2020/06/15 Update: Please note that thinkhumanist.org is no longer active. We have left the existing text of our original news item from 2007 below.
The Humanist Society of Scotland and the British Humanist Association launch their Darwin Day podcasts
The BBC does not allow non-religious thinkers on ‘Thought For The Day’ and is committed to keeping the slot religious. Humanists believe that morality and ethics are not the sole preserve of faith groups and have decided to create and podcast their own humanist TFTDs on www.thinkhumanist.org. This will be linked to every humanist organisation throughout the world and our aim is both to offer an alternative to religious morality and to show the BBC and the public that humanists can be equally, if not more, thought provoking when tackling moral and ethical issues as religious thinkers.
The website launched today and podcasting this week will be BHA supporters: comedian and “Jerry Springer the Opera” creator Stewart Lee and humanist philosophers Julian Baggini , Nigel Warburton and A.C. Grayling. Gillian Stewart, a Humanist celebrant for the HSS who conducts wedding, funeral and baby naming ceremonies will also be podcasting as will Kate Hudson, chair of CND.
Following the launch week of www.thinkhumanist.org, the Humanist Society of Scotland will invite humanists from throughout the world to podcast on the site so that there is always an alternative for non-religious thinkers to listen to.
A.C Grayling said:
‘It is wrong that ‘Thought for the Day’ refuses to have any but religious voices on it. The far richer and longer-standing humanist tradition, stemming from Socrates to our own day, is a treasure-house of insights and perspectives that our world is tragically lacking, oppressed as it is by mainly religion-fuelled divisions and atrocities. The Humanist Society of Scotland has done us a service in offering a real alternative to predictable pieties that now speak to minorities only in our society.’
NOTES
Andrew Copson British Humanist Association
07855 380633
Juliet Wilson Humanist Society of Scotland
07786 136 102/ 0131 556 0128