Both Rik and Adam have written about their take on Humanism and its proponents since I wrote about the British Humanism Association last week.

Rik isn’t the only person I know who objects to Richard Dawkins’ hard line on religion. While I take exception to Dawkins’ slightly patronising attitude to those who choose to believe in a God, I agree with much of what he says, including his opinions on the teaching of religion in schools. I think children should be taught about the worlds religions purely from a subjective standpoint, and they should be taught this alongside evolutionary theory as well the history of the Universe (kids are bright enough these days aren’t they?). Getting a fair education like this provides a platform from which they can form their own opinions about the world and this, I think, is a human right.

Meanwhile, Adam criticises the overall formality of the Humanist perspective with particular reference to the texts on the BHA website. The writing is pretty dry, and does tend to boil down the richness and complexities of life into a few easy-to-swallow statements. However, I’m inclined to support what they say, even if they do need a livelier copywriter.

The fact is that there are people still living in the dark ages and human beings are capable of incredible evil, whether it is driven by politics or religion or whatever. Dawkins would call it mental poison; if this is the case, I just wonder if we’ll ever find the antidote.