I have long campaigned for the inclusion of a non religious voice to be heard on Thought for the Day (see below) and it seems that the BBC has finally bowed to the inevitable, perhaps as a result of my pointing out to the BBC Trust that their previous policy was in defiance of UK Equality and Human Rights legislation.
The BBC has created a new body, The Standing Conference on Religion and Belief on which Humanists will now have a voice. So why is this important?
The proponents of religion have always sought to portray the godless as having no morals or at the very least no moral blueprint by which actions can be judged. In the public sphere the advice of religious leaders but never the Humanists is invariably sought when questions of morality are raised and this has enhanced their standing in society.
The association of morality and religion is no accident. Those rules that many religions promote, although largely self serving, are invariably portrayed as the moral code by which the individual’s behaviour should be judged both here on Earth and later by the creator. Their authenticity is never questioned because it is claimed that they are the word of God himself and delivered to us, often in strikingly similar ways; the Quran dictated to Mohamed, an illiterate peasant and the 10 Commandments written in tablets of stone and given to Moses.
However there has always been an alternative to God given morality and that is Humanism. Humanist values are an inevitable consequence of being human; they are in part hard wired into our biology and part learnt within the human family. They are necessary for our continued existence and not simply a code of conduct handed down to us by a superior being. Parental altruism is essential for the survival of our offspring and during their long development into adulthood; human beings simply learn their morality in the same way that they learn language and Humanism is not a new idea; it had been a part of Confucianism some 500 years before Christ.
So let’s hear much more of the Humanist voice not just on the BBC but in public life in general.
