The quotations in the book, which come from ancient philosophers such as Epicurus and Mencius through to contemporary literary figures including Margaret Atwood, Zadie Smith and Wole Soyinka, are intended to show that humanism “is not a new idea, but has a deep history going back thousands of years”.
She has not been impressed with the government’s handling of the Covid crisis: “The most gentle way of saying it is they could have done better. OK, they are dealing with something that is completely novel, but there has been a failure of policy making and communication. At the beginning of the pandemic, I started out wanting to give the government the benefit of the doubt. But their erosion of public trust has left me doubting them very much indeed,” she says. Prof Alice Roberts, the broadcaster, scientist and author, has been filming this week for the third series of Channel 4’s Britain’s Most Historic Towns, after a five-month gap. “The last time we were out, back in March, people were pulling the shutters down around us. We felt very nervous. I drove home that evening, and stayed there,” she says.
Humanism is a general philosophy or framework for life, rather than a movement or an organisation that people join, she says. But Humanists UK is “extremely needed”. The organisation helps train humanist celebrants, supports people across the world who are persecuted for their non-religious beliefs, and “provides a much-needed voice for humanism”, she says.
The pandemic has led to people asking questions about the meaning of life and death, and what really matters to them. “In the past, people were more likely to turn to religion in times of crisis than look to other sources of guidance,” Roberts says. “But there has always been an alternative – the humanist approach – and in the UK today, where most people are now not religious, that alternative is more relevant than ever.”
Roberts, who became president of Humanists UK last year, says she has come across many people who, on learning about humanism, say: “That’s me! That’s what I think, I just didn’t know there was a name for it.”
Suppose that it was possible to obtain a measure of academic performance perfectly controlled for any differences in educational opportunities beyond the applicant’s control. In this case, it seems that test scores would track some combination of hard work, innate…
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There are many corrosive forms of discrimination. But one of the most dangerous is the bias in favour of consciousness, and the consequent denigration of the unconscious. We see it everywhere. It’s not surprising. For when we’re unreflective – which…