Regret this site admin and author-in-chief had an accident resulting in hospitalisation and severe restrictions to my mobility, which is why things have gone a bit quiet. However, my ankle may be broken but my typing fingers aren’t, so aim to start writing again ASAP. Meanwhile, if there’s anything you’d like to read about here, please email us.

Here’s the latest Suffolk Humanist News, with apologies for lateness – our editor may have got herself hospitalised, but she’s back on the mend now. This edition includes information on our upcoming AGM, our meeting with Peter Tatchell in Colchester last month, and upcoming events. Download SH News April 2007 (93 KB PDF)

E-mail: mail@suffolkhumanists.org.uk Event description: Opinions on the Sea of Faith vary widely in Humanist and Secularist circles. For an explanation of what they’re about, see their website. They’re concerned with what will replace institutional religion as interest in it declines. The SoF Roadshow will be at the Quaker Meeting House, 39 Fonnereau Road, Ipswich, IP1 3JH. The cost is 8, including a vegetarian lunch, tea and coffee. Speakers are Don Cupitt, fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and Stephen Mitchell, a Suffolk Parish Priest and founder member of SoF.

Every MP in the country is to receive a copy of Richard Dawkins’ latest book The God Delusion following a grassroots effort by humanists who want to challenge state privileges given to religious groups. The campaign, organised through the community action website, Pledgebank, is an attempt to demonstrate how widespread secular and atheist views are in this country. It comes in response to Prof Dawkins’s rallying cry in the book for atheists to be more vocal.

At this year’s Cambridge Science Festival, Re:Design was a dramatisation of the correspondence between Charles Darwin and the Harvard Professor of Botany, Asa Gray. You will need broadband and Flash, Windows Media or Quicktime player to see the video extract. Terry Molloy, who plays Darwin, is my brother-in-law!  Tags: Darwin, Theatre, Cambridge

If you’re a Radio 4 listener, you’ll know that the debate about including atheist/humanist thoughts for the day in the Today programme has been hotting up. We’ve had an email from Naomi Phillips, Public Affairs Officer at The British Humanist Association, as follows: We seem to be getting somewhere with our campaign to have humanist voices included on Radio 4’s ‘Thought for the Day’. Last week both BHA member Lord Harrison of Chester and Jonathan Bartley of Ekklesia (the Christian think tank with which the BHA has worked on issues like creationism), himself a contributor to Thought for The Day, made the case on the Today programme for including humanist contributors.

Hundreds of thousands of people have rallied in Istanbul in support of secularism in Turkey, amid a row over a vote for the country’s next president. BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Huge rally for Turkish secularism. Many see the nomination of foreign minister Abdullah Gul as a threat to the strict separation of religion and politics since Turkey became a republic in 1923, suspecting that he has an Islamist agenda and would be in a position to veto all laws and appoint key establishment figures.