For those that don’t know, the AHS (or to give it its full name, the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies) is a national umbrella organisation catering for non-religious societies within higher education in the UK.

The AHS has enjoyed high profile support during it’s relatively short history with patrons including author and academic Professor Richard Dawkins and journalist and writer Polly Toynbee. Dawkins said this of the AHS:

Public statements of non-belief are treated as threatening, an affront to the religious, while the reverse is not true. More concerning is the enduring assumption that religious belief does not have to earn respect like any other view, an approach that has caused politicians and public figures across the UK to withdraw from asking the vital question: why is religion given such special status in government, culture and the media? Why is belief in a higher power an indication of greater moral fortitude, character and acumen? The AHS says publicly that it isn’t; on the contrary, beliefs that are unsupported, bigoted or demand special privileges should always be challenged. No opinion should be protected from criticism simply by virtue of being religiously held.

With over thirty members covering the length and breadth of Britain and Ireland, the AHS is one of the fastest growing organisations of its ilk and the 2011 convention will be its biggest event to date.

Speaking about the convention, the British Humanist Association’s Chief Executive, Andrew Copson, who is speaking at the event said:

It is impressive to see how the AHS has grown over the last six months, more than doubling in size. It’ll be very exciting to see this reflected in the numbers that come to the AHS Convention, and I am very excited to be taking part in it.

The line up for the convention is a veritable who’s who with speakers including the philosopher, author and long-term supporter of the AHS Professor AC Grayling. Grayling spoke at the AHS’s first convention in 2009, saying:

As well as making the case for reason and science, it is great to know that the AHS will be standing up against religious privilege and discrimination. All people are entitled to their beliefs but we secularists (whether religious or humanist) are right in arguing that the state must be entirely neutral in these matters. A situation where the religious beliefs of a few may dictate the personal choices of everyone in abortion, for example, or assisted suicide is quite wrong. Yet some religious groups defend and even aim to expand their considerable privileges – public money for their “faith-based” schools, seats in the House of Lords, exemption from laws inconvenient to their prejudices. The AHS shows that increasing numbers of young people are unwilling to put up with it.

Other headliners include journalist and activist Johann Hari, comedian Robin Ince and politician Lord Warner. National Secular Society executive director Kieth Porteous Wood and the BHA Choir round off the set list.

All of the speakers are set to take to stage between 12pm and 6pm on the Saturday of the convention. Fringe events will be taking palce throughout the day, including exhibitions by a variety of local and national organisations. The day is also being broadcast live via the popular science and religion podcast The Pod Delusion.

The Sunday of the convention will be aimed primarily at the AHS’s member societies, with workshops running on sustainability, finances, debating and an awards ceremony.

AHS President, Richy Thompson, summed up the convention:

We’re very excited about this convention, which promises to far and away be the AHS’s biggest gathering yet. The line-up of speakers looks really great, and the events on the committee-centric day should help stimulate a new year of leaders for non-religious societies.

Tickets for the convention are avaialble from the BHA website for the Saturday, or both days. Tickets are priced at £6 (£3 students).

In October of this year, I had the pleasure of being able to attend an audience with the Harvard University humanist chaplain, Greg Epstein, hosted by the British Humanist Association at the Bishopsgate Institute in London. Greg delivered a short lecture on his career to date, focusing primarily on how he became the humanist chaplain at Harvard and then what his ambition was for the humanist brand in the coming years. His views were very similar to mine in that we both feel very strongly that there is a product that non-religious people can market and that product is humanism. Greg felt that there was enough contained within a humanist world view to be able to successfully market its ideas and, ultimately its services, to a very wide audience.

Admittedly, Greg’s idea of humanism is a modern one. It centres around the need to develop a firm and widely accepted philosophy of humanism that can be used to build a formal world view, accepted in general (if not every aspect) by the majority of humanists. Whilst many self-confessed humanists may say that this philosophy exists, it is evident from the relatively wide cross section of humanists I have spoken to about this that actually this is not the case. There is a certain aversion, particularly amongst traditional humanists, to the development of a central philosophy, and what that means practically. This can probably be put down to the route to humanism that many of these traditionalists took, i.e. they chose humanism as an antidote to religion for whatever reason. However, in order to market the idea of humanism and grow its market share, this aversion needs to be overcome.

How do we do this? How do we help make sure that over the next ten years we can really build up the brand of humanism and make sure that those that are not religious say so, and even go as far as unifying the non-religious under one brand umbrella? The current campaign to get non-religious to be made into an answer on the next UK census is one way. The work of young, trendy, rock stars of humanism such as Greg Epstein and Brian Cox is another. A third option is the work and campaigning by organisations such as the BHA in building the profile of humanism. Personally, I would like to see a combination of those factors being used to really market humanism and its world view at young people. This may sound controversial, similar to the practices of some religions in targeting children. However, I mean young people, those in their late teens and early twenties that are naturally looking for world views to subscribe to and who have the tools to be able to rationally choose which one best fits their outlook, ambitions and personality. Work is currently being done in the UK to try and achieve this, organisations such as the AHS are trying to unite and encourage student groups to discuss and debate the very issues I am writing about here. The Chris Worfolk Foundation is another organisation that is trying to engage with young people. The CWF has more practical activities as its main focus, mainly involving volunteering and community work.

The final question is what can we do about this? Personally, I think the answer is a relatively simple one. Contribute. Contribute by calling yourself a humanist. Contribute by acting like a humanist. Contribute by supporting your local and national groups – whichever one best fills your needs. The more people do the following, the more obvious the link between humanists as people and humanism the world view will become. I strongly feel that this organic development will lead to the singularity that will allow a humanist brand to be launched more formally.

A Muslim smallholder in Kent has been fined £3,000 and told to pay £3,799 costs at Bromley Magistrates’ Court after he slaughtered sheep using halal methods but without pre-stunning the animals.
Sheep

Zeki Ismail’s small farm in Keston was raided last December after he bought six sheep at a market in Ashford, Kent. Bromley Council’s food safety officers, meat hygiene vets and animal health inspectors all feared Mr Ismail might kill the livestock for halal meat without following safety rules. By the time they arrived at the farm with police, three sheep had already been killed and the meat shared around the family.

But Mr Ismail claimed that he was completely unaware he was breaking strict farming laws. Mr Ismail slit the throats of his sheep without stunning them first – breaking a UK law which states animals which are not stunned must only be killed at a licensed slaughterhouse.

Mr Ismail admitted failing to stun the sheep before killing them, religiously slaughtering the animals outside of a slaughterhouse, supplying food containing specified risk material for human consumption, and failing to tell the local authority that six sheep had moved onto his smallholding.

London’s Halal Food Authority says animals have to be fed as normal and given water prior to slaughter and one animal must not see the other being killed. The authority also says the “knife should be four times the size of the neck and razor sharp, and as far as possible the slaughterer and the animal should face Qibla or Mecca.”
The organisation does not ban animals from being stunned before their throats are slit, but the UK’s Halal Monitoring Committee insists that slaughter must take place without stunning the animals.

This is an interesting development following my article on this very subject not so long ago that was published in Secular Future.

I don’t know how many of you will have ever tried looking at how many different groups exist for atheists and the seemingly endless associated groups, humanists, secularists, brights, freethinkers, rationalists, sceptics etc, but there are a lot. Almost every conceivable name and wordplay related to atheism, humanism, secularism etc has been used and there is a group set up. However, the majority of these groups have relatively low numbers and small areas of influence. In fact with the exception of the British Humanist Association and National Secular Society, these groups receive little to no national attention.

I think this is a problem. I think it is perhaps a greater problem, however, that there is no unified group representing all non-religious people. Whilst it is true that no two atheists (and I will use atheist from now on as an umbrella term for anyone who describes themselves as non-religious) have the same desires, ambitions or even world views, they do tend to exhibit broadly similar political and ethical views. These views should be expressed to decision makers, politicians and commercial leaders. Atheists should have a national voice that should be listened to.

Having spent some time with the BHA I can report that they do sterling work in the name of humanism and the NSS, likewise for secularism but they don’t represent enough people. Their image is not attractive to young atheists, for example, and their membership demographics highlight this. There is a need for a unifying brand to be created and heavily marketed. The most difficult thing for atheists to grasp at the moment seems to be the need to start running an organised, national atheist centred organisation that represents everyone, regardless of the name they call themselves. Moreover, this organisation needs to be run like a business.

The more time I spend delving into local and regional groups, and even some of the larger national groups, is the feeling that they are not meant to be attracting new faces, finding new blood. What is more depressing is the fact that the large organisations do not have the resources or, seemingly, the desire to recruit and retain members.

In order to develop the kind of business, the kind of brand that I have alluded to above, requires a rethink of how atheist organisations should approach marketing, recruitment and ultimately their basic business model. People in today’s world are consumers. We consume everything. We should start appreciating this fact and begin to treat members and potential members like customers and potential customers respectively. If atheist organisations approached recruitment like a service brand approaches their customer base I believe they would be far more successful.

These organisations need to start marketing themselves not as a luxury, discretionary purchase such as a large screen TV or an expensive tailor made holiday, but an essential! Once you have started to change people’s minds about how essential their worldview is to their lives then you can start to turn your customers into fans. Brand loyalty is something that the religious organisations have built up and the strength of this loyalty is stronger than that of household names like Coca-Cola and Sky. Atheists should be aiming for that kind of loyalty.

This kind of loyalty can only be developed if atheists stop thinking of themselves as idealists and start thinking of themselves as offering a service, a product.

Watch us live here!

Below is a copy of the press release we put out, if you come across any article etc whilst roaming the web, just drop me a line or leave a comment with the URL.

The National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies (AHS) launches today in central London with addresses of support from Professor Richard Dawkins, Professor A C Grayling and Polly Toynbee.

The AHS will support established and newly-forming atheist, Humanist and secular student groups and give them a national voice. It will provide a network, resources and a joint platform for these societies and make sure that their needs and views are being considered on the national and international level. The AHS is affiliated with the British Humanist Association (BHA).

In the wake of the successful ‘atheist bus campaign’, the 2009 Darwin celebrations and an increased prominence for non-religious campaigns, the launch of the AHS marks the new mobilisation of the UK’s non-religious student majority and is the start of several nationwide events and campaigns.

Supporting the launch of the AHS, Richard Dawkins said, ‘Public statements of non-belief are treated as threatening, an affront to the religious, while the reverse is not true. More concerning is the enduring assumption that religious belief does not have to earn respect like any other view, an approach that has caused politicians and public figures across the UK to withdraw from asking the vital question: why is religion given such special status in government, culture and the media? Why is belief in a higher power an indication of greater moral fortitude, character and acumen? The AHS says publicly that it isn’t; on the contrary, beliefs that are unsupported, bigoted or demand special privileges should always be challenged. No opinion should be protected from criticism simply by virtue of being religiously held.’

A C Grayling said, ‘As well as making the case for reason and science, it is great to know that the AHS will be standing up against religious privilege and discrimination. All people are entitled to their beliefs but we secularists (whether religious or humanist) are right in arguing that the state must be entirely neutral in these matters. A situation where the religious beliefs of a few may dictate the personal choices of everyone – in abortion, for example, or assisted suicide – is quite wrong. Yet some religious groups defend and even aim to expand their considerable privileges – public money for their “faith-based” schools, seats in the House of Lords, exemption from laws inconvenient to their prejudices. The AHS shows that increasing numbers of young people are unwilling to put up with it.’

Chloë Clifford-Frith, press officer for the AHS, said, ‘We live in a world where religious governments execute adulterers and homosexuals, deny women and minority groups basic freedoms, circulate fraudulent claims about contraception and scientific research and create laws that protect them from criticism. We are privileged, in such a world, to live in a country where we can even have this debate, and as such we have a duty to bring it into our universities and beyond.’

Norman Ralph, President of the AHS, emphasised that, in addition to challenging organised religion in the UK, the AHS also presents a positive message of community and understanding. Bringing together diverse student societies from across the country, it will support students who wish to establish a safe space for discussion of atheist, Humanist and secular issues and defend their right to express themselves without censure. Further campaigns will promote the public understanding of science, and the importance of ethical values derived from a rational approach to reality. ‘We want to celebrate knowledge and human endeavour’, he added, ‘Humanity should take responsibility for its flaws, and also take credit for its successes, not abscond responsibility to an imaginary father figure. We’re about celebrating, learning and making the most of the one life we have.’

Polly Toynbee said, ‘I am honoured to be present at the birth of this new movement. We need to oppose zealotry and fanaticism of all sorts by promoting the positive and liberating case for believing that life on earth is precious because the here and now is all there is and that our destiny is in our own hands. The Humanist view of life is progressive and optimistic, in awe of human potential, living without fear of judgement and death, finding enough purpose and meaning in life, love and leaving a good legacy. It is great to see these values being taken up by today’s students. I’m sure the AHS will go from strength to strength and keep the rational and ethical humanist tradition alive both on- and off-campus’