New BHA President Polly Toynbee on Radio 4

Dear BHA Member/Supporter

We hope you caught our new BHA President, Polly Toynbee, on the R4 Sunday (religious news and current affairs) programme. This may be of particular interest because Polly discusses becoming the new BHA President.

Enjoy, Jemma Hooper

The 6 minute interview (transcribed below) is available for download.

'I've always fort the corner very hard against undue influence of religions in our public life'

'Already in our society we are getting de facto segregation because of where people live often in ethnic and religious ghettos. To institutionalise it - by having more religious schools - I find deeply shocking.'

'I'm angry at the idea that religion should play a part in our national life and certainly in law making; we are the only democracy in the world that has a theocratic element where 26 bishops sit in the House of Lords and have some power and influence over the process of law making - that is unheard of any other democracy.'

'the Bishops have such influence in the House of Lords that they can dictate to the rest of us whether we can choose the time to die at our own wish when we are suffering terminal illness.' (more from Polly here)

'What you would call the spiritual i would call the life of the imagination ... what I reject is any idea of superstition or of there being a powerful being outside of us controlling our lives.'

Transcription by Chris Street:

Roger Bolton: Now - what do the jazz singer George Melly, the comedienne Linda Smith, the agony aunt Clair Rayner and the scientist Sir Julian Huxley all have in common? Answer: they have all held the Presidency of the British Humanist Association. Now the Association has appointed a new President, the Guardians Polly Toynbee. I asked her why she had taken on this role.

Polly Toynbee: It was a great honour to be asked. I've always been a strong Humanist, I've been an Honourary Associate of the National Secular Society, I've always fort the corner very hard against undue influence of religions in our public life and I don't think it has been ever more important in my lifetime than now. It used to be a rather eccentric cause, I mean why are you taking on this poor rump of religion, but religion is back and rampant and curiously has a lot of defenders in government who are willing to give it much more space than it used to have in the past.

RB: You said indeed that there indeed is a clash of civilisations not between Islam and Christendom but between reason and superstition. Do you think superstition ie in your terms religion, is now central.

PT: Its certainly gaining ground. I think its extraordinary that under 10 years of a labour government we should have many more religious schools - that the whole new cadre of schools - the Acadamies - so many of them should have gone to religious institutions. We are due to see some 60 new muslim schools, for instance. Already in our society we are getting de facto segregation because of where people live often in ethnic and religious ghettos. To institutionalise it - by having more religious schools - I find deeply shocking, very alarming for the future and thats something that i certainly want to campaign against very hard.

RB: But why are you so passionately opposed to religion - and not just passionately sometimes one gets a real sense of anger. You are angry that religion in the 21st century should play such an important part in peoples lives.

PT: The part it plays in peoples private life is their own business, I'm angry at the idea that it should play a part in our national life and certainly in the education in the law making, we are the only democracy in the world that has a theocratic element where 26 bishops sit in the House of Lords and have some power and influence over the process of law making - that is unheard of any other democracy.

2:22 RB: But you can't say to people who are strongly religious that you must keep it to your private life because they believe that what's at stake here are peoples souls, what they believe is that their faith has to effect and permiate all parts of their life.

2: 34 PT: Oh of course. One expects them to be part of the thriving diverse arguements in a democracy and so take their chance along with everybody else

2:46 RB: But you at war with the religion not just in terms of the Church of England or in the political importance of religion but with religion generally and aren't you bound to be defeated because every single opinion poll that seem to conducted say regardless of how many attend church or whatever at weekends perhaps around 60-70% of people have a real spiritual sense and it seems that comes from generation to genertion - we are born with it - it is part of us and for you to try to dispense with it some would say is an impossible ambition.

3:15 PT: that all depends on what opinion polls you look at and usually who has conducted them. If you ask me another way most people are atheist or at least agnostic they dont believe there is a personal god who listens to their prays they dont believe that there is a force outside them guiding individual lives.

3:34 RB: but thats an arguement about an interventionist god its not an arguement about the sense of the spiritual or transcendent about something outside and beyond ourselves which most opinion polls I've looked at seem to suggest that the majority of people have

3:46 PT: I think it very often a matter very often of semantics of language. What you would call the spiritual i would call the life of the imagination and I think that is amazingly powerful in all human beings. I think we lead much more than half of our lives inside our imaginations inside our creativity, amongst our hopes and fears and dreams and memories and out of that comes the creative impulse out of that comes all sorts of things maybe good or bad but are in another realm but I locate that entirely within us. I think humans have this extraordinary capacity which one imagines that animals dont have. We can imagine being somebody else we have that sort of imagination it makes us social animals. You could call it spirit, I dont mind the word the spirit, what I reject is any idea of superstition or of there being a powerful being outside of us controlling our lives.

4:42 RB: a lot of people would share that but at the same time would say dont give up everything here because when they look at the 20th century and they look at the achievement of non spiritaual non religious leaders like Mao, like Hitler, like Starlin they say at least at the heart of religion or most religions is a respect for the individual , a belief often in the individuals immortal soul and that is vital, that respect for the individual and they would say most non religious governments dont have that and we are back into the happiness of the largest number - Utilitarianism view which can often make individual human rights irrelevant

5:16 PT: its very idea odd this idea - the moment you are not religious you are supposed to be a Maoist or a Stalinist or a Fascist as if somehow those forms of Utopianism weren't just as dangerous as religious fundamentalism, of course not all religious people are extremists or fundamentalists but if you look at where religion nearly almost always leads when it gets secular power its as frightening as those extreme utopian secular political states. Religion in itself the seeds of real it has power thats why it is important to keep it in the private sector

5:54: RB so your agenda is very clear. Where religion has power within the political agenda and elsewhere you want it out. Out of parliament, out of schools, out of anywhere it can influence people

6:04: out of anywhere it can control other peoples lives, the idea that the religious can set the agenda on abortion as they keep threatening to do and have done in the past, for instance the debate in House of Lords the right to die the Joffy bill where their was a real chance would have passed the House of Commons were it not for the religious - they organised themselves so powerfully, they have such influence in the House of Lords that they can dictate to the rest of us whether we can choose the time to die at our own wish when we are suffering terminal illness. Well why should the religious order me how i live my life. These are individual matters. How people choose to live their own life is their business

RB: the new President of the British Humanist Association Polly Toynbee. Clearly ready for the fight.

Select Comments from RDawkins

1. Comment #67953 by monkey2 on September 5, 2007 at 11:08 am

Polly Toynbee is a media savvy journalist / commentator. An excellent choice for President.

If anyone hasn't heard President Toynbee before this was her being very polite.

2. Comment #67957 by steve99 on September 5, 2007 at 11:27 am

It was a good interview, with Toynbee having excellent responses to Roger Bolton's questions.

3. Comment #67961 by detox on September 5, 2007 at 11:48 am

Very restrained, very insightful. Never thought about the euthanasia issue before: another one of those things that makes you grate your teeth.

4. Comment #67963 by Friend Giskard on September 5, 2007 at 11:58 am

Bolton accused Toynbee of wanting to put a stop to religion having any influence on the way we run our society. She should have responded to this calumny by pointing out that the aim of secularists is to ensure only that religion does not have undue influence.

Religion should have no more political influence than other special interest groups such as political parties, trade unions etc.

It is exasperating to me how one will never hear a member of the British government endorsing this morally unassailable goal.

5. Comment #67971 by gcdavis on September 5, 2007 at 12:45 pm

Polly has been a trenchant voice in British journalism for a long time. She comes from a tradition of social justice and liberal values and is a long time member of the National Secular Society and this is where her real strength lies, in challenging the privileges and special pleading that religion has enjoyed within the British political system. British humanism is a bit sandals and beards and I do not think that it is offers a platform worthy of her talents, of course I hope that I am wrong.

8. Comment #68043 by Beth on September 5, 2007 at 7:49 pm

Brilliant! I have always enjoyed her editorials - so glad she is on the side of reason.

9. Comment #68048 by sabre_truth on September 5, 2007 at 8:48 pm

Friend Giskard said:
Religion should have no more political influence than other special interest groups such as political parties, trade unions etc.

I would go a step further and say that it should have no more political influence than other leisure and recreation clubs such as the National Mahjong League or the East London Swinger's Club for Standard Poodle Enthusiasts.
http://richarddawkins.net/article,1608,n,n

24. Comment #68241 by pewkatchoo on September 6, 2007 at 1:33 pm

Sorry folks, I know that I am going to get some more flack here, but I am very uncomfortable with the idea of Polly Toynbee as an important light in the atheistic world. I find the vast majority of her writings to be badly thought through and, in many cases, simply a bit of left-wing ranting. At the same time the interview was OK, but she said nothing that any one of us on here could have said.

I also read the link that Flagellant supplied. Her approach is rather careless and she makes some statements that are patently ridiculous, for example:
Given the Northern Alliance's past, we should draw up a human rights contract now and make Alliance leaders sign the UN's International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, binding them personally against atrocities before fighting begins.

Yep Polly, that will work. Mr Eugenides has some fairly astute things to say about miss Toynbee http://mreugenides.blogspot.com/2006/11/polly-am-i-bovvered.html and, having read quite a few of her articles, I am inclined to agree with his summation. Only once in a while does she produce something worthwhile, the rest of the time...

25. Comment #68248 by Philip1978 on September 6, 2007 at 2:07 pm

Pewkatchoo
I actually have to agree with you and Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson, wrote that she, "incarnates all the nannying, high-taxing, high-spending schoolmarminess of Blair's Britain. Polly is the high priestess of our paranoid, mollycoddled, risk-averse, airbagged, booster-seated culture of political correctness and 'elf 'n' safety fascism"

I respect that she got an award for being a pain in the arse towards Islam and wow, what a voice on the rights of women and their role in religion, if my posts on this site have said nothing else, I totally agree with her views on how religion is nothing but despicable to women. But she gave loads of support for Tony bLiar beforehand and although she has criticised him I am wary of her opinions now, ok she may have rescinded it a bit but there is this part of her I do not agree with and that is sometimes I think she may have gone over the top somewhat. I disagree with Boris on his views sometimes but I think he is right in this cause, I am open to advice as how to like this woman a bit more!

Philip
28. Comment #68346 by crabsallover on September 7, 2007 at 12:04 a
Maybe this is how they also claim that there are 17 million humanists in Britain, (a statistic not supported by the last census) they're just borrowing a few Christians, as well as quotes, for their numbers.
13. Comment #68107 by fides_et_ratio

Blockquote text

MORI Poll
In December 2006 BHA organised a MORI poll. This showed that 17M (36%) of UK adult population agreed to ALL THREE statements below. BHA said that those people who agreed with ALL three statements where humanists in their outlook:-

1) 62% feel that scientific & other evidence provides the best way to understand the universe (rather than feeling that religious beliefs are needed for a complete understanding of the universe) **
2) 62% feel that ‘right and wrong’ can be explained by human nature alone, and does not require religious teachings, and
3) 65% base their judgments of right and wrong on ‘the effects on people and the consequences for society and the world’ (rather than basing judgments of right and wrong on personal preferences OR rather than thinking that right and wrong judgments are unchanging and should never be challenged)

http://dorset-humanists.blogspot.com/2007/06/17-million-humanists-in-britain-36-of_30.html
Original source:
http://www.humanism.org.uk/uploadedFiles/cms/store//Demo_BHA//ATTACHMENTS/Humanist_w43_2006x.pdf