Have you noticed how often the word “closure” is used these days? A policeman or woman might say, when being interviewed on TV about a case, that they want to find the perpetrator so the that the victims can have “closure”. A verdict, a funeral, a divorce, or any event that marks a significant setback in someone’s life, and he or she may be expected to find “closure”. It’s one of those words that seems to mean something, but doesn’t.

Hazel Blears is the Labour MP for Salford and Secretary of State in the Department for Communities and Local Government (since 28 June 2007). I’ve only just learned about a speech she made to the National Imams and Rabbis Conference in March this year. Ms Blears clearly sees religion as a good thing, while a lack of faith is (she seems to think) hardly worth bothering about. In the speech, she said,  It seems to me that for all the talk about British society becoming more secular, more consumerist, more avaricious, actually we have seen a growth in the importance of faith in many of our communities.

Plans to allow British scientists to create human-animal embryos are expected to be approved tomorrow by the government’s fertility regulator. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority published its long-awaited public consultation on the controversial research yesterday, revealing that a majority of people were “at ease” with scientists creating the hybrid embryos. Human-animal embryo study wins approval | Science | The Guardian. Despite religionists’ objections, the research should go ahead.

In 2001 a new category of identity was introduced in the census: “mixed”. Thousands of Britons were no longer required to tick “other” or align themselves exclusively with the more established groups recognised by the state. The census results made it apparent that labelling people simply as “black”, “white” or “Asian” hid far more about the nature of Britain’s population than it revealed. Comment is free: Thinking outside the ticked boxes.

So folks, if any of you get spam emails from dead people, this explains why. You just wouldn’t listen, would you? The rapture: When all the believers in Jesus Christ, who have been born again, are taken up to heaven. After the rapture, there will be a lot of speculation as to why millions of people have just disappeared. Unfortunately, after the rapture, only non believers will be left to come up with answers.

Think about a moral principle or two. You know what I mean. Stealing is wrong. Lying is bad. You should not cause unnecessary suffering. You should try to help those in need. That sort of thing. blog.talkingphilosophy.com » Morality on Mountaintops. James Garvey asks if it’s excusable to do things that are usually considered morally dubious if you’re in some sort of life or death situation. Tags: Morality, Excuses, right+or+wrong

The British Humanist Association has condemned the Governments ‘joint statement’ with religious groups released today, joining teacher representatives and some religious groups such as the Hindu Council UK in objecting to increased support for ‘faith’ schools. Andrew Copson, BHA Education Officer, said, ‘To expand state-funded faith schools is to increase discrimination in school admissions against pupils and their parents and to increase employment discrimination against teachers. It means more pupils will be segregated by religion and ethnicity and denied the right to a fully balanced education or to school with children from different backgrounds and learn with and from them.

A new report examining the views of young Muslims in Ipswich and Suffolk has been published. Entitled “Exploring Young Muslims’ Views” – it was compiled by Mojlum Khan, a Suffolk-based Muslim and launched before an invited audience of local Muslims, senior representatives of local statutory bodies and others, at Suffolk College on Tuesday 27th March. Mojlum is closely connected to the Ipswich Mosques. He is the Development Manager at the Bangladeshi Support Centre and he also serves as a visiting Imam at a Young Offenders’ Institution.

To appeal to younger Humanists, we’ve signed up on Facebook. If you’ve got a Facebook account, make us your friend! If you don’t know what Facebook is, come and find out. Tags: Facebook, Internet, Contacts, Group

Camp Quest is the first residential summer camp in the history of the United States for the children of Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists, Brights, or whatever other terms might be applied to those who hold to a naturalistic, not supernatural world view. The purpose of Camp Quest is to provide children of freethinking parents a residential summer camp dedicated to improving the human condition through rational inquiry, critical and creative thinking, scientific method, self-respect, ethics, competency, democracy and free speech.

So the schools secretary, Ed Balls, and faith group leaders have formed a partnership endorsing faith schools as a force to improve social cohesion in England. This gasp-inducing statement is on a par with “let us build and run more nuclear power stations Chernobyl fashion – oh, and let’s put them in city centres”. In the face of the failure of multiculturalism, with the awful example of faith-divided schooling in Northern Ireland over decades, with news of Deobandi control of half of British mosques where hostility to the host community is preached, the government is choosing to continue to fly in the face of all reason and experience, and to design and pay for – with our tax money – greater future divisiveness and trouble.

When Nicholas Pandolfi of local radio SGR fm wrote a piece about his ‘proxy atheism’ recently in the Ipswich Advertiser, he provoked letters of protest from local Christians. Some people agreed with his sentiments, including Suffolk Humanists’ members who supplied me with cuttings (we don’t get the Advertiser in our neck of the woods). Nicholas wrote, I SHOULD like to ‘out’ myself. My name is Nicholas Pandolfi and I am a ‘proxy atheist’; a clumsy title at best and one that leaves me perched painfully on the fence between Faith and No Faith.

A headteacher who tried to reduce the influence of religion inside the classroom by creating the country’s first secular state school had his plans blocked by senior government officials who called it a ‘political impossibility’. Secular school barred by Whitehall | UK News | The Observer. Ed Balls MP is minister for schools. You can email him about this lunacy. Tags: Ed+Balls+MP, Secular+education, Schools

One of the world’s most respected Deobandi scholars believes that aggressive military jihad should be waged by Muslims “to establish the supremacy of Islam” worldwide. Justice Muhammad Taqi Usmani argues that Muslims should live peacefully in countries such as Britain, where they have the freedom to practise Islam, only until they gain enough power to engage in battle. His views explode the myth that the creed of offensive, expansionist jihad represents a distortion of traditional Islamic thinking.

While the military are shooting and gassing monks and civilians in Rangoon, here in Cambodia the picture is somewhat different. All appears to be well, the monks are cheerful, and no-one is protesting or getting shot. Cambodia has a motto – Nation, Religion, King – and yet no-one seems to get that worked up about it. The King’s face adorns every shop wall, and most places also have a small shrine, but get talking to the average Khmer and Religion or King will be the last thing they mention, certainly to an outsider.

After a number of requests from teaching unions and civic bodies, including the Christian think-tank Ekklesia and the British Humanist Association, the UK Department of Children, Schools, and Families has issued guidance for teachers uncertain whether and how to discuss creationism – which is rejected by both scientists and theologians as lacking factual and theoretical value. A statement on Teachernet, a government website, states that “Creationism and intelligent design are not part of the National Curriculum for science” and describes “intelligent design” as “a creationist belief” that “is sometimes erroneously advanced as scientific theory but has no underpinning scientific principles or explanations supporting it and it is not accepted by the international scientific community.

Leading a class in prayer can be tricky if you are an atheist. Tim*, 24, has found it one of the many challenges of being a non-believer working at a Roman Catholic school in west London. He does not think his colleagues know that he is an atheist it did not come up at the interview and he is only in his first year of working as a science teacher.

The head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique has told the BBC he believes some European-made condoms are infected with HIV deliberately. Maputo Archbishop Francisco Chimoio claimed some anti-retroviral drugs were also infected “in order to finish quickly the African people”. BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Shock at archbishop condom claim. Makes you wonder if you need to fail an intelligence test to become a Catholic archbishop.

One of the most discordant debates in Russian society is playing out in public schools like those in this city not far from Moscow, where the other day a teacher named Irina Donshina set aside her textbooks, strode before her second graders and, as if speaking from a pulpit, posed a simple question: “Whom should we learn to do good from?” “From God!” the children said. Welcome or Not, Orthodoxy Is Back in Russia’s Public Schools – New York Times.

The religious activist Stephen Timms, who also happens to be the Labour Party’s vice-chair and Minister for Competitiveness (“with special responsibility for faith communities”), this week made the insulting claim that “people of faith” bring special qualities to social work that “are rare elsewhere”. Speaking at a conference of Traidcraft, the Christian-based fair trade organisation, Mr Timms said: “There is positive impact when people of faith are involved in the lives of their community, because these people bring valuable qualities in their service which are rare elsewhere and they are qualities modern Britain urgently needs.

It can be done. There were so many problems associated with sectarian education in Newfoundland that all schools were taken under secular state control in the 1990s. Before then, animosity between different faith schools even resulted in savage ice hockey matches which weren’t about playing the game, but an all-out battle. It was a grim fact of life in that province under its historically sectarian education system in which the churches ran the schools with money from the public purse.