Tim Whitmarsh, Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge, has compiled a most valuable record of atheist thought in the ancient world of Greece and Rome. Humanists need to know this early history – it will prevent their believing that supernatural explanations of the world and religious morality predated naturalist and…
Global anthropogenic CO2 emissions continue their inexorable rise. The science shows that there is the increasing likelihood that the world is heading towards an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe. Yet despite the multitude of research papers, articles, meetings, and political activity dissipated in the last two decades, we seem to be…
Whenever there is technological change, there is always political disruption. We’re currently living through one of the most profound technological revolutions in human history – so can we really expect our politics to remain unchanged? Technology and politics writer James O’Malley presents a provocative and sometimes shocking prognosis for democracy….
‘Evil begins when YOU begin treating other people as things’. Terry Pratchett What is sex? What does it mean to enter a sexual encounter with another person? I say it is it an intimate, comfortable, reciprocal, safe, pleasurable meeting of bodies with the goal of enjoyment, and not premised on…
Many of us still have to make up our mind on the EU Referendum. Rather than the vital facts we generally have heard exaggerated claims and biased conjecture, making it virtually impossible for the average person to take a well-informed view. Indeed, is it so complex a matter that all…
During the parliamentary debate on 2nd December 2015 on the bombing of Islamic State targets in Syria, Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn made an impassioned speech in favour of the government’s motion. A key reason he provided was that Islamic State were “fascists and fascists must be defeated”. This was…
The Panama Papers have revealed the corruption and greed of the global elite. They have also underlined the hollowing out of democracy. We now inhabit a world in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in human history. The hoovering of wealth to the top has accelerated since the…
Readers of the Ethical Record might remember from 1993 the intemperate rant against humanism by John Carroll. In Humanism: The Wreck of Western Culture, Carroll insisted that humanism is dead while also declaring it to be a major threat to western civilisation. Though hardly a coherent or measured criticism, Carroll’s…
1. The Paradox of Modern Humanism At the heart of modern humanism is a paradoxical combination of attitudes: scepticism about religion, but optimism about human nature. By optimism about human nature I mean the view that, not only is it possible for us to be nice to each other, but…
The Howard League is an independent charity, a membership organisation that campaigns for less crime, safer communities, fewer people in prison. In 2016, we celebrate our 150th anniversary – having been founded in 1866 by admirers of John Howard, commonly thought of as the first ever prison reformer. FENNER BROCKWAY…
