Are You A Heathen?

Julian Baggini has written in the Guardian that we need to rethink and re-brand atheism to make progress in public debate with the religious.

He's right that the debate about the place of belief in public life and the rights of non-believers has become polarised and that moderate atheists are often excluded (in the same way that moderate believers are).

Baggini writes that 'We need a name that shows that we do not think too highly of ourselves'. He's right that groups like the Brights do no one any favours as the name is a PR disaster, implying superior intelligence and smugness. He's also right that humanism is not the answer as it's just a sub-set of non-believers.

His solution is to re-brand atheists as heathens because 'in the public imagination [atheism] amounts to little more than a caricature of Richard Dawkins'.

The word 'heathen' has the same root meaning as 'pagan' - people who live in the countryside and who are therefore not civilized (living in the city, from the Latin civis). These people had their own belief systems that were characterized by the derogatory 'heathen' or 'pagan' as primitive, along with everything else they did. It was also a term used by early missionaries so it has a racist tinge to it as well.

As someone who was raised in the countryside, far from civilization, I'd like to reclaim the word 'yokel' and make it a source of pride but I won't be calling myself a heathen.

Other groups have reclaimed words or changed their meaning (gay, for example) but one of the problems with heathen is that it's already in current use. Heathens are a variety of neo-pagans and British heathens have an annual meet called Heathenfest in Peterborough. They may not be too pleased with the word being co-opted by atheists*. Heathen is also a thrash metal band and the Heathens are a Dudley speedway team.

Baggini does say that people may not agree with everything in his manifesto, that it is a broad set of principles, 'an attempt to prescribe what the best form of atheism should be like'.

But no matter what we decide to call ourselves, there will still be moderates and extremists and there will still be people calling themselves atheists.

This could lead to non-believers becoming like the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea. Our opponents will be pleased to see dissention and division so, rather than establishing common ground between believers and non-believers, a name change could just be divisive. Perhaps he should have run a focus group first before re-branding the product.

He writes that heathens can be religious, they are people who 'reject the real existence of supernatural entities and divinely authored texts, accept that science trumps dogma, and who see the essential core of religion in its values and practices' and many religious people 'will find themselves in agreement with much of what heathens believe'.

Maybe a few of them will but they are not considered true believers by the more orthodox. Hostility to non-believers and attacks on human rights come from these most orthodox of believers and religious leaders who will not embrace any of the manifesto points. They don't want common ground or common cause. These are the people who have access to the media and to government, not the more moderate believers.

While it may appear pragmatic to soften our image in order to engage with them, the fundamental differences remain and the hard core are not going to be mollified by heathens any more than they currently are by atheists. If reasonable, calm debate worked, we wouldn't be in the position we're in now. By suggesting a re-brand, he is acknowledging that we must change because the religious hardcore will not - but perhaps the re-brand is pandering to them, bending over backwards to make them accept and engage with us. Making concessions to a bully doesn't work, it just gives him more opportunity to mock, dismiss and kick you.

One of the manifesto points is about secularism. This is the key issue and the one he should focus on. It doesn't matter what non-believers call themselves or what believers believe, it is what happens in the public sphere that needs our attention. Our efforts should be focussed on making sure that religion doesn't claim any unfair advantage or try to disadvantage non-believers, women, minorities or the 'wrong' sort of believers.

Baggini's aim is to find 'common ground to make fruitful dialogue possible'. Entering into dialogue with the religious could be productive in some areas, but it's more important to make politicians listen and act to protect our rights. This might be easier if we had some religious people on board - and in some cases we already do work on common causes together. The National Secular Society has already been doing this for some time, for example on freedom of expression and sharia courts. But in other cases, it's the opposition between belief and non-belief that's the source of the problem, the different and intransigeant interpretations of human rights. No amount of dialogue or image-softening will fix that fundamental disagreement, rooted in incompatible world views. Secular legislation and education are the only routes.

Directing the re-brand at politicians so they are less timorous about engaging with us might work but recent governments have shown scant regard for facts and evidence and too much regard for religious arguments. The media is as bad, giving endless time to extremists because they make good copy while moderates do not, often getting a paragraph tacked on to the end of a story, if they're lucky. A bishop who rants about gay marriage is going to get far more column inches than any moderate, whatever they call themselves.

It's easy to wear a badge or a T shirt with Heathen on but re-branding is not what's needed. What we do need is for moderates (of both sides) to be more active, not let the extremists of either side go unchallenged or hog the limelight, to let them, the media and the public know they do not speak for us. There are a lot of us; what we call ourselves is irrelevant, we need to get out there.


*I've contacted a couple of pagan and heathen groups and will add their comments if they respond.

Psychic Detectives

Evening all. Two jolly queer stories this week from Dock Green.

Firstly, Police in Lampeter spent £20,000 following up tips from psychics in a murder investigation. The suicide verdict was questioned when mediums told the police that a lion, a horse and a man called Tony Fox were important. So off went the Boys In Blue round all the local pubs with Lion or Horse in the name.

The police were told that the dead man's ghost had been in touch to say he was strangled by gangsters and forced to drink petrol and bleach. Oddly enough, a second postmortem found no trace of either substance. Tip for mediums: don't make claims that can be disproved in five minutes with a scalpel.

The Dyfed-Powys police said they followed up the leads 'to reassure the family that the full circumstances of the death were as they appeared. Police have a responsibility to the deceased, their family and the public to investigate all deaths thoroughly'.

Up to a point, lads. Going against post mortem evidence does not say a great deal for their trust in forensics either. The men and women in white coats can't be exactly delighted.

The dead man had a row with his girlfriend and local news added that 'Their relationship had deteriorated since the birth of their son Luca in 2005, and Miss Edwards, 23, said her former partner had developed bouts of anger. She said Mr Assaf, who had spent six months in jail for assaulting her in 2006, was addicted to amphetamines'.

Does this make the police more or less gullible? Were they fooled by an alleged psychic or were they just doing their job? Could the mediums have been giving them a real tip-off based on facts they were trying to dress up as knowledge from Beyond the Veil for who knows what motive? The police said they had to be sure no third party was involved and someone decided this was worth twenty grand of police time.

We will never know at what point in the mystic revelations the police decided they'd been had or, in their terms, decided that no third party was involved.

A police source commented: 'We are becoming a laughing stock'.

Well, yes.

Then, a few days later, there was another story, this time about Alan Power, a police trainer with Greater Manchester Police, who is going to court after being sacked because he believes psychics can help in police investigations.

Judge Russell at the Manchester Employment Tribunal said 'I am satisfied that the claimant's beliefs that there is life after death and that the dead can be contacted through mediums are worthy of respect in a democratic society and have sufficient cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance to fall into the category of a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Regulations'.

He is referring to the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003. This is the same law used by Tim Nicholson when he argued that green beliefs are equal to religious beliefs recently.

There's respect for someone's right to believe any old nonsense and then there's taking that nonsense seriously in the workplace, which requires quite a leap especially in a job where lives and safety are at stake.

The judge said that a later hearing would have to establish whether Power was 'dismissed for the possession of religious or philosophical beliefs or for his alleged inappropriate foisting of his beliefs on others'.

Power has belonged to a Spiritualist church for 30 years. He told the hearing that he believed in psychics and their 'usefulness to police investigations'. He is to call a psychic he has known since 1980 to testify that his association with the psychic has proved 'detrimental' to his police career.

Greater Manchester Police are going to argue at an appeal that Judge Russell 'erred in law' because Power did not originally claim to have a religious belief, only that he had a belief in psychics and their usefulness to the Force.

They must be aware that their public reputation is at stake - something Dyfed-Powys police might like to have considered.

On the one hand, is there really any difference between believing that the dead can be contacted and that (fill in any mainstream religious belief of your choice here). If the latter is 'worthy of respect in a democracy', why not the former? What is the difference between praying to a supernatural being to guide you in your investigation, solving the case and ascribing it to His Wisdom and bringing in a psychic? Both are world views based on faith not science, evidence or any testable claim. Both often involve post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning, confirmation bias, seeing patterns where there are none and a whole gamut of logical fails, not to mention leaps of imagination.

On the other hand, Manchester police do appear to be showing a lot more common sense than the Dyfed-Powys police. The fact that Power wants to prove his beliefs have been detrimental to his career means that he has form, that they have known about him for a while and he went too far.

If Power wins his case, then the floodgates will be open for people with any kind of belief to refuse to do certain work because it is against those beliefs, to bring those beliefs into the workplace, demand concessions or privileges and to appeal if they get sacked. As long as they can prove they didn't just make up a belief on the spot because they fancied a day off, they could have a case.

Two incidents of psychics and police do not make a trend, but it would be interesting to know just how many members of the Force have some sort of supernatural belief that they bring to work with them. There is a Christian Police Association , a Muslim Police Association, a Sikh group and a Pagan Police group.

The pagans wanted to take the Solstices and Halloween off and Hertfordshire police have appointed two pagan police chaplains. A member of Staffordshire Police is a practising Wiccan who has offered to do spells to help his colleagues.

In the light of all this, does using the dead to grass up the living seem so extreme?

UPDATE: 25 NOVEMBER 2009

Power's case has now been heard and the judge found against him.

The tribunal heard that Power was playing the part of an arrested shoplifter during a police training exercise near Warrington in 2004. But, according to the report, 'he became visibly aroused during the frisking process'.

A sergeant from Merseyside police saw this and decided not to use him again. Cheshire Constabulary made the same decision because of his 'inappropriate behaviour'.

So the perp had form.

The information came to light in October 2008 after Power, who denied the allegations, got a job as a special trainer with Greater Manchester Police. He was sacked three weeks later with the force citing his 'current work in the psychic field' as a reason.

It was also alleged that he had handed out inappropriate research materials to Merseyside officers about the World Trade Centre attacks.

The GMP said "The matter has never been about Mr Power's beliefs and we vehemently deny any claims he was discriminated against on those or any other grounds".

So first time round he was sacked for a stiffy, then either for his psychic activity or for handing out leaflets. Or possibly his pony tail. The evidence is not exactly clear.

Either way, this particular psychic will no longer be using his invisible friends as police informants or copping a feel-up on the job.

More importantly perhaps, citing discrimination against your beliefs is becoming an increasingly tenuous response to being fired.

UPDATE 26 November

This post appeared on the Friends of the National Secular Society Facebook page:

I'm the sister of the man in this story. I'd love to say lots more, but then he'd take me to court too! All I can say is that I'm very very glad he lost!!!