Quotes from BHA chief executive Hanne Stinson, BHA education and public affairs officer Andrew Copson and BHA Vice Presidents Claire Rayner, Baroness Whitaker and Richard Norman on Ipsos MORI polls (released 24/11/06) on the level of humanist convictions amongst the British public and on how many of the British public believe religious groups and leaders are paid too much attention by Government
(Numbers in brackets refer to endnotes)
Hanne Stinson , chief executive of the British Humanist Association said, �Britain is basically a Humanist country, and this poll shows it. We have always been aware that many people who do not identify themselves as humanists, and this includes quite a few people who do not know what Humanism is, live their lives by what one might describe as humanist principles. People who join the Association often tell us that they have been humanists all their lives, or for the last 20 years or so, but didn�t know it. But it is very encouraging to find that 36% of the British population are not simply non-religious, but actually humanist in their outlook and their morality, and that very many others don�t feel they need religion to understand the universe, or to guide their moral decisions. These people may not belong to the Humanist Association, may not have even heard of Humanism, but they share our attitudes and we speak for them in our campaigns.
�Bishops and Archbishops every day make more extravagant claims about Britain�s alleged Christian values, but here at last is the evidence to show they are wrong. The churches, despite their establishment and institutional privileges, have lost the right to speak for Britain. The Government still makes one concession after another to religion on the basis of that 70% census figure, but if the public resents Government kow-towing to religious leaders almost as much as they resent its subservience to foreign leaders, then ministers really need to think again. They should move towards a secular state in Britain, with the Government neutral on matters of religion and belief, no privileges for any belief system, and public debate conducted in shared language, not dominated by religious pronouncements based on theology.�
Ms Stinson added that her only surprise was that only 42% felt religion got too much attention from Government, and wondered how much higher this figure would have been if respondents had been able to select more than three options from the seven listed. �The other explanation might be a lingering deference to religion that has outlasted mass religious belief. Time and again religious groups get their way against overwhelmingly public opinion. They killed off the Assisted Dying Bill, which 4 out of 5 people supported (1); they have won wide exemptions from equality legislation so they can continue to discriminate against gay people and those who do not share their beliefs; and they will be doing their utmost to defend their 26 unelected members of Parliament when the Government tackles Lords reform this session!�
Andrew Copson, Education Officer at the BHA, said that the result was particularly interesting coming so soon after Government caved in to religious pressure over faith schools: �The government keeps making the mistake of seeing pressure from religious groups as widespread public opinion. Even though poll after poll has demonstrated wide public opposition to faith schools (2), religious groups have fought off all attempts to reduce the harm done by them, and instead have won more privileges and pay scarcely a penny of the costs of �their� schools.�
Claire Rayner, writer, broadcaster and BHA Vice President (and former President) said, �It is such an encouragement that so many of the British public accept the positive values of humanism. I fall over people with just the same views all the time, though they may not call themselves humanists. The local soup run that goes out to the homeless is run by the local churches and synagogues, but when I got involved with them I discovered that at least half of them are �non-believers�. But there is nowhere else they can go if they want to help.
�I was a humanist without knowing it for many years before I found the Association � when I did, it was like finding a sort of home. Here were people with a range of views that matched mine, who shared my respect for life in all its forms and who, above all, did not in any way try to bully other people to follow their beliefs.�
Richard Norman , Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosopher at the University of Kent, author of On Humanism(Routledge), and a Vice President of the BHA said, �What is encouraging about this poll is not just the fact that so many people can thrive without religious belief, but that they are capable of taking a rational and sensitive attitude to moral questions. They recognise that you can do justice to the complexity of moral problems without succumbing to the crude relativism of "it's all a matter of personal preference".�
Baroness Whitaker, a Labour peer and a Vice President of the British Humanist Association said, �Ever since I was at (a Christian) school, I preferred humanism and I joined the BHA not long after I returned from graduate studies in the USA in 1961. As a child I found the religious presentation of sin and virtue uncongenial and as an adult I found the humanist perspective on morality, with its emphasis on reason, persuasive and attractive. It�s heartening to see that, today, so many people feel the same.
�I don�t think that religious beliefs are needed to understand the universe, or to be moral (as even tiny children feel remorse and compunction) � the knowledge that life is finite obliges us to make choices, and our rational nature makes us justify these choices and relate them to each other in a coherent way. This is what creates systems of ethics and values.
�My own humanist values motivate me as a working peer, where I put the case publicly that non-religious worldviews such as humanist ones should be accorded the same status � no more and no less � as religious ones.�
ENDNOTES
(1) 82% of the British public �think that a person who is suffering unbearably from a terminal illness should be allowed by law to receive medical help to die, if that is what they want�� (NOP poll, 2004)
(2) eg 64% opposed the idea of government funding for faith schools, ICM poll 2005; 80% believed all schools should be open to those of any religion or belief, MORI poll 2001; 80% opposed the expansion of faith schools, YouGov poll 2001
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