by Alistair Robinson

Most of us are outraged by the violent actions of animal rights extremists, but at the same time the movement’s ideas and assumptions are gaining a foothold in the media and the public imagination. From my own experience it seems that among the young thinking people of this country animal rights is a very attractive political and ethical stance. My question is this: how can we be sure that things such as empathy for animals, concern for their moral status, and a desire to put them on a par with humans, do not stem only from a false attribution of uniquely human emotions?

We have a predisposition to see ourselves in the world around us: we endow the universe with human characteristics such as consciousness, and call it God; we hear an expression of love in a cat?s purr; we see an ancient oak as dignified and venerable. This is anthropomorphism. We attribute human characteristics to the things of the world, and those things are independent of that attribution: the fact that we have decided that they have qualities of our own does not make a difference to the actuality of the things themselves. It is, though, natural and important to the way we perceive the world. Unfortunately this means that we often naturally perceive the world falsely, that is, irrationally. Now this is not always a problem (the dawn chorus sounds like joy, and it makes us joyful - so what?), and it is mostly resisted in the areas where it might bias our judgement to dire effect, such as science. But there is an increasing acceptance of anthropomorphism in supposedly rational debates about the differences between humans and animals. And as we shall see, even in some scientific research there is a susceptibility to it.

Leaving aside the arguments about whether or not animals have, or should have, inalienable rights, one persuasive argument for better animal welfare is that the inhumane treatment of animals is uncivilized: that it dehumanizes and brutalizes us. After all, our actions are conscious and chosen, because we are uniquely self-aware and free. We can see that if cruelty repulses us and evokes imaginative emotions and empathy (anthropomorphic as we are) then it might follow that continually straining these responses will desensitize us to cruelty in general, stripping us of our compassion for all beings, including our fellow humans. And this may be true for society as well as for individuals.

Philosopher Daniel Dennett suggests that just as the mistreatment of the dead bodies of our loved ones would be unacceptable to us - despite our knowing that the person has gone - so there may be a similarly good reason to treat animals well, no matter if our empathy and compassion are anthropomorphic. Culture carries with it beliefs and customs that are important to us, and not necessarily because they have obvious practical value or a basis in a true perception of the world.

I do believe that the humane treatment of animals is preferable for these reasons, but we are now seeing anthropomorphism encroach on the part of our society that should be free from it: science. Anthropomorphic conclusions are being presented as additions to our body of knowledge about the world. Some science is now being claimed - often, it seems, by the scientists themselves - to bear out the assumptions of animal rights activists: ?Does a hook hurt a fish? The evidence is reeling in.?¹

In this article I will concentrate on the ideas of cruelty and suffering. There are more fundamental problems to be tackled when looking deeply into animal rights philosophy: if we decide to give an animal independent moral status, doesn?t that mean that we presuppose the capacity to make moral decisions, and ultimately the capacity of consciousness? Can a species be conscious at all if it has not developed language? Some neuroscientists, as well as some modern philosophers, have said that it cannot. And then we have the controversy over the communicative abilities of chimpanzees. I will look briefly at consciousness further on, but here I leave these issues open, and turn to suffering.

A recent study by a team from the Roslin Institute and the University of Edinburgh concluded that fish feel pain, implying that angling is cruel. Researchers tested the neural responses of rainbow trout and injected the fish with mild poisons. A few incontrovertible statements can be made in the light of the study?s findings: fish have specific neural receptors that respond to heat, mechanical pressure and acid; the neurons fire in a way very similar to the firing patterns of human neurons in response to adverse stimuli; fish behave abnormally when their lips are injected with bee venom and vinegar, rocking from side to side and breathing very rapidly; and the abnormal behaviours and symptoms are not seen - or at least not to the same extent - either in fish that are simply handled or those that are given an injection of a harmless substance.

What are we to conclude from all this? It is truly an addition to our knowledge - it is especially enlightening on the evolutionary divergence of bony fishes and cartilaginous fishes - but can we conclude from it that fish feel pain? To begin with there is the problem that such a conclusion depends upon a scientific definition of pain, of which there is none. We might define it with reference to the actions of neurons in response to adverse stimuli, but this is only the physiological cause: when we use the word we mean the experience. Even behavioural responses need not be concomitant with an experiential mental state. It seems to me that an adequate definition must take in psychology as well as physiology and behaviour. So it might be that we cannot proceed strictly by deduction from the scientific results to the presence of pain. But why shouldn?t we make a reasonable conclusion based on some other reasonable assumptions? It may seem too obvious to be denied that if another vertebrate species behaves in the same way as we do under a corresponding stimulus, and if its physiological responses to that stimulus are the same as ours, then it feels what we feel.

We can see the assumptions being made here more clearly if we consider a definition, given by contemporary philosopher David DeGrazia, of another kind of suffering: anxiety. DeGrazia gives four components to anxiety, all having been observed scientifically in animals:

1. Autonomic hyperactivity (rapid pulse and breathing, sweating, etc.)
2. Motor tension (jumpiness)
3. Inhibition of normal behaviours
4. Hyperattentiveness (visual scanning, etc.)

These are the symptoms of anxiety that we see in humans. But it might be misleading to group these as a definition of anxiety, because we are accustomed to using the word to signify more than the physiological and behavioural symptoms. When we say anxiety and mean an experience, we cannot omit the thing that allows us to experience in the first place: consciousness of the self existing through time, or temporal self-awareness - the very thing that allows us to be aware of what is happening to us. And DeGrazia does in fact assume this to be the context of the four components, both in humans and in animals. So the definition above, if we are to apply it across the board, asks that we assume what we are trying to prove: that animals experience things in the way that we do.

I now want to present a candidate for the presumed logical argument of all those who claim scientific back-up for the idea that animals experience something akin to human suffering; that fish feel pain or that deer suffer stress. But first I must clear up my meanings. In my argument so far, pain and anxiety are more or less interchangeable. We might also add fear to the list. They are kinds of suffering that have behavioural and physiological symptoms, and that are said by some to be experienced by animals. So to make things simpler I will use the word suffering. Now, I have cast doubt on certain uses of the words pain and anxiety. Taking this further (perhaps too far), even suffering could be said to apply only to humans. So for convenience I will use it to mean simply the state of a being subjected to adverse stimuli.

For the science to be conclusive on its own, the logic needs to run like this:

1. The nature of both human and nonhuman suffering is in essence physiological and behavioural
2. The human and nonhuman physiological and behavioural characteristics of suffering are the same
3. Therefore nonhuman suffering is in essence the same as human suffering

The logic is valid but not necessarily true: statement 2 is definitely provable but statement 1 is disputable. It could also be seen as an example of petitio principii reasoning, where the conclusion is taken for granted in a premise, in this case statement 1.

This is something of a caricature, and I did state earlier that even if a deductive argument doesn?t work, we might still reasonably make conclusions. A fairer representation of the argument might be that the evidence points to the probability of pain and anxiety in animals, if we also accept that many animals are to some extent temporally self-aware, or conscious. Here we can see the same problem cropping up again: whatever the scientific results tell us, they need to be interpreted in a certain way if they are to lead to: QED fish feel pain. So the whole question turns on whether it is a reasonable assumption that animals are conscious, something that I cannot cover here in much depth. But crucially we have seen that the cited scientific evidence alone is silent on the question of whether fish feel pain, because it is silent on the question of whether fish are conscious.

Suffering does take on a different quality in a conscious, imaginatively emotional being. As we experience it, it depends upon our sense of ourselves, our sense of the passage of time and of the changing fortunes in our lives. When we are subjected to adverse stimuli we feel pain, anxiety and fear for the very reason that we are conscious of what is happening to us - we experience the stimuli, not only respond unwittingly to them. But because we share so much of our evolutionary history with animals, the outward signs of these responses are similar. We recognize distress in another human being and can be forgiven for attributing the same set of emotions to an animal if we see it behave in the same way.

Even if we are looking only at the science we find disagreement. There is evidence to suggest that fish do not have the capacity to feel pain. Previous studies have found that they do not have an area of the brain corresponding to our own neural pain-processor - the neocortex - so that although the same signals are sent to the brain, there is no recognizable pain-experience-producing region to go to when they arrive. This at least tells us that we cannot describe what it is like to be a suffering fish, because its brain processes the signals in an alien way. How, then, can we make any sort of moral conclusion on this, unless we simply decide - guided by taste, inclination and sentiment - that fish do experience something like human suffering?

Before I conclude, I will touch upon the problem of consciousness, which is probably the crux of the matter. I suggested earlier that a being cannot be conscious without language. Neuroscientists Gerald M. Edelman and Giulio Tononi have written that the concepts of the self and the past and future emerged only when language appeared in the course of evolution, in communities of speakers. There must have been an intimate connection between social development and the evolution of consciousness, and language must be the likeliest contender for that connection.

It has been argued that although we (a) use language and (b) are conscious, (b) need not depend on (a). If it did, the argument goes, babies would not be able to feel pain or experience fear before they developed their language ability. There are two points to be made here. First, it is probably true that new-born babies are not quite conscious. We nurture and protect them while knowing that from the outset they are developing, becoming more and more human. Second, modern cognitive psychology and linguistics tells us that a baby is learning language right from the start. New-born babies have linguistic skills, because language is partly built-in: it is not just a matter of filling an empty brain with vocabulary and syntax. It seems problematic, then, to back up the claim that language is not necessary for consciousness by comparing animals to babies, which are just humans in development.

But consciousness is another story - a complicated one and the hottest topic for philosophers today - and I must leave it there.

Few of us want to see animals being treated inhumanely, but we would do well to consider how our natural and perhaps inaccurate assumptions about the inner lives of animals can affect our understanding of the true differences between ourselves and other species. Animal rights has more adherents than ever before, and many who profess no passionate beliefs on the subject seem to accept its ideas. The media is currently highly responsive to claims about pain and stress in animals, and science at times is taking anthropomorphism at face-value, and allowing it to bias its conclusions.

This could well be to do with the mood of the age, one that happily brings man down a peg or two on the scale of importance at every opportunity. While it is to be welcomed that thanks to science we no longer see ourselves at the centre of the universe as destiny?s chosen creatures, we also need to keep ourselves from allowing the spirit of the times to colour our unique, rational understanding of the world.

---

1. Randerson, J. 2003 Does a hook hurt a fish? The evidence is reeling in. New Scientist May: 15

---

Alistair Robinson is from Edinburgh, Scotland

By Doug Berger

I wanted to take the opportunity to write an essay in rebuttal to an essay written by Jane Haddam that was posted on her official website in 2003.

Jane is a published author of several mystery novels and freelance articles for various mainstream magazines.

I have had the pleasure of discussing the points made in her essay on an e-mail list called “sechum” at Yahoo Groups, on which we both participated. We debated and argued the points and I think it is healthy for Humanists to read reasoned critical essays about Humanism.

I really recommend you read her essay in full so that my thoughts don’t appear like I am taking things out of context.

Here is the link: http://www.janehaddam.com/chd/notahumanist.html

The main thrust of her essay is that she takes an exception with the Humanism being expressed by the main national groups, the American Humanist Association (AHA) and the Council of Secular Humanism (CSH), on their website and in their official magazines. She feels that the groups exclude people with political philosophies such as her’s. Specifically she sees the magazines and websites promoting what she calls a “left-liberal” political agenda.

I first heard the word “left-liberal” in a posting from Jane on the e-mail list. She claimed that liberal publications use the term to separate themselves from Clinton Liberals who like former President Clinton are more centrists then classic Liberals.

In my research, most of the articles and essays using “left-liberal” came from obviously conservative websites and publications. I found one reference on a liberal website but the word was used more as sarcastic remark like when men say “Sorry, I’m just a pig” to women they insulted.

My conclusion is that “left-liberal” is used as a pejorative like “Liberal” is when used by people who don’t like Liberal politics. It is not just an alternative label as Jane claims.

Aside from that point, I feel Jane makes some points that Humanists should examine, but where I disagree with her is her insistence that a particular political viewpoint on an issue is an official view of all Humanists. I don’t agree that the lack of any one viewpoint from any magazine articles or books indicates anything about what the Humanist consensus is or what it should be. The magazines and books publish viewpoints that should, if anything, be rooted somewhere in the Humanist philosophy.

I also differ with Jane on what the Humanist movement should be about. She claims we should just be secular - dealing with only protecting the rights of secular people.

I don’t believe the Humanist movement will grow if we ignore our historic political roots. I don’t think that a majority of Americans would become Humanists if we just focus only on secularism or at worst, Humanism will become so generic it won’t stand for much of anything.

“At base, however, we’re still left with a situation where a secular American who believes, as most Americans do, that neither rights nor morals are entirely social constructs must put those convictions aside to join a humanist organization. The same is the case for Americans who are supporters of free market philosophies, or even modified free market philosophies. In fact, in some cases, secular Americans who hold views like that have to learn to keep their mouths shut.”

Jane brings up an interesting point about the nature of groups. I don’t feel that it is only limited to Humanist groups. Even in groups committed to a particular political position, some in the group will not have all their viewpoints expressed in the group. Look at the two major political parties in the US. You have a national platform, calling for specific action on some issues. These platforms were developed by the leadership of the party. I know that some of the planks in those platforms don’t make all Democrats or all Republicans happy. Those individuals choose to belong to the party because they find enough issues to support.

Organized Humanism doesn’t work exactly like a political party. We don’t have a leadership developing a platform. We do have more than one set of general overlapping principles that one can adopt if they find they agree substantially with them but we as a group developed those principles together.

I have observed some Humanists berating someone who had a different particular political viewpoint and I don’t agree that is the right thing to do. Humanists do and should argue and debate those issues rationally with all viewpoints included.

“If the secular movement wants to grow, it has to be a secular movement, not a left-liberal movement that tacks on secularism. That means not only making sure that the house organs publish more than one point of view when they address political questions, but that they spend more time concentrating on secularism than they do on politics. It also means doing something about the nearly monolithic cultural climate in secular groups and on secular discussion forums.”

I do agree with Jane that the national groups, the magazines they publish, and even some Humanists I have met do give the impression that one must be a liberal to be a Humanist. I agree that at least in the AHA, it does seem it is still 1968 and Humanists are suppose to battle “the man” and its oppression etc…

Where I do disagree with Jane is her insistence that Humanism should only be about the rights of secularists.

If I thought that was true I would jump ship and go back to calling myself an Atheist.

Humanism is a defined philosophy that incorporates reason, science, and logic to try and solve human problems. Humanists reject any supernaturalism for anything from morals to solutions to problems.

Humanism should include as many viewpoints on issues of interest to us. Humanist principles do not advocate and should not advocate one particular political viewpoint over all others unless that one viewpoint is seen as the best way to address the problem or issue.

I think the reason that Jane feels she doesn’t fit into Humanism and why she claims that Humanist thought is too liberal is because the Humanist philosophy, as a whole, is “left” of center in the political spectrum. A majority of Humanists probably are tentative liberals even if they shy away from the label as many of us shy away from the Atheist label.

As another list participant put it, if a Humanist who is a conservative wants to make an argument of an issue from their perspective then they should. The fact that hasn’t happened often enough is because conservatives are a minority within Humanism not because the principles dictate it.

Jane then makes the following point:

“I have no idea why a “[c]ommitment to the use of critical reason, factual evidence, and scientific methods of inquiry…in seeking solutions to human problems and answers to important human questions,” as CSH’s What is Secular Humanism page puts it, should lead inevitably to support for assisted suicide or the conviction that there is no objective basis for morality–if you ask me, it should lead straight to the opposite conclusions–but I do know that I am not willing to support organizations that promote policies I think are wrong.”

I have been following the assisted suicide debate in the media and on some of the Humanism e-mail lists. The main arguments against assisted suicide have been based on religious morals not secular ones. Religionists believe that suicide is a sin and therefore should be against the law. Most Humanists believe that it is the person involved who should make the decision and the state should stay out of it. We think of it as a rights issue not a moral question much like most of us support a woman’s right to an abortion even if some of us, like myself, don’t like abortion.

There is another non-religious argument against assisted suicide that involves the potential of abuse. Some people feel that a terminally ill person could be manipulated to ask for assisted suicide or it could be used to free up health resources by unscrupulous health care people.

The question of an objective morality is one of those debates that just doesn’t seem to end because the answer isn’t clear. There are good arguments on both sides of the issue. Jane feels very strongly that there is an objective morality and she finds opposite views repugnant.

Individual Humanist views on those issues do differ but the public face (the magazines, websites, and books) has tended to express one particular viewpoint. I believe that other viewpoints should be published as long as those viewpoints are drawn from Humanist principles.

Someone, outside the Humanist movement, could draw the incorrect impression that what comes from the National groups is the “official” view of all Humanists. We should be emphasizing the fact that the Humanist consensus isn’t dictated from Headquarters.

“Second, both magazines, and their parent organizations, redefine several philosophical issues as conflicts between “church” and “state.” That practice extends to many of the smaller organizations as well, like the Institute for First American Studies. Abortion and euthanasia are presented as if no one could ever object to either if they didn’t believe in God. Questions about funding abortion through Medicaid or providing condoms to students in public schools turn on presenting the “pro” case as secular and the “con” as purely religious.”

While I do agree we need to be careful which issues we define into a conflict between church and state, unfortunately she mentions the three issues that in fact are a conflict of church vs. state. The pro side is based on a secular argument and the con side is based on God’s law.

Arguments from secularists against abortion, euthanasia, and condom handouts have been made but the Humanist consensus on those issues happens to be one based on the conflict between church and state. That is how the debate in the public is framed. Since the “con” arguments are based on religious or subjective tastes the argument becomes part of the “Church & State” debate.

“Third, both major organizations–and most of the small ones–hold fast to a philosophical and scientific paradigm that is out of date anywhere else on the planet. Science may have abandoned the blank slate and environmental determinism decades ago, but organized humanism still loves them both. That love has consequences. It means that organized humanism is still promoting “relativism” in morality, not merely by rejecting absolutism–which would make sense–but by denying that morals have any objective basis at all. It means that organized humanism denies any basis for political and civil rights except the whim of the society that chooses to grant them. In addition, most importantly, it means that organized humanism is still fatally attracted to social engineering. If environment is everything, and rights don’t exist except when society decides to give them to you, it makes sense to push for the control of children and their upbringing and education. That’s how you “effect change” for “the good of society.”"

The issues she mentions in the quote above are issues that we Humanists debate a lot in person and on e-mail lists. Not all Humanists hold the same view on those issues. We don’t march in lock step with each other. In fact, those issues above aren’t even mentioned specifically in the various principles of Humanism printed by the AHA and CSH.

Viewpoints on both sides of the argument could be derived from the principles but these issues are political issues and in politics, you can have a wide range of thought.

“Organized humanism” doesn’t love the “blank slate” and “environmental determinism.” “Organized Humanism” isn’t promoting “relativism” or believing civil rights only exist on the whim of society. “Organized Humanism” is not fatally attracted to social engineering. Do some individual Humanists express those views? Sure. However the national groups don’t hold any of those positions nor would I want them to.

Again Jane makes the mistake in thinking that the national groups dictate the Humanist consensus or sanctions those views by publishing articles about them in their magazines.

I would go so far as to say that “Organized Humanism” doesn’t exist. Belonging to a group is not required to be a Humanist. There is no test or allegiance required. There is no political test either.

To be a Humanist all you need to do is read the principles. If you find you agree substantially with them then you are a Humanist.

As Jane found from personal experience, just because someone says they are a Humanist doesn’t mean they will act like one all the time.

I have met some Humanists who love the free market and think that Humanism should only be about protecting individual rights. They consider themselves Humanists because Humanists favor individual rights.

On the other hand I know some Humanists who are more liberal than I am. They are against war ‘period’. They believe we would be better off as a socialist state.

I can tell you that such ultra-liberalism is not reflected by a majority of Humanists I know or talk to. Using Jane’s arguments, one could complain that Humanism is too conservative since you don’t read any articles about building communes.

The point is that Humanism is not just about politics or only about one issue like rights. Humanism is a philosophy of life that helps find human answers to human problems in a rational way without the need for a God.

I think Jane’s essay expresses some problems with the public face of Humanism that should be looked at and changed if necessary. However, I don’t agree that organized Humanism is a political organization first, secular as an afterthought.

I don’t believe that non-Liberal viewpoints are actively excluded. Those viewpoints are a minority of minority philosophy. That doesn’t mean those ideas are invalid, only that such ideas are not supported by the same number of Humanists who support the opposite viewpoint. If you have many more people holding the same views then it naturally will be expressed in print.

Non-liberal viewpoints are needed to fill out our search for a consensus and they deserve the same respect we give Liberal ideas. We may not agree with them but we do need to listen.

Although there are many flavors of Humanism, there is at least one area we all agree on. Humanists insist on the separation of Church and State. Separation of Church and State means the government and religion must not be entwined with each other. The government should be neutral in religious matters and religion does not have an advantage in the government. This concept was described in a letter that Thomas Jefferson, who helped draft the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution of 1789, wrote to the Danbury Baptists Association in 1801, as a “wall” between the state and religion.

Jefferson and his contemporaries lived at a time when kings ruled by divine right with support of the head of the state church. In England, the king was the head of the state church himself and appointed bishops, who served in the House of Lords as members of the British Parliament. If you wanted a career in government, you had to belong to the recognized Church. Governments collected taxes for that state church, and state church clerics had significant influence on the matters of state.

Fringe religious groups were persecuted and even killed for their beliefs and in many cases the government encouraged or participated in this persecution. Many of these groups moved around a lot to try to find a place where they could practice their religion. Some groups of colonists to what would become the United States were members of religions being persecuted in Europe.

The US Constitution includes a couple of statements that lead us to the concept of the “wall.” The 1st Amendment prohibits Congress from passing laws that infringes on a person exercising his religious beliefs or that establishes a religion. The 14th Amendment extended these limitations to state legislatures and local governing groups. The Constitution also prohibits religious tests for public office. In the hundreds of words in the text, there is not one mention of God or a particular religion. Jefferson knew that freedom of religion was important and that government needed to protect that right. He was one of the primary authors, along with George Mason, of the Virginia Bill of Religious Freedom in 1779.

The thinking for the separation is that for religion to flourish, the government needs to keep completely out of religion and religious issues. After 200 years under the Constitution, the United States is one of the most religious countries in the world and we have the most religiously diverse populations in the world. For that diversity to continue, the government must not act in a way that favors one religion over another.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that the United States avoided sectarian strife. In 1801, the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut wrote Jefferson because the Connecticut state constitution did not prohibit the state from legislating about religious matters. The letter said, “…what religious privileges we [Baptists] enjoy (as a minor part of the state) we enjoy as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights: and these favors we receive at the expense of such degrading acknowledgments as are inconsistent with the rights of freemen.“1

The Baptists at the time were a fringe religious group. Those fringe groups were the ones discriminated against not only by their local government but also by people from the dominant religious groups like the Congregationalists.

Throughout the early part of US history, various fringe groups were persecuted or discriminated against for their religious beliefs.

Mormons, especially, found themselves the targets of citizens and state governments seeking to drive them out of existence. In the 1840s, the Mormons had a successful settlement at Nauvoo Illinois. The other Christians in the area resented their success and tensions simmered. After a violent encounter, the authorities arrested the Mormon leader, Joseph Smith and his brother.

A mob of Christians arrived at the jail to exact their own justice and Smith was murdered. This event split the Mormon church with part of the group following Brigham Young toward Utah while the other part went to Missouri.

The Christians didn’t like Mormons because of their “strange” beliefs that said Jesus had visited the Native Americans. This distrust manifested itself into persecution.

There were also the “Bible” Riots in 1844 in Philadelphia. The riots occurred when the Catholics in Philadelphia tried to have the Protestant King James Bible removed from the public schools.

Large numbers of Irish immigrants arrived in Philadelphia. A majority was of the Roman Catholic faith yet when their children went to the public schools, they were forced to read from the Protestant King James version of the Bible. The Protestant majority controlled the local government and the schools.

In 1842, Philadelphia bishop Francis Patrick Kenrick asked the school board to remove anti-Catholic books. Kenrick also requested that Catholic students be permitted to use their own Bibles - the Douay version - during morning devotionals.

In late February of 1844, a rumor started that a school director in the heavily Catholic north Philadelphia suburb of Kensington had ordered a teacher to suspend Bible readings. Like most rumors, it wasn’t true.

Then the politicians got involved using anti-Catholic rhetoric in speeches held in Catholic neighborhoods that built up the heat until finally a shot rang out and the riot was on.

When the riot was over, most of the damage was in the Irish neighborhoods. There was also 19 killed and 40 wounded. The Irish were blamed for the riot by trying to remove the Bible from the public schools.

It wasn’t until 1947 and 1948, with Everson vs. Board of Education (1947) and McCollum vs. Board of Education (1948) that the US Supreme Court began enforcing the separation of Church and State. Everson forbid the direct state funding of religious schools and/or religious instruction in public schools. McCollum ended the practice of public schools allowing clergy to come in during the school day and hold religious classes for those children whose parents wanted them.

Separation of church and state is important to Humanists because it protects our freedom of conscious. By preventing the government from favoring a particular religious belief, we are free not to believe. Separation of church and state also is important to believers because it prevents a majority religion from using the law to persecute a minority religion.

For more general information on this topic, I recommend a great website that will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about separation of church and state. Here is the link:

The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State

http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html

1 From the text of the letter from the Danbury Baptists Association to Thomas Jefferson dated 10/07/1801.

Posted by Doug Berger - February 10, 2003