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Welcome to Derbyshire Secularists and Humanists
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Are we nasty, evil, militant secularists?
Rampant paranoia, fed by the right-wing press and opportunist politicians, seems to have overtaken otherwise rational religious people - apparently we "militant secularists" are trying to ban religion - which is news to us!
Let's set the record straight so people can stop shouting at one another.
- "Secularists" - people who support a secular state which guarantees freedom of belief for everyone. The state is neutral - the opposite of a theocracy. Many religious people are secularists.
- "Atheists" - people who have no need of gods to answer the big questions of life.
- "Humanism" - a set of beliefs shared by many atheists. There is no ideology or set of beliefs called "atheism".
- Since religions stopped burning us at the stake we have become the most tolerant bunch you could hope to meet. We will go to great lengths to defend the right of anyone to believe what they like - as long as those beliefs don't call for harm, prejudice or discrimination against anyone else and as long as those beliefs are not funded by taxpayers.
- We don't threaten religion - religions threaten religion. There were no secularists involved on 9/11 or 7/7 - we don't go round killing people because of their religious beliefs. 300 Christians have been murdered recently in Nigeria by Muslims. 600,000 Christians have been forced into exile from Iraq because of the war led by Christian (Catholic) Tony Blair and Christian (Evangelical, born-again) George Bush. Religious fundamentalism is the greatest threat to all of us.
- Almost £100 million of taxpayers' money has been spent on the National Prevent Strategy to prevent religiously motivated violence in the UK. No wonder our tolerance is stretched almost to breaking point.
- As is evident on this web site, we happen to think that many religious beliefs are nonsense (some of them are dangerous nonsense) - but we understand the psychological and social reasons why some people need them. We are not being patronising - we make a genuine effort to understand. Just because we don't feel a need for gods and religions ourselves doesn't mean we deny them to anyone else - that would be silly.
- Please click here for latest research on religious and social attitudes of UK Christians.
Would someone like to contact us and tell us what "unique Christian values" are and why England is "a Christian country?" We ask because we know what our values are, human values, most of which predate Christianity and enable a society to function in harmony, but we genuinely have no idea what "unique Christian values" are.
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"No Need For God"
Please click here to find out about our new book: "No Need For God".
The book is based on the author's experience of giving talks on atheist humanism to thousands of school students over the last five years.
The book is designed for those aged between 10 and 15 but it is an excellent introduction to atheist humanism for anyone of any age.
The front cover was selected by students in year 10 at Derby Moor school and the text was discussed with students at Bristol, Derby, Durham, Leeds and Oxford universities.
To quote one student at Oxford:
"I wish we had had this when we were doing RE at school because it's hard to get atheist ideas across in class without some written backup."
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Who are we?
We are atheists and agnostics who make sense of the world using reason, experience and shared human values.
We take responsibility for our actions and base our ethics on the goals of human welfare, happiness and fulfillment.
We seek to make the best of the one life we have by creating meaning and purpose for ourselves, individually and together.
We answer the big questions for life without need of a god and we reject ideas for which there is no need and no evidence.
We are happy to provide a free speaker on any topic, anywhere, at any time - contact us for details.
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Free guide
We have produced a free 12 page guide to humanism.
To obtain a copy please send us an email with your name and address.
New religious schools
New Islamic schools will open in Derby in September 2012 with a planned intake of over 750 pupils.
Please click here for details.
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What do we do?
We have helped to change the RE syllabus for all Derby City and Derby County schools - that's over 500 schools! The syllabus now includes the study of "non-theist world views" (Atheist Humanism) at all key stages.
Each year we go into many primary and secondary schools to give lessons and talks about our views. Last year we spoke to over 2,000 pupils.
Each year we provide speakers for all sorts of organisations all over the country on many different topics.
We wish we did more. We wish we held regular meetings. However, to do more we would need people willing to organise things. At the moment we have people very active in education - but we need someone to take the initiative to broaden what we do. Contact us if you are willing to help.
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Learning "about" religion
We differentiate between "religions" (as structures and institutions) and people who believe. We don't object to people having beliefs, as long as those beliefs cause no harm to anyone and they do not call for anything bad: discrimination, intolerance, prejudice, oppression, etc.
We oppose religious ("faith") schools and we oppose worship in schools.
We support the idea of children being taught about religions - after all, we don't want them to grab the first religion they come across and we certainly don't want them to become uninformed bigots.
However, we have a problem when people tell us that there is something we can learn from religions. As we see it, what we learn from religions is only negative - and has been the cause of violent confrontation for millennia.
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Thoughts for the day
- Everyone was an atheist until someone came up with the untestable god theory.
- There is no gene for religion. There are no religious children, only religious parents.
- Truth is not subject to a vote. If 50 million people believe a foolish thing it is still a foolish thing. The god idea is a foolish thing.
- Occam's razor: the simplest answer is the best - the one that makes the fewest assumptions and invents the fewest new ideas. The god idea fails totally.
- There is no need for the god idea and no evidence for it - there are much simpler answers to the big questions of life.
- Some people have a personal need for the god idea, others don't. Why?
- If god is so powerful why are there over 1,000 named gods and over 200 named religions/sects in the world today?
- A strong, internalised sense of personal morality is far better than one contained in a book written by nomadic goat herders over 2,000 years ago.
- Does god have a gender? Would it solve a lot of problems if religious people called their god "she" rather than "he"?
- Most people are apatheists - they don't care one way or the other about the god idea because it has no impact on their day-to-day lives.
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Supporting freedom of religion & belief
We support the right of everyone to have freedom of thought, religion, belief and expression - as long as none of them cause, or call for, any form of physical, psychological or economic harm to anyone.
We support the right of religious people to practice their religion (preferably quietly) - as long as they fund such activities out of their own pockets.
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We support the right of religions to stand on their own two feet - independent and free of any form of public subsidy.
For that reason we do not support religious ("faith") schools.
At the moment all taxpayers (believers and non-believers) are forced, by threat of imprisonment, to pay for 100% of the costs of religious schools. This is not simply fair on those of us who have no need of gods or religions.
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National organisations
We support the National Secular Society (NSS) and the British Humanist Association (BHA).
 
The NSS produces NewsLine, a free weekly newsletter - on-line or sent by email
The BHA organises a humanist celebrant service for namings, marriages and funerals.
On the subject of funerals, you might like to look at our page on death and funerals.
Profiles of religious belief
Religious groups are not homogeneous - there is as much variation within a religious group as there is within a non-religious group.
No individual, or group (sect), within a religion can speak on behalf of the whole religion. Someone in the middle ground may say "Our religion does not support violence, our religion is not homophobic, our religion treats girls and women as equals" where someone else will say the opposite - and be proud of it.
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Obviously they share the same religion, the same prophets and the same holy books - but the range of views can be extremely wide.
Liberal Judaists are "liberal", Ultra Orthodox Judaists have views to the right of Attila the Hun.
So, whenever listening to a "religious spokesperson" or "self-appointed religious leader" - take it all with a big pinch of salt!
Please click here to visit our page illustrating various profiles for religious belief.
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Morality and respect
Morality has nothing to do with religion - there are good and bad religious people just as there are good and bad non-religious people.
Humanism does not lay down a set of rules cast in stone or prescribed in holy books. However, we have a strong sense of personal morality because we believe that with rights and freedoms go personal responsibilities.
One of our supporters defines her own "moral code" as:
- Cause no direct or indirect harm to anyone by what you do or say.
- Pursue freedom, fairness and justice for all.
- Treat other people in the same way you would like them to treat you.
- Take care of the world around you to leave a positive legacy for the future.
She then goes on to define "harm" as "physical harm, emotional harm, economic harm, discrimination, prejudice or oppression."
We respect those who earn respect by what they do, not by what they say or what they believe.
We have infinite respect for people like those who work selflessly for organisations such as Médecins Sans Frontières - people who put their principles and humanity into action.
We have no respect of abstract ideas - even our own. All ideas are open to criticism and sometimes ridicule - it is not possible to offend an idea.
The problem comes when religious people feel that ideas should be respected merely because they are written in a holy book and millions of people believe them. Perhaps they should lighten up and accept that criticism of ideas is not the same as criticism of a person.
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The Catholic church
We have no respect for the Catholic church nor for a Pope who claims that "In the 1970s, paedophilia was seen as a natural thing for men and children."
He obviously lives in a different world from the rest of us because this may have been true within the priesthood of the Catholic church but it has never been true for the rest of us!
We cannot respect a man who sheltered priestly abusers, who is directly responsible for the death of over 67,000 women each year from back-street abortions in countries where the Catholic church insists that abortion is illegal (WHO figures) and who has caused the death of millions from HIV/AIDS because of the church's ban on contraception.
It's not just Catholics
We can turn to any religion and find many example where immoral actions are justified in the name of religion. Currently the most obvious example is the violence and murder carried out by those who believe in martyrdom and an afterlife in Islam. For a less obvious example try Googling for the Goddess Yellamma and investigate the role of the Devadasi in Hinduism.
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Click to enlarge
Click here for other bedfellows of religion
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Educating women in (some) Muslim countries
Sometimes a story defies any clever words.
Look at this young woman's eyes and if you don't cry, or you don't jump up and down in anger, you don't deserve to call yourself a human being.
Islam has a long way to go in sorting out the relationship between men and women - despite the protestations of "moderates".
Include an image of Mohammed in a drawing? Death threats. Write a book criticising Mohammed and Islam? Death threats. Be a women and want to be educated? Get your fingers chopped off.
Morality is far too important to be left to religions!
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If religion is so great ...
- Out of 1.6 billion (yes, "billion") Muslims in the world only two (yes, 2) have won Nobel prizes in science. One for Physics in 1979 (Abdus-Salam was not recognised in Pakistan as a Muslim because of the sect he belonged to) and one for Chemistry in 1999 (Ahmed H. Zewail).
- Forty six Muslim countries contribute just one percent of the world's scientific literature. (Spain and India each produce more than all 46 Muslim countries combined.)
- Spain translates more books in one year than the whole of the Arab world.
- Between 1980 and 2000 South Korea granted 16,328 patents while nine Arab countries granted 370 - and most of those were registered by non-Arabs, non-Muslims.
- A study in 1989 showed that the USA alone published 10,481 scientific papers - the Arab world published 4 (yes, four).
- What would many Arab countries be like if there was no oil beneath their feet?
- What is the effect of Islam on creative, imaginative, free-thinkers in Muslim countries?
- Does an obsessive religious view of the world, and of human development, stultify intellectual activity?
- Does religion open minds - or close them?
- There are over 30 armed conflicts in the world where inter-religious or intra-religious factors play a key part. Religious people kill other religious people in the name of their respective gods or their interpretation of their holy books.
- Has the world gone mad?
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How do slugs meditate?
We are frequently accused of picking on the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Islam and Christianity.)
Well, we don't have a down on any particular religion - though we certainly disapprove of many of the things done in their name and we do have a habit of asking very simple questions which sometimes upset religious people.
Just for balance we have often wondered about the topic of karma in Buddhism. The Buddha (Siddhattha Gotama) had some excellent ideas during his lifetime - though his struggle to reach the conclusion that the best way to behave is to cause no harm to anyone or anything seems to indicate that he was a slow learner compared to we atheist humanists.
His opposition to the hierarchical structure of the Hindu religion at the time, and the role that the cast system played in maintaining the social status quo, is as relevant today as it was almost 2,500 years ago - and it certainly doesn't apply just to Hinduism. We have no doubt that he would turn in his grave if he could see how his ideas had been distorted into a religion complete with all the associated mumbo-jumbo. He explicitly stated that he was not to be worshipped by anyone - yet tens of thousands of temples and statues that have been built in his name.
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| Back to Karma.
It would seem that as a result of one's actions one accumulates both positive and negative karma during life as a human and, to a large extent this determines the form in which you will be reincarnated. We assume that those with lots of positive karma will return as humans so that they can once again pursue the path towards nirvana and a state where reincarnation is no longer necessary.
There is always the possibility, given the right amount of negative karma, that reincarnation could result in an individual returning as a slug. Our naive questions are
- How does a slug achieve sufficient positive karma to return as a human in the next life?
- How does a slug meditate and strive towards nirvana?
It would seem that a reasonably high level of consciousness, particularly self-consciousness, is required in order to pursue nirvana and to accumulate positive karma. How does the slug handle these things - by being kind to other slugs?
Are we being flippant? No. We are simply pointing out that the simplest and most child-like questions are the ones that tie religions in knots - even a non-deist religion like Buddhism.
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Learning "from" religion
Religions have taught us a lot about tolerance - and we are strong on irony.
The importance of words
Religious words are full of value-laden assumptions - we need to make it crystal clear what they really mean.
Our use of key words:
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