HumanistLife

A humanist’s encounter with faith and spirituality

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Late last year, BHA Chief Executive Andrew Copson was one of 20 commissioners working under Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss to produce the Woolf Institute’s ‘Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life: living with difference – community, diversity and the common good’. One of the report’s recommendations was: ‘It should be a high priority, not only for interfaith organisations but also for all religion and belief groups, educational institutions, public bodies and voluntary organisations, to promote opportunities for encounter and dialogue.’

So when I received an invitation from the ‘World Congress of Faiths’ to their conference in Salisbury in January 2016 I welcomed it – another sign that humanists and Humanism are being recognised as constructive players in the wider religion and belief landscape. Afterwards they asked me to do a post for their blog and a longer piece for their journal. Here’s the blog post. 

—Jeremy Rodell, BHA Dialogue Officer

Dialogue with religious believers can be tricky. First we have to get past difficult terms like 'spirituality' - or at least find a useful meaning for them.

Dialogue with religious believers can be tricky. First we have to get past difficult terms like ‘spirituality’ – or at least find useful meanings for them. Photo: Mitchell Joyce/Flickr.

‘Spiritual’ is a word most humanists avoid because of its lack of definition and its religious and pseudo-scientific connotations. And most humanists feel alienated by the word ‘faith’, regarding it as synonymous with ‘religion’ and ‘belief in the absence of evidence’. So a World Congress of Faiths conference titled Promoting spiritual life: an interfaith perspective was not my natural habitat.

On the other hand, I have had enough ‘interfaith’ experience – yes, that’s another alienating term – to know that the people involved are almost always friendly and interesting. This event was no exception and I felt welcome. My concerns about the relevance to me of substance of the conference were largely dispelled by the opening talk, An overview of current approaches to spirituality, by the Revd Canon James Woodward, Principal of Sarum College. He emphasised both that he did not know whether ‘spirituality’ was valid concept – referring to it as a ‘Polyfilla’ word – and that, as far as British Christianity in its present institutional form was concerned: ‘It is over’. That put paid to some of my preconceptions!

As Charles Clarke and Linda Woodhead say in the introduction to their 2015 paper on Religious Education ‘The last twenty-five years have witnessed some of the most significant shifts in religious belief and practice since the Reformation’. There is a rapidly emerging new British landscape in which the majority has no religious identity (already about 50% according to the British Social Attitudes survey). Many – probably most – of them are atheistic, while among the religious minority, forms of faith that are ‘stronger’ than traditional Anglicanism – especially non-denominational, notably Pentecostal, Christianity and Islam – start to predominate. I think both religious people and humanists have a common interest in helping ensure that the outcome of this huge transition is a harmonious, well-integrated (and, I would argue, secular) plurality.

However, whether we are religious or non-religious, we are all human beings with inner lives. One of the growing areas for attention by the BHA is Pastoral Support for non-religious people in hospitals and prisons. Humanists who do this work are usually embedded in chaplaincy teams and are, of course, dealing with the same type of human issues and concerns as their religious colleagues. I think this sense of ‘spiritual’ was what Dr Desmond Biddulph, President of the Buddhist Society (and a psychiatrist), was talking about in How can faiths work together to promote the value of spirituality? But I couldn’t share all of his Buddhist perspective, or the implication that the majority who are not of ‘faith’ have no part to play in helping people who need the support of an independent fellow human being. Nevertheless, in this sense of acknowledging, supporting and perhaps developing both the human inner life and our shared humanity, there is plenty of common ground.

Similarly, some humanists have, to varying degrees, uplifting experiences associated with being part of a greater whole/transcendence or even ‘near death’ or other ‘spiritual’ experiences of the type described by Marianne Rankin, Director of Communications for The Alister Hardy Trust, in The personal experience of the spiritual: its variety and commonalities. The difference is not in the subjective experience itself, which can be profound, but whether it is – to use Dr Alan Race’s term – ’embodied’, a manifestation of the brain, its chemistry and its response to stimulae, upbringing and wider society, or whether it is a manifestation of a soul and a ‘spiritual realm’ – physical versus non-physical. It was notable that Marianne Rankin’s talk did not deal with that. Perhaps wrongly, I had the impression that the Alister Hardy Trust’s library of experiences is seen as evidence in support of the ‘spiritual realm’ hypothesis, or at least that it is built on the premise that the hypothesis is true. Of course, I would point to the extensive, and growing, body of evidence for the ‘embodied’ hypothesis, and the lack of any scientifically objective evidence for the ‘spiritual realm’ hypothesis. But that difference of view does not make the subjective experiences themselves any less powerful or less universal.

In Integrating spirituality into the public realm, Dr Jonathan Rowson, former Director of the Social Brain Centre at the Royal Society of Arts, was content to use the term spirituality without the distraction of defining it. He argued that ‘spirituality’ is nothing if it is not ‘transformative’ and that meaningful transformation is not in the realm of inner contemplation, but rather should be a driver for political action to improve life for other people. For him, climate change was top of the priority list. There is no doubt that many religious people are driven to do good works by their beliefs. But, as a humanist, I do not accept the principle that somehow subjective ‘spiritual’ experience ‘ought’ to be transformative. Nor do I like the idea of invoking ‘spirituality’ to legitimise political action – just look at the US Christian Right or Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia. And I feel very uncomfortable if ‘spiritual’ motivations are elevated above other types of motivation, such as simply thinking that something is ethically right because it makes the world a better place. Many people of faith and many humanists are interested in similar areas of social and political concern – there is undoubtedly common ground here. But why bring ‘spirituality’ into it?

In response to my concerns about the ‘bagginess’ of ‘spiritual’ as a term, James Woodward challenged me to come up with an alternative and to say what I thought the meanings were. I readily admitted that I do not know of another word. But to me it is used to refer to:

  • our inner human lives, including our sense of meaning and purpose;
  • specific types of subjective experience usually described using words such as ‘transcendent’, or ‘connectedness’, ranging from the mundane to ‘peak experiences’;
  • the manifestation of a real but non-physical ‘spiritual’ realm to which some people attribute these types of subjective experiences – the territory often claimed by religion.

The woolliness of the term is illustrated by Ofsted in their definition of schools’ Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural development (SMSC): ‘Explore beliefs and experience; respect faiths, feelings and values; enjoy learning about oneself, others and the surrounding world; use imagination and creativity; reflect’.

The conference did not reduce my misgivings about ‘spiritual’ and ‘spirituality’. On the other hand, I encountered interesting people and became aware of the wide spectrum of views and academic work taking place in this area. Some of the issues covered by the conference are important aspects of the human condition.

As the transition to a plural society with a non-religious majority and a varied religious minority moves further forward, we all have a role in ensuring they are not neglected. There will inevitably be areas of disagreement, along with plenty of common ground. Dialogue is the best way to map out and understand the territory.

Common ground dialogue: how can humanists and Muslims live and work together in 21st century London?

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BHA trustee Alom Shaha led the discussion, joined by several Muslim panellists

BHA trustee Alom Shaha (centre) led the discussion, joined by several Muslim panellists

According to the 2011 Census, one in eight Londoners identifies themselves as a Muslim. In November 2014, a group of us decided it was time to move beyond the black-and-white ‘isn’t Islam terrible’ rhetoric and start talking with, and listening to, fellow Londoners who are Muslim. The aim was not to debate whether Islamic beliefs were right or wrong, but to respect the fact that most Muslims will continue to see their faith as an element of their identity. We wanted to get behind the media stereotypes and start to understand what real Muslims think, and where the real differences and common ground lie. Above all, we wanted to start seeing Muslim Londoners as fellow human beings, and not as ‘The Other’.  So we invited four of them to a dialogue at Conway Hall on 25 November 2014, chaired by Alom Shaha, author of The Young Atheist’s Handbook and an ex-Muslim from a Bangladeshi background.

Our guests were Mamadou Bocoum – Public Relations Officer for the Sharia Council; Huda Jawad – Advisor at the Centre for Academic Shi’a Studies and research Coordinator for Solace Women’s Aid; Sara Khan – Co-Founder and Director of the human rights charity Inspire, and Yasmin Rehman – from the Centre for Secular Space and researcher into polygamy and the law.

140 people turned up – mainly humanists but also a number of Muslims. The feedback afterwards was overwhelmingly positive. As one of the attendees said this was ‘a chance for humanists to hear a range of views from intelligent and non-stereotypical, politically-engaged Muslims, without anyone demanding that they justify their religious belief’. We see it as a first step.

This report ‘tells it as it was’ – barring a rearrangement of points into a logical order – without comment, reflecting our aim to improve understanding. You can hear the full audio recording here.

Muslim identity, racism, victimhood

Yasmin’s parents came to the UK in the 1950s and 1960s. Growing up in a small mining town in the North East meant facing routine racism and the threat of violence. On the day of her father’s funeral, someone posted a note through their door saying ‘That’s one less Paki to worry about.’ Then there was the Rushdie Affair, the point at which it felt that the Government started to consider ‘Muslims’ as a group that needed special attention. That was powerfully reinforced by the September 11 (‘9/11’) and July 7 (‘7/7’) terror attacks in New York and London. Unfortunately even now, when dealing with officials, Yasmin reports ’you get a seat if you say the right thing’. Faith leaders were only too happy to respond by providing a strengthened faith identity. From being a Punjabi Muslim, with more in common culturally with Hindu and Christian Punjabis than Muslims from other parts of the world, Yasmin found her Muslim identity promoted to the top of the list and with it, increased pressure on her generation to practice their faith and adopt its outward signs.

Racism then morphed into anti-Muslim prejudice and hatred. Yasmin’s son, then aged 18, was brutally assaulted on a London bus in the wake of the 7/7 attacks and has moved to the Far East. She fears he will never return home to the UK.

Huda was a child in a Sunni area of Saddam’s Iraq. She was taught to conceal her Shia identity in order to protect her family from persecution. When she came to the UK, she did not even identify herself primarily as a Muslim, and the Islam she heard about in school RE lessons seemed unrecognisable. But things changed after the Rushdie Affair ‘when the question became, ‘Are you British or are you Muslim?”, and so began a personal journey to explore her faith and its texts.

Alom too grew up in a UK in the 1970s and 1980s where racial prejudice was considered normal and unremarkable. He saw 9/11 as the turning point when his generation began to be pigeon-holed as ‘Muslim’, and racism evolved into anti-Muslim prejudice. In his experience as an ex-Muslim, sometimes people use their atheism to mask covert racism and anti-Muslim bigotry. And too often ‘terrorist’ is equated with ‘Muslim’, despite the data.

But the Muslim communities themselves also had to take some responsibility for the current ‘us and them’ position. Firstly, in Sara’s view, they had been let down by poor leadership, making them vulnerable to pressure from extremists. Frequently she had seen leaders unwilling to counter extremist on-line narratives, simply claiming ‘there’s no problem, it’s all to do with foreign policy’. Inadequate leadership was particularly serious when failing to confront gender issues: when police or Local Authorities approached mosques to discuss issues such as violence against women, they were often told there was no issue and found it impossible to talk directly to Muslim women. Mosques became ’gatekeepers, not gateways’.

Secondly, in Yasmin’s view, a sense of victimhood pervaded Muslim households, especially on the back of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Satellite TV channels were filled with reports of Sunni victimhood from Chechnya and other places across the world. Yet when she tried to challenge this outlook, she found herself accused of ‘Islamophobia’.

The panellists felt that the media gave an extremely misleading portrayal of British Muslims, which then formed the basis for the opinions of the wider population, which added to a ‘bunker’ mentality. The result, in Mamadou’s view, was that Islam was being hijacked by the hardliners. Sara gave the example of the BBC giving Anjem Choudary the key 8.10am interview slot on Radio 4’s Today programme after the Lee Rigby murder, despite his extreme views being detested by most British Muslims.

The rise of ISIS and of extremism in the UK

All the panellists were horrified by ISIS and what Sara referred to as their ‘takfiri’ form of Salafist-Jihadist Islam, in which anyone who does not share their extreme dogma is considered ’not a true Muslim’ and is therefore dispensable – a ’school of thought alien to most Muslims’. Sara pointed out that the Islamic State, in the sense that ISIS was pursuing it, was a modern idea. She saw it as part of the wider challenge of reconciling Islam with modernity.

Extremist ideas generally, and ISIS in particular, posed a serious challenge to Muslim parents in the UK. Young British Muslims who were already feeling alienated and angry were easy prey for jihadist propaganda. But the underlying causes of radicalisation are complex. Sara explained that the government’s ‘Prevent’ strategy had evolved considerably in recent years, and there was now a wealth of academic research available in this area. It showed no single cause or route, and no correlation with poverty or lack of education.

It was true that British Sikh and Hindu communities, which had also suffered from racism, did not suffer from extremism to the same degree as the Muslims communities, though Huda pointed out that every religion had the capacity for violence. She gave the example of Buddhist monks who persecuted Muslims in Burma. A number of factors had impacted the particular position of Muslims in the UK. Foreign policy was one. But it was also significant that, unlike some other immigrant communities, most British Muslims had their origins in relatively poor rural areas in the Indian sub-continent. Children of first generation immigrants often came from homes where they were told not to question their parents’ views and authority, while at school they were being taught that questioning and enquiry were a good thing.

At the same time, in addition to the influence on them of extremists in social media, Sara pointed to the millions of pounds that has been spent by Saudi Arabia on pushing Wahhabism, a hardline variety of Islam with a bigoted view of those who do not share it, and which takes no account of cultural background.

The pressure towards hardline thinking was therefore significant. And, as Huda said, ISIS were especially good at media management and recruitment, while at the same time in Britain ‘my sons are being told they are the enemy and potential terrorists. How do I prevent them from walking into the arms of ISIS?’

Extremism affected both Muslims and non-Muslims: a Pakistani police colleague of Yasmin’s had been killed by a suicide bomber when he shook his hand in a mosque. In Belgium a Shia Imam had been killed by Sunni extremists, and in the Edgware Road in London, a mob of Anjem Choudary followers had attacked a man simply for being a Shia. Meanwhile, the Far Right was exploiting ISIS and other Islamist extremists to stoke anti-Muslim hatred. Huda felt the pressure acutely: ’This is home. But I’m increasingly feeling there will be a time when I need to find the bags that I’ve packed, but I don’t know where I’m going. I’m not Muslim enough, not secular enough, not Shia enough. How many more headlines do I need to read in the Daily Mail before it’s time to go?’

Yasmin felt that women could play a vital role in combating the trend, citing the example of Northern Ireland, where women from both sides who had lost children in the conflict had come together.

There was agreement that it was better for Anjem Choudary and other hardliners’ activities  to be visible, rather than driven underground, but disagreement over whether there was any benefit in attempting dialogue with them.

‘We have a problem with the text’

Mamadou knows the Qu’ran intimately – he memorised the whole thing when he was fourteen and can quote chapter and verse. But he thinks ’we have a problem with the text’. In his view the main issue is people taking verses out of context and interpreting them literally. He agreed with the Christian theologian who said ‘Any text without context is a pretext’, and pointed out that, if he were following the Qu’ran literally ‘I would not be sitting here’, because humanists are not Muslims, and there is a verse which says non-Muslims are enemies.

But the Qu’ran itself asked readers to contemplate and think for themselves about its meaning, so that ‘the understanding of the text is greater than the divinity of the text itself’. He called for Muslims to be brave enough to question the meaning of the text and to understand and apply Kant’s approach to hermeneutics in order to move beyond literalism.

Sara and Huda shared this interpretive thinking. ‘The text will be as moral as the reader’ in Sara’s view. Like Mamadou, Huda saw the text as ‘all about enquiry’, with verses requiring Muslims to reflect, ponder and understand too often overlooked in favour of simple ’dos and don’ts’. It concerned her that many Muslims forget the blossoming of science and philosophy which took place in Muslim Spain, an empire where rational enquiry was valued and which lasted for 300 years.

In Mamadou’s view, Muslims could learn from humanists to ‘put human beings at the centre of what we do.’ ‘I have a human being in front of me, not God,’ she conceded.

Multiple Islams

On the panel were three Sunnis – if we include Yasmin, who preferred not to discuss the details of her beliefs – and one Shia Muslim.

Huda explained the split between Sunni and Shia (literally ‘the followers of Ali’) as originally a political disagreement about the leadership of Islam after Mohammed’s death, with the Sunnis backing the leader chosen by his followers, and the Shia believing that it should be his descendants, starting with Ali, cousin and son-in-law. Despite agreement over the basic tenets of Islam and the Qu’ran, over time that had developed into a religious, cultural and political difference to the extent that the Sunni-Shia schism is one of the main underlying factors in the current wars in the Middle East. Conservative Sunni clerics do not consider Shias true Muslims. Huda sees ISIS as an unholy alliance between jihadis and Baathists formally loyal to Saddam Hussein who consider Shias the ‘number one enemy’, echoing Saddam’s view that they are ‘worse than Jews, worse than flies’.

She saw massive diversity within British Islam, with no single identity. Instead she regarded her faith as a framework for people to find their own path. Her mother was a science teacher and her family includes converts, secularists. Her personal view was that ‘Islam is all about rationality – we are told to forget tradition’. Unlike Yasmin and Sara, Huda wears a hijab, not because it is a religious requirement but because she has worn it for so long it is part of her personal identity.

Mamadou was born and brought up in Senegal. Among his identities was Sunni Islam with an African flavour which he continues to develop. Arriving in the UK, he found an alien ‘chicken tikka masala Islam’ in which the culture and practices of rural villages of the Indian sub-continent dominated. He argued for the development of a British ’fish and chips’ Islam reflecting both the diversity of the Muslim communities and British values and culture. As he pointed out ‘You cannot have this platform in the Middle East, or in the sub-continent. This is “fish and chips Islam”’.

Feminism and women’s rights

Sara identifies herself as a ‘Muslim feminist’, a term that some atheists, and some Muslims, tell her is an oxymoron. For her, ‘my faith… has given me a notion of equality, freedom of belief’ and it was her reading of the Qu’ran that inspired her to fight for justice, regardless of a personal cost which has included abuse and death threats. Attacks have come both from jihadists and, ironically, from their most virulent critics. Rod Liddle, for example, referred to her in the The Spectator as a ‘pseudo-apologist for the jihadis’ because she challenged media generalisations about British Muslims.

In her view, many Muslims do not know their own history. Islam promoted early ideas of women’s rights in seventh century Arabia, which included numerous social, political and economic rights. She recommended Lenn Goodman’s book Islamic Humanism. Unfortunately, the faith has been largely developed by men opposed to challenge on the grounds of gender equality. Ultra conservatives are trying to extend this thinking, for instance, by introducing gender segregation into British universities and denouncing those who oppose them as ‘non-Muslims’, echoing ISIS. Globally, extremist Muslims are targeting Muslim feminists, as in the case of the Libyan activist who was recently murdered.

But that was not the only source of opposition to progress. As Huda said, moderate Muslim feminists in the West find themselves in a triple bind: they have the general challenges associated with being western Muslims; their co-religionists use ‘feminist’ as a form of insult; and their co-feminists attack them either for being too religious or not religious enough. Sara has even been accused by white, non-Muslim feminists of being an ‘Islamophobe’.

LGBT rights

A questioner quoted a Gallup survey of 500 British Muslims in which none had considered homosexuality acceptable. How can gay people live freely alongside Muslims, for example, in East London?

Huda’s view was that ‘God is the only judge’. But she was not surprised by the data because people would tend to answer this question the way they think was expected. In fact Muslims in her community talk about the issue in private all the time, but consider it taboo to discuss it publicly.

But there was no question that the current view across Islam is unfavourable towards homosexuality. A particular reason for resistance to change was that, for a community that feels under siege, the traditional teaching is seen as a bastion against ‘the West’.

Mamadou compared the development of Christianity and Judaism with Islam, which he saw as still a relatively young religion that needed time to reform.

But things may be slowly shifting: there is an organisation called Imaan, set up to support LGBT Muslim people – it held a conference earlier this year; TellMAMA, which tracks anti-Muslim attacks in the UK, had recently recruited Peter Tatchell on to its board; Shereen El Feki’s book ‘Sex and the Citadel’ covered the reality of gay life in Arab society; and the Safra Project, which supports Muslim LBT women. Mamadou had worked with a gay imam in Washington.

On the other hand, Safra had received threats for campaigning against forced marriage, and the liberal Muslim Institute had come under attack for a discussion on gay rights.

Yasmin ‘called out’ the East London Mosque, which she said had been taken over by Islamists who were strongly homophobic. And Sara demanded zero tolerance of homophobia, pointing out that Muslims cannot complain about Islamophobia without at the same time challenging homophobia.

Freedom of speech

In response to a question about threats of violence directed by Islamists at people deemed to be ‘insulting Islam’, Huda said that they must always be condemned, provided it was done even-handedly. ‘God and the Prophet can take care of themselves’ and she thought most Muslims don’t take violent offence to challenges. But she wondered whether sometimes the target is not so much faith but a particular community. For example, she wondered what the headlines would have looked like if Harold Shipman had been Muslim rather than Jewish.

Faith schools

The question of whether the state should be paying for sectarian religious schools clearly divided the panel

The question of whether the state should be paying for sectarian religious schools clearly divided the panel

There was a clear difference in view among the speakers on faith schools. They did not all support Alom’s call to back the British Humanist Association’s position opposing ‘faith’ schools as sectarian, divisive, and in a majority of cases discriminatory.

Huda said she did not send her children to a ‘faith’ school, but understood the need for a safe space where parents could ensure children know enough about their religious and cultural backgrounds to defend themselves against ISIS propaganda.

Mamadou thought that some faith schools were doing a ‘wonderful job’ and they should not be closed down. But support for them also meant being ready to criticise when they got it wrong.

Yasmin had herself attended a convent and considered separating children on the basis of faith a form of apartheid. And she had been very disturbed to come across a junior school where young girls were wearing hijabs. She felt strongly that the state should not fund faith schools, which only increased division on the basis of religion and class, and. She wanted to see global religions taught as an academic subject, with less ‘Eurocentricity’.

Sara had two daughters at a local community school. She had no confidence in what a Muslim faith school or a madrassa would teach them, and preferred to do it herself. She recognised that there are some good faith schools and felt parental choice should be respected, but good governance was essential.

Sharia and apostasy

Although Mamadou is the Public Relations Officer for The Muslim Law (Sharia) Council UK, there were only a couple of references to Sharia during the meeting. The first was from Yasmin, who pointed out that there is not just one Sharia law, with four distinct schools within Sunni Islam. She was ‘really troubled by government support for sharia councils for dispute resolution’, and wanted ‘all women to have equal access before the law’. She wondered why it was that only in the past 20 years have British Muslim women who want a divorce been expected to go to a sharia court: did that mean all the previous divorces were invalid? Huda later pointed out that in fact there were five schools of Sharia Law, four Sunni plus one Shia.

Surprisingly, the issue of apostasy did not come up in the questions, although the speakers’ rejection of Qu’aranic literalism suggested what their views might be.

Were speakers representative of the wider Muslim community?

A questioner cited opinion polling suggesting the speakers’ liberal views were not representative of the general views of British Muslims.

Yasmin was critical of much of the polling data, which she did not recognise on the basis of the many people she knew. It was often unclear who actually got to fill in the questionnaire. Sara pointed out that over 80% of British Muslims were very patriotic, and even the extremists seemed to prefer the benefits and freedoms of living in the west.

Messages to humanists

During the discussion there were a few points directed at humanists hosting the event:

  • Sara ‘We value your support and assistance in combating extremism’.
  • Huda: ‘It’s better to ask and enquire than hold back for fear of causing offence’.
  • Mamadou: It’s important to avoid ‘the arrogance of exclusiveness – what I believe is right, what others believe is wrong’. He called for the non-religious to be ‘modest enough to accept the religious person’.
  • Huda: ‘When I’m reaching out to humanists and secularists, I do so in the hope that they will accept me without trying to demonise my religious beliefs or identity’ or ignore me because ‘you’re not rich enough or educated enough.’

I for one would like to think that these misconceptions about humanists were greatly clarified by the event.

All four speakers welcomed the opportunity for the dialogue and wanted to see it continued.

The event was organised by local humanist groups in London and Conway Hall Ethical Society. The core team was Helen Palmer (Chair, Central London Humanists), Jeremy Rodell (Chair, South West London Humanists), and Rory Fenton (Dialogue Officer, British Humanist Association).

Spirituality and Humanism

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by Jeremy Rodell

This article is an updated version of talks given to West London Humanists & Secularists and to Westminster Cathedral Interfaith Group, based on an earlier debate on ‘Can humanists be spiritual?’ held by South West London Humanists.

The stunning sight of Mont Blanc, which inspired feelings of the 'sublime' in great writers such as Shelley. Photo: Jean-Raphaël Guillaumin

The stunning sight of Mont Blanc, which inspired feelings of the ‘sublime’ in great writers such as Shelley. Photo: Jean-Raphaël Guillaumin

Many humanists avoid anything to do with spirituality or the spiritual. ‘It’s an ill-defined term’, they say, ‘laden with religious baggage. Not for us.’ I think that’s a mistake. Yes, it is an ambiguous term, and some of the ground it covers is anathema to most humanists. But, whether or not we choose to use these words, they refer to essential elements of our humanity which  should be as much home territory for humanists as for anyone else, including the religious.

Religious spirituality

Here’s an illustration of what humanists don’t like. It’s from St.Paul’s letter to the Romans (8:6-11)[1]:

6 The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. 7 The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8 Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.9 You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. 10 But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.

In this Christian view, there are two intertwined realms, the physical and the spiritual. And if you buy the theology, you can overcome death. Islam features a similar idea. It’s an attractive proposition, but one we would say is simply made up. Eastern religions – even Buddhism as actually practiced in many places – often feature a spiritual realm in which gods and other spiritual forces operate. Almost all religions feature miracles, in which the laws of nature are somehow suspended, adjusted or overturned.

Similarly, there’s a huge array of non-religious New Age spirituality, from Reiki to Astrology, which has similar characteristics but without the associated structures and scriptures: a belief in a spiritual realm, or at least the existence of supernatural powers and miraculous or paranormal events – including mini-miracles such as a Reiki massage that does more than a placebo – not governed by the laws of nature. More myth and wishful thinking, we would say.

I’ll call this type of religious and New Age thinking ‘religious spirituality’. It really is ‘not for us’.

 

Experiential spirituality

On the other hand, here’s Andre Comte-Sponville, former Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris, from his Book of Atheist Spirituality :

‘The first time it happened I was in the forest in the north of France. I must have been twenty five or twenty six. I had just been hired to teach high-school philosophy in a school on the edge of a canal, up in the fields near the Belgian border. That particular evening, some friends and I had gone for a walk in the forest we liked so much. Night had fallen. We were walking. Gradually our laughter faded, and the conversation died down. Nothing remained but our friendship, our mutual trust and shared presence, the mildness of the night air and of everything around us…My mind empty of thought, I was simply registering the world around me – the darkness of the undergrowth, the incredible luminosity of the sky, the faint sounds of the forest…only making the silence more palpable. And then, all of a sudden…What? Nothing: everything! No words, no meanings, no questions, only – a surprise. Only – this. A seemingly infinite happiness. A seemingly eternal sense of peace. Above me, the starry sky was immense, luminous and unfathomable, and within me there was nothing but the sky, of which I was a part, and the silence, and the light, like a warm hum, and a sense of joy with neither subject nor object …Yes, in the darkness of that night, I contained only the dazzling presence of the All…. 

…’This is what Spinoza meant by eternity’, I said to myself – and naturally, that put an end to it.’

What he’s talking about is an intense human experience. I recognise it because I’ve had one too.  Most religious people, as well as Comte-Sponville himself, as an Atheist, would call this a ‘spiritual experience’. In this example, it’s particularly powerful. But it’s on the same spectrum as the experience created by great art, whether it’s the shiver down the spine from a Beethoven slow movement, or the instant of human connectedness from a great painting, novel, film or play, or the sense of wonder from seeing the stars on a dark night.

Albert Einstein put it in a cosmological context:

‘A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe – a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to the affection for those nearest us.’

And:

‘There are moments when one feels free from one’s own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable; life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny, only being.’

This is non-religious ‘spirituality’ in Comte-Sponville’s sense. Einstein isn’t suggesting there’s a spiritual realm or nature-defying miracles. He’s talking about enhanced human experience, in this case triggered by the natural world. Many artists try to do the same thing. As the painter Mark Rothko said: ‘A painting is not about an experience. It is an experience.’

There are a few things that these artistic and natural examples of ‘experiential spirituality’ have in common:

  • For a start, they are non-intellectual. As Comte-Sponville found, as soon as you try to analyse what’s happening – in his case by thinking about Spinoza – it disappears. Beethoven didn’t want you to think about the structure of his music, he wanted you to be transported by it. (OK, that’s a guess, but it seems likely.)
  • Secondly, the core of the experience is a sense of transcendence or connectedness. That may mean other people, wider humanity, the rest of the universe, or simply ‘something greater’. The experience carries with it a diminishment of the ego, sometimes to the point where there is no self-awareness, or separation between subject and object. Rather than ‘you’ looking at ‘it’, there is simply ‘looking’.
  • The feeling that goes with it is powerful and positive – elation, joy, compassion. Sadly, for most people, especially those of us who tend to over-intellectualise, it’s often short-lived. We quickly come back to normality as we start to think about it.
  • The final characteristic is that the experience is individual. As far as we know, the others in Comte-Sponville’s party just had a nice walk. Even sharing art with others in a concert hall, or a gallery, our experience is entirely subjective and individual.

The big difference between a religious person and a humanist in considering any type of spiritual experience is that the religious person may see it as a religious experience, a manifestation of the spiritual realm, perhaps of the divine. The humanist would say it is a subjective human experience, available to anyone, taking place in a human brain, triggered by a complex combination of external sensory inputs and internal memories and processes, and nothing to do with a spiritual realm or deity, both of which she thinks are imaginary. Spiritual experiences can even be created in the laboratory or by taking the right drugs.

But knowing all that does little or nothing to diminish the power of the experience. Our ability to have a sense of transcendence and connectedness with others is arguably one of the defining features of our humanity. There is nothing magic here, just the still-mysterious characteristics of human consciousness.

Many religions give spiritual experience a higher priority in life than Humanism does, because they equate it with getting closer to god. So they deliberately set up the conditions in which it is likely to occur: awe-inspiring architecture, emotionally-powerful music, practices of contemplation and meditation which make people slow down and provide the sort of pause in daily life offered by Comte-Sponville’s silent walk in the forest. We don’t need the accompanying religious baggage, and I’m sure Richard Dawkins doesn’t aspire to the Dalai Lama’s spirituality, but – given that spiritual experiences are almost always positive and life-affirming – maybe we should be have the humility to accept that there are things we can learn here.

Some humanists find all this difficult to swallow. One reason is simply a dislike, even a phobia, of anything that smells of religion. Those who have had to break free from a strong faith background, or suffered from faith-based persecution, may understandably feel that way though, personally, I don’t have any concern that my Humanism will somehow be contaminated by religiosity.

Another, less understandable, reason seems to be a reluctance to accept the fundamental difference between our growing ability to observe and understand how the human brain works, and the subjective experience of being a human with a brain.

Almost all humanists would agree that the scientific method is by far the best way to understand objective truths about the world, including brains. But subjective experience is not, by definition, open to direct observation by anyone other than the person experiencing it, though it is undeniably both ‘real’ to that person and, as far as we know, unique, as we can’t get into the minds of others other than through their descriptions, or their artistic expression. If I say I can see the face of Jesus in a cloud, no-one can deny that’s what I’m seeing. They can, of course, demonstrate that it’s an illusion brought on by our brilliant facial recognition software, but that’s a different point. The emotional, maybe ‘spiritual’, experience of hearing Schubert’s string quintet is not the same as explaining and observing what’s happing in my brain while I’m listening to it, just as the (definitely non-spiritual) pain of shutting my fingers in a drawer is not the same as describing the responses of my nervous and hormonal systems – they don’t hurt.

You might think this is blindingly obvious. Sadly, there are people who really do resist the idea – the fact – that subjective experience is real to the subject. Maybe personality differences come into play, in the same way as we don’t all have the same appreciation of the arts.

What we’re talking about here is part of the experience of being a human being. Without ‘experiential spirituality’ there can be no gasp at an unexpected beautiful view, no ‘Comte-Sponville moments’, and a huge diminishment of great art.

But even accepting all of that, should humanists actually use the word ‘spiritual’ in this experiential sense? Other terms might do just as well to convey what we mean without confusing the two. ‘Sense of the transcendent’ maybe?

The problem with avoiding the S word altogether is illustrated by this quote from Christina Rees, a spokesperson for the Church of England’s General Synod, talking a few years ago on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about why humanists and other atheists should continue to be banned from its Thought for the Day slot (as they still are):

‘Most people, more than 80 percent, understand life as having a spiritual dimension…’  whereas atheists are ‘…coming from a position that denies the spiritual dimension… a partial and diminished perspective…There is more to life than you can see, touch and measure.’

In her view, atheists are lesser beings because they lack a spiritual dimension. Like Mr Spock, they may appear to be human but have the essence of humanity missing. I don’t think humanists should accept that.

Another problem with saying that humanists should disapprove of the S word is that fellow atheists and other non-religious people often choose to use it because they think it’s the best word for the job.

This is from an article by Joe Cornish, the respected British landscape photographer:

‘For some landscape photographers, Nature’s beauty is all the evidence they need of a Divine Creator. For others, scientific curiosity reveals an alternative explanation, where over unimaginable aeons our plant has evolved into the unique wonder that is our home today. This is a form of ‘terrestrial theology’, a belief in the fundamental, non-negotiable laws of physics. It’s not by any means depressing, reductionist scientific thinking based on the inevitability of nature’s immutable laws, but a broad church which encourages compassion and wonder in the beauty that we find in landscape, and humility in the face of what the world has to teach us. There is little doubt that for many of us, landscape photography is a spiritual journey.’

Is anyone going to say to him ‘Sorry Joe, you’re obviously an atheist, so you’re not allowed to use that word’?

And here again is the painter, Mark Rothko, whose work is often referred to as ‘spiritual’:

‘Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit, and the only means of making concrete the purpose of its varied quickness and stillness.’

Both Cornish and Rothko are using these words because, as artists – one inspired by nature, the other by introspection – they are the best words they know to convey what they mean. And they don’t seem to care whether they have religious baggage. In fact an article in the Telegraph about the Rothko exhibition in London in 2008 was headed ‘Rothko exhibition: art replaces religious faith‘.

There may be humanists who would be happy to dismiss the entire world of art as contaminated by the same ‘irrationality virus’ as religion, but I’ve never met one.

Inner spirituality

Philip Sheldrake’s Brief History of Spirituality defines it as the ‘deepest values and meanings by which people live.’ Like all definitions, that’s far from perfect, but it highlights the other sense in which we use the term, to mean the profound interior life that we all have, and which, to varying degrees, we know and examine, but can rarely fully control.

It’s in this sense that the NHS uses the term in its advice to carers on ‘spiritual care’:

Difficult or traumatic events in your life might lead you to ask questions about why something is happening to you or why something happens at all. Similarly, when a person is ill or dying they might think about what their life means or what will happen after they die.

Spirituality, or looking for meaning in your life, is a personal thing. For some people it means religious belief, but many believe that spirituality doesn’t have to be religious. Listening to beautiful music or appreciating nature may be spiritual experiences for some.

For some people, awareness of their own or someone else’s mortality brings questions about life’s meaning and purpose. For others, spirituality might already play an important and guiding role in their life. Religious faith may help some people to make sense of their situation, but others might find that they begin to question the beliefs that they have built their lives on.

Having the opportunity to talk about spiritual issues can help carers and the people they care for to feel more at peace and better able to deal with what the future might bring.

That’s precisely the type of need that humanist Pastoral Support teams aim to provide to non-religious people in hospitals and prisons. This type of spirituality may be ill-defined from a philosophical perspective, but we all know what it means. It’s about human beings in difficult circumstances thinking seriously about their lives and needing to share their thoughts and emotions with other human beings.  Are we really going to ask the NHS to change the term they use? If so, to what? Or is it more sensible to accept that humanists and other non-religious people have – in this sense – spiritual needs and we want to help meet them?

While the NHS has ‘spiritual care’, education has ‘spiritual development’, a component of ‘Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural’ (SMSC)  development on which Ofsted inspects all state schools[2]. Unfortunately, their definition of the ‘spiritual’ component is an example of the muddle and ambiguity that those who dislike the S word complain about:

  • beliefs, religious or otherwise, which inform their perspective on life and their interest in and respect for different people’s feelings and values
  • sense of enjoyment and fascination in learning about themselves, others and the world around them, including the intangible
  • use of imagination and creativity in their learning
  • willingness to reflect on their experiences.

But buried within this hotpotch is development of the element of children’s inner life that touches on the ‘deepest values and meanings by which people live’.

Setting aside the religious component –which is there, but certainly not dominant, in either the NHS or Ofsted examples – this is all about the ongoing subjective experience of being a human being, and about understanding that, in this profound sense, others have inner lives too. Unlike Experiential Spirituality, which is about finite experiences, this is the part of us which has the experiences, the essential part of our humanity that exists all the time – whether we are consciously aware of it or not – and which we can examine and talk about to others. I’ll call it ‘inner spirituality’.

Pulling all this together…

‘Spirituality’ is an ambiguous term. But so are other terms we’re happy to use, including ‘Humanism’ and ‘religion’. The ambiguity lies is its breadth of meaning, which has extended beyond the original sense of ‘spirit’ (meaning the ‘animating or vital principle in man and animals’) to cover:

  • Inner spirituality: our profound inner life, relating to the ‘deepest values and meanings’ by which we live; the ongoing part of us that can be subject to self-examination, care and development; and the part that can be impacted by spiritual experiences.
  • Experiential spirituality: a wide spectrum of experiences ranging from the experience of art to a full-blown, unexpected Comte-Sponville type experience, but sharing the common characteristics of being non-intellectual –  feeling not thinking; involving a sense of transcendence or connectedness with something larger; being associated with emotions of elation, joy and compassion; and being specific to the individual.
  • Religious spirituality: the realm of god(s), miracles and the paranormal to which spiritual experiences may be attributed by religious people.

Humanists may prefer not to use the S word if there’s another way of conveying what we mean, maybe aesthetic awareness, sense of transcendence, love of nature, or simply love. On the other hand, we shouldn’t let the baggage of religious spirituality put us off if it’s the best word available, or if we need to reclaim it from those who seek to use it to exclude the non-religious.

Whatever terms we use, spiritual experience, and awareness of our own and others’ profound inner lives, are important parts of what it means to be human – and a humanist. And while this will remain an area of difference between humanists and the religious, we can also recognise it as an important area of common ground.

 

 

[1] Thanks to John Woodhouse for highlighting this quote.

[2] Thanks to Marilyn Mason for pointing out the ambiguities in the educational sphere.

Why the faithful need secularism

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Jeremy Rodell discusses the meaning of ‘secularism,’ among other things. Note: this article first appeared on Sarah Ager’s Interfaith Ramadan blog.

Hundreds rally for the March for a Secular Europe

Hundreds rally for the March for a Secular Europe

What is Secularism?

Let’s start with what secularism means to secularists.

The British Humanist Association (BHA) defines secularism as ‘the principle that, in a plural, open society where people follow many different religious and non-religious ways of life, the communal institutions that we share (and together pay for) should provide a neutral public space where we can all meet on equal terms. State Secularism, where… the state is neutral on matters of religion or belief, guarantees the maximum freedom for all, including religious believers.’

The UK’s National Secular Society (NSS) adds that it’s ‘not about curtailing religious freedoms; it is about ensuring that the freedoms of thought and conscience apply equally to all believers and non-believers alike.’

So a secular state does not mean denying the role of Christianity and other religions – for both good and ill – in history and culture. It does not mean that religious people must forego their principles if they enter public life. Perhaps most important of all, it does not mean a society lacking in values. There’s a fairly clear set of liberal, human values shared by the majority in the UK and most other western countries, including freedom of speech, thought and belief; respect for democracy and the rule of law; equality of gender, age and sexual orientation and the view that fairness and compassion are virtues. Many of these values are enshrined in law.

The BHA and the NSS really ought to know what they’re talking about here. Unfortunately, many people, usually people who are not themselves secularists, use ‘secularism’ interchangeably with ‘atheism’ or ‘Humanism’.  The previous Pope even talked of “militant Secularism”, meaning “militant Atheism” (despite the fact that the weapons used by ‘militants’ like Richard Dawkins are writing books and giving lectures, not planting bombs). But you can be religious and secularist. In fact the unequivocally Muslim, anti-Islamist campaigner, Maajid Nawaz, has just become an Honorary Associate of the NSS.

The reason for this confusion is that western countries have only become secular – to varying degrees – after many centuries in which the Church was a major power in society and there were constraints on freedom of thought and expression. Much of that power has been eroded since the Enlightenment, but battles are still going on. For example, 26 unelected bishops remain sitting as of right in the British Parliament, and many state-funded schools can discriminate in their admissions simply on the basis of parental belief. It’s no surprise that the protagonists in these battles are usually churches on one side, and humanists and other atheists on the other. If you’re on the side of the churches, it probably feels that secularism and atheism are the same thing – The Enemy.

That’s a mistake. Not only does it ignore the common ground between Christians and humanists, but it focusses on loss of religious privilege and influence, ignoring the fact that Secularism also guarantees freedom of religion and belief, and the freedom of thought and expression that goes with it. That’s important, given the realities of faith and belief in much of the modern world.

Growth of pluralism

According to the 2013 British Social Attitudes Survey, 51% of the British population are now “Nones” – people who do not consider themselves as belonging to any religion. It was 31% in 1983. Only 16% are now Anglicans, the Established Church (40% in 1983), 12% non-denominational Christians, such as African Pentecostal (3% in 1983), 9% Catholics (10% in 1983) and 5% Muslims (0.6% in 1983), with Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, Buddhists and other types of Christians making up most of the balance (all under 2%). Within each of these groups there is a lot of diversity: at least 10 different sects comprise the 5% Muslims, and the 0.5% British Jews range from ultra-Orthodox to Liberal. So we’re seeing both a big decline in religiosity and an increase in pluralism. It’s hard to imagine a more plural global city than London.

In many non-western countries, the inter-connectedness of the modern world, and wider awareness of differing beliefs – including Atheism – is also tending to increase pluralism, or at least the desire for pluralism. At the same time, it is increasingly under threat, often because of war and the active spread of an intolerant Wahhabi strain of Islam.

Secularism versus oppression

Secularism is as necessary to protect believers from other believers as it is to protect atheists.

You can currently be put to death simply for the ‘crime’ of atheism in 13 countries, according to the International Humanist andEthical Union’s 2013 Freedom of Thought Report. Saudi Arabia has now passed a law declaring atheists to be terrorists. In Mosul, in northern Iraq, there has been a Christian community for around 1600 years. In 2003 there were 70,000 Christians living there. Now ISIS have taken over and they have all fled. In Burma the government seems to be doing little or nothing to stop extremist nationalist Buddhist groups from massacring Rohinga Muslims. In Pakistan there’s growing evidence of ethnic cleansing of Shia Muslims by Sunni terrorist groups – the word ‘genocide’ is appearing – and it is illegal for Ahmadiyya Muslims to claim to be Muslim. Often they are simply killed. In Malaysia, Christians have been legally forbidden to use the word “Allah” to refer to God, even though they have been doing so for hundreds of years. In Iran there is institutionalised persecution of Baha’is .

Sadly, there are many other examples where the response to pluralism is oppression. Often it’s entwined with political power, driven by fear of losing power – or simply of change – and lack of confidence that the favoured belief will succeed in a plural environment.

Secularism is the alternative response to pluralism. Ideally it’s complemented by the type of mature democracy that avoids “winner takes all” outcomes such as we saw in Egypt under President Morsi.

The faithful need secularism because it guarantees their freedom, and in some cases their survival. It is the only alternative to oppression in a fast-changing, inter-connected plural world.

 

Can humanists be “spiritual”? The yes camp.

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‘Spirituality’: Jeremy Rodell argues that it’s an important facet of our humanity.

As Marilyn says in her piece, there are fewer differences in our views than you might expect. My main concern is that we should not feel so insecure in our own position – that you can lead a good life without belief in the supernatural – nor feel so hostile to religion, that we should be afraid to recognise experiences and use language that are also used by religious people if the experiences are real and important, and the language is useful in communicating what we mean.

In the same discussion on Radio 4’s Today programme that Marilyn referred to, on the well-worn topic of whether atheists should be allowed to contribute to the “Thought for the Day” slot, Christina Rees, a member of the Church of England’s General Synod, argued that:

“Most people, more than 80 percent, understand life as having a spiritual dimension…”  whereas atheists are “…coming from a position that denies the spiritual dimension… a partial and diminished perspective…There is more to life than you can see, touch and measure”.

I was insulted. Here was a member of the General Synod telling me that, as an atheist, I’m a sort of Mr Spock – superficially like other people but missing a core part of what it means to be human. And, by implication, telling me that “spiritual” is not a word I’m allowed to use.

Unfortunately, as we’ve heard from Marilyn, many Humanists go along with this point of view, fearing they will somehow get contaminated by religion if they use the word, or admit to having a spiritual dimension in their lives. I think it’s time we moved beyond that.

What is “spirituality”?

It isn’t hard to define a Humanist spirituality that doesn’t imply any supernatural beliefs, yet accepts the reality of a spiritual dimension to being human.

The key is to recognise the reality of personal “spiritual” experience. Some people have this type of experience a lot in their lives, others only rarely. When a religious person has it they attribute it to an external supernatural cause – a deity, saint, or whatever fits with their beliefs. Of course, we think that’s a mistake. But the experience itself is a fact. Neuroscience can now show us what is going on in someone’s brain at the time, and it’s even possible to create the experience artificially in the laboratory. But that doesn’t diminish the power of the experience itself.

Of course, there’s actually a spectrum of experiences here, ranging in intensity from those stimulated by great art or, in particular, great music, to the more profound and unexpected, as described by the former Sorbonne Professor of Philosophy, Andre Compte-Sponville in this extract from his Book of Atheist Spirituality:

“The first time it happened I was in the forest in the north of France. I must have been twenty five or twenty six. I had just been hired to teach high-school philosophy in a school on the edge of a canal, up in the fields near the Belgian border. That particular evening, some friends and I had gone for a walk in the forest we liked so much. Night had fallen. We were walking. Gradually our laughter faded, and the conversation died down. Nothing remained but our friendship, our mutual trust and shared presence, the mildness of the night air and of everything around us…My mind empty of thought, I was simply registering the world around me – the darkness of the undergrowth, the incredible luminosity of the sky, the faint sounds of the forest…only making the silence more palpable. And then, all of a sudden…What? Nothing: everything! No words, no meanings, no questions, only – a surprise. Only – this. A seemingly infinite happiness. A seemingly eternal sense of peace. Above me, the starry sky was immense, luminous and unfathomable, and within me there was nothing but the sky, of which I was a part, and the silence, and the light, like a warm hum, and a sense of joy with neither subject nor object …Yes, in the darkness of that night, I contained only the dazzling presence of the All….

…’This is what Spinoza meant by eternity’, I said to myself – and naturally, that put an end to it.”

Personally, I’ve had a couple of similar experiences, neither of which were in any sense “religious”.

If none of this is meaning anything to you, these two quotes from Albert Einstein may help:

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe – a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to the affection for those nearest us.“

And:

“There are moments when one feels free from one’s own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable; life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny, only being.”

There are plenty of other examples where people from a wide range of backgrounds and beliefs report similar perspectives and experiences. Whether we’re talking about something as intense as Compte-Sponville describes, or a few seconds of “otherness” brought on by a Beethoven slow movement, spiritual experiences seem to have some common characteristics:

  • They are non-intellectual. As Compte-Sponville found, as soon as you start trying to analyse the experience, it disappears.
  • There’s a sense of connectedness with a greater whole, other people, wider humanity, the rest of the universe, or simply “something greater” (easy for a deity or two to slip into the religious imagination here!).
  • They involve a diminishment of the ego, sometimes to the point where there is no sense of separation between subject and object (not “you” looking at “it”, but simply “looking”).
  • They are very individual – others in Compte-Sponville’s party just had a nice walk.
  • They are associated with a sense of elation, joy and – often – compassion; they are powerful and positive for the person involved. (And anything that diminishes the ego and increases compassion for humanity is surely a good thing for society.)
  • Knowing that they purely subjective does nothing to diminish their power.

And, for most people, intense spiritual experiences are pretty rare.

Whose language it is anyway?

Even if we accept that Humanists have a “spiritual dimension”, it can still be argued that we shouldn’t use the word “spiritual” because of its religious connotations and lack of clear definition.

The snag is that no other word will do as well if we want to communicate what we mean. Terms such as emotion, aesthetic awareness, love of nature, or simply love, goodness or hope simply don’t do the job. Just because it’s used for everything from the experiences of Catholic nuns to New Age gurus, doesn’t mean it’s off-limits to us. In fact atheists are uniquely positioned to understand that all of these people are really talking about the same thing, but they interpret it through the filter of their (to us irrational) beliefs. We shouldn’t allow the religious to ban a useful word from our vocabulary.

Here’s an illustration: that well-known organ of Humanist thought, Photography Monthly magazine, recently carried an article by Joe Cornish – one of the most respected landscape photographers working in the UK today. In it he said:

“For some landscape photographers, Nature’s beauty is all the evidence they need of a Divine Creator. For others, scientific curiosity reveals an alternative explanation, where over unimaginable aeons our plant has evolved into the unique wonder that is our home today. This is a form of “terrestrial theology”, a belief in the fundamental, non-negotiable laws of physics. It’s not by any means depressing, reductionist scientific thinking based on the inevitability of nature’s immutable laws, but a broad church which encourages compassion and wonder in the beauty that we find in landscape, and humility in the face of what the world has to teach us. There is little doubt that for many of us, landscape photography is a spiritual journey.”

What should we say to him? “Sorry Joe, you’re obviously an atheist, so you’re not allowed to use that word”? I’d rather thank him for explaining that you don’t have to be religious to have a spiritual perspective.

The Humanist response

Because many Humanists put so much energy into being against religion, the important and enriching potential of the spiritual part of our lives has been under-developed. Yet, for many people, spiritual experience is a profound part of being human, even if they rarely experience it in their daily lives.

Christina Rees’s opponent in the Today programme discussion was the humanist philosopher A.C.Grayling. Unfortunately, he didn’t pick up the point about spirituality – perhaps because it’s the type of concept philosophers feel uncomfortable with, or more likely, because there was limited time and he had his own points to make about non-religious philosophers. But what he could have said is something like:

“It’s simply untrue to say that humanists are not spiritual, and rather insulting. Spiritual experiences are pretty much universal across cultures and beliefs, and can be shown to be a feature of the way the human brain works. Many Humanists have as profound a spiritual awareness and understanding as you have. The difference is that they know the cause is not any sort of supernatural agent. But the experience is profound and important in helping us understand our place in the world. If humanists have a fault, it’s that we’ve failed to do enough to acknowledge and develop this aspect of our humanity.”