Be Reasonable

UK shops withdraw Jerry Springer: The Opera DVD

BBC News has an article covering the blogosphere's response to the following short piece which appeared in the Independent a few days ago:

Major retail chains have bowed to pressure from a tiny fringe Christian group by withdrawing copies of a DVD of Jerry Springer: The Opera from stores around the UK.

Woolworths and Sainsbury have both taken the unprecedented step of removing the film from shelves because of "customer" concerns about the content of the musical, released three weeks ago. Sainsbury has admitted it received just 10 complaints.

We are not amused. I've sent letters of complaint to Sainsbury and Woolworths. I shop at both of these shops and I'm seriously disappointed. Unless they reverse the decision I'll be doing my Christmas food and present shopping elsewhere.

I'm hoping that the withdrawal of the DVD was a reflex reaction to receiving complaints and not the result of a considered censorship decision. I'd like to see Sainsbury and Woolworths come admit that they made a mistake.

As penance I think they should stock not only Jerry Springer: The Opera but also The God Who Wasn't There.

Spreading the atheism meme

Over at Atheist Revolution, vjack has set a challenge: us reasonable folk need to start proposing solutions to the problems we are discussing. Well, I'm not one to turn down a challenge, so here's my take on how we can wean the world off its deity dependency.

First of all, I'm optimistic that the human race will eventually achieve a post-religious society. I'm also pretty sure that it won't be in my lifetime (of course I'd love to be proved wrong). I think we might be able to speed things up just a little though.

I started this blog because I think it's important to make the atheist perspective more visible. I can't make much difference as an individual, but together we can add to the volume of information that's available. Exposure to ideas makes them more acceptable. We need to take the shock value out of atheism and make it a normal everyday outlook on life.

The What Can I Do? category on this blog is intended to hold suggestions on how we can move things forward, I plan to post suggestions there when I get ideas. At the moment, it just contains one post (other than this one), Stand Up and Be Counted which suggests joining organisations that campaign on freethought issues. I think this is very important. In the UK, the British Humanist Association and the National Secular Society do great work representing us - if they had more members and more money they'd be able to do more.

I also suggest we practice what we preach, as it were, and apply reason. No I don't mean that we need to reason with the believers, we know that hasn't worked! What I mean is that we need to tackle this rationally.

I think Dawkins is right on this one, religion is a meme. We need to understand how it works and how to counter it. We need to apply science, philosophy and knowledge of history to the problem. We've got reason on our side, let's use it.

Stand up and be counted

Would you like to live in a country where there's no such law as blasphemy, where state schools cannot offer religious instruction, and where there is no offical state religion? No, this isn't an advert from the French Tourist Board, it is an advert of sorts though.

Relatively few reasonable people (rationalists, humanists, secularists, etc) are members of reasonable organisations. In some cases this may be an active decision, not all reasonable folk feel the need for organisations that promote their worldview. However, I suspect that many people are not members for other reasons. Perhaps they don't know that such organisations exist, or they don't understand what they do or they've just never got around to it.

I've just renewed my membership of three UK-based reasonable organisations because I do think they are valuable. It only took me a few minutes per organisation to subscribe online (links below). I think it's well worth the money. You can also make additional donations to further support the work of these organisations.

The National Secular Society and the British Humanist Association do a great job of providing a reasonable voice in UK politics. Recent examples have included opposition of the religious hatred bill and government funding of faith schools. The more members these organisation have the more weight their activities will have.

The Rationalist Press Association publishes New Humanist Magazine. I think it's really important to have a print magazine that provides a reasonable perspective. A New Humanist subscription is included with membership, or you can subscribe to the magazine without becoming a member.

Join the British Humanist Association
Join the National Secular Society
Join the Rational Press Association

Of course there are reasonable organisations around the world. But I'm afraid you'll have to go and look for those yourself ;-) There's one international organisation that I will mention though The Brights. As you may of heard, the Brights are trying to get the word bright recognised as a generic term for those with a 'naturalistic world view'. It doesn't cost anything to register as a Bright, but you can make a voluntary donation if you like.

Go on, do it now.