Atheists and Humanists: Contribution to Society

Lord Maxton Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, first, I thank my noble friend Lord Harrison for introducing this debate and for the very temperate way in which he did so. I am an atheist despite once receiving a birthday card from a sister-in-law which said, “I used to be an atheist until I realised I was God”. I do not even believe that. I am an atheist and a humanist, but I am now going to be slightly more divisive than has so far been the case. I am an anti-clerical atheist. I do not believe that history proves that the churches and religion have been good for the world. All right, it may be that I studied history and that I go back a long way. It used to be the case that churches hanged people in this country because they did not go to church. Even if you look at the record of the Church of England and that Bishops’ Bench over 200 years on, for instance, the abolition of capital punishment when atheists such as Bradlaugh were introducing that proposal, they consistently voted against it. They wanted to keep capital punishment right up until the end. I accept that the churches are now against it, but it took them a long time to come round to that.

We have just had riots on the streets of Belfast about—what?—religion. I come from the city of Glasgow, which is divided between two different Christian churches. If you look at the great movement for democracy throughout the Islamic world, what is stopping it from developing properly? It is religion and divisions within the Islamic faith. Of course there have been good Christians and of course there have been good people from all religions who have tried to help the poorest in our societies in any way they can. After all, I am a member of the Labour Party, which in part was formed by people who came from the Christian tradition and who wanted to help. Kier Hardie himself was an active Christian—a temperate one, I accept, because he never drank. Equally, however, they were always the minority rather than the majority.

Today we live in a much better society, not just in this country but throughout Europe and the western world, than we did in the past. We live in a society that looks after the poor and the elderly, and which helps those who are widowed early. I shall tell noble Lords a story. My own father was the director of a research institute at Oxford University and was at the professorial level. He died on 6 May 1951, one day after my 15th birthday. My mother received from the university his salary for the first five or six days of May, and that was all. There was no widow’s pension, but now all that has changed. It is interesting to note, although I am not making a direct correlation, but as our society has improved, so has religion declined. The number of people who believe has gone down and down as our society gets better and better.

It is an interesting fact that if you look at the countries which all the research shows have the lowest number of people who believe in religion, you will find that they have the lowest crime rates, the lowest levels of infant mortality, the best education systems and the best social security systems. They are, of course, Sweden, Denmark, Canada to some extent, Estonia and countries of that nature. In the United States, the states with the lowest crime rates and the best systems of education and so on are in fact those which have the lowest number of people who believe in religion. I am not making a direct correlation between the two, but it is difficult not to. The fact is that that is what is happening. I am sorry, but I do not believe that somehow we are living in a worse society now than we did; we do not, we live in a much better world than we had in the past. Society has improved as religion has declined.

I turn to one final point. We have not yet had the figures for the extent of religious belief in Scotland—where I come from—but it is likely to be in the region of a majority of people, or just under that, of non-believers. If you apply the same increase as in England, it will be a majority. If that is the case, surely we have to have major changes in public policy. We have to look at our broadcasting and our public broadcasting in particular—the BBC—and at which people we allow, for example, on “Thought for the Day”. Personally, I would abolish “Thought for the Day” altogether. I would not have humanists coming on and putting their case; we should just not have it at all. Why do we have a “Thought for the Day” on our public radio?

We have to change our education system. I know that it is no longer true but, when I was in education, there used to be one compulsory subject on the curriculum: religion. Surely, if the majority no longer believe, we have to look at the way in which the whole of our public policy is drawn up and change the way in which we look at society. I hope that that will be coming very soon.