Atheism and Humanism

Sometimes I'm asked about the difference between atheism and Humanism.  It is important: there are some items in New Humanist this month that say more or less the opposite of what I think. One is by a philosopher who thinks we have enough "isms" and the other by an atheist who thinks that atheism is the end of morality, and that is something to be desired.

No, I don't agree.  Atheism asserts that there is no God, or, as I prefer to say, that there is no evidence that this universe is anything other than material.  Humanism says that, because there is no God, we must take care of each other and treat each other with the same tolerance, respect and compassion we hope to receive. I add that this is based on a precept, the Golden Rule, which is older than any of today's religions.

Similarly, atheism says there is no life after this. Humanists agree but go on to say that because this is so, we should do our utmost to live this life fully and well, for our own sakes and for the benefit of others. 

I have noticed that atheism has negative connotations for many people. They say things like, "I'm not an atheist, I just don't believe in God" or "I'm not an atheist, I'm just not religious".  In that event I stress the positives of Humanism, an approach to life without belief in God or religion, but which insists that because of this we must treat each other well, and with respect, and try to make the most of this one life we have, both for ourselves and for others.  I find that these positives are well received by almost everyone.

For religious callers...

Religion is an illusion at best and a lie at worst. The alleged benefits it offers are false. The methods it uses to secure more followers are immoral. There is no shred of evidence in support of religion or its claims. The mountain of evidence suggesting the contrary is overwhelming.

Religious scriptures are full of ridiculous claims, impossible requirements and contradictions. I have studied the bible in both of the original languages, Hebrew and Greek, which is a claim very few doorstep evangelists can make. I can support the statements in the first sentence of this paragraph, and indeed pile up examples. Others who are native speakers of Arabic say the same of the Koran.

Let's just take one simple example, the claim that there will be life after death. Everything we know about the human body says that who we are, our awareness and our consciousness, is a product of the electro-chemical activity in our brains. The effect on personality that brain injury has is just one small piece of supporting evidence. Current research in neuroscience indicates that what we take to be deliberate conscious decisions are in fact made deep in our brains long before we become aware of them. That's just another small piece of a jigsaw that wipes out any doubt, when it is all taken together, that who we are depends on our physical bodies. That when our body dies, we stop existing is the inevitable conclusion.

It seems to me that the principle benefit of religion is to assuage the fears of those who are about to die – to give them hope that they will in fact go on living in some way. It's a false claim, but it seems to offer some comfort to some people. I don't believe in lying to anyone, even those, perhaps especially those, who are about to die. Non-existence is not something to be afraid of. We did not exist for the first 13.7 billion years of the Universe's existence. Not to exist for the remainder cannot be a problem.

If you want to believe fairy tales and soothe yourself with false hopes, that's up to you. It is deeply immoral to encourage others to do the same. Reality is always better than lies or illusions. This life is better for being only the only one we have, and more to be savoured for being short.

More miners please!

The rescue of Los 33 was one of the most heart-warming news items of the century so far - maybe of the last century too.  It would be interesting to see other people's nominations for Heart Warming News Story of the Decade for each decade, oh, let's say since I was born in 1944.  So more or less the end of WWII.

A knock-on benefit of the rescue was that it drove most other news stories off the screen.  When I say "News" I am using the term in the loose way that the BBC do.  I mean, the main news programmes are crammed with things that are expected to happen during the day - well that's not my definition of news, which should be something that has happened that I need or want to know about - and padded out with forecasters telling you what they expect to happen in economics, defence, politics, fashion, music, literature, travel, climate, you name it for years ahead. "By 2040 this will be the case..." There are two things you can say about these predictions.  First, they will prove to be somewhere on a scale between definitely inaccurate and wildly wrong. Second, what is predicted is on a scale from mildly unpleasant to disastrous.

Yesterday the main news item was to do with who or what we should expect to be attacked by and in what way.  Cyber-terrorists will explode our power stations with a computer virus that also disables all traffic lights and shuts down the banking system - that seems to be roughly the flavour of the moment.  And of course, to defend ourselves against these hidden aggressors we must renew our capacity for a nuclear counter-strike and double the number of battle ships.  Perhaps the best news today is that we won't have any aircraft carriers soon. The Foreign Secretary seemed to say that we need a nuclear arsenal in case someone - maybe a terrorist hidden we don't know where - tries to blackmail us with a nuclear threat.  Yup, I buy that. It's easy to see that in such a case we need to be able to obliterate all possible secret hiding places before they get us.

Why is it that non-nuclear nations like Sweden and Chile and Switzerland haven't been wiped off the face of the earth yet? I heard someone claim on the radio the other day that in Chile it is impossible to bribe a policeman, that new free care facilities for the impoverished elderly are being opened regularly, and I don't know how many other things we British can only dream of.  He didn't actually say that there are no corrupt politicians, that would have been totally unbelievable, but he made it sound as though it might be so. Anyway, they can certainly rescue miners, so almost anything is possible.

And to top is all, two sweet looking old ladies just called.  They wanted to warn me that I am going to eternal torment if I don't give my heart to Jesus.  I told them I had already promised it to medical research.

Quackery

Much as I love ducks, this has nothing to do with them.

A couple of days ago a friend introduced me to Mitchell and Webb on YouTube, and specifically their wonderful skit on Homeopathic A & E.  It exactly hits the mark. If you want to waste time and money on homoeopathic treatments nothing anyone can say will dissuade you.  But when your life is on the line, you want a real doctor.

I'm happy to give alternative treatments room to prove themselves. Acupunture is making headway. There are results such that it can be used for anaesthesia in serious operations.  This despite the mumbo jumbo surrounding it. Shiatsu derives from the same mumbo jumbo, and uses the same points, for pressure rather than needles. I have had an insight into the training Shiatsu therapists undergo, which includes some detailed anatomy. And I've seen it at work. My sister benefited from Shiatsu treatment for her sciatica. Of course it may not have been the Shiatsu that helped her, but it may. I'd like to see it tested as Acupuncture has been.

Homeopathy has been put to scientific test and found totally lacking. The House of Commons Science and Technology committee decided that observed results are due entirely to the placebo effect. You can read a well-referenced explanation of the claims of homeopathy and how they violate the basics of physics and chemistry on Wikipedia. But at least homeopathy does have an organisation and some training, even if the training is largely mumbo jumbo.

Unhappily anyone can set up as a therapist or healer. I knew someone who was suffering acute mental distress who was persuaded to go for past life regression treatment. The idea is that something from a past life is causing your present problems, which can be relieved by accessing the cause. Reincarnation is an attractive idea for some, but there is absolutely no reason to believe it. Who we are is intimately and totally linked to our physical bodies and the circumstances of our present lives. All the evidence points to one conclusion: when our brains stop, we stop. When our bodies waste away we, as persons, are no more.

One has to admit that there is no conclusive proof that nothing survives death. Such evidence is impossible to obtain. But the evidence linking our conscious selves to our physical existence is so strong it would be remarkable in the extreme if this were not so.

None the less, people by and large cannot imagine and are deeply antithetical to non-existence. And, since most of us are not aware of, nor educated enough to judge, the scientific evidence that makes survival of death seem so very unlikely, the hope persists, and on this forlorn hope past life regression trades. That the person of whom I am about to speak was highly educated, employed as a therapist by the NHS working with mental health, yet still was taken in by this idea indicates how strongly it appeals.

I'll call her Mary. Mary had experienced a great deal of distress from problems related to anxiety for a number of years. I guess she was unwilling to attribute them to her mental health for professional as well as personal reasons, and over time quite a few straws were clutched at. But the anxiety got worse, her distress increased, and she was at times suicidal.

Someone convinced Mary to try Past Life Regression Therapy. I don't know the details: one of the conditions imposed on her to get "benefit" from the treatment was never to speak about what she had experienced. All I can say for sure is that it had something to do with deer. Whether as a hunter, the hunted, or in some other way I do not know. Very soon after the treatment Mary's condition became significantly worse. She was suicidal and terribly distressed. I cannot say that this was directly linked to the past life regression she had tried, but I do know that there was an association in time. Correlation does not prove causation, but it looks suspicious.

Finally the NHS intervened, a psychiatrist visited Mary at home and she was admitted as an emergency to a mental hospital. This was not the end of her troubles. She went through agonies, including the end of her marriage, but, last I heard, she was well on the way to recovery and living an independent life.

Conventional medicine, and a drastic change in her life circumstances, helped Mary where quack treatments could not.  Of course! I am angry that she was given false hopes, and let down by those who offered them.

And I am utterly and implacably opposed to quakery and the damage it does to people who are seduced into resorting to it.

Ducks, on the other hand, are charming creatures, great fun to watch, and really tasty roasted.

Aix-En-Provence (3)

Pavillon Vendôme

Pavillon Vendôme was a lucky find.  I was wandering across Aix wondering if there was time to walk down to the river - I hadn't realised how far it was - and I saw what in the UK I'd call a Brown Sign, the kind of thing you find pointing to National Trust properties.  So I followed it and there was Pavillon Vendôme.  It's a 18th century grand house, very nice, but I loved the garden.

Rose Garden

As you enter the grounds the rose garden is the first thing you see.  It was, frankly, past its best.  But still a great place to sit in the sun and relax. Sitting there with a book for an hour after breakfast on my final day was ideal.  I had the place to myself too.  This seems to me to be typical of Aix-En-Provence: it is full of treasures which you can either spend a lot of time reading up about and looking for or otherwise just wander about and let yourself be surprised by.  There were museums I did not visit, tours I did not take, but still I was enchanted by the place.

One thing I did do was take a road train round the town.  The commentary pointed out some interesting things I'd missed when walking about, and the very fact that the driver got this thing round some of the very narrow streets was a treat in itself.  One of the treats I learned about concerned a fountain in Cours Mirabeau.

As I mentioned, the part of the avenue in which traffic is allowed is not wide, and there are two fountains right in the middle, with the carriageway parting like a roundabout to accomodate them.  Getting a delivery lorry round these must be a nightmare.  I found one of those vans that deliver cash to banks stopped on one, making a drop or collection.  By the time it was ready to move quite a lot of traffic had built up.  The driver needed to reverse in order to manoevre round the fountain.  But no-one behind him had made any allowance for that!  Chaos ensued while, as far as I could tell, everyone in the street had to back up in order to create room.

Warm fountain

But this kind of thing is common.  Walking down a typically narrow street you see a van stopped.  The doors are open, and the driver is nowhere to be seen.  He's making a delivery to one of the tiny shops.  There is hardly room for a pedestrian to get round, so traffic has to wait.  You pass drivers reading newspapers, generally letting time pass.  There is nothing else to do.

Anyway, the point about the fountain: the water is naturally warm, and steams in the cold weather.

Thinking again about what I said about Aix not being as interesting as Avignon, I think that was a bit harsh.  I loved Aix.  It gave me everything I needed, namely refreshment both metaphorical and actual, in abundance.  There are lots of museums, there is a theatre, and there are walking tours around the town and the surrounding countryside.  You can visit places where Cézanne set up his easel.  I felt I had exhausted Avignon, but Aix I know a barely scratched because that was what I wanted.

I left Aix-En-Provence knowing that there are 3 major towns in Provence, and that having seen two I must go to the third.  Marseilles beckons.  But I would happily return to Aix just to be charmed by the narrow streets and old buildings that have been soaking up sunlight for centuries.  And then, if I was in the mood, there would be plenty to do, and enough restaurants to satisfy my every culinary need.  And there is the public humour - I noticed it on the road train and could not get my camera out in time - it was a dry cleaners and pressers.  And the name of the establishment: Aix-Presse.  Don't you just love it!

Aix-En-Provence (2)

I should mention that quite early on the first morning the new batteries in my camera gave up the ghost, so almost all my pictures were taken on my phone.  The quality is not the best.

The Place d'Hotel de Ville is somewhere you must visit more than once - it managed to combine two of my favourite aspects of Aix.  I stumbled across it on my way across town towards the road out to Cézanne's home.  It's picturesque at any time, but in the morning it is the home to a market.  The array of fruit and vegetables, fish, herbs, spices, cheeses, and all top quality, had to be seen to be believed.  Having worked in the food trade for two longish periods, and being fond of both cooking and eating, I love food markets and good food shops.  Aix-En-Provence is blessed with both.  There are lots of shops, mostly the small shops that could be found in any English town beforen the giant out-of-town supermarkets drove them all out of business.  Aix is a warren of shops like that.  One shop I found specialised in pink.  Pink what?  Pink everything.  The only person in the shop, who I took to be the owner, was dressed entirely in pink.  She had pink scarves, pink doorknobs, pink plastic eyeballs on legs - if it was pink, she seemed to stock it.  The following day I was at a street market where a stall holder was dressed in black.  And while she didn't have the wide range of goods of the lady in pink, she had more black clothing than I can remember seeing before: black leather belts, black frilly things, black boots and shoes, black hats and scarves.  So now you know where to go if you need black or pink.

But there are two kinds of small shops that stand out:  really nice clothes shops and really nice food shops.  There were some gorgeous shirts at a price I would never pay, similarly shoes.  I gawped at a few.

But the top shops for me were the food shops. Let's start from the market.  There picture shows a single stall in the fruit and veg market.  This was one of many.  One stall had nothing but mushrooms - more types, different sizes, some huge, some tiny, just a wide array of mushrooms.  Another stall had rows and rows of herbs and lavender. I walked round and round just drinking it all in and wishing I could buy vegetables from my table there.  This was just one food market I saw.  It was not the only one.

I went off to see the Cézanne house, and on the way back called in to pick up some herbs.  And the market was being demolished.  It was mornings only, and back the following day.  Instead the restaurants round the square were extending their groups of tables, and when I next  came that way there was room to seat several hundred people.  These open air cafés are one of the things I love most about continental Europe, from Amsterdam south.  But the ones in Provence take the cake.  It's partly the climate, partly the relaxed atmosphere, and partly the enormous variety on offer, from really good quality restaurants with a menu and wine list to tempt anyone to bars and snacks. And you can get a good local wine in any of them.

Then there are the cake and pastry shops: merangues, flans, tarts, bread, everything.  I could have overloaded on sugar and cholesterol very easily indeed.  So, getting back to the day, I walked into the market, found it gone, and wandered off down another street that I hadn't tried before.  After a few steps it opened out into a wide square, and all down one side restaurant after restaurant.  I browsed a few menus, and decided on the obvious: this is Provence, we're a short way from the Med, go for the sea food.  I found a table, sat down, and over came the waiter with a menu.

A serving of mussels

I didn't need it: "Meules Marinierre s'il vous plait".  I ordered a carafe of white côtes du rhône wine, and sat back.

In a trice there was a basket of crisp-crusted French bread, then came the wine and a flagon of water.  I settled down to enjoy nibbling the bread, and sipping the wine.  Soon the mussels arrived, along with a plate of French Fries.  Fortunately I'd been served mussels in an establishment like this before and knew what to expect.  It needs most of the afternoon and has to be washed down with half a litre of wine.

Aix-En-Provence (1)

I watched the television series, then I saw for myself...

Much as I enjoyed John Thaw as Peter Mayle in "A Year In Provence", I had no idea where Provence actually was (somewhere in France...) or that Avignon was in Provence. I was on the TGV earlier this year when I found from the train announcement that after Avignon the next stop was Aix-En-Provence. That it was close to the Mediterranean coast was another surpise. I was quite unprepared for the sunlight on old buildings, the climate, the beautiful countryside, the food, or the local wines. Every wine area I have been to is the same: they don't export the stuff they want to drink themselves. But the wines of the Rhône valley have all the potential of the great river itself, wide and meandering with a hidden power in its strong currents.

Avignon captivated me. Getting a really cheap deal from Eurostar helped, and the TGV is a great way to travel, the double-decker trains racing through the hills and vinyards, past farms, villages, rivers and mountains at an average speed of 158 mph, and smoothly enough not to spill your drinks. I enjoyed the look of the old city, of standing on the famous bridge about which, as a child, I had learned to sing. And because the papacy had moved there from Rome from 1305 to 1377 and the papal palace had been preserved, it was also full of history. And I ate well, and got seriously chilled in what was really a very short stay.

So, getting wound up over various things and remembering the lesson of my surgery that life is for living, I set off again, to do that extra stop on the TGV - Aix-En-Provence. Once again, the TGV, but this time no Eurostar Special Offer. It was cold and wet when I left St Pancras International at lunchtime. Arriving at Aix in the early evening it was just dark and still warm.

I don't quite know how it works: I originally experienced it when I first went to Texas nearly 20 years ago. Somehow as I got off the plane I seemed to have room to expand. Maybe it was the big expanse of sky, maybe it has something to do with the attitude of the people. Perhaps back then it had something to do with circumstance. I remember at a particularly dark time in my life, on my own just north of Chicago, sitting outside a Starbucks and feeling free of boundaries, feeling that I had room and the opportunity to be me and put down the load I was carrying. Provence has the same effect. From the TGV station, several kilometers south of the city, the night sky was better than any I have seen in Northamptonshire, and I expanded to fill some extra room that had appeared around me.

Before leaving I had downloaded instructions to find the transit bus to the town centre, and of course, there it wasn't. But just then a fellow traveller was met in the car park and greeted in English, so I asked if they knew where the transit stop was. Two Australians! One living in Aix, the other visiting, and from that the offer of a lift to the street I needed and some interesting chat about Aix, and the inability to tune to a satellite TV station showing cricket.

Cours Mirabeau

So 15 minutes later I was standing on the wide expanse of Cours Mirabeau, amid trees, the pedestrians, the halting traffic: it's a wide street, but traffic is restricted to a narrow central lane down which speed, progress even, is not far short of impossible. Pavement cafés thronged with customers, and my hotel was easy to find.

Honoré, Comte de Mirabeau, was a leading, and controversial, figure in the French Revolution, and born in Aix-En-Provence. The first to be buried in the pantheon, he was also the first to have h‎is bones removed elsewhere! I would have loved to find a Mirabeau Museum, but there isn't one. Nor did I meet anyone with whom I could discuss the town's famous son. Was he a traitor to the revolution, or a practical man who saw a different future to some of the other leaders? What would have happened if Louis XVI had listened to his advice? Would France have become a constitutional monarchy and the Terror avoided? There is no statue of him in the avenue that bears his name. At one end is a memorial of the 15th century King René, and at the other is the Place Charles de Gaul. There is a square named after the French Resistance fighters who died in World War II, but I found nothing commemorating the Revolution that changed European history and gave the continent the concept of individual rights and the idea that government is responsible to the people. So that was a disappointment.

Rooftops of Aix from my hotel room.

In general, I found Aix-En-Provence to be less interesting than Avignon - it is less aware of its history. But on the other hand, it is more pleasing on the eye. Walking round the old city reveals another interesting, eye-catching, vista on just about every turn. And if Aix has forgotten Mirabeau, it has another favourite son, Paul Cézanne. Cézanne and his friend Emil Zola were both born, and educated, in Aix-En-Provence. There is not much evidence that I saw of Zola. But there is Cézanne everywhere. Hotels named after him, streets named after him, prints of his paintings, a tour of the sites of some of his famous landscape paintings, and the house where he lived and worked for the last years of his life.

Atelier Paul Cézanne is found by leaving the old city on the north side. I decided to walk - it was a warm day and I wanted to enjoy just being in the South of France. Cézanne is sometimes called the painter's painter, with an implication that some of his work is less popular with the public. I am not educated in art, but I love his work. His paintings are in the great collections world wide. So I did not expect to find much in a small museum in Aix. The house, which is set in trees off the road out of Aix, on a hill overlooking the city, manages visitor's expectations in this respect. As you approach the door you are told that in this house you will not find any of Cézanne's paintings - his spirit is here. And because there is not a lot of room inside, people are admitted a few at a time. As there were already a couple of family groups hanging around the door I moved past the house to a small building with a large video screen where a presentation was playing with readings from the artist's papers and many of his paintings: a few self portraits, some still life, and some of those great expansive landscapes. I sat and watched. Then a second showing began and I listened, finding my French was good enough to make sense of most of it. So after a brief walk round the grounds I returned to the house. I had in mind the shop I had spotted by the door, and hopefully a copy of the DVD presentation - maybe even in English.

Now I found I had made a mistake. Outside the house was a large group of Japanese tourists, so large it was hard to get near the door. But I managed it, and squeezed my way inside. The notice about "a few at a time" had been ignored. The house was swarming with Japanese. It was hard even to turn round in the throng. I managed with difficulty to edge into the shop. The selection of books, insofar as I could get near it, was poor, and the DVD was not on offer. I had a choice: I could fight my way to the counter, buy a ticket, and struggle through the melée, or I could wait until the mass left, or I could give up. I was in hassle-free mode, so I left and returned to the city. Another disappointment.

But not so much: I didn't expect to see Cézanne's major works. I had hoped to see his studio, but did not expect it to have the aura of Darwin's study. And I had seen the really good presentation, twice in fact. Lunch beckoned.