Alice Roberts | Morals Without Religion: the Unholy Mrs Knight and the Hypocritical Humanist

so some of you may recognize the title of my talk morals without religion it's the title of Margaret Knight's amazing 1955 radio essays and I'm going to be looking at the context of these essays I'm going to be looking at what has changed from from then to now but it all say a bit of a personal journey as well and why I feel as though I have quite a bit in common with Margaret Knight so the subtitle of my talk is the unholy mrs. Knight and the hypocritical humanists say I was brought up an Anglican my family went to church pretty much every Sunday at a huge Church and central whistle so Mary Redcliffe and this is it I went to Sunday school when I was little and then I attended services as I got older he was quite high church they just about stopped short of swinging census but there was plenty of ritual and mystery I loved it I loved the smell of the candles the lowest nate's of the organ that shook the floor in the church and vibrated behind your sternum the embroidered Chaucer Bulls and the altar cloths soaring architecture it's a magnificent building amazing there isn't roof bosses every one of them different and I reckon I could still chant the Nicene Creed I was trying this this morning in the bathroom it they can it's quite shocking it's burned into my mind age 14 I was confirmed and then and then I started to think about whether I actually believed in any of the tenets of the faith that I'd been steeped in from birth I was a scientist at heart I was questioning everything and some of the claims that this religion made seemed fairly flaky not transubstantiated or con substantiative but unsubstantiated I talked about my dates with my dad as an engineer he approached the Bible Old and New Testaments as a compilation of myths with some truths buried deep in it and some useful moral teachings but for me there was just something quite fundamental that seemed being compatible with the lightest possible way of being a Christian when I examined my beliefs properly I couldn't accept that Jesus was the son of a God in anything more than an entirely metaphorical sense and there was something more than that I just didn't believe in God and so age 15 I stopped going to church my dad accepted it my mum told me I was rejecting all the values I'd been brought up with when I left for university a few years later I turned vegetarian once again she told me I was rejecting all the values I'd been brought up with and not to bother coming home as she certainly wouldn't be cooking me any vegetarian meals if I did having rejected the religion and the meat-eating that I've been brought up with I went off to medical school and off into a strange somewhat convoluted career where I graduated as a as a doctor and worked as a doctor and then I became a university lecturer specializing in anatomy and biological anthropology before adopting another role alongside the academic one later'd Public Engagement television and and writing books as well as joy I discovered through through doing television and then of course I found my fetus having family feeds as a writer I reached the absolute pinnacle the apotheosis of any career as Pathak president of humanist UK now I must admit I thought this would be controversial I have a strong Protestant work ethic I perhaps look like I ought to be firmly part of the establishment along with the established church of course I'm the daughter of a church warden for God's sake what I didn't expect was the controversy that erupted last November after I was interviewed by The Sunday Times as the incoming president of humanists UK we had a very wide-ranging interview about humanist weddings pastoral cares civil rights but actually when it went to print it boiled down to just one issue now I've supported humanists UK's faithful campaign for many years they've done an absolutely brilliant job of monitoring the emergence of illegal faith schools campaigning for evolution to be taught it's now in the curriculum in primary school they've campaigned for inclusive sex and relationships education and also recalls questioned why so many a third of taxpayer-funded state schools are affiliated with the particular faith mostly theory and this for the Sunday Times was the most controversial part of the campaign now I was completely upfront about sending my own children to COV school indeed that was part of my argument my husband and I find ourselves in the situation that thousands and thousands of non-religious parents find themselves every year if I wanted my children to go to a reasonably local state primary school it would have to be a COV school and in these schools the diocese has fairly extensive influence over the curriculum and some even practiced selective admissions they openly discriminate against the children of non-religious parents and I think for people you haven't you aren't thinking about sending their children to primary school it's it comes as a real surprise to a lot of people that there is this discrimination in the in the system well following this headline the the article itself was very reflective of my feelings and my views and and was well reported but the headline attracted a lot of knee-jerk reactions especially on social media of course so cue a Twitter pile on where I was accused of hypocrisy and I was I was there kind of shouting into the storm I'm not a hypocrite this is the point I'm making non-religious parents don't have a real choice kids of non-religious parents are being discriminated against because of their parents lack of faith I shouted into the storm but the interview provokes an interesting conversation at least and lots of parents at the time contacted me to say that they were in the same position that they were facing these difficulties as well and lots of people I'm pleased to say also joined humanists UK around this time as well it was the following Sunday that for me all hell broke loose having waited 30 years to properly express her outrage at my apostasy my mother wrote to the Sunday Times and followed up with an interview now I'm not going to delve into that in any detail it's all there if you want to look it up online but it was as the editor said when he rang me on the Saturday evening before it went to press not a supportive letter so a family route apparently I'm not sure you can call it your way because I have no idea and involving a BBC presenter the right-wing press lapped it up and paid for more and social media went absolutely mad for it and article in the mail on Sunday by Peter Hitchens was headlined if our if our church or schools they say wicked Alice why do you send your children to one I'd kind of explained that much choice while others were suggesting that I was not only a hypocrite but possibly a liar as well as Julie Lynn rating conservative women how wretchedly uncomfortable it is for the rich and famous I'm not sure about the first one not sure about the second one anyway with ideological credentials to protect when they have to find a school for their offspring BBC presenter Alice Roberts is just the latest to have been rumbled as having her two children at a school of whose very existence she does not approve and she went on as an intelligent individual as well as a committed humanist did Roberts really not have what it took to make sure that she secured that place at one of the non faith schools she would have preferred allegedly that is to say a house move in the years she had to think about it and then she also suggests I should have gone privately maybe professor Roberts just hope she could get away with it hoping to get away with anything I'd use my personal story to illustrate the situation that thousands of on religious parents find themselves in every year and the information hadn't been uncovered in an awkward way by the Sunday Times I'd first brought it up publicly four years ago when I wrote a letter in support of humanist UK's faith school campaign anyway it's not just humanists like me who are arguing that schools shouldn't push a particular faith on children or create segregation in this way plenty of religious people including religious leaders are also in favor of inclusive education the accord coalition is chaired by an Anglican vicar the Reverend Stephen Terry and it's a group founded some 10 years ago to broaden the debate around faith schools and advance inclusive education in April the former bishop of Bolton became the latest distinguished supporter of the Accord coalition and yet and yet we're seeing an expansion of state faith schools and no suggestion at all from the church that it intends ending any of its discriminatory admissions practices here are just a couple of quotes from parents in the 2015 report for the fair admissions campaign the school is dividing the community most middle class white English parents play the game and send their children to the church school well everyone else attends the non church school depriving children at both schools of a balanced mix of friends here's another one I can't understand how we can have three schools not point four miles away but due to religious discrimination were unable to get into any of them I now won't be able to return to work as I can't get my son to his school and me into work from a mother in Surrey now a common defense of faith schools is that they provide they provide a sound basis for moral education there's still a perception floating around that morals without religion or somehow morally bankrupt back in 2003 the agony aunt and novelist an Atkins said on Radio Falls thought for the day which I want to be the first humanist presenting a napkin said without God where do we find absolutes of right and wrong what is to stop a secular society sinking to depths of depravity that is yet we only dream of Anakin's fear is misplaced of course religiosity is not correlated with low rates of violence in fact it's the other way around secular countries tend to be less violent than religious ones the main facts are driving the advance of both peace and emancipated values is a Steven Pinker say eloquently articulates in his latest latest book enlightenment now education and in answer to her first question how do we know right from wrong a humanist would perhaps reply that ethical behavior is best guided not by recourse to religion but by employing empathy self-control the moral sense and reason the faculties which Steven Pinker has described borrowing a phrase from Abraham Lincoln as the better angels of our nature Pinker argues that the historical reduction of violence from interpersonal violence to wars between states and the rites revolutions of the 19th through to the 21st centuries have come about principally through the application of cold hard reason to moral and ethical questions that cold hard Reason makes us warmer and softer it makes us better people anyway back to that week in November where everybody from Judy Lynn to Peter Hitchens was queuing up to have a go at me like cancels work that week I avoided social media completely and instead I immersed myself in reading various works of humanist philosophy amongst them I reread Margaret nights essays on morals without religion Margaret Knight was a psychology lecturer at Aberdeen University and these essays were originally spoken word they were radio essays broadcast in 1955 and what was then the BBC's home service what is now Radio 4 and there had been a huge backlash against these programmes at the time and against her as well so I felt in that moment back in November as though I had a lot in common with Margaret Knight but I also couldn't help to reflect and it was very uplifting to see how much progress there had been since the 1950s so for the middle part of my talk now it's it's not me at all I want you to imagine that you're back in 1955 listening to the world's surface service as I read excerpts from Margaret Knight's morals without religion she started by addressing her talks to the ordinary man and woman the general feeling is that it does not matter much what views a man holds on the higher management of the universe I must say at this point we can forgive her for using man for everyone she means humans she means men and women as long as he has the right views on how to behave to his neighbor they're not at all troubled about religion this ordinary man and woman except for one thing what shall they teach the children for where intellectual dates are concerned this ordinary parents feeling is who am I to judge I find these doctrines hard to believe but many very able men believe them men who have studied the subject much more fully than I have furthermore parents are repeatedly told that Christianity is the only alternative to communism and there can be no sound character training that is not based on religion when juvenile delinquency increased after the war they heard on all sides that this was the inevitable result of the decay of religious belief and the lack of sound religious training in the home and in 1944 a new Education Act was passed by which daily prayers and religious instruction were made compulsory in the state schools so on the whole are ordinary parent thinks it is best to take no risks when the children are older they can decide for themselves meanwhile better bring them up in the Orthodox Way talk to them about God teach them to say their prayers take them to church occasionally and try to stave off awkward questions I am NOT out to destroy Margaret Knight said the Christian convictions of people in whom they're deeply implanted and to whom they mean a great deal and sure that nothing I say here will have the slightest effect on believers of this time but what I do want to argue is that in a climate of thought that is increasingly unfavorable to these beliefs it is a mistake to try to impose them on children and to make them the basis of moral training the moral education of children is much too important to matter to be built on such foundations most Christians have ceased to believe in the devil and the Orthodox view is that the universe is controlled by a single all-powerful and wholly benevolent power and that raises insuperable intellectual difficulties for why should this all-powerful and holy benevolent being have created so much evil it is no answer to say that God is not responsible for the evil that evil is due to man who is misused his freewill and defied God's edicts because it is not true that all the evil in the universe is due to man man is not responsible for leprosy and gangrene and cancer to take a few obvious examples there is no possible answer to the dilemma that so troubled st. Augustine either God cannot prevent evil or he will not if he cannot he is not all-powerful if he will not he is not all good this difficulty arises for all religions which hold that there is an omnipotent and benevolent power in control of the universe it is undeniable that in the present scientific climate of thought belief in these doctrines is becoming more and more difficult to maintain just as to take what I should regard as a parallel case it is almost now impossible for anyone to believe in witches though I do not imagine any scientist has ever disproved their existence actually there is not much attempt today to defend Christian dogma by reasoning the fashionable attitude among Orthodox believers is a defiant anti intellectualism people say of course I realize these believes and not beliefs are not literally true but then children are lot list literal-minded they think naturally in terms of symbol and legend so why not make use of this tendency and character training it is no use giving the child cold blooded lessons in ethics moral teaching has got to have color and warps and Inter so why not give them that by the means which live ready to hand the myths of religion and the moving and beautiful ceremonies of the church the child will cease to believe in the myths as he grows older but that won't matter they would have served their purpose well I agree that moral training cannot be coldly rational there must be color and warmth an interest one of the best ways to give that is to give the child plenty of models that he can admire and imitate tell him plenty of staring stories stories that will move and excite him and make him think that that is the sort of person he would like to be this may be far more effective even at the time then tying up the idea of goodness with a church and religion if a young child is brought up in the Orthodox way he except he will accept what he's told happily enough to begin with but if he's normally intelligent he's almost bound to get the impression there's something odd about religious statements if he's taken to church for example he hears that death is the gateway to eternal life and should be welcomed rather than shunned yet outside he sees death regarded as the greatest of all evils and everything possible done to postpone it if he asked questions he gets embarrassed evasive answers well dear you're not old enough to understand yet but some of these things are true in a deeper sense and so on the child soon gets the idea that there are two kinds of truth the ordinary kind and another rather confusing and slightly embarrassing kind into which it is best not to inquire too closely all this is bad intellectual training it tends to reduce a certain intellectual timidity a distrust of reason a feeling that perhaps it's rather bad taste to pursue an argument to its logical conclusion or to refuse to accept a belief on inadequate evidence and that is not a desirable attitude in the citizens of a free democracy however it is the moral rather than the intellectual dangers that I'm concerned with here and they arise when the trustful child becomes a critical adolescent he may then cast off all his religious beliefs and if his moral training has been too closely tied up with religion it is more than possible that the moral beliefs will go too he may well decide that it's all just old wives tales and now he does not work know where he is at this stage he could be most vulnerable to communist propaganda far from being a protection against communism tying up morals with religion could help drive people into his arms on the subject of communism she continues it's a mistake I suggest to think of Christianity and communism as the two great rival forces in the world today the fundamental opposition is between dogma and the scientific outlook on the one side Christianity and communism the two great rival dogmatic systems and on the other scientific humanism which is opposed to both scientific humanism does not regard it as a virtue to believe without evidence it deals with hypotheses not dogma hypotheses that are constantly tested and revised and the light of new facts rather than with alleged immutable truths that it is heresy to question and it is concerned with human beings and with this life rather than with supernatural beings and another world because it believes that the primary good lies in human happiness and development men and women realizing to the full their capacities for affection for happiness for intellectual and aesthetic experience and regards these things as more important than any ideology or abstraction whether it is the church or the state or the five-year plan or the life hereafter in this first talk she concludes I've inevitably been rather negative the next week I hate to be more constructive to present scientific humanism in its positive aspect and to return to the question I raised at the beginning of this talk namely how should the humanists parent set about the moral education of his children 1950s Britain was rocked by her words but there was more to come morals without religion part two in my last talk I suggested that Orthodox Christianity is no longer intellectually tenable and that scientific humanism provides the best answer to our need for a constructive attitude to life and a code of conduct I want you to deal with two questions that are of considerable practical importance to humanists parents namely what should they tell their children right God and what sort of moral training should they give them we must I am sure tell children something about God we cannot just bypass the problem by not mentioning it and for young children I would suggest tentatively something of this sort we can tell them that everyone believed at one time and some people believe now that there are two great powers in the world a good power called God who made the world and who loves human beings and wants them to love one another and to be happy and good and a bad power called the devil who is opposed to God and wants people to be unhappy and bad we can tell them that some people still believe this but the most people now think there is not really a devil the devil is something like the ogres and witches and the fairy tales and we can tell them that some people now do not think there really is a God they we often talk as though they were then when the child asks us what we believe as he certainly will we can say that we do not think there really is a God but that many people think otherwise and that he can make up his own mind when he's older may I say at once that I do not think it would be desirable for children to grow up in ignorance of the New Testament those stories are part of the fabric of our culture they're woven into our literature and art and architecture the child should hear them all I urge is that they should be treated frankly as legends let children read and listen to the New Testament stories in the same way they've read and listened to the stories of Greek mythology and when they ask if the stories are true they can be told that they're a mixture a faction legend now the question of humanists character training to begin with a little psychology at different times very different views have been held about the nature of man that one extreme was the view held by the philosopher Hobbes that man is essentially selfish if we help our neighbor it is just because we think it may induce him to help us later on that the other extreme is the view of which Rousseau was the chief exponent that man is naturally unselfish and cooperative and that if he behaves otherwise it can only be because his natural development has been to feared with neither of these extreme views is correct the truth lies between to start with a good resounding platitude human nature is very mixed it is natural for us to be to a large extent self-interested and to be hostile and aggressive towards people who obstruct us in getting at what we want and it is also natural for us to want to cooperate with other people and to feel affection and sympathy for them in more technical terms Margaret Knight says we have both ego instincts and social instincts which may pull us in different ways it is arguable that civilization depends largely on widening the scope of the social impulses and this argument is is revised and recounted in in Pinker's better angels where he talks about widening the circle of sympathy to humanity back to Margaret morality in the humanist view you can best be regarded as an organised attempt to reinforce the social impulses this does not mean that we must always be making sacrifices we have a duty to ourselves as well as others but the essence of humanist morality is disinterestedness not letting our own claims and interests blind us to other people's so when we come to the practical question of child upbringing perhaps the most important question to ask is this is it in any way possible by our methods of upbringing to increase the chance that the child will grow up to be a warm-hearted and generous person this is a question which can receive a refreshing a definite answer she says and the gist of the answer can be conveyed in one word love warm-hearted and generous natures are developed not primarily by training and discipline important though these are in other ways and she does have a bit of a diversion into spanking later on we have moved on a bit since the 1950s but by love if a child is brought up in a warm happy confident affectionate home atmosphere he has the best chance of developing into a well-balanced secure affectionate and generous minded person parents should never say I won't love you if you do that or if you do that you're not my little boy the child should never get the impression that parents love is in anyway conditional this does not mean that we should never make it clear to a child that we take a poor view of something he has done but this is the important point condemn the act but not the child's himself my time is running short and the religious listener has perhaps been getting more and more restive this is all very well he's perhaps saying but what is the ultimate sanction of this moral training what answer could you make if the child was to ask why should I consider others why shouldn't I be completely selfish what possible answer is there except the religious one because it is God's will why should I consider others these ultimate moral questions like all else meant questions can be desperately difficult to answer as every philosophy student knows myself I think the only possible answer to this question is the humanist one because we are naturally social beings we live in communities and life in any community from the family outwards is much happier and fuller and richer if the members are friendly and cooperative than if they're hostile and resentful but the religious listener may feel this is simply evading the point so may I say in conclusion that the answer he would propose is not really any more satisfactory the skeptic could always answer why should I do God's will why shouldn't I please myself and that surely is just as much of a poseur as why should I consider others to start with in fact it's a good deal more of a poser in view of some of the things that the believer must suppose God to have willed but we need not go into that again for in any case this question of ultimate sanctions is largely theoretical I have never yet met the child and I've met very few adults to whom it's ever occurred to raise the question why should I consider others most people are prepared to accept as a completely self-evident moral axiom that we must not be completely selfish and if we base our moral training on that we shall I suggest be building on firm enough foundations they're wonderful essays and thank you for listening to them again I think they I think they bear revisiting now the reaction was enormous this isn't actually morganite I must admit they provoked thousands of letters to Margaret herself to the BBC and the newspapers Margot Knight was hounded and vilified in the press for several weeks it all sounds curiously familiar so here's some context after the Second World War the churches saw a limited revival set against a long term trend of decline which had started in the 19th century and the BBC itself I was very surprised about this had developed an evangelical fervor broadcasting more and more religious programs in the early 50s the BBC saw it is its mission to maintain Christianity and to promote Christianity in Britain women had experienced an expansion of possible roles in society during the war but they weren't to enjoy that emancipation for long the 1950s of course was an era of austerity and a return to traditional domestic roles for women reinforced by the BBC's women's era the woman's place was in the home cooking cleaning and of course making babies and then Along Came Margaret Knight she certainly had to fight to get her talks on air but eventually having been pushed back three times she found an ally in the controller of talks Mary Somerville when the first thought went out on the 5th of January 1955 the response was relatively minor there were 12 phone calls to the BBC criticizing the program and there were five in support of it but during the week the press got hold of the story and we're having a field day so this is without social media it's basically driven by by print media a telegraph article talked about Margaret Knight's sustained attack on religion in general and Christianity in particular and later that week the Sunday graphic ran with a full front page headlined the unholy mrs. Knight saying that the BBC has allowed a fanatic to rampage along the air lanes not a metaphor we're familiar with now beating up Christianity with a razor and a bicycle chain when the second talk went out then a week after the first the critics had been primed and it provoked a much larger negative response with 40 calls and only one of them was positive the story got bigger and bigger unfolding in thousands of letters and mostly hostile articles in more than 30 newspapers some of the comments were openly misogynistic The Daily Express headline was a woman makes a remarkable attack on religion for children the caption accompanying the fate of Margaret Knight on the front page of the sunday graphic read don't let this woman fool you she looks doesn't she just like a typical housewife cool comfortable harmless but mrs. Knight is a menace a dangerous woman make no mistake about that the Daily Express interviewed churchmen for their opinions with the Bishop of Coventry Neville Gorton crated as calling her a brusque so competent bossy female but also a very simple-minded female and this is the sort of woman who drags children from the cross all of this under what I have to admit is a completely inspired headline Bishop checks mrs. Knight Margaret and I it's childlessness also counted against her with comments like I cannot understand why the BBC allows a woman to express her views upon trial training when she seek remand she herself is childless it's quite shocking today and many commentators adopted a deeply patronizing tone for example feel pity for this unhappy overeducated woman how barren her theory how truly ignorant she really is poor dear don't be skating in your judgment but truly truly sorry for her there's more than a hint of a patronizing tone here I think if she really doesn't like the prayers and the Christian teaching she can withdraw her children from them but she doesn't I suspect that she's also quite able to pay school fees if she chooses and to escape the whole business say why is she making a public master of herself could it be that she's just an annoying zealot Peter Hitchens again in November 2018 the social historian Callum brain who have been corresponding with over recent weeks has analyzed the Margaret nice fair in depth he rate to be an atheist in the 1950s was broadly acceptable if one was a man engaged in intellectual pursuit but to be an atheist was culturally unacceptable if one was a woman who looked like an ordinary housewife was childless and might endanger children so is it still culturally unacceptable to be a visible female humanist albeit one with children Callum Brian identifies several themes and the criticism of Margaret Knight and her radio essays including misogyny intellectual snobbery we're either Margaret herself was accused of being simple-minded or the people listening in were poor parents who were likely to be led astray by simplistic atheistic arguments another another criticism was removal of comfort one commentator described Knights cruel broadcasts cruel because they hate it the only comfort and hope of countless people and of course there is that opening the door to communism as well a kind of personal sexy from Wiltshire rate mrs. Knights lectures have been the greatest gift communism has ever had in this country and our American friends will think we've taken leave of our senses in 2018 interestingly the specter of communism was replaced by that of Islam Peter Hitchens in the mail on Sunday again back in November I wondered does Alice think that the triumph of humanism and the expulsion of Christianity from the schools will lead to some sort of secular paradise she's in for a shock religion in this country is due for a revival as material wealth fails I'm not sure he's getting that from but who will benefit the force that is most likely to fill the gap when the church dies is Islam strong increasingly powerful and present in our midst confident quite unafraid of people like her if she gets her way she may live to see her granddaughter's attending schools where they have to wear hijabs and chant the Koran then rather too late she might start see the virtues of the Church of England it's the same argument Christianity was all defense against communism in the 1950s now apparently is our defense against fundamentalist Islam another criticism of Margaret Knight was that she was unpatriotic an anti-christian in a Christian country with Christian values and that the BBC had essentially collaborated with her The Daily Telegraph accused the BBC of a sponsoring of atheism fearing a precedent being set for broadcasting in quotes agnostic propaganda equivalent to again in quotes a serious apologia for homosexuality or any other manifestation of the frailties of human nature Peter Hitchens also alludes the role of the BBC and helping spread my dangerous ideas professor Roberts Lisa gives me a title there who is on TV a lot has just become the new face of humanists UK a movement dedicated as far as I can make out to spreading the belief that there is no God Nate's that the professor's increasingly public commitments being anti religious is not prevented her from presenting several prominent programs on the supposedly impartial BBC these days it hardly seems worth even questioning that back to Margaret Knight we've we've heard a lot of criticisms from the right-wing press but actually most liberal and left-wing newspapers supported her right to express her views publicly even if they disagreed with them as to the letters the BBC received nearly 1600 letters after those those two essays went aid and the split was around 60% against but 40% for and market night herself received more than 1100 and there was a similar split there and the Daily Express reported receiving around a thousand letters again with a similar split for and against and the positive responders were saying things like at last someone is saying these things we felt for so long when Margaret Knight published her radio essays she included quotes from from several letters including this one from Germany please accept my gratitude from an unnamed man who's seen in your talk the Sun rising of a new epoch based on simple reflection to do the good because it is good and not because you expect to be recompense after your death being myself a victim of Nazi oppression I think we all have to teach our children the supreme ethics based on facts and not on legends in the deepest interest for future generations and I receive plenty of positive responses to some in print and and some from religious leaders say GP Taylor priest rate in the Yorkshire Post this is something that even I as a priest fully agree with I've never been able to understand why taxpayers money should go towards funding schools with an ethos based on a particular faith surely if a religion wants to subliminally profit eliza n-- it should pay for it itself better still it should not be allowed to do it at all and he went on we can be thankful to the church fool they've done in the past in bringing education to the masses but china times changed and the glory days of the church benignly helping society educate its children is over britain is no longer a Christian country and there are other faiths wanting to open schools I think it's now right for all religions to get their hands off education there is a growing need to limit the influence of religious groups in places where our children are being educated I'm not sure whether a priest would have spoken out so openly in the 1950s times have changed a report commissioned by the BBC in 1954 showed Britain to be a fairly religious country 25% of the population were frequent churchgoers 39% were non churchgoers but only 3% responded that they didn't believe in Christianity anymore our country is now largely non-religious in the last British social attitudes survey less than half of the UK population said they were religious and this will continue to fall if we look at a more recent survey of young people under the age of 30 70 percent said they were not religious and of those that were 10 percent were Catholic 7 percent Anglican and 6 percent Muslim fewer than a million people well under a million people attend church regularly and Jeremy Paxman alerted me to this comparison the RSPB has more than a million members so if we have Anglican bishops in the House of Lords jennae perhaps Miranda Christie over Nicole fees currently president of RSP we should be in the House of Lords as well [Applause] and yet of course despite this we still have an established church those bishops and the state-funded faith schools the moral panic and media circus around margaret knights radio essays was intense but it was short-lived it died away after about three weeks but it was seen as a historical watershed Callum Brown identifies the night affair of 1955 as an important cultural turning point he rates it as about equivalent in its impact to the trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1960 whether the Margaret night affair accelerated the cultural change or just reflected it it was this watershed moment the writer Ludovic Kennedy common dick commentated before mrs. Knight Britain had been a more or less Christian country after her it became a more or less secular one for the BBC the balance of criticism was important 60 percent to be negative certainly forty percent positive and that assured some of the managers there that their audience was ready for more liberal debate and that free speech even if it was seen as anti religious was an important principle to defend outside the BBC humanist groups grew in numbers and campaigned for more humanist forces to be heard on air but in the end it was audiences who voted with their feet or their ears and eyes listening and viewing figures for religious programs were dwindling as we moved into the 1960s and 70s while the tone of programming was becoming more liberal and less deferential Monty Python was regularly to be found mocking organized religion and atheists such as Jacob Bronowski were set loose with landmark series on the BBC Margaret Knight herself appeared a few more times in televised debates and on Women's era in the end the response tonight exposed highly gendered attitudes in 1950s Britain there was that readiness of her critics to savage her as a childless woman and the other really prominent theme in those responses is the fear of atheism as a very dangerous idea but the public response to the affair also exposed a nation divided and Margaret Knight had taken this philosophical debate into the public arena she was criticized for that she was criticized for not knowing enough theology for not using enough technical language but in fact her argument was not dumbed down it was devastatingly simple a really dangerous idea there was not that morals could be taught without religion was not even that God did not in her opinion exist it was that these things could be open for everyone to debate she reduced the argument down to basic principles and made it understandable and accessible her most dangerous idea then I think was that ordinary people could dare to think for themselves thank you you [Applause]

Channel: Humanists UK

Views: 160,422

Rating: 4.7506113 out of 5

Keywords: BHA, Humanism, Secularism, Atheism, Agnosticism, Education, Talks, Lectures, BritishHumanistAssociation, Non-religious, Science, Philosophy, alice roberts, margaret knight, bbc, bbc bias, thought for the day, bbc radio 4, bbc radio, hypocrisy, education, schools, morality

Id: 0LCTHGm1-lg

Length: 43min 52sec (2632 seconds)

Published: Wed May 06 2020