Atheists and Humanists: Contribution to Society

Lord Warner Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend on securing this debate and pay tribute to his staunch commitment to humanism. I declare my interest as chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group. I should say that we need more Conservative members.

Belief is a very personal matter, heavily influenced by life experiences. I started off as a traditional working-class boy going to Sunday school and singing in the church choir, if you can believe it, although the main attraction of the latter was the payments for performing at weddings. Where did it all go wrong? Largely through education and, particularly, the reading and teaching of history: a hefty dose of Darwin, Crusades, Inquisitions and burning witches gets the questioning juices going. By the age of 15 I had total disbelief in any gods, apart from Denis Compton, or any creed based on the supernatural, an afterlife or organised religion. It looks to me as though an increasing number of young people in the United Kingdom are getting to this position as they move, quite swiftly in many cases, to reject religious belief. I should add that I have far more confidence in young people and their values than some have suggested today, particularly their capacity for mutual support of each other, which seems to me to be a strong, socially cohesive value.

The 2011 census shows the number of people identifying themselves as non-religious at 25%, up from 15% in 2001. Perhaps more significantly, people with no religion had a much younger profile, with four in 10 of those with no religion being under 25. The British Social Attitudes survey has shown an even sharper move away from religion, with 41% of people surveyed in the census year saying that they had no religion. The BSAS subsequently looked in more depth at religiosity. This revealed that in 2012 half the population did not regard themselves as belonging to a religion, with this rising to nearly two-thirds of 18 to 24 year-olds. Only 14% of people attend a religious service weekly.

Why should we take these data seriously? As the BSAS said:

“Getting an accurate picture of the importance of religion in people’s lives matters; not least because it influences the role of religion in policy making and public life, and helps guide the allocation of funding and resources”.

What is taking place in our society is generational replacement. Older, more religious generations are dying out and being replaced by generations without any religious beliefs. I hope that I can stick around long enough to see further progress.

The data suggest that Governments and parliamentarians should be more cautious about listening to religious interests when changes in public policy are under consideration. We all know what these policy issues are because they are debated often enough in this House—abortion, assisted dying, embryo research, faith schools, employment law, and discrimination. A whole raft of these issues regularly features. On the optimistic side, I think that we crossed a Rubicon in this House when many noble Lords drew on the views of younger generations in framing their views and casting their votes on gay marriage. Governments now need to pay less attention to the views of organised religions in the framing of public policy and treat them like any other pressure group. Their views should be listened to but given no more weight than any other set of interests.

The media, especially the public broadcasters, also need to think about these changes taking place in the beliefs of their viewers, listeners and readers. How does the BBC reconcile a head of religious affairs with a quest for younger audiences? Perhaps more controversially, what about the constitutional implications for the monarchy? How can a sovereign be crowned as a defender of the faith if not only a minority of the citizens do not hold that faith, but the majority have no faith at all? On current trends that could well be the situation before the latest royal arrival comes to the throne.

I am not a fundamentalist secularist but I have concerns about the growing tendency to shape public policy in response to religious interests when the evidence shows that our society is moving away from religious belief. Groucho Marx posed the question, “Would you want to join a club that let me in?”. I am very happy to be a member of a club that includes, among others, JK Galbraith, Aldous Huxley, Margaret Sanger, Robert Oppenheimer, Bertrand Russell, Jonas Salk, James Watson, Gore Vidal, Mark Twain, Philip Pullman and Sigmund Freud. I could go on, but I thought that I would give noble Lords a list of personal heroes. It is a cause for celebration that more people in the UK seem to be moving toward that club’s membership. The data suggest that the tide of UK history is moving against religiosity and politicians, the media and the monarchy need to reflect on that.