Dublin Declaration on Secularism and the Place of Religion in Public Life

By MICHAEL NUGENT


On Sunday 5 June 2011, the World Atheist Convention in Dublin discussed and adopted the following declaration on secularism and the place of religion in public life. Please discuss and promote it with your friends and colleagues, and if you are a a member of an atheist, humanist or secular group, please discuss and promote it with your fellow members, and with the media and politicians.

1. Personal Freedoms
(a) Freedom of conscience, religion and belief are private and unlimited. Freedom to practice religion should be limited only by the need to respect the rights and freedoms of others.
(b) All people should be free to participate equally in the democratic process.
(c) Freedom of expression should be limited only by the need to respect the rights and freedoms of others. There should be no right ‘not to be offended’ in law. All blasphemy laws, whether explicit or implicit, should be repealed and should not be enacted.

2. Secular Democracy
(a) The sovereignty of the State is derived from the people and not from any god or gods.
(b) The only reference in the constitution to religion should be an assertion that the State is secular.
(c) The State should be based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Public policy should be formed by applying reason, and not religious faith, to evidence.
(d) Government should be secular. The state should be strictly neutral in matters of religion and its absence, favouring none and discriminating against none.
(e) Religions should have no special financial consideration in public life, such as tax-free status for religious activities, or grants to promote religion or run faith schools.
(f) Membership of a religion should not be a basis for appointing a person to any State position.
(g) The law should neither grant nor refuse any right, privilege, power or immunity, on the basis of faith or religion or the absence of either.

3. Secular Education
(a) State education should be secular. Religious education, if it happens, should be limited to education about religion and its absence.
(b) Children should be taught about the diversity of religious and nonreligious philosophical beliefs in an objective manner, with no faith formation in school hours.
(c) Children should be educated in critical thinking and the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge. Science should be taught free from religious interference.

4. One Law For All
(a) There should be one secular law for all, democratically decided and evenly enforced, with no jurisdiction for religious courts to settle civil matters or family disputes.
(b) The law should not criminalise private conduct because the doctrine of any religion deems such conduct to be immoral, if that private conduct respects the rights and freedoms of others.
(c) Employers or social service providers with religious beliefs should not be allowed to discriminate on any grounds not essential to the job in question.

Reference:
Dublin Declaration on Secularism and the Place of Religion in Public Life

The Eagle

While winter sprinkles its browns, yellows, and ambers on barks, leaves and shades of human faces, and smoke pouring over roofs, smog over pavements, and while tired souls are hastily walking in agony, I have one question left to ask “what does it take to live a dignified life?”

Is it happiness, comfort and cosiness or is it desires? What does it take I wonder to become an eagle, lonesome, strong, content, solemn, focused to haunt on desires? How can that eagle die without rats and vultures noticing, leave this world in dignity, with nothing but that ancient song left behind and heard beyond the horizon over the Aegean Sea?

The scope of survival

This news is from Canberra Times, dated 4 June 2011:

“Australian National University has confirmed it moved several high-profile climate scientists, economists and policy researchers into more secure buildings, following explicit threats to their personal safety….

More than 30 researchers across Australia ranging from ecologists and environmental policy experts to meteorologists and atmospheric physicists told The Canberra Times they are receiving a stream of abusive emails threatening violence, sexual assault, public smear campaigns and attacks on family members.”

As bitter truths about our approach to the tipping point in climate change are unveiled by scientists, and governments sluggishly but nevertheless close in to intervene, the carbon lobby is becoming more aggressive in their tactics.

Regardless of how bitter confrontations are going to be, there is no escaping from science. Science is telling us by as close as 2100 our planet will be warmed up by 2-4°C. 2°C rise is certain regardless of what we do now.

The consequences are dire. There are various scenarios depending on timing of intermittent tipping points such as effects of release of CO₂ from the vast permafrost of Siberia, driven by temperature rise in Arctic, which at nearly 4°C is three to for times than the average. For example, a 4°C rise would kill off 85% of the Amazon rainforest, a 2°C rise now seen as inevitable would kill of 20-40%. Sea levels can rise up to 70 meters.

These things will happen.

---

Our genes copy themselves. The quality of being copied by a Darwinian selection process is what drives life on Earth. Life has a sense of space and change. Sense of change led to emergence of concept of time in humans. Our gene setup endlessly reconfigures itself; generations who can better exploit the information gained by knowing space and time, survive best.

“If that vast fire over the far mountain range isn't likely to effect my tribe now, I should probably not worry, and go by my everyday business of hunting. Only if the fire seems to be closing in I should think about moving, but then this hunting ground and nearby water seem too good to give up so perhaps I should stay.”

There is always room for failure in judgement of space and time. The fire could be advancing much faster than our humanoid ancestor thinks. In that case his tribe will be engulfed in flames.

When our humanoid ancestors walked in savannas of Africa 2.3 - 2.4 million years ago, their genes’ scope of survival was limited to their immediate vicinity, perhaps within a diameter of tens of kilometers for each group.

Today our capacity to comprehend space and time is much widened. We now know what is going on in every part of the world. We started to make sense of what made us, we look at skies and our universe’s distant past. With science our capacity to accurately reflect on future and farther increased.

Despite these advancements our judgements about survival strategies are still largely affected by selfish interests.

Humanity now is divided roughly in two. Those who think “Well, it’s not going to happen in my lifetime, so I don’t care”, and those who worry about their grandchildren and their grandchildren’s future.

People in the first group think much like our ancestor watching the fire in distant mountain range. People in the second group are super humans who have the capacity to extend humanity’s survival beyond stars.

References:

Requiem For A Species - Clive Hamilton

Canberra Times - News