Norman Ralph

Questival is an annual festival that is put on by the AHS to celebrate the ideas of skepticism and rational thinking. Featuring speakers such as Julian Baggini and Michael Marshall and performers like Matt Parker and Jonny Berliner the weekend long event attracted young people from across the UK.

Having missed its predecessors in the Yorkshire Dales, it was with some excitement that I made my way to Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire to join forty other free thinkers. At this point I must add my sincerest thanks to David and Peter from the Bradford University Atheist and Humanist Society for sorting me out with a lift down from Leeds! I arrived a little after eleven in the evening on Friday to be greeted with some bean chili and a glass of Glenfiddich and rest of the Questivillains (the collective noun according to the organisers) partying like it was 1999. I had booked my spot at Questival quite late so I had turned up without a camping spot but quickly found an old friend from university who had some room in his tent and after I had dumped my stuff I quickly joined in the party.

The theme of the main shenanigans seemed to be worms (the sleepover classic of wriggling around in your sleeping bags pretending to be worms) and the quote of weekend was soon to follow:

Andrew is the egg, everyone sperm him!
- Mark Wonnacott

The drinking and conversing continued late into the night (and the next morning by all accounts) with topics ranging from whether Socrates was a figment of Plato’s imagination to whether Oli had comfortable thighs and ankles. I gave up to hit the sack just after midnight due to the fact I had been at work and travelling all day.

The mob was awoken early Saturday morning for a breakfast of sausages and bacon (and their vegetarian equivalents) that was incredibly welcome by those that had taken the partying too seriously the night before. The rest of us wanted to fuel up ready for a full day of events. We started off with a gentle stroll into Tewkesbury that involved a water crossing! The nearest bridge to cross the Avon was several miles away, so the Questival team had organised canoes to ferry the forty-odd people from one side to the other. Despite the inherent risks of putting many people in small, unstable canoes everyone made it without getting too wet and those of us that thought the crossing was hard work were in for a surprise when we were presented the most fiendishly difficult treasure hunt I have ever been faced with!

Splitting into a number of teams we set about trying to solve numerical, general knowledge, observational and physical challenges to try and unlock the secret to the philosopher’s tome (the prize turned out to be a signed copy of Professor Grayling’s The Good Book). Unfortunately, the team I was in struggled to solve the final puzzle, so settled for second prize – that of getting to the pub early! We were slowly joined by the other teams and managed to quaff our fair share of some good ale and cider before setting off back to the festival site for an afternoon of speakers and performers.

Due to a scheduling incident, the weekend’s first speaker, Julian Baggini, failed to show up but the BHA’s faith school coordinator, and former AHS President, Richy Thompson, and skeptic and 10:23 founder, Michael Marshall, stepped into the breach to talk about campaigning from both a national and grass roots level. This was followed by a presentation by the founders of the fantastic Pod Delusion about skeptical landscape and how social and internet media are used to provide balance to the “crackpots”. The talk also laid the foundation for a special live recording of a Pod Delusion podcast which featured some great segments on epigenetics, cyber security, the STEM project and a wonderful summary of the energy industry’s portrayal in the media by an insider codenamed “Steve”. The evening was rounded off by the self-styled standup mathematician Matt Parker who did a meta-gig (a gig about his other gigs) that covered everything from his uncanny ability to predict barcodes, how many times we would need to shuffle a deck of cards to see every possible combination and other fun maths stuff. He had the room in stitches and if anyone gets the opportunity to go and see him then you should jump at it! Many of the attendees then hit the bar at the campsite and spent the night drinking and dancing and wondering if Gordon Swayze was just a figment of their imagination.

Sunday was a little less frantic as we started off with a leisurely breakfast followed by the rescheduled Julian Baggini talking about logical fallacies with reference to news and media stories. The talk struck the right balance between philosophical technicality and layman application. Despite being at a number of events where he has spoken, I have never actually heard Julian talk live. He is an engaging speaker with a real knack of selling logical argument and critical thinking. The early afternoon was then taken up with a variety of activities ranging from archery to sailing to making graven images of gods. The final act of the weekend was a musical performance from the simply brilliant Jonny Berliner whose quirky science and maths based songs had people gasping fro breath whilst tapping their feet. I bought his single and EP on the spot and he is definitely a name to look out for!

Following a lengthy debate with a good friend of mine over at Gibfootballshow about whether the automatic red card given to goalkeeper’s who foul an opposition player when acting as last man was fair it occurred to me that many people today don’t see football as being about fair and sporting play, but as a form of show business – an entertainment rather than an athletic competition.

Many people would argue that football, and sport in the wider sense, is about entertainment and I probably wouldn’t disagree. Top level sport needs public support to survive and continue to attract the very best athletes rather than watch them drift off into other careers. However, I don’t think that sport, and football in particular, should forget that whilst it has a need to be entertaining it is not in the business of show business. The rules and regulations of the games need to reflect the foundations on which sport was built – fairplay, sporting behaviour and honest competition.

I am not naive enough to think that sport is only about the ideal. Many sports created as a way of preparing for battle and honing fighting skills. Others were created as a means of control and to keep people’s minds off whatever the problem of the day was – indeed, this is still the case in less developed countries. However, the emergence of sport as being an embodiment of chivalry and honour stems from these very beginnings.

I believe that the rules of sport need to change with the times. They need to reflect the needs of participants, officials, spectators and other interested parties. They also need to change to accomodate advances in technologyand science, including medicine. However, the underlying spirit and traditions of the games need to be maintained and preserved.

This spirit is one of fairness, where any body can take part in the sport and know they have the same opportunity to succeed in any situation. Of course skill and physical ability have an impact on this. I know that technically I cannot compete with top class sportsmen and women in any field, but I know that if I were to challenge Ronnie O’Sullivan to a game of snooker, or my village team took on Manchester United at football, the only difference between us would be our relative skills and abilities.

Changing rules to differentiate between one player and another, between one group of participants and another is something that goes against this philosophy of openness and fair play.

After the relative success of my recent post on Blackpool’s start to this season’s Premier League campaign, which got reposted on a couple of well respected football blogs, I thought I would write a second piece on the beautiful game.

This piece is focussed on one of the main reasons for Blackpool’s current success story, their manager and coach Ian Holloway. Holloway, who made 2 short of 600 league appearances as a tenacious midfield player, has had a relatively low key career to date. Many of his playing days were spent in the lower leagues with teams such as Bristol Rovers (where he had three successful stints over 18 years), Plymouth Argyle and QPR. He was known as a hard working midfielder who fitted in well in the hard working teams of the bottom couple of tiers of English professional football. His spell at QPR under manager Gerry Francis saw Holloway taste the top flight for several seasons, playing over a hundred times in a four year spell in the Premier League, scoring 4 goals.

Holloway took his first steps into management in 1996 when he rejoined Bristol Rovers as Player-Manager. Bristol were struggling in Division 2 (now League 1) and looked likely to get relegated. Holloway steered the club clear of the drop and managed to finish in a safe 17th position. With a full off-season to work with the squad, Ollie managed to guide the team to a play-off place in the 1997-1998 season. Bristol Rovers were unlucky to lose their semi-final play-off game 4-3 on aggregate to a strong Northampton Town outfit. After finishing a disappointing 13th the following season, Holloway retired as a player and took on management full time. 1999-2000 saw Bristol Rovers move back up the table to 7th place, narrowly missing a play-off spot.

In 2001 Holloway took the QPR manager’s job and was tasked with avoiding relegation. Holloway failed and tasted his only taste of relegation is his career. Holloway learned a lot from the experience and rebuilt the squad from scratch. He started to demonstrate some of the traits we see today, he began to think about how he could turn a club around in a season. Unfortunately, QPR did not bounce straight back up and spent three seasons in League 1 before winning automatic promotion back to the Championship in 2004. A couple of mid table finishes in the next two seasons started to see Holloway linked with a few higher profile jobs, especially that of Leicester City. However, Holloway blames the arrival of F1 mogul Flavio Briatore as the the main reason for the club’s dip inf form and his own apparent lack of focus. QPR narrowly avoided relagation in 2006 and Holloway spent the majority of the tail end of the season on gardening leave.

In June 2006 Holloway was appointed as boss of Plymouth Argyle, the third club he had now managed and played for in his career. Holloway spent a little over a season at Plymouth, leaving them in 2007 to become the manager of Leicester City. This decision was not met well by the Plymouth supporters after Holloway had promised them the Premier League. In an interview he would later give, Holloway looked back on this period and said:

I had a year out of football and had to think about what went wrong in my life. I was given some decent values from my mum and dad in our council house and one of them was honesty and trust and loyalty, and I forgot to do all that at Plymouth. I left them and I made the biggest mistake of my life. But I ended up here [Blackpool] and it was the best thing I have ever done. Daily Mail, 2010

Holloway’s time at Leicester was not a happy one. He had developed health problems due to the extensive commuting he was doing as a result of caring for his profoundly deaf children, he also experienced his second taste of relagation, losing to old club Plymouth Argyle 1-0 along the way. Following relegation, Holloway and Leicester parted company.

A year out of the game saw Holloway concentrate on his family and personal life. Holloway battled his sciatica and anger management issues and in May 2009 was appointed as the manager of Blackpool FC following the departure of Tony Parkes as caretaker. 15 months later, Holloway and Blackpool played in the Premier League, beating Wigan Athletic 4-0.

Enough of the history lessons. Ian Holloway has always been an eccentric figure. Seen in the media and by a number of other managers as a bit of a clown (though he was voted the 15th funniest Londoner in a Time Out poll in 2006), he has been know to give some interesting post match interviews. Whilst at Plymouth Argyle as a manager, he offered to buy every one of the travelling supporters a drink to say thanks for their support. This image has led to many doubting his ability as a manager and coach.

However, recent history has shown this is not necessarily the case. Holloway knows the game he wants to play and tries to build his teams around that game. Holloway is very much a proponent of the “we’ll score one more than you” school of football philosophy and believes that attack is the better form of defence. Holloway often deploys a minimum of three attacking players at Blackpool, often supplementing these with additional forward thinking midfield players. he is also not shy about making attacking changes late in games, even with a slender lead.

In my opinion, where Ian Holloway excels as a manager and coach is the psychological game. He is no talent scout like Arsene Wenger, or a wheeler dealer like Harry Redknapp. He is certainly no tactical wizard like Jose Mourinho or Carlo Ancelotti. What Ian Holloway is, however, is a motivator. He manages to get relatively mediocre talent and make them play with passion, intent and desire. He turns Championship players like Taylor-Fletcher, Evatt and DJ Campbell into solid Premier League players. I am not trying to have a dig at the quality of the squad, it is what it is based on budget, stature and training facilities. What I am saying is that under a different manager, even a better tactical manager, Blackpool would probably not be in the same position they find themselves in today. In terms of his ability to get the best out of players, he reminds me a lot of Alex Ferguson. I do not for a moment think that Holloway is the next Alex Ferguson, or even close to him, but they have the same ability to make people play and love playing.

The obvious example of this ability is in the pre-season signings that holloway made when Blackpool won promotion. He shunned the traditional European and South American journeymen that many promoted sides plump for and instead went for Premier League rejects such as Craig Cathcart and Marlon Harewood and players that needed and wanted to provide themselves after being jettisoned by other clubs. He demanded that the players he signed bought into his philosophy of attacking football and had a desire to play 38 games a 110% of their ability and turn up and give 100% each and every week.

This approach will probably keep Blackpool in the league and will probably see Holloway extend his current two year deal. I think Blackpool will not stay in the Premier League long term unless they can attract better quality players, the euphoria of promotion and the passion that Holloway is getting the existing squad to play with will not last forever. We have seen in the past with teams like Reading, Wigan and Hull that good first seasons count for very little in subsequent years. However, I think that in Ian Holloway, Blackpool have a coach they can stick with and build the club around.

When I wrote a blog post about Blackpool winning the English Championship play-off final with the title “Blackpool for the Champions League”, I was writing somewhat tongue in cheek, I could not have imagined that they would actually go out and perform the way they have done. The English Premier League season is nearly half way through and Blackpool lie in 12th place on 19 points. Blackpool are not going to qualify for a Champions League spot from here, but it is highly likely they will avoid relegation which is a major feat in itself as they were by some margin the bookie’s favourite to go down at the start of the season (average price around 2/7). I have to admit that I was cautious at the start of the season about the team’s prospects, especially after the summer transfer activity that Ian Holloway undertook. It seemed to take an age for him to make any signings at all and with him releasing a large number of players at the start of the off-season, I was worried that he would struggle to bring in any players. Ian Holloway said at the time that we was looking for the right sort of player with the right mentality to fit into his system, a system that many thought would contribute to the team’s downfall. Ian Holloway prefers an attacking style of play, as seen in the Championship play-off, and tends to employ an “we’ll score one more that you” approach. Eventually Holloway made some signings, which included picking up strikers DJ Campbell (Leicester) and Marlon Harewood (Aston Villa) along with Elliot Grandin (free), Chris Basham (Bolton Wanderers) and Luke Varney (on loan from Derby County).

Even with the additions to the ranks, most pundits thought Blackpool would struggle in their first Premier League season (and first in the top flight since the 1970s). Few would have predicted the start that Blackpool got off to beating Wigan by four goals to nil. The result actually led to Blackpool sitting in top spot in the league for a couple of hours until Chelsea won their opening game of the season by a bigger goal margin. This start could not last and a couple of games later Blackpool were dumped out the League Cup and then humbled by Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. However, wins against Newcastle, Liverpool, West Brom and Wolves have meant that Blackpool avoided the possibility of ending the season on the lowest ever points total and also ensured that pundits started changing their minds about them even getting relegated.

Before I get ahead of myself, I think it is important to mention that this is still going to a very tough season for Blackpool and if they do manage to avoid relegation this season, it is a real probability next year. Blackpool will always struggle to attract quality players, it is not the most attractive club in the world and it has no money so will never be able to match the wages that teams around them can offer to journeymen and promising lower league players. The stadium, Bloomfield Road, is also a massive problem due its size and the lack of expandability. With a capacity at the moment of around 12000, it is the smallest ground in the league and will never generate the kind of match day income that the club will need to survive. The Blackpool hierarchy need to sort this out and sort it out pretty fast if they have any real chance of ensuring their continued stay at English football’s top table.

Where Blackpool have a fighting chance at the moment is their manager, Ian Holloway. Seen as a bit of a joker and an average journeyman coach/manager by most, he has transformed Blackpool in his relatively short tenure as Blackpool boss. His attacking philosophy and ability to make players play at a level higher than their underlying ability may allow are the reason that Blackpool won promotion the Premier League and their performances in the league so far. Holloway has a habit of adding extra attackers during games he is already winning, and often plays with three or four attacking players in his formations. Both of these tactics were obvious in Blackpool’s now famous victory over Liverpool in October.

The other ace in Blackpool’s hand is their skipper and last season’s top goalscorer, Charlie Adam. Signed for a once club record of £500,000 from Rangers, Adam has quickly become the keystone in Blackpool’s team. His goals, set pieces and on field leadership are vital for the team and Blackpool look a far weaker team when he is missing. Whilst at Rangers, Adam was never considered a particularly good player. He had a strong left foot but was deemed surplus to requirements at Ibrox. Many fans, myself included, questioned his move to Blackpool but we have been ecstatic to have been proved wrong!

By the New Year we should know whether Blackpool are going to stay up this season. They have a testing series of fixtures over the festive period, playing Liverpool, Man City, Sunderland, Tottenham and a very tough game away at Stoke. If Blackpool can come out of that series of games with four or five points then they will be a win or two away from securing their position for the 2011-2012 season.

Come on the Tangerines!

Ever since I wrote this article about building an atheist brand back in 2009, and especially following Dan Bye’s comments on the piece, there has been a nagging thought at the back of mind that I have been trying desperately to work out. Namely, what is it that atheist can actually offer under some sort of brand? Is there a service or product that exists that can be commercialised and marketed? These two questions have gone unanswered for the last year and this has obviously weakened my position on this subject. A subject that I still fundamentally see as being central to the progression of a non-religious world view into the popular psyche.

In October of this year, I had the pleasure of being able to attend an audience with the Harvard University humanist chaplain, Greg Epstein, hosted by the British Humanist Association at the Bishopsgate Institute in London. Greg delivered a short lecture on his career to date, focusing primarily on how he became the humanist chaplain at Harvard and then what his ambition was for the humanist brand in the coming years. His views were very similar to mine in that we both feel very strongly that there is a product that non-religious people can market and that product is humanism. Greg felt that there was enough contained within a humanist world view to be able to successfully market its ideas and, ultimately its services, to a very wide audience.

Admittedly, Greg’s idea of humanism is a modern one. It centres around the need to develop a firm and widely accepted philosophy of humanism that can be used to build a formal world view, accepted in general (if not every aspect) by the majority of humanists. Whilst many self-confessed humanists may say that this philosophy exists, it is evident from the relatively wide cross section of humanists I have spoken to about this that actually this is not the case. There is a certain aversion, particularly amongst traditional humanists, to the development of a central philosophy, and what that means practically. This can probably be put down to the route to humanism that many of these traditionalists took, i.e. they chose humanism as an antidote to religion for whatever reason. However, in order to market the idea of humanism and grow its market share, this aversion needs to be overcome.

How do we do this? How do we help make sure that over the next ten years we can really build up the brand of humanism and make sure that those that are not religious say so, and even go as far as unifying the non-religious under one brand umbrella? The current campaign to get non-religious to be made into an answer on the next UK census is one way. The work of young, trendy, rock stars of humanism such as Greg Epstein and Brian Cox is another. A third option is the work and campaigning by organisations such as the BHA in building the profile of humanism. Personally, I would like to see a combination of those factors being used to really market humanism and its world view at young people. This may sound controversial, similar to the practices of some religions in targeting children. However, I mean young people, those in their late teens and early twenties that are naturally looking for world views to subscribe to and who have the tools to be able to rationally choose which one best fits their outlook, ambitions and personality. Work is currently being done in the UK to try and achieve this, organisations such as the AHS are trying to unite and encourage student groups to discuss and debate the very issues I am writing about here. The Chris Worfolk Foundation is another organisation that is trying to engage with young people. The CWF has more practical activities as its main focus, mainly involving volunteering and community work.

The final question is what can we do about this? Personally, I think the answer is a relatively simple one. Contribute. Contribute by calling yourself a humanist. Contribute by acting like a humanist. Contribute by supporting your local and national groups – whichever one best fills your needs. The more people do the following, the more obvious the link between humanists as people and humanism the world view will become. I strongly feel that this organic development will lead to the singularity that will allow a humanist brand to be launched more formally.

I will dispense with the normal “sorry I haven’t posted in ages, I was busy” excuses because even though I have been busy, I have had free time enough to blog but I just have not done so. The main reason has been due to the fact that thinking up articles and getting them posted has not been top of my priority list for the last couple of months and with my Twitter feed syndicating up here every week, it hardly felt worth it to re-hash the mundane activities I partake in on a day to day basis.

Having said all that, I do have a couple of articles I want to put up as soon as I have finished them inspired by the Harvard University humanist chaplain, Greg Epstein (author of Good Without God) whom I got to go and see courtesy of the BHA last month. The focus of these articles are similar to a couple of articles I have published in the past on marketing the humanist brand and developing the non-religious “product”.

I also have the article series I promised back in January to post which was delayed for a number of reasons, not least some issues over the leaking of my blog’s existence to the powers that be as well as the break-up of my relationship.

Below is the press release regarding the national anti-homeopathy campaign organised by The 10:23 Campaign:

Consumers in Leeds to take part in nationwide homeopathic ‘overdose’ protest against Boots’ continued endorsement and sale of homeopathic products, despite the company admitting they have no evidence the ‘treatments’ work.

Leeds-based Consumer rights activists will be taking part in the protests on January 30th, culminating in a mass homeopathic ‘overdose’ taking place in towns across Britain. The intention is to demonstrate to the public that the homeopathic remedies sold by Boots are nothing but sugar pills, and put pressure on Britain’s leading pharmacist to live up to its responsibilities and ensure that the products it sells to customers are genuine.

The protest, organized by Leeds Skeptics as part of the 10:23 Campaign, comes after a Boots representative, Paul Bennett, attracted ridicule from the national press after admitting to a parliamentary select committee last November that Boots sells homeopathic remedies to the public even though they have no evidence the ‘treatments’ work. The Science and Technology Select Committee are due to release their report on homeopathy around the time of the protest, at the end of January.

The 10:23 Campaign is a national movement headed by the Merseyside Skeptics Society, which aims to raise awareness of homeopathy, a multi-million pound industry based on a long-discredited 18th century ritual, selling remedies to the public which have no scientific basis and no credible evidence for their efficacy beyond the placebo effect. While dispensing sugar pills may seem harmless, in reality the endorsement of homeopathic potions by leading health providers can have grave consequences. As well as potentially undermining trust in medicine and medical advice, customers may be misled into believing that they are treating their illness – for example a 2006 Newsnight investigation revealed that homeopaths were advising customers to take ineffective ‘preparations’ in place of antimalarial drugs. In extreme cases, such as the ‘healing therapist’ Russell Jenkins, deaths have occurred.

The Boots brand is synonymous with health care in the United Kingdom, and they speak proudly their role as a health care provider and their commitment to deliver exceptional patient care. Michael Marshall, a spokesman for the 10:23 Campaign, said the following:

“We do not expect the nation’s leading pharmacist to sell us remedies that do not work. The sale of homeopathic remedies is defended on the basis of allowing customer choice, but choice relies on clear information, and misleading customers by endorsing homeopathic brands restricts their ability to make good health choices.”

Ahead of the protests, an open letter to Boots has been published online and signed by thousands of unhappy customers from across the UK and beyond.

I have been “out” as an atheist for about eight years now and have lived with the associated consequences through the cut throat environment of high school, the holier than thou (excuse the pun) world on university and the politically correct arena of real life employment. Out of all those experiences it was the time at university that I found the need to explain and defend my position almost inescapable. Maybe it was the inquisitive and argumentative nature of students, but at school and at work the topic of religious belief has never really been an issue.

It was this thought that has inspired a series of articles that I am going to be releasing over the next few weeks. There are five in all, but I think that the final two will probably get posted as a single piece as I feel that the flow is better suited that way. So, for those of you that have been ignoring my posts recently due to the lack of real or meaningful content should start refreshing those RSS feeds and rechecking those bookmarks!

The article series is called Living as an Atheist and will hopefully highlight some of the issues that are faced by atheists when trying to apply the principles and ideas that tend to be associated with an atheistic world view to real life situations.

The first piece will be on what it means to be a young atheist in sixth form/college and then university. The main thesis is that the 16-25 age bracket is the key defining period in how an atheist will develop their wolrdview and what features of that worldview persist into life beyond education.

The second article is about university atheist societies and it is aimed to coincide with the anniversary of the official press launch of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies. The focus of this article will be on sustainability and leadership within the student community of an atheist society. This is a subject which I have been invited to speak on at the AHS Conference in Oxford att he end of February.

The third part of the series is an essay on working in a multi-ethnic environment and the clash of British capitalism and religious imperatives. The key points under exploration will include the compatability of the market system with Islamic ideas on trade and finance as well as the human element of actually working alongside adherants to a number of religions and how “office banter” can lead to difficult situations and damaging misunderstandings.

The fourth and fifth articles will be a short history of my own journey to atheism and then an in depth analysis into the development of my world view and how that is implemented both in my student world and my professional world.

So, keep your eyes peeled as I am unsure yet as to which day will be ebst for publication but will probably depend on when I need to kill the msot time at work over the next week.

I was invited to speak at the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire last night on my experience with Leeds Atheist Society and the AHS. This is my first real public speaking engagement since stepping down as AHS president in June this year. Below is an excerpt from the lecture that focusses on my own personal history with these organisations, although my lecture went into a bit more detail about the general history and possible future too.

I want to talk to you about the current burst of enthusiasm amongst students to take on religious societies at their own game and build student societies based around atheist or humanist or secularist principles.

There has been a great flurry of activity over the past two or three years with regards to getting young people, especially students, involved in these societies. Much of this activity has been instigated and masterminded right here in Leeds.

Before I go on to talk about the bigger picture, or even the local picture I want to introduce you to my own personal picture.

It all started when a when an enthusiastic first year friend of mine approached me in a bar to ask if I would sign a petition to request the formation of an Atheist Society at the University of Leeds Student Union. I declined the offer. I wasn’t an atheist, at best I was agnostic. How could I sign the form?

Luckily, that wasn’t the end of story. Whilst I had felt unable to literally sign up as an atheist there and then, it did inspire me to look at the matter in far more detail then I ever had previously. It was with this new found desire to understand atheism that within a month I was standing front and centre at the Atheist Society launch party in January 2007, fully signed up as a proverbial card carrying atheist. By the April of 2007 I was elected Secretary and had taken on a central leadership role within the Society.

This is probably a good time to speak about the growth of the Leeds University Atheist Society, seeing as much of the rest of the talk will branch off from this history as we go on.

As I mentioned before, Leeds Atheist Society was created in December 2006 as the brainchild of Chris Worfolk and quickly established itself as a society of big ideas when it announced that less than six months after forming it would put on a week long awareness event. This event was known as Rationalist Week and is now an annual flagship event for the society and has even been adopted by a number of other student societies and inspired the recent creation by the British Humanist Association’s Humanist Week.

Rationalist Week 2007 was the catalyst that allowed a small group of dedicated members to turn Leeds Atheist Society into the largest and most active student atheist society in the UK.

The society grew from a dozen members in 2006-2007 to fifty members in 2007-2008, making the society one of the fastest growing groups on campus. This growth in popularity did not go unnoticed and the society narrowly missed out on winning “Best New Society” at the annual Students Union awards.

As we moved in to our first full year we put on our first weekend away, taking 12 members to London for a weekend of debate, history and partying. We also ran a constant stream of events ranging from simple talks and lectures through to interfaith debate.

A real feather in the society’s cap was the introduction of the One Life course – a secular look at the important questions in life. The course is aimed at non-atheists and is designed to let them explore the meaning of life and the question of ethics without the need for a god.

I was elected president shortly after Rationalist Week 2008, a week that played host to over 40 events, saw us introduce a more spacious marquis and allowed us to reach in excess of a thousand students.

As president of the society, I helped steer us towards our current vision of education and enlightenment. This means a focus on teaching atheists as well as religious people what being an atheist or a humanist or a secularist really means. The launch of Perspective course also allowed us to teach atheists about other religions.

The society continued to grow and by the end of the 2008-2009 academic year we could boast a membership of just over 100. We also continued to develop Rationalist Week, with the 2009 event going 24/7 with events all day every day for a week. Answers course was also launched in March, aimed at developing our own members’ ability to express themselves and their atheist ideas.

In April 2009, a brand new executive committee took over the running of the society with a new brand of the education vision. The focus of the society is about not just educating our members but helping them to enrich their lives by providing opportunity for charity and helping them discover a way to live a more positive life based on humanist philosophies.

The growing popularity and the ever increasing range of events started to get the attention of other faith groups on campus. A screening of the documentary “What Muslims Want” developed into a heated debate, but nothing compared to some of the difficulties we were to encounter.

During Atheist Week in November 2007 we had our banners stolen in broad daylight and in February 2008 during the run up to my lecture on freedom of speech entitled “We will mock Muhammed if we want to…” I received personal death threats from anonymous Muslims. The society also received several threats from various quarters and in the end I took the decision to self-censor and remove some of the more controversial material from the presentation. Whilst running Rationalist Week 2008, we again had problems with our banners – this time seeing them defaced and covered in religious graffiti.

This problem was highlighted during Rationalist Week 2009 during a debate between Leeds Atheist Society and the Islamic Society. Not only was the atmosphere in the marquis highly charged with personal and religious insults flying around, but a group of Asian men sabotaged our generating equipment and physically threatened a number of our members.

So, I have regaled you with the saga of Leeds Atheist Society and many of you might wonder what this has to do with the growth of the student movement nationally. Well, the reasons that drove our society’s formation are behind many of the societies springing up across the UK.

There are several factors that have been suggested as causing, or helping to cause, this recent phenomenon. The ones I want to look at are the “Atheist Superstars”, the rise of religious fundamentalism and the encroachment of religion into our daily lives.

The deluge of publications that have erupted over the past decade or two has literally swept atheist and humanist ideas into the forefront of the public consciousness. People like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Chris Hitchens and Arianne Sherine have rarely been out of the bestseller lists or off the pages of newspapers since the turn of the century.

Atheism is no longer confined to the meeting rooms of community and education centres, it is no longer associated with dusty tomes and leather patched philosophy teachers. It is part of pop culture now and as such is part of youth culture. I know that several of my friends, and even me, would say that the availability of this material has played a significant role in our taking up of the atheist battle standard.

Another factor is the rise of religious fundamentalism in the Middle East and the USA. It is virtually impossible to watch the news or read a paper or magazine without some reference being made to religious terrorism or some form of extremism – whether it be suicide bombs in Kabul or imprisoned school teachers in Sudan.

Whilst many students do not link their lack of belief directly to fundamentalism, there is a clear link between the religious rhetoric of Western leaders and the growing feeling amongst young people that they need to have their say about religion. This means that religion is no longer something that can be ignored and whispered about every now and again when some story slowly filters into the public domain. These days every religious story is in the public domain and moreover it is right in the middle of the public consciousness.

Finally, the most student orientated factor is the presence and power of religious societies on campuses across the UK. These societies represent less that 10% of the student population but many have a disproportionate amount of power and influence not only within Students Unions but also on higher education policy in general.

Many student atheist societies form to act as a counterpoint for these organisations, a way of forcing debate and critical thought amongst the student population. Religious societies have national representational bodies; some are even governed centrally too. It is this national influence that sparked the idea of a national atheist organisation specifically for students.

This national organisation started out as a single online resource centre for student atheists to use and a forum for them to share ideas and best practice, this hub was called Secular Portal. It was on a discussion thread on Secular Portal that an idea was floated to hold an atheist student conference. Several weeks later, representatives from six student societies along with advisers from the BHA, NSS and HSS sat in a lecture theatre at the University of Edinburgh and formed the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies. That was June 2008.

My role moving forwards from the creation of the AHS was to write the constitution. My remit was simple; write a comprehensive, democratic and sustainable constitution that allowed for the AHS to work towards charitable status within a few years. If any of you have had to write this kind of document will know, turning a simple remit into a workable document is not the simplest task. Nevertheless, by the November of 2008 we were ready to ratify the constitution and officially form the AHS as a legal entity.

It was decided to host the ratification conference in Leeds, the largest and most active of the founding member societies. At the conference, the constitution was ratified and I was elected its first president. My manifesto was clear, I was to lead the AHS to a national launch within six months and build membership to a sustainable level by our first AGM to be held in June 2009.

The first part of that manifesto was probably the easiest, although not without glitch, as we had a venue we could use for free in London and a host of press pulling speakers we could enlist to help us out. The only problem was ensuring that enough students would attend to help us gain members so we could really push on and move forwards.

The launch event itself was a massive success. Held in Conway Hall, home of the South Place Ethical Society, with guest speakers Richard Dawkins, Polly Toynbee and Anthony Grayling we managed to attract a sizeable audience and getting some fantastic press.

I stepped down as president in June 2009 to hand over to the next executive and the AHS has continued to build its national presence and develop its policies and procedures to continue to work towards a charitable status.

It is still vitally important that student atheist, humanist and secularist societies continue to thrive and that they are continued to be supported by a national organisation that aims to help out individual societies in a practical and meaningful way. This means supporting the development of new societies, provided guidance and resources to existing societies and also providing practical training to the committees of those societies to ensure sustainability and longevity. A national voice only works well if the4 focus is on the people it claims to speak for and not if its priorities lie in press coverage and campaigning.

Just found this snippet on the NSS website.

A Muslim smallholder in Kent has been fined £3,000 and told to pay £3,799 costs at Bromley Magistrates’ Court after he slaughtered sheep using halal methods but without pre-stunning the animals.
Sheep

Zeki Ismail’s small farm in Keston was raided last December after he bought six sheep at a market in Ashford, Kent. Bromley Council’s food safety officers, meat hygiene vets and animal health inspectors all feared Mr Ismail might kill the livestock for halal meat without following safety rules. By the time they arrived at the farm with police, three sheep had already been killed and the meat shared around the family.

But Mr Ismail claimed that he was completely unaware he was breaking strict farming laws. Mr Ismail slit the throats of his sheep without stunning them first – breaking a UK law which states animals which are not stunned must only be killed at a licensed slaughterhouse.

Mr Ismail admitted failing to stun the sheep before killing them, religiously slaughtering the animals outside of a slaughterhouse, supplying food containing specified risk material for human consumption, and failing to tell the local authority that six sheep had moved onto his smallholding.

London’s Halal Food Authority says animals have to be fed as normal and given water prior to slaughter and one animal must not see the other being killed. The authority also says the “knife should be four times the size of the neck and razor sharp, and as far as possible the slaughterer and the animal should face Qibla or Mecca.”
The organisation does not ban animals from being stunned before their throats are slit, but the UK’s Halal Monitoring Committee insists that slaughter must take place without stunning the animals.

This is an interesting development following my article on this very subject not so long ago that was published in Secular Future.