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BBC: Humanism

My Lords, I am grateful as a happy Christian to be given this opportunity to find myself surrounded by so many happy humanists and I hope that happiness will prevail. I have three minutes, which is about the time a "Thought for the Day" script takes to read, so I shall limit myself to saying that I am a Christian, will speak as a Christian and will speak about "Thought for the Day". First, I need to say that I simply do not understand my religious faith as being determined by dogma and indoctrination. I do not understand my religion to be rigid and I do not understand Richard Dawkins to be possessed of particularly great courage, since as the professor for the public understanding of science, he has resorted again and again to so much evidence of lack of the use of scientific method in the way that he has pilloried—yes, pilloried—religion. I wish British humanists all the best in developing programme content and satisfying their desires to contribute more widely to the output of the BBC. I want to make one point on "Thought for the Day". As a contributor to "Thought for the Day" for 17 years, I honestly believe that I could deposit the 198 scripts which I have written for the programme in front of everyone in this Grand Committee and that noble Lords would not find one single occasion when I took a swipe at anyone who did not believe. If I could have the same assurance that British humanists using the same slot would not take a swipe at people who did believe—there has been a little bit of evidence of that in the contributions made thus far—then it would seem to me that their place in the slot would be perfectly justified and justifiable. I have taken from the website of the British Humanist's Association their vision: ""A world without … discrimination, where people are free to live good lives on the basis of reason, experience and shared human values"." I would say "Amen" to that if it would not cause them offence. Their mission is stated as: ""The British Humanist Association exists to promote Humanism and support and represent people who seek to live good lives"." I say "Amen" to that. The trouble is that in each case I have left out a phrase. The vision actually says: ""A world without religious privilege or discrimination"," and their mission includes the words, ""who seek to live good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs"." I wish to see people live good lives whether or not they have religious beliefs. I wish to see a world without discrimination and I want to encourage people of varying beliefs, whether in the transcendental or not. I submit my little case here and I encourage British humanists to be a little more generous and a little less sectarian in the way they view religion.