Our latest newsletter is ready, with reports of our activities over the past year and an invitation to our AGM and a pub lunch. Click on the heading and then click here to download it (PDF).

Our events calendar seems to have deleted itself, so apologies for not posting this sooner. We have a guest speaker on Tuesday 14th April. Richy Thompson from the BHA is coming to talk to us about faith schools. Around a third of all state-funded schools are schools with a religious character the legal term for faith schools. This number has grown in recent years as successive governments have increased the influence of religious groups in the state-funded education system.

Terry Pratchett, humanist author and advocate of assisted dying, died at home on Thursday 12th March with his cat sleeping on his bed, surrounded by his family, said his publisher, Larry Finlay.Andrew Copson, BHA CEO, has written an obituary. Click here to read it.

Stephen Fry was interviewed byGay Byrne for RT Ones ‘The Meaning of Life’ today.Knowing that Fry is an atheist, Byrne asked him what he’d say if he was “confronted by God” at the Pearly Gates. Fry replied, Id say, bone cancer in children? Whats that about?How dare you? How dare you create a world to which there is such misery that is not our fault. Its not right, its utterly, utterly evil.

Our latest newsletter is ready for you to download. There are articles about our contribution to the annual Human Rights Day celebration based on Article 18 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, what group members thought about “British values”, and differing views about atheism and anti-theism. Click here to download it (PDF). Note: if you’re viewing this on the home page, the link won’t work. Click on the heading above to go to the post.

Hardly a week goes by without someone displaying their ignorance in public about what secularism means. This is a simple explanation, for the benefit of anyone, like Baroness Warsi, Eric Pickles MP, the Pope, andDonald Morrisonof the Free Church of Scotland (who pities secularists), who doesn’t know what he or she’s talking about. The video was produced by QualiaSoup for the National Secular Society.

We’ve been affiliated to the Suffolk Inter-Faith Resource (SIFRE) since its inception in 1991, at about the same time that our group was founded. Among other things, it’s allowed us to contribute to educational activities in the county, in schools and other statutory and voluntary bodies, including local government. An off-shoot of SIFRE became the East of England Faiths Agency, which provides speakers for all of these organisations, and members of our group have been SIFRE and EEFA tutors.

This question is asked in an amazing half hour rant by Megan Fox, a Christian creationist Tea Party supporting home-schooling American “mom”, made when she visited the evolution exhibit in theField Museum of Natural History in Chicago. The sad thing is that she doesn’t realise how wrong she is, that she’s teaching her children a load of nonsense, and that she’s making a total fool of herself online, since the video’s gone viral.

The problem with Secularism is that too many people don’t know what it means. It’s frequently used to describe a formof repressive atheism that’s anti-religion. The National Secular Society explains it succinctly: Secularism is a principle that involves two basic propositions. The first is the strict separation of the state from religious institutions. The second is that people of different religions and beliefs are equal before the law. The former nun, Karen Armstrong, who writes extensively about religion, is the latest to misuse the term in an article for the Guardian, ‘The myth of religious violence’.

Posters featuring quotes and reflections from prominent British humanists much-loved novelists George Eliot and Virginia Woolf and philosophers Bertrand Russell and A C Grayling will appear in 100 London Underground stations from 22 September until 5 October and in other UK cities in following weeks. Click here to find out more and download copies.