RATIONALIST a s s o c i a t i o n

RATIONALIST a s s o c i a t i o n march & april 2012 VOLUME 127 No 2

RATIONALIST a s s o c i a t i o n

RATIONALIST a s s o c i a t i o n honorary associates David Aaronovitch Peter Atkins Lord Birt Colin Blakemore Alan Brownjohn Colin Campbell Philip Campbell Noam Chomsky Helena Cronin Richard Dawkins Sanal Edamaruku Ekow Eshun AC Grayling Trevor Griffiths Stuart Hall Tony Harrison Simon Heffer Eric Hobsbawm Richard Hoggart Ted Honderich Robin Ince Linton Kwesi Johnson Richard Leakey

RATIONALIST a s s o c i a t i o n ditorial Editor Caspar Melville News Editor Paul Sims Commissioning Editor Laurie Taylor Associate Editor Sally Feldman Cartoons Editor Judy Walker Designer Nick McKay cover Getty Images/David Leveson Website www.newhumanist.org.uk MARKETING & distribution Business Manager Judith Walker Marketing Executive Cassandra Scott Advertising info@newhumanist.org.uk Distribution Comag Specialist Telephone 01895 433 753 SUBSCRIPTIONS subscriptions New Humanist Subscriptions, Trinity House, Sculpins Lane, Wethersfield, Braintree, Essex, CM7 4AY Email newhumanist@escosubs.co.uk Telephone 01371 851881 Fax 01371 851808 PublishING The Rationalist Association Registered charity No 1096577, a company limited by guarantee No 4118489 RA President Jonathan Miller RA Board Sally Feldman Winston Fletcher Jose Gonsalves John Metcalf David Pollock Tess Woodcraft Jonathan Stopes-Roe Chairman Laurie Taylor

RATIONALIST a s s o c i a t i o n

Stewart Lee Kenan Malik Haydn Mason Edwin Mullins John Postgate Philip Pullman Jonathan Rée Amartya Sen Simon Singh Marcus du Sautoy David Starkey Ralph Steadman DJ Stewart Ian Stewart Hazhir Teimourian Claire Tomalin David Tribe Baroness Turner of Camden Arnold Wesker Francis Wheen Elizabeth Wilson Richard Wiseman Lewis Wolpert Editorial Ofices Merchants House, 5-7 Southwark Street, London SE1 1RQ Telephone 020 3117 0630 Fax 020 7407 7962 Email info@newhumanist.org.uk NEWHUMANIST, ISSN 0306-512X, is published 6 times a year by the Rationalist Association © 2012 New Humanist. Printed by Blackmore Ltd, Dorset. Distribution by Comag Specialist. FSC Certification number TT-COC-002714. The mark of responsible forestry © 1996 Forest Stewardship Council A.C. The views expressed in New Humanist are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Rationalist Association CONTRIBUTORS THIS ISUE

sarah ditum is a freelance journalist, whose writing has appeared in the New Statesman, Psychologies and the Guardian’s Comment is Free. On page 10 she examines the anti-choice campaign spearheaded by the Tory MP Nadine Dorries.

nick cohen’s new book, You Can’t Read This Book (Fourth Estate), traces the myriad ways in which censorship has triumphed in the last 20 years. On page 14, he offers a rousing ten-point manifesto for all those who wish to protect free speech.

4 New Humanist march april 2012

angela Saini is a science journalist and author of Geek Nation: How Indian Science is Taking over the World (Hodder). Examining the fallout from last year’s Fukushima nuclear crisis on page 22, she argues the disaster has made atomic power safer than before.

stephen cave is an author and philosopher. His new book, Immortality: Testing Civilisation’s Greatest Promise (Biteback), examines our urge to outwit the Grim Reaper. On page 39 he explains how even atheists are not immune from illusions of eternity.

elizabeth wilson is a cultural historian, novelist and occasional Tarot reader. On page 24 she defends her dabbling in the dark arts. Cultural Passions, a collection of her cultural criticism and essays, will be published later this year by IB Tauris.

M [editorial]

MARKETPLACE OF OUTRAGE In the more than two decades since the publication of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses the landscape of free speech and censorship, Kenan Malik writes, has been utterly transformed. Where once freedom of speech was seen as an inherent good, a vital corollary to a free society, it is now viewed as a problem, because it entails the threat of offending, and as we all know no one must ever feel offended. Malik is one of our most sensitive chroniclers of the erosions of liberty, and in his typically pithy piece on page 9 he examines the forces that recently prevented Rushdie from travelling to a literary festival in Jaipur, India, and the “marketplace in outrage” which seems to have supplanted our faith in the free flow of ideas.

Malik’s is, thankfully, not the only voice speaking up for free speech. In his excoriating new book You Can’t Read This Book, Nick Cohen takes a tour d’horizon of the past 20 years and details in particular the many ways in which faith groups have used the language of offence, and the law, to protect their “deeply cherished” beliefs from legitimate scrutiny and criticism. On page 14 we present his ten-point plan for beating the censors and restoring free speech. It’s an invigorating read.

provided a welcome shot in the arm to the atheist cause and an antidote to the timidity and sentimentality that so often neuters debate about faith. We offer a list of the ten reasons we’ll miss him on page 8.

THE FIX IS IN Even though we’ve lost our best debater, the debate around the place of religion in society continues. One of the latest salvos has been fired by the bestselling philosopher Alain de Botton, whose new book Religion for Atheists recommends an alternative to Hitchens-style confrontation; why not take the best ideas from religion, and leave all the supernatural guff behind? Sappy or smart? You decide, after you’ve read our interview on page 18.

One of de Botton’s more eye-catching proposals is that the university should be reorganised. Rather than departments of French Literature or Social Studies, courses should be reorganised around questions that really matter to people’s everyday lives, like “what is a good life”, and “how to deal with death”. Such proposals will not be to everyone’s taste, but he is far from alone in his diagnosis that there is something seriously wrong with higher education. On page 34 Laurie Taylor meets Cambridge don Stefan Collini to discuss what has gone wrong with British universities, and how to put it right.

THE GREAT DEBATER Cohen’s book is dedicated to the great Christopher Hitchens, who died late last year, and carries as its dedication a Hitchens quote defining our time as an “all-out confrontation between the ironic and the literal mind”. Cohen takes inspiration from Hitchens’ lifelong struggle against the humourless “commissars, inquisitors and bureaucrats”. Hitchens was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Association, which publishes New Humanist, and a valued supporter of the humanist cause. There was always plenty to argue with in his writing, but that was the point. From Mother Theresa to Iraq and whether women can be funny, he was always trying to provoke. With his anti-religion polemic God Is Not Great he provoke. With his anti-religion polemic

MARMITE MESSIAH One thing de Botton does not suggest the godless should take from religion is miracles, which is a shame since they can be one of the most entertaining parts. For evidence of this turn to Christina Martin’s jolly “Top 6 Jesus sightings” (page 8), where you can see the miraculous appearances of the messiah in everything from a jar of Marmite to an IKEA toilet door.

And for further proof that irrationalism can be fun turn to page 24 and see if Elizabeth Wilson can persuade you that Tarot cards, those emblems of occultism, can, like all myths, stir the imagination and illuminate the human mind. ■

ALAIN DE BOTTON ON THE GOOD BITS OF RELIGION > PAGE 18

ALAIN DE BOTTON ON THE GOOD BITS OF RELIGION

“Original sin is a tremendously useful metaphysical starting point”

“Original sin is a tremendously useful metaphysical starting point”

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