A newsletter with the agenda and reports is attached. We’ll be at Pinewood Community Hall from 7.30pm on 14th April – see the events calendar (right) for a map and directions. SH&S News April 2009 A4.pdf (262 KB) Not sure about PDF files? Easy-peasy!

If you don’t want Murphy O’Connor in the Lords, have you signed this petition?

A few years ago, while visiting a local high school, one of the girls told me that her little sister had been told that their parents would go to hell because they were atheists. Who told her? Her primary school teacher. Did they complain? I believe they did, though I don’t know what the outcome was. In another local primary school, a class had been doing some science about colours. The head teacher visited the classroom and was admiring a picture of a rainbow.

By David Mitchell What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility the prerogative of the harlot through the ages. Those were the words of Stanley Baldwin, quoting his cousin Rudyard Kipling in the years leading up to the Second World War. Nothing much has changed in certain parts of the press and Humanists and other visitors to this website will have read about the furore caused by the scurrilous article in the Daily Mail on 20th March by James Chapman making wild and inaccurate accusations against the BHA.

The campaign was the idea of comedy writer Ariane Sherine, who’d seen some Christian bus ads with a link to a website with an unpleasant message. How unpleasant? Judge for yourself. I especially dislike the bit about God’s wrath if you reject him –  You will be condemned to everlasting separation from God and then you spend all eternity in torment in hell. Jesus spoke about this as a lake of fire which was prepared for the devil and all his angels (demonic spirits) (Matthew 25: 41).

The New Statesman asked various people what God means to them. What does it mean to you?

I was going to write about Easter, for the benefit of those who’ll ask things like, “And what do you poor atheists do at this time of the year if you don’t believe in Easter?”, but I’m too busy gardening. However, Cath Elliott’s saved me the bother. I will get around to writing an informative and educational page about the Spring Equinox Festival eventually.

Franny Armstrong’s film about climate change, starring Pete Postlewaite, will be shown at the Hollywood Cinema, Ipswich, on Sunday 26th April at 4pm, 6pm and 8pm. Go the Age of Stupid website to see a trailer, and more.

The Atheist Bus Campaign‘s Just Giving page is now closed, after raising a phenomenal amount of money. There will be more ads later in the year – watch this space.

Twitter can make you immoral, says the Daily Mail. That would explain why I’ve become so wicked. There are at least three “immoral” Suffolk Humanists on Twitter – me, and him, and him. Oh, and Charles Darwin’s on there too. If you don’t understand Twitter, read this.

I never thought I’d live to see a TV documentary that made ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ look balanced but the BBC managed it, and on the flagship channel, with The Narnia Code (BBC1 16th April) a blatant ‘puff’ for Dr Michael Ward’s book ‘Planet Narnia’. Whilst Ward’s theory about an inner meaning behind C.S Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles was an interesting one, the last 20 minutes of the 60 minute programme were pure Christian propaganda, with a series of scientist/Christians wheeled out to spout the most outrageous nonsense.

In today’s Guardian – new evidence that faith schools don’t provide the benefits claimed for them, and that they increase social fragmentation. Government Minister Jim Knight provides the usual justification for keeping them.

From the Independent: Religious broadcasting has taken an unexpected turn at the BBC, leaving secularists last night claiming a breakthrough. An important new committee that the corporation will consult on religious broadcasting is to include a humanist. Read more about it on the BHA website. The humanist who’ll sit on the Standing Conference on Religion and Belief will be Andrew Copson, the BHA’s Director of Education & Public Affairs.

We might like to imagine that all the funny Creationists are over the other side of the Pond, but we know that’s not true. However, it’s unlikely they’d be allowed to get away with this sort of daftness over here. Bill Nye, the harmless children’s edu-tainer known as “The Science Guy,” managed to offend a select group of adults in Waco, Texas at a presentation, when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun.

The BHA now has its own YouTube channel. The latest video is of Daniel Dennett at Conway Hall, providing “A Darwinian Perspective on Religions: Past, Present and Future”.