Religion

Even without a Grayling grilling, the first BHA Conference in a decade is a success.

Written by Richard Godbehere. Published for The Skeptic online on 13th July 2011.

On the weekend of Friday 17th June, the great and the good of the British Humanist Association gathered in Manchester for the first annual conference in a decade. Boasting talks from some of the most prominent humanist thinkers, the weekend promised to be a carnival of rational thinking and Godless morality focusing on the search for the meaning of life, with talks from such luminaries as likes of A.C.Grayling, Peter Atkins, Chris French, Philip Pullman, Natalie Haynes and Stephen Law. It was a weekend I couldn’t possibly miss but, being an impoverished student at Goldsmiths College, not one I could afford. Thankfully, through a little eyelash fluttering and help from one of the speakers, namely Professor Chris French, I managed to blag my way in as volunteer. Here are my thoughts of the weekend.

From the archives, Steven Mohr examines the origins of the movement and evidence that the famous 12-step programme simply does not work

From the archives in 2010, Matthew Provonsha reports on his disillusionment with life in the Camphill religious commune

Written by Adam Buick. Published for The Skeptic online on 22nd September 2010.

When the Pope visits Britain this year he will “beatify” Cardinal Newman who died in 1890. Beatification, which requires one miracle, is a step towards “canonisation” (becoming a “saint”) which requires two.

John Henry Newman was born in 1801 and became an Anglican clergyman in 1825, but in 1845 he converted to Roman Catholicism and eventually rose to become a Cardinal. He wrote two essays on miracles, one in 1826 (when he was still a Protestant), the other in 1843 (when he was well on the way to becoming a Roman Catholic). The full text of both can be found at http://www.newmanreader.org/works/miracles/index.html#contents.

The first essay expressed the orthodox Anglican/Protestant view on miracles: that the only true miracles are those described in the Bible (and that they are to be accepted as really having happened only because the Bible is the revealed word of God). This position implies that all miracles claimed outside the Bible and any since the first century of the Christian era - as by pagans, the Catholic Church and the Koran - are not miracles and that natural, non-miraculous explanations for them can be found.

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