotent. It lost its relevance to the point that to even question whether or not such a being existed was irrelevant. God, if you like, imploded as much linguistically as philosophically.

The trick then of moving up and outwards in your faith is not to find another set of beliefs but merely to find a language which you find you can respond to fully. That may involve another set of beliefs, it may not. Belief or lack thereof is so much less important than the community in which you embed. Often a person moves from their religion because, for them that community is no longer fit for purpose. It no longer bears the fruit of compassion and love that it professes to deliver. That has nothing to do with belief but everything to do with the human qualities of compassion. If a community lives with a language of love and compassion but then uses it as a set of euphemisms for oppression, staleness both in its human interaction and its language sets in. ‘Falling away’ then becomes a noble act rather than a sinful one.

A few of us have found some sort of home within Humanism. I like not knowing. I like testing everything I think I know is true. I like my world being rocked if at the end of it it makes me a better person. My embedding within Humanism is not to embrace the certainty of science but certainty of its processes. The aspiration to be humble enough not to assume knowledge but wrestle with it until it’s the closest thing that resembles the truth for that brief moment in time. It is the excitement that comes with being proved wrong only to find something more true. It is the fruits of doubt. Humanism doesn’t fulfil that in itself. It’s not a package you sign up to and find sudden fulfilment. It’s a process and an attitude one can adopt. It is a tool to help you aspire to being the best person you can be. Humanism isn’t the answer, it just demands you ask the right questions whilst showing compassion and respect to those around you. That approach leaves me free to respond to the world around me with a language and creativity which is true to itself whether its in the way I act or whether I’m blurting out beatles songs on my ukulele. These are my voice, my actions, my accountability my blank canvas. At this stage then it is difficult to recall what it was I ever thought I’d lost.

 

Matt Hicks is a nurse in the Royal Navy as well as being one of the RN Service Representatives for the Defence Humanists. In his spare time, Matt can be found touring Devon with a bag full of songs and his ukulele. He blogs at The Wooden Duck.

Our commitment to challenging faith-based homophobia

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Cutting Edge Consortium founder Maria Exall writes about the impact of faith-based homophobia on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in this country and around the world. 

Human rights activist Peter Tatchell at London Gay Pride, highlighting the role religion plays in propagating homophobia around the world.

Human rights activist Peter Tatchell at London Gay Pride, highlighting the role religion plays in propagating homophobia around the world.

For lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people of faith, official Church teaching on sexuality and gender identity is cruel. Despite the welcome tolerant stance of Pope Francis at the recent Synod on the Family in Rome and the increasingly warm words from Archbishop Justin Welby, there is a long way to go before the diversity of sexuality and gender is promoted by religious leaders as a positive aspect of human life.

Despite the development of a progressive consensus on LGBT rights over the past two decades in the UK, the leadership of the vast majority of the Churches are islands of continuing prejudice, with some honourable exceptions including the Quakers and Unitarians. Such positions are not, of course, the sole prerogative of Christian leaderships. They are often reflected in the kind of violent statements and actions which have emanated from some Muslim and Orthodox Jewish leaders and organisations, but the situation in the Christian Churches is a source of continuing concern.

Church leaders in the UK could speak out in their worldwide communions for more tolerance, but they have remained quiet when anti-homosexual legislation was introduced in Nigeria, Uganda, and Russia, and they fail to stand up for LGBT asylum seekers when they are treated disgracefully by the UK Border Authority. And it should not be forgotten that the leadership of the Anglican Churches, the Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelical Alliance, and many other Christian organizations opposed at every stage the comprehensive equality legislation on sexual orientation and gender identity brought in by UK Governments over the past two decades.

Now however there appears to be a heeding of the ‘sign of the times’. There is a real possibility of a shift towards a pastoral approach that embraces the principle of the dignity of the human person in both the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches, the most numerous Christian denominations in the UK. But that very possibility has fired up the increasingly desperate opposition. In an attempt to stem the liberal tide they are now focused on disciplining their clergy and theologians.

The situation of Jeremy Pemberton, the Anglican priest denied a license to practice as a hospital chaplain by his Bishop because he is married to another man, is the most recent sign of this. And there is no evidence this paranoia will end in the near future with the withdrawal of Reform, the inappropriately named conservative grouping, from the internal Anglican talks on homosexuality.

In the Roman Catholic Church, the theologian Tina Beattie has been banned from speaking in church premises by the Diocese of Edinburgh due to her support for the right of Catholics to vote for same-sex marriage legislation.

But the homophobic and transphobic stance of these Church leaders is not supported by the majority of lay Christians — the faithful have moved on. As the work of Linda Woodhead and others has shown, Christians in the UK overwhelmingly accept the diversity of human sexuality and gender identity in our society with the views of older churchgoers and those with conservative evangelical theologies the only significant variance.

LGBT people of faith deserve the blessing of their churches for their loving relationships and their rainbow families. The eventual acceptance of LGBT equality by the Christian Churches will be a step change in fighting homophobia and transphobia in the UK and will help in the struggle for LGBT rights worldwide. This fight for tolerance within religion is a fight we all have to win.

Maria Exall is founder member of the Cutting Edge Consortium, an alliance of LGBT faith groups, humanists, trade unionists, and community activists all campaigning against faith-based homophobia and transphobia.

Register now for the Cutting Edge Consortium Conference 2014 at Conway Hall on 1 November by visiting the website. Speakers include humanists Andrew Copson, Peter Tatchell, and Lord Michael Cashman,

Happily Godless

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Tony Akkermans shares a short excerpt from his book, Happily Godless.

Happily Godless: Tony Akkermans shares his thoughts on Humanism, and much else, in this book, released 29 August 2014.

Happily Godless: Tony Akkermans shares his thoughts on Humanism, and much else, in this book, released 29 August 2014.

Once upon a time there was, in the Western world at least, but a single god. Closely defined with clear-cut attributes. Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent. In fact so many omnies that from here on in I shall refer to him as Omnigod. I am talking, of course, about the god of the Bible and the Koran, the creator of heaven and earth. A hands on god who controls every happening here on earth, who is compulsorily worshipped in school assembles, who is at the heart of church services, who hears prayers and who, if they cross themselves in good time, makes footballers score goals.

For some two thousand years this father figure god has had a very good run for his money. He has been feared and worshipped unfailingly and his every capricious move has been meekly documented and accepted. But things are changing. All is not well with Omnigod. Wicked, troublesome rationalists have started ganging up on him. They have been pointing out major weaknesses in his lifestyle, such as the total lack of evidence for his existence. This is greatly worrying his self-appointed representatives on earth. All the great minds in the churches have got together in a telephone box and have racked their brains over a proper line of defence. After Herculean metaphysical labours, laced with much prayer, they have come up with the solution: Omnigod must be given a makeover.

A collection of brand new words and phrases have been brought to bear. Out goes the Omni and in comes the obfuscation. God is now the ‘Ground of all Being’ he is the ‘Ultimate Reality’. He is unfathomable, ineffable and unknowable. He is woollier than a champion sheep. Let Dawkins try and shear him now. The trouble is that if rationalists can’t get to grips with such an elusive customer, then his befuddled apologists can’t either. As Freddy Ayer has said in Language Truth and Logic: if things are unknowable there is no point in entering into further discussion. After all, unknowability and nothingness have much in common. So ‘Blurry God’ as I shall dub this ineffable creature won’t let the religious off the hook. Nice try Don Cupitt, Paul Tillich and the rest, but it must be Omnigod or nothing.

But boy, oh boy is Omnigod on thin ice these days! When he was the idol of the desert tribes his fiefdom was restricted to the sun, the moon and pancake earth. The size of real estate a god worth his salt could manage. But, it turns out, the acreage has grown. Let me give you two remarkable statistics: there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth. And more staggering still: light from the exploding star GRB 090423 has taken 13 billion years travelling at the speed of light to reach us. (To give you an idea of the magnitude of 13 billion you would not reach that number if you counted uninterruptedly for more than 400 years). Bearing in mind that a single light-year represents a distance of 6000 billion miles this would tend to hint at the insignificance of our otherwise so self-important little planet earth.

Within this mind-numbingly huge universe there must be many other civilisations that would demand God’s undivided attention. Think of the trillions of prayers that must be answered or arbitrarily ignored; and if you are a football fan think of the all the wonderful goals scored with God’s help on all the pitches in the galaxies. The theologians have the answer (if they don’t they always make one up): God is Omnipotent and moves in mysterious ways. But so does Santa Claus in his annual toy deliveries. For centuries men of God have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing. There is a choice here: resort to increasingly contorted explanations or simply conclude that God is imaginary.

Omnigod’s biggest bugbear of course is the problem of evil. For human induced catastrophes such as murder, mayhem and war, Omnigod’s apologists think they have found a clever get out clause: free will, it’s the people’s fault, God is off the hook. This expedient may be sufficient to mollify the unthinking flock but cuts no ice with rationalists, who are in the habit of thinking things through. The free will idea goes as follows: God is in charge of the boardroom decisions while we, the minions on the shop floor, may decide the petty detail. If we get it wrong we must carry the can because God is too busy with the bigger picture. But this convenient division of responsibility must have its limits. There must be a point where certain misdemeanours by the workers are of such a magnitude that they endanger the corporation’s survival and can no longer be ignored by the MD. Free will and Omnigod’s overall control are mutually exclusive. If Omnigod allows the Germans the free will to vote for Hitler and he also allows Hitler the free will to murder six million Jews, then Hitler is running the show and Omnigod is a cowardly bystander pretending not to notice. Would it not have been the decent thing to zap Adolf with a heart attack?

To crank this up a little further I have devised the ultimate freewill test. Suppose a deluded Ayatollah, wishing to meet his 72 virgins in paradise or an Armageddon-crazed redneck fundamentalist, hoping to be raptured soon, managed to get hold of an arsenal of nuclear weapons and employed his acolytes to plant devices in all population centres of the world and that all the bombs were connected by mobile phone signals to his hideout, where he is sitting with his finger poised over the button. Ready to blow God’s beautiful creation to smithereens. (a fanciful scenario I admit, but you get my drift). The ultimate moment of truth. Would God strike him dead or would he have to shrug his shoulders and say: “well, I have granted this person free will – do your worst; no exceptions to my scheme, nothing I can do about it”? At that point theologians must stop waffling and make up their mind. Either they must say that God would act to stop the earth’s destruction or they must allow that a mere human being has become more powerful than God. If, as I suspect, they would argue that God would act, they would have to face the follow-up question: if he can act now, why not in Auschwitz, why not in Dunblane? Why not in thousands of other dreadful scenes of human suffering? And if God cannot or will not act, where is the justification for all the centuries of worship and prayer?

Tony Akkersmans is the author of Happily Godless: Humanism for a Better World, which is available to buy on Amazon.

The Epicurean revival

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Hiram Crespo writes for HumanistLife about the philosophy of Epicureanism, and argues that is has made a resurgence in modern works of positive psychology. 

Stumbling upon happiness in the garden of Epicurus? Flowers: Tim Daniels.

Stumbling upon happiness in the garden of Epicurus? Flowers: Tim Daniels.

As the annals of history have it, in the sixth century Emperor Justinian had all the schools of philosophy that competed with Christianity finally closed. This was the last we heard of the Epicurean School, whose tradition had remained culturally vibrant for seven centuries. Epicurus had been among the first to propose the atom—2,300 years ago—the social contract as a foundation for the rule of law, and the possibility of an empirical process of pursuit of happiness: a science of happiness. These progressive schools were oases of tranquility, reason and pleasure known as Gardens, where the ideals of civilized friendship flourished and men, women and even slaves engaged in philosophical discourse as equals.

If any set of doctrines can be considered the foundation of the Epicurean philosophy, it would be the Tetrapharmakon: the Four Remedies. For didactic purposes, the teachings were imparted in the form of short, easy to memorize adages. There are, to be fair, many more than four remedies in Epicureanism. However, these are known to be the core of the teaching out of which the rest of the philosophy flows:

Do not fear the gods
Do not fear death
What is pleasant is easy to attain
What is painful is easy to endure

In his Principal Doctrines 11-12, Epicurus argued for the study of science as a way to emancipate ourselves from irrational fears. For naturalists who don’t believe in gods or spirits, the first two negative statements may be translated as ‘Do not fear chance or blind luck, for it is pointless to battle that which we have no control over. It generates unnecessary suffering’.

Roman Epicurean poet Lucretius, in his De Rerum Natura, dedicates long portions of the philosophical poem to explaining how natural phenomena such as lightning and the movements of heavenly bodies are not the work of the Gods and that fear of the Gods is inconsistent with civilized life. Since he was unable in those days to produce a fully scientific theory to explain all these phenomena, he provided several possible theories for many of them without officially endorsing one, and humbly acknowledged that future thinkers would prove the main points of his naturalist and scientific cosmology, which they eventually did. And so we can say that his basic attitude was a sound one, and also that he respected our intelligence enough to not exhibit arrogance and certainty where he did not have conclusive theories. He allowed time to prove him right … and sincere.

That the prohibition against fearing the Gods, and against fear-based religion in general, is the first and main taboo in Epicurean philosophy, remains refreshing to this day.

The second remedy is elaborated in a series of teachings and aphorisms which serve as a form of cognitive therapy to deal with the trauma of death. Among them, the most memorable is the purely hedonistic one. It is summed up thusly:

Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not

There is also the symmetry argument, which compares the time after our death to the time before our birth of which we have no memory. Since there is nothing there, why fear it? It is as unintelligent to be needlessly tormented about the afterlife as it is to be tormented about the state prior to birth. I frequently argue that it wasn’t just the teachings, but the manner in which they were imparted –within the context of a loving community of philosopher friends– that served as a consolation and that it is impossible to replicate the peace and conviction that Epicurus gave humanity without this sense of community.

The latter two positive statements in the Tetrapharmakon lead to Epicurean teachings on how we should evaluate our desires and discern which ones are unnecessary versus which ones are necessary, which ones carry pain when satisfied or ignored versus which ones don’t. By this analytic process, one learns to be content with the simple pleasures in life, those easiest to attain and which carry little to no pain. It is here that the real fruits of Epicurean insight begin to be reaped. The best things in life are free.

One of the first psychological tasks of every Epicurean is to become mindful of his/her desires and whatever pain or anxiety they may be generating. Another task is to learn to relish and appreciate the simple things when they’re in front of us. The good friends, the good foods and the refreshing beverages, the family, the good music, our proximity to nature, even our view of the sky which (as Carl Sagan advised us) should always humble us.

The good news, according to Epicurus, is that happiness is easily attained if we cultivate philosophy. He cites the need for thankfulness and for robust friendships as fundamental ingredients for the good life, and not only categorizes desires but also discerns between kinetic (active) pleasures that happen when we satisfy a desire, and katastemic (inert) pleasures that happen when we have no desires to satisfy, which he labeled as superior.

Harvard psychologist and happiness researcher Dan Gilbert confirms Epicurus’ insights, including how meaningful relations significantly increase the amount of pleasure and of memorable experiences that we gather throughout our lifetime. He uses different verbiage: natural happiness is that attained when we satisfy a desire (kinetic pleasure, in Epicurean parlance) whereas synthetic happiness is that which we enjoy regardless of attaining desires (katastemic pleasure).

Because synthetic happiness requires no externals, it is therefore superior, it is a sign of a liberated being. He argues the case for synthetic happiness by citing the example of the lottery winner and the paraplegic who exhibit similar levels of happiness one year after winning the lottery and losing the lower limbs, respectively. These cases had been studied by happiness researchers Brickman et al.

This, in positive psychology, is being called the hedonic treadmill or hedonic adaptation: the habitual happy state that we always return to. Methods are being researched to increase the heights that are normal for each individual.

Gilbert’s theories, as far as I’m concerned, are Epicureanism by another name. One of the elements of Epicurean teaching that philosophers have struggled with the most throughout history is the idea of katastemic pleasure. It is often argued that lack of pain is not a definition of pleasure, but this is the art of happiness that Epicurus taught: that we must learn to be happy regardless of external factors and that it’s possible and desirable to cultivate katastemic pleasures via the philosophical disciplines. In fact, Epicurus argues that the very purpose of philosophy is to ensure an end to suffering and to create a beautiful, happy, pleasant life.

Gilbert’s research upholds katastemic pleasure as a necessary ingredient in human happiness and is beginning to reinvigorate the discourse on the philosophy of happiness that Epicurus had begun, and which was interrupted by Justinian 1,500 years ago. He also adds new concepts to our science of happiness and even proposes that we have a psychological immune system that fights unhappy moods.

Gilbert’s findings, along with research dealing with wellbeing in fields such as neuroscience and diet, point modern Epicureans in the direction of an interdisciplinary, practical reinvention of philosophy, which is just what we need if philosophy is to become once again the revolutionary, emancipatory cultural engine that it once was.

As to the Fourth Remedy, Epicurus reminded us of the temporal nature of bodily pain. We may get a fever, or a stomach ache, but within days our immune system fights it. In the case of more chronic pains, one gets used to them after some time. In nature, no condition lasts forever. The impermanence of all conditions is a consolation when we consider whatever pain they generate. A dismissive attitude towards pain takes discipline but it can be cultivated if we are mindful, disciplined, and develop a resolve to protect our minds.

Then there are mental pains and anxiety. These are systematically worked through via cognitive therapy. The resolution to follow Epicurus is a resolution to protect one’s mind. It’s impossible to be happy if we can’t control our anger and other strong emotions: we will go from one perturbed state to the next and never taste the stability of ataraxia, which translates as imperturbability and is the ultimate maturity that a philosopher can reach.

We live in a dysfunctional consumerist society filled with anxiety and neuroses, where few people analyse their life, most have a short attention span and are usually uninterested in disciplining their minds and curbing mindless desires. If philosophy is understood as the Epicureans understand it, then it becomes evident that people desperately need philosophy today.

Many more things could be said about the consolations of Epicurean philosophy. I leave my readers with an invitation to study Epicurus and engage themselves and others in philosophical discourse. I promise that your life will be enriched.

Hiram Crespo is the founder of societyofepicurus.com and the author of Tending the Epicurean Garden (Humanist Press, 2014).

Defending morality undermines your values

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Sean Spain responds to a recent article on HumanistLife with a novel solution to the ‘is-ought’ problem.

'We will act compassionately towards one another. We will act fairly towards one another. We will be kind to one another.' Photo: Jesslee Culzon.

‘We will act compassionately towards one another. We will act fairly towards one another. We will be kind to one another.’ Photo: Jesslee Culzon.

I recently read an article by George Keeling, mounting a defence for humanist morality. The crux of the argument is that morality is the natural expression of advantageous evolutionary activities – ‘[That] moral passions exist to ensure co-operation and ultimately the perpetuation of our genes’.  Social co-operation is the grounding of this morality, and can be seen to be advantageous to species across the animal kingdom. Man, it is argued, is a naturally social animal whose co-operative instinct has flourished into empathy which is unique to higher-functioning cognitive abilities. Thus the humanist morality stems from an inherent drive to treat others as they would be treated, and the humanist acknowledges this drive as his moral compass. Of course we can’t just rely on this drive to steer us all on the course to ethical action; instead we simply acknowledge the roots of our ‘disposition towards compassion, fairness and kindness’ and in doing so affirm the grounds upon which our value judgements stand.

I admire this value-compass for human action. In the reality around here, the humanist finds truth. In the world around her, she finds wonder; in the society around her, she is optimistic; in her intuition, and the knowledge of its emergence, she finds an ethical grounding.

But Ethics demands more from us than this. Co-operation may be advantageous to my survival, but that doesn’t necessarily make it ethically good. I may feel compassion towards the members of my group, but that won’t suffice to justify my command for others to not harm them.  It can’t be good because it is: a statement which outlines what is can’t be used to logically deduce what ought to be. The two are different statements in kind and as such need a mediating principal as justification. Once this mediating principal is introduced (e.g. a utilitarian framework) then the ethical discourse becomes one of choosing X over why; and the mediating principal props up the ought – the is becomes redundant.

Hume realized this:

‘I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, ’tis necessary that it shou’d be observ’d and explain’d; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.’[1]

Translated, Hume observed that there is a jump in reason when one presents phenomena which is the case (i.e. co-operation, and empathy, are evolutionarily advantageous- and may even perhaps be argued to be the etymological roots of our notions of morality) and then deduces from it that what is the case ought to be. The justification of a moral proscription must be grounded in reasoning beyond just the description of events.

The burden of an ethical framework demands an external justification for the Ought. Plato grounded his idea of the ‘Good’ in a plane of the forms; religion finds good in ‘God’. Even philosophers like Kant, who have attempted to reposition the notion of what is good, systematically ground its value beyond themselves- in something absolute, and metaphysical.  What is often forgotten in these ethical systems is the appeal to a position of value as something which is beyond the world as it is. They do this because they have to. Ethics demands a firm ground for value which must be more than a description of events, or relative in a mechanistic world-view.

But there is an alternative approach.

Wittgenstein realised this problem of value, and the implications which the value problem had for ethics and more fundamentally aesthetics.

In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein notes:

6.4 ‘All Propositions are of equal value.’[2] ( clarification: Truth propositions)

6.41 ‘…In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value – and if there were, it would be of no value.’[3]

6.42 ‘Hence there can be no ethical propositions.’[4]

A fact, what is, can’t have a value in itself. The values around us are valuable to us, not outside of us. The value of co-operation might be found in the benefits of an improved feeling of safety among each other; a personal satisfaction may be felt when an empathetic urge is fulfilled; we feel relief when our compassion for an individual in danger is rewarded with their safety. The value is a feeling. But ethics demands an external ground for this value to meet the requirements of absolutism. Thus throughout history we have tried to establish this value and in doing so have had to ground it in metaphysical postulations, or religious gods.

The problem is the ethical discourse itself.

The solution? Don’t try to defend morality. It’ll undermine your value system, and the values of your actions. Reject the discussion of ethics because it is misleading. We don’t need to rationally defend what is good. We feel it is good. It shows itself to be good. But the good we make use of isn’t some ethereal absolute – it is a dependent evaluation which is justified by our empathetic intuition and intellectual reasoning.

And the same purposes can be fulfilled. We will act compassionately towards one another. We will act fairly towards one another. We will be kind to one another.

And if you are asked to defend what someone else deems your morality, you can respond in the infamous words of Wittgenstein:

  1. ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’.[5]

Sean Spain is an undergraduate student of Easter & Western Philosophy. He is primarily interested in the Philosophy of Language & Value- particularly in their application to ‘real-world’ events

 

Notes

[1] Hume, David ‘Treatise of Human Understanding’, end of section 3.1.1.

[2] Wittgenstein, Ludwig ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosohicus’, pp. 29-31.

[3] Ibid Wittgenstein, Ludwig

[4] Ibid Wittgenstein, Ludwig

[5] Ibid Wittgenstein, Ludwig

In defence of humanist morality

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Geoff Keeling contemplates the biological origins of morality and ethics in humans.

Something about Hobbes

Thinkers like Thomas Hobbes believed that, short of the social contract, human nature only afforded humans a life that is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. 

I recently watched a conversation between WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek and the American conservative David Horowitz. In the heat of the argument Horowitz made the following claim:

‘War is the natural condition of mankind. There’s always been wars – right? From the beginning – and many of them. Peace occurs when there’s a concert of powers or a single power that could intimidate would-be aggressors.’

I couldn’t help biting my tongue here. As a humanist I believe in the inherent goodness of human beings. That we can be good – and that we are good – for the sake of goodness itself. Religious people sometimes ask sceptical questions about my ‘humanistic morality’. The idea is foreign to them because their thinking is grounded in the idea that ‘War is the natural condition of mankind’. In this article I want to defend the humanistic idea of natural morality. I hope it will be useful for other humanists facing the same questions.

Horowtiz’s thinking is based on the work of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes’ basic idea can be summarised as follows:

‘There must be some coercive power to compel men equally to the performance of their covenants by the terror of some punishment greater than the benefit they expect by the breach of their covenant’[1].

Thinkers like Hobbes and Horowitz believe that humans existed in a state of nature before political society. It’s only through a social contract that we liberate ourselves from barbarism. In the Hobbesian state of nature life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Modern human morality is a veneer: the Freudian superego that struggles to restrain our savagery. But as any social anthropologist will explain: there has been no period where humans lived outside of political society. This is also true of bonobos and chimps – our nearest evolutionary cousins – who have complex matriarchal and patriarchal societies respectively. The first step to refuting the idea of a ‘moral veneer’ is to show that humans never existed in the warlike state of nature.

The next step is to refute a common misunderstanding about evolution. The phrase survival of the fittest doesn’t lend itself to images of altruism and fairness. But in many cases organisms with genetic pre-dispositions towards co-operation have the upper hand when it comes to natural selection. A popular example is the ‘insurance policy’ that vampire bats have developed over food-allocation. It doesn’t take long for a bat to starve to death. But on any given night, it’s likely that a non-trivial percentage of the colony will come back on empty stomachs. In this instance the unsuccessful bats beg their peers to regurgitate some blood and feed them. And their peers usually do.

This may seem counter-intuitive. Surely, natural selection ought to preserve the best hunters? But think about it this way. Two randomly selected bats in the colony have a reasonable chance of sharing some DNA. Siblings share 1/2 of their genes and cousins 1/8. The bats need not know which of their fellow-bats is related to them. Do not let fellow bats die will increase the probability that their genes stored in other bats (including genes that code for co-operation) will be passed on to the next generation. This is because the set of related bats is a large subset of the colony, so there is no hard selection pressure for a more specific rule. There is also a second benefit. In the near future the regurgitator herself might be close to starvation. In sharing now she is more likely to receive blood when she needs it most[2].

Robert Trivers outlines the extent of natural co-operation in his paper The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism[3]. Co-operation ranges from the symbiotic relationships of cleaner fish and their hosts, to birds warning their flocks when predators are near. But morality is more complex than simple co-operation. The distinction is that the co-operative instinct in higher primates is grounded in empathy: the ability to stand in another’s shoes. And our empathy is not just towards each other. Frans de Waal recalls a bonobo who nursed an injured bird back to health[4]. Humans often put themselves at substantial risk to save animals and other humans.

The brilliant thing about evolution is its use of general rules. Be nice to those you meet is much easier to code for than Be nice to close relatives – the latter of which is largely unnecessary as primates tend to grow up in the company of relatives. It’s these general rules that enable us to develop elaborate social constructs that underpin human morality. Evolution has programmed us to see empathy as a reward in itself. Evolution is indifferent to whether the biochemical reward comes via a religious framework or secular principles. What remains universal is the human propensity towards goodness. The Scottish philosopher David Hume observed:

‘How great soever the variety of municipal laws, it must be confessed, that their chief out-lines pretty regularly concur; because the purposes, to which they tend, are everywhere exactly similar.’ [5]

Though social anthropologists have observed huge variation in cultural traditions, the human moral passions exist to ensure co-operation and ultimately the perpetuation of our genes. But it’s so important to appreciate that this series of mutations – which has led to genuine compassion for others, is a real force that exists in each and every one of us. The fact that evolution has preserved this disposition doesn’t mean that kindness is just an evolutionary mechanism. With the constant barrage of ISIS atrocities and stories of lavish-bonuses in the finance sector, it’s easy to forget that although humans are capable of great wrongdoing, our natural stat is not one of war but of understanding. At the core of human nature – whether religious, secular or spiritual, is a profound evolutionary disposition towards compassion, fairness and kindness.

Geoff Keeling studies in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics. He is a humanist interested in philosophy of biology and cognitive science. He can be reached at g.keeling@lse.ac.uk.

 

Notes

[1] Thomas Hobbes (1651) Leviathan

[2] See O Curry (2005) Morality as Natural History or R Dawkins (1976) The Selfish Gene for a good explanation of this. For the original paper see GS Wilkinson (1988) Reciprocal Altruism in Bats and Other Mammals Ethology and Sociobiology pp85 – 100

[3] R Trivers (1972) The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism Quarterly Review of Biology pp35-57

[4] F de Waal (2005) Our Inner Ape Granta Books p2

[5] David Hume (1989/ 1777) Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals Oxford University Press p202

The joy of changing one’s mind

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James Miller reflects on a particular privilege of those who base their opinions on evidence.

This article will end with a question for you all. But first I want to talk about something that I’ve found to be one of the most mentally rejuvenating experiences one can have: changing your mind.

Despite a reputation among my peers as an inexorable foe when debating, a rock in the river that none of their ideas cling to, many of my opinions are radically different now to how they were five years ago.

To name a few: I was against the 2003 invasion of Iraq until I learnt more about Saddam Hussein; I was much more sceptical of climate change before reading more studies and reports; I supported more ‘terror laws’ until I learnt more about civil liberties. Animal rights? Didn’t really give two hoots until I thought about what it really meant. The ever-controversial Hijab? I was very against it, until I realised that I was holding it to a different standard to Christian nuns’ headwear. (The niqab – covering the face – I still think is degrading and disempowering).

All of these things, you’ll notice, were basically ill-thought out opinions that I moved beyond by learning. I’ve voraciously consumed book after book to find out more about the world and the people in it, and it’s such a rewarding experience.

Much like the tipping point when putting together a jigsaw, the true picture of things starts to appear. And while the final piece of the puzzle will never slip into place, because (sadly!) you can’t know everything, the feeling that you’ve just arrived at an informed, supported and well-reasoned opinion about the world is almost dizzying. Especially so if it contradicts something you once held to be unshakeably true.

So why don’t we see more people changing their minds? I was astonished a few months ago when the former Archbishop of Canterbury changed his mind in the ‘right-to-die’ debate. It was the first time I’d seen someone in the public eye with a previously-entrenched opinion change their mind so radically. I couldn’t stop talking about it.

But that’s one case. It’s just one instance where someone has come out and figuratively said: ‘I now disagree fundamentally with the opinion I held previously.’ It almost seems brave, doesn’t it?

I think that perhaps there are two facets to why we don’t see this happen more. There’s how we receive ideas, and also how they’re linked to notions of identity.

The majority of us learn our first ideas from our parents, teachers, and friends. We all know that most Christians had Christian parents, most Muslims have Muslim parents etc. (I’d wager that most Conservatives, Labourites or Lib Dems have parents who instilled those views into them too). And in our younger years opinions are like fashions – you want the ‘right’ ones to fit in with your peers.

It’s only as we get older that some of us really start to look to the world – rather than the people we’re close to – to inform our views. My own anecdotal experience suggests that not everyone does this. It seems that often people accept points made on the basis of authority, or tradition, and don’t have an internal drive, or mission, to find out what they themselves actually make of things.

Which leads on to the second point: ideas as identity. It’s hard not to bundle the two things together sometimes. We hear sentences that start: ‘As a Christian…’, ‘The Conservatives think that…’. or ‘A socialist view would be…’. These constructs are allowing ideas or ideologies to govern who we are, rather than using who we are to form our ideologies.

And it’s something that we’re all often guilty of. I’ve caught myself before saying ‘As a humanist…’ at the start of a sentence. This is limiting – it’s suggesting that my view is couched in a set of values that are prescribed by a group. What I really mean is that I have taken a particular view point, and that view blends in with the backdrop of humanism.

Tying together ideas and identity can dangerous. It can be allowing oneself to be absorbed into tribalism, or group think. A desire to conform to the rules or lines of thinking set down by others: ‘I believe x, because x is what a Christian/Buddhist/capitalist/feminist should think.’

Just as silly, and equally lazy, is imposing such constraints from the outside-in. Racism, sexism, homophobia – these are all things that only persist because we marry ideas and identities. A racist viewpoint is largely saying ‘I don’t like Black/white/Asian people because I believe x, y and z to be true about all Black/white/Asian people.’ It’s a patently absurd view to take, but it persists nonetheless.

I’ve been personally riled up by it on a few occasions. Seeing articles or videos that lump atheists together, or suggest that ‘atheism is turning into a religion’ boil my blood. Does anyone seriously think that a lack of belief in something is enough to successfully predict what that person does believe?

These are the kinds of things we need to deconstruct. We need to untie ideas from identity, and encourage people to question their own views. Gently remind someone that believing something because their parents told them to, isn’t a particularly good reason to believe something.

What people need is to experience changing their minds on a topic that’s bigger than them. It does two things. It reminds them that most ideas don’t dictate who they are, and (for the most part) how to act each day. Changing your mind doesn’t shatter the earth beneath your feet.

But it also brings the unique delight of opening up new realms of thought and discovery. When a scientist is proven wrong, he or she goes down another avenue. We need that mentality to be more pervasive across society.

Let’s discuss concepts and ideas without cultural baggage. Let’s promote the joy of learning and seeking truth. Let’s get rid of the notion that changing your mind is a weakness, or a betrayal of your identity.

Because ultimately, ‘free thinking’ means being free to dissent, free to be sceptical, and free to change one’s mind. Your ideas might have labels for them, like humanist or Christian ideas, but I think that those labels aren’t for you as a whole.

So here’s the question I promised you at the beginning, and I’d really love to see some interesting answers: on what topic(s) have you changed your mind, and why? You never know, you might change the mind of someone else in the comment section too.

James Miller is an in-house writer for a public organisation and proud supporter of the BHA.

Humanism and ‘Ripping’ Yarns

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Matthew Hicks writes on the virtues of scepticism, and on flimsy claims about Jack the Ripper’s identity.

A certain amount of scepticism is always in order. Especially evidence is in short order, as with most claims of Jack the Ripper's identity.

A certain amount of scepticism is always in order. Especially when evidence is in short order, as with most claims of Jack the Ripper’s identity.

What would be left of Humanism if religion didn’t exist? It’s a question that is so often asked but is of course a misunderstanding of what a humanist is concerned about.

Humans are conduits of information. That is, with our five senses, we receive and send information we think is usual for day to day functioning i.e. interacting with others, avoiding or confronting danger and seeking fulfilment. You would think after 200,000 years of existence, we would be experts. Indeed, in many ways we are but we have a knack of trying to find the easiest way to do things and that on many fronts is our downfall. Humanism seeks to enable every person regardless of where they are on the planet to thrive individually and in their communities. The best way to do this, we often feel, is to learn how to receive and send information in a trustworthy and fulfilling way.

Essentially the humanist is concerned with one question, as I see it. That is:

‘What is it that we can be sure of?’

The answer is not nearly as important as the process involved in answering the question. The process involved in being a humanist lies in being sceptical about every piece of information that comes your way. We don’t do this because we’re grumpy but because it is a vitally important skill in order for us to get by in life. It affects every aspect of our life down to what mobile phone you choose to much more important issues such as what medical treatment do I opt for or, on a larger scale, how do we respond to crisis affecting us personally, our family or either nationally or globally.

This week a story came out which is a perfect test case for illustrating what I’m banging on about. According to many newspapers and news sources, ‘armchair detective’ Russell Edwards has solved the mystery of Jack the Ripper. I can see you all rolling your eyes. After all, Patricia Cornwell alleged to have done the same years ago alongside so many other authors.

The basic points are that Edwards claims, with the help of a molecular biologist, to have isolated DNA from prime suspect Aaron Kosminski and matched it with DNA on the shawl that belonged to one of Jacks victims. The account is quite convincing on many levels or rather it would be if it wasn’t subject to so many influencing factors. You do not need to be an expert in DNA or forensics to know that all this evidence would be all the more compelling if the methodology of the scientist and the results had been submitted for scrutiny in a peer led review within a scientific journal rather than an account in a commercially viable book.  By bypassing the scientific community, the author has shown either his naivety in thinking he had enough evidence or that he knew the evidence wouldn’t be robust enough at the hands of impartial scientists.

Of course the above is irrelevant. Even if you’re unaware of scientific processes, you do not need to look hard to see that this book is making a noise more for the fact that we live in an era of discontent on many levels not dissimilar to pre war Germany. Of course, in times of economic down turns there are always scapegoats i.e. immigrants.  Regardless of whether Aaron Kosminki the Polish Jew was guilty or not, he was likely a prime suspect in 1888 as much for his ethnicity as for any circumstances or evidence linking him to the murders. I would like to take a risk in suggesting that Edwards book is all the more highlighted by the media because the papers know that to put a Polish Jewish cat amongst the right wing pigeons is going to kick up a profitable storm.

We might also ask why such a story would interest us. Well, there are many reasons, but the main one is that humans in the west seemed to be obsessed with monsters. As philosopher Rene Girard once said, the most frightening of monsters are those who most closely resemble humans. Godzilla really ruffles few feathers unlike the figure of Hannibal Lecter, genius man eater who is untouchable and evil even when incarcerated. We distance these monsters though because the fear we really feel comes from realising that we are all capable of the same evils. Psychologist Dr Philip Zimbardo, famous for his 1971 Stanford prison experiment, has argued convincingly that mankind’s evils are more circumstance led than disposition led. That is a frightening thought. Good people can turn bad quite easily. In the attempt to ignore such a fact, it is very easy to point that finger away from the systems that create these monsters to easy targets that are unable to defend themselves. I am not suggesting that Edwards has a thing against Polish Jews but I am suggesting there is an underlying racism in society today that has been well stoked and will be all the more receptive to his information.

The point is that when we receive information, we can be lazy just and accept it with all the baggage of its bias and perceptions or we can ask a series of questions which will tell us whether to accept it or not. These questions are simple processes. Where has the source of the information come by it? Why is it of interest to them? How will they benefit from passing that information on? Once we have asked these questions and answered them enough to be sure that we can then dismiss or accept this information, we can then ask the following similar questions. ‘Why am I interested in this information? Will it be of true benefit to me? How will I benefit from passing on this information? What service or disservice to others will be served by passing it on?’

The process is a hard one to adopt initially but it is an important one if we are going to make claims of confronting the current threats to humanity and the world around us in order to continue living and thriving. At a time when only 11 countries out of 196 worldwide are not involved in some sort of conflict, where a third of the world’s population owns three thirds of the world’s wealth, we would do well to adopt the humanist approach. It’s not about being unable to stomach religion. It’s not about winning philosophical points about theism. You just have to watch Richard Dawkins interview with the Bishop of Oxford on YouTube to realise that it is misinformation that bothers Dawkins rather than religion itself. For me, Humanism is about casting aside irrational fears far enough to empower each and every one of us to live in personal and collective peace.

Matt Hicks is a nurse in the Royal Navy as well as being one of the RN Service Representatives for the Defence Humanists. In his spare time, Matt can be found touring Devon with a bag full of songs and his ukulele. He blogs at The Wooden Duck.

Humanist Heroes: Roy and Hayley Cropper from Coronation Street

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Screen and stage writer Rob Fraser writes about his humanist heroes: Corrie‘s Roy and Hayley. 

Roy and Hayley

Hayley Cropper (Julie Hesmondhalgh) and David Neilson (Roy Cropper) are Rob Fraser’s humanist heroes. Photo: ITV.

True To Character.

First, a confession: I am a deeply religious person. I began practising my faith at the age of six which I know many would consider too young, and it’s true that there was an element of parental indoctrination – this was a belief system I shared with my mother. We would attend a ceremony together two evenings a week, fifty two weeks a year. Later, there would be more opportunities to celebrate, almost on a daily basis, but it was the twice weekly observance which formed the bedrock of my faith and remains a comforting ritual some thirty seven years since the (half) hour I first believed. Yes, for the best part of four decades I have worshipped Coronation Street.

I would happily crawl along the cobbles on my knees to the Rovers Return, like a Mexico City pilgrim approaching the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I would treat a splinter from Stan Ogden’s window cleaning ladder with the awe due a sliver of the one true cross. Alma, Curly, Hilda, Raquel, Bet –  I revered these characters in my childhood and youth as I would prophets, archangels and saints, but in adulthood two unlikely figures have ascended to truly iconic status, Roy and Hayley Cropper. The pair had inauspicious beginnings – he basically an ineffectual stalker of Deidre, she introduced as a pre-op transgender girlfriend in what was to have been a short term and potentially sensationalist storyline – in the sixteen years which followed they became the heart and soul of a hugely popular, mainstream, prime time television soap. Not only that but they served as the moral core of the show – compassionate, non-judgemental, and engaging with transformative effect in the lives of two troubled young women (Fitz and Becky) who became Weatherfield favourites. Their values were those often claimed as Christian by, well, Christians.

When Julie Hesmondhalgh decided to leave the series, a major exit strategy was required. But rather than some tabloid titillating ‘who killed character X?’ plot the writing and production team opted for a rather more mundane tragedy: Hayley would be diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer, and die. This wholly relatable storyline reflected the characters’ evolution on the show – they were an inarguably unusual couple to whom the audience felt empathy and affinity – but there was an unusual aspect in how they would handle their ordeal: Roy and Hayley would face death, grief and loss from a Humanist perspective. Capital H. Explicitly, defiantly Humanist.

Now, Roy’s atheism had been long established and tied in to his love of knowledge and his fascination with science (in fact he even lectures the Street’s most devout denizen, Emily Bishop, on the futility of ‘talking into thin air’), but Hayley had a slightly more conflicted history. She had for example, gone to great lengths to have her marriage blessed by a Church of England vicar. Even at the time this has felt more born of a desire for acceptance and acknowledgement rather than any deeply held religious belief but still her embracing of Humanism is significant. Here was a person whose entire life had been about choice and self-determination so it was perfectly logical that she should reach a/her Humanist conclusion. And so it was that in the weeks leading up to her death she met with a Humanist minister and planned her funeral: it’s become a cliché to say these services are a celebration of life but in Hayley’s case it’s the only phrase possible, there would be Queen songs and bright colours and a cardboard coffin emblazoned with flowers, carried by ‘the girls from the factory.’ All lovely stuff but the truly heroic – and I would argue truly Humanist – moments came not in preparing a send off but in dealing with death itself, when Hayley decided to end her own life.

The episode in which Hayley took an overdose and slipped calmly away in her own home, in her own bed was the highest rated of 2014 and nearly ten million viewers watched through tears as Roy lay down next to her for the last time. Coronation Street is not an avowedly political programme but it does consciously and conscientiously strive to promote acceptance and inclusion. It has gay, straight, lesbian, disabled, black, and Asian characters but none are defined by their race or sexuality – and the audience react to them based on their actions not their appearance. For no one was this more true than Roy and Hayley – initially described by onscreen neighbours as a ‘nutter’ and a ‘freak’ who became the most beloved and trusted people on TV. How fantastic then that when two caring, curious, and charitable individuals found themselves in extremis the only step they could naturally take was towards Humanism. It’s hard to say with any great certainty whether or not will prove to be one of those watershed moments when popular culture reflects changes in wider society, but to hell with certainty, I have ‘faith’.

Rob Fraser has been a television writer for fifteen years, with credits ranging from Monarch of the Glen to Taggart via Holby City, and has recently completed his second stage play, Faith School.