One thing that distinguishes humanism from most other world views is that humanists judge situations on their own merits according to standards of reason and humanity and not according to ‘received wisdom’ or their interpretation of some archaic book. This is a basic principle of humanism but, unfortunately, it seems nobody had told the Humanist Society of Scotland (HSS) Board of Trustees this before they sat, early last year, to consider an appeal from one of their members against a decision made by the Society’s celebrant training team. The appeal was upheld.

Earlier this week, that same successful appellant was the subject of a story in a grubby little Scottish tabloid, which the HSS seems keen to promote. That a link to this story appears on the HSS website suggests that the HSS approves of it — and I dare say the story was probably fed to the newspaper by someone on the HSS Board of Trustees. But I reckon the story that appeared in that particularly odious little rag of a newspaper was of virtually zero interest to regular readers and is already wrapping fish suppers.

The story behind the story is a tad more interesting, at least to me. Before I share it, I want to say that I have the utmost respect for the good people in the Humanist Society of Scotland and for the excellent work they do, especially in providing ceremonies. Having some 25 years experience of involvement in charities and other non-profit organisations, I know they are full of unsung heroes who are passionate about what they do and who do it brilliantly.

I also know that charities and voluntary organisations sometimes attract people who are well-meaning but unaware of their own limitations. (Read about the Dunning-Kruger effect here.) In fact, such people have often been successful in other fields of work and think that they can usefully contribute something to the management committees of non-profit organisations. But, all too often, they come heavily laden with the culture and values of whatever sector they built their career in. These are often out-of-kilter with voluntary sector culture and the resulting conflicts can tear small organisations apart unless the people in them can learn from their mistakes and try to rectify them. I believe this is as true of Humanist organisations as it is of any other and I think this story from the HSS is an illustration of it.

(By the way, I think a further, much smaller, category of people attracted to charity membership and volunteer work are entirely self-serving and I guess the subject of the tabloid story — the target of  the HSS Trustees’ wrath — is one of those.)

Here’s the story as told to me by a former HSS member:

The bloke in the newspaper — I’ll call him ‘Noddy’ — is a retired police officer who joined the Humanist Society of Scotland and became a registered celebrant, conducting funerals and weddings. Early last year, his son was convicted of supplying cocaine. This was considered newsworthy by the Scottish press because of Noddy’s high-profile police career and because his son was himself a serving police officer at the time of his illegal activities.

Now it turns out that Noddy has told Funeral Directors that his son — who’d been sentenced to 12 months in prison for the drug offence — is a humanist celebrant. Indeed, he has passed on ceremonies work to his son, even though the latter has not gone through any kind of selection procedure, let alone been trained and approved by the HSS to carry out ceremonies in their name.

Like the British Humanist Association, the Humanist Society of Scotland trains suitable men and women to produce and conduct ceremonies of a high standard. Most celebrants take the work seriously enough to adhere to a code of conduct defining what is acceptable. Funnily enough, that code doesn’t allow for the passing off of one’s ex-convict son as a trained and registered celebrant to Funeral Directors and bereaved families. Presumably this is because it is a betrayal of the trust of the former, cheats the latter of the quality of service they deserve and deprives other celebrants of work they — unlike Noddy’s son — were qualified to do, having each made a personal investment in becoming qualified by paying for and attending the training and having each been assessed as meeting the high standards demanded by the HSS.

According to the newspaper report, Noddy claims he has trained his son much better than the HSS could. I find this hard to believe for reasons that will become apparent.

Celebrant training involves attending a course run by a team of very experienced celebrant trainers. (Indeed, the senior trainer at the time was one of the Society’s most experienced celebrants as well as its most experienced trainer and had worked tirelessly for many years developing the training courses and review scheme for celebrants and establishing high professional standards.) At the end of the course, candidates are required to complete a written assignment — a ceremony script based on a scenario provided by the trainers.

Noddy trained first as an HSS funeral celebrant then, in November 2009, he attended the Society’s training course to conduct humanist weddings. According to a document signed by the four HSS trainers, Noddy’s first attempt at a funeral script was poor and he was given “full and detailed feedback on the areas in the script that did not meet the Funeral Celebrant Standards was given. He was then mentored to raise his standard of work and the second ceremony he presented achieved the required standard.” The same paper describes Noddy as “inattentive” and “disruptive” during the weddings training course; he talked over people and “showed a disregard for his colleagues and the training process.” Of his first attempt at the end of course assignment — a wedding ceremony script — the trainers say they were,

shocked to receive such a poor piece of work from this trainee, particularly given the fact that he had received a great deal of detailed feedback on previous material presented for review, most especially on the ceremony script he submitted for his review to be added to the Funeral Celebrant Register.

So, in addition to his inappropriate demeanour during the training, and in spite of everything he was supposed to have learned with all that extra help from his funeral training, Noddy had produced a terrible wedding script. Indeed, the script he’d produced had such serious flaws that if it were a real marriage ceremony, it would have meant the couple were not legally married! It was the — hardly unreasonable — view of the training team that, as these flaws had since been pointed out to Noddy, he may well be able to produce a script of the required standard now. But the production of a satisfactory script on second attempt and after he’d been told what was wrong with the first one would not, as far as the trainers were concerned, alleviate the many concerns raised overall about his ability and behaviour. The four members of the training team were as one in their opinion that Noddy should not be allowed the opportunity to resubmit his assignment this time. And who, in their right mind, could blame them?

In making this recommendation, we felt that we were acting in the best interests of both the trainee and the HSS as a whole, to ensure the maintenance of the highest professional standards.

That the training team’s recommendation was in the best interest of the HSS is indisputable. That is why it was supported by a majority of the charity’s Ceremonies sub-Committee, who evidently had their heads screwed on properly. All ceremonies are hugely important to the people having them and providers of these ceremonies can’t afford to make serious mistakes. This is particularly true of Humanist marriage ceremonies, which have — thanks to the good will of the Scottish Registrar General — had legal status in Scotland since 2005.

For the good of the HSS, Noddy should have accepted the training team’s decision but instead he complained about it to the charity’s Board of Trustees. I’m told — though I personally find it hard to believe — that Noddy was actually encouraged to do this by a member of that same Board of  Trustees who, as it happened, was another retired police officer. (But I’m not going to go there.)

Now come on, guys! Why would someone entrusted by a charity’s paid-up membership to act in the charity’s best interests, actively encourage someone — even if he is a mate — to challenge a decision that was clearly in the best interests of both the charity and the public it professes to serve? Especially someone who cares so much about the HSS that he’d managed to grab not one but two powerful jobs in the HSS leadership? (Seriously — he was the HSS Secretary and he doubled up as National Ceremonies Co-ordinator. I suspect this is why the HSS are so shy on their website about who they are compared to, say, the BHA. I understand he plays neither role now, however. No idea why.)

Encouraging an obnoxious and incompetent trainee to complain doesn’t make sense does it?

But it gets worse.

The group of four HSS office-bearers tasked with investigating what they called Noddy’s “complaint/appeal”, actually recommended that not only should his request to resubmit be granted but that he be offered mentoring to help him reach the required standard. The Board of Trustees agreed with these recommendations, thereby allowing this disruptive, inattentive, rude individual, whose ceremony script had been so poor it had shocked his trainers, to resubmit the assignment incorporating all the amendments he now knew it needed, thereby getting his name onto the Registrar General’s list of Humanist celebrants who are approved to conduct legal weddings in Scotland.

And they arrived at this decision through a piece of reasoning that a twelve-year-old would be ashamed of.

According to their report, the group “agreed immediately that they did not wish to disagree with the trainers’ evaluation and that there should therefore be no recommendation for approval or otherwise. The single issue facing them was one of fairness, precedent and equity with specific reference to the request to resubmit only.”

WTF???

There was no “issue of fairness, precedent and equity” to be considered here. The HSS isn’t a tribunal or public examination board but a provider of a valued service to the public. The only “issue” was whether or not the candidate was suitable to conduct marriage ceremonies in the name of the HSS. The experienced team entrusted with the task of training and assessing candidates said that he wasn’t and they gave good reasons why he wasn’t. That should have been the end of the matter.

The investigating group, however, thought otherwise. Read this and weep:

“This decision we consider to have been contrary to natural justice, especially in a training situation. We are also aware that in what we consider to have been similar circumstances an earlier candidate was permitted to re-submit work and was subsequently recommended for registration. We do not accept that the differences between the two cases are of sufficient significance to merit such diverse treatment….Our determination is that in denying the candidate an opportunity to resubmit his work after appropriate remediation there is a danger that natural justice might have been denied him, and that humanist principles of fairness, equity, and good practice in this particular regard might have been breached.”

Rational thinkers will instantly spot biggest flaw in this execrable piece of reasoning. For the benefit of any numptyheids, I’ll point it out:

It is the patently ludicrous suggestion that, because an earlier candidate had been allowed to re-submit, Noddy should be allowed to as well. This, evidently, is the ‘precedent’ that the investigating group refer to.

It is normal practice in many training situations to fail no-hopers but to allow candidates who’ve shown promise and whose flaws are considered redeemable in the professional judgement of their trainers, to re-sit. If the earlier candidate’s behaviour and work was as bad as Noddy’s, then he or she shouldn’t have been allowed to resubmit. The fact that he or she was invited to resubmit indicates that, in the professional judgement of the HSS trainers, the earlier candidate wasn’t as bad as Noddy. (The investigating group repeatedly say in their report that they that didn’t assess Noddy’s work and weren’t questioning the evaluation of the trainers.)

So what precedents would be set by the training teams decisions to allow the earlier candidate to resubmit but to refuse Noddy the same opportunity?

That candidates who — unlike Noddy— show promise, should be given a second chance and that candidates — like Noddy — who don’t show promise, shouldn’t.

Anyone see a problem with that? I’m particularly interested in hearing how it breaches “humanist principles of fairness, equity, and good practice”?

In the meantime, let’s consider what precedent has been set as a result of the investigating group’s recommendations and the Trustees decision to endorse them?

That it doesn’t matter how obnoxious a candidate is and how bad their work, they must be virtually spoonfed into passing the course!

Nice one, HSS.

If precedents were as important to humanist principles as the HSS Board of Trustees seemed to think, one wonders how many more hopeless candidates they would have allowed to use up their people’s time and resources, before reason prevailed and they got their priorities right. Fortunately for them, precedents are totally irrelevant and they can ignore the consequences of their stupid reasoning and pretend it never happened (well, apart from the consequences of losing their training team, all of whom resigned in disgust at at the decision and quite right too).

And if they can’t understand why precedents don’t matter, I can do no better than refer them to late Professor Stuart Sutherland’s classic book ‘Irrationality’:

Anyone who has ever sat on a committee will have heard someone say, ‘We can’t do that: it will set a precedent.’ This remark is wholly irrational. The proposed action against which it is directed is either sensible or not. If it is sensible, taking it will set a good precedent; if it is not sensible, the action should not be taken. Whether or not a precedent is set is therefore irrelevant; the decision should be made on its own merits. Moreover, outside courts of law, nobody need be bound by past decisions: the past is finished, it cannot be changed, and its only use is that it may sometimes be possible to learn from it.

I recommend Sutherland’s book to all humanists and — to repeat what I said at the beginning — especially those who aspire to positions of responsibility that affect other people’s lives.

The HSS come out of the Noddy story (as it appears in newspaper) smelling like a rose but they don’t deserve to. Noddy had an unblemished (I presume)  30-year career in the police and who could blame the HSS Trustees for not foreseeing he might pull a stunt like that? Well, anybody who knew the inside story of how Noddy came to feel he could get away with anything, that’s who.

If those who are ultimately responsible for this debacle are seriously committed to humanist principles, they might yet demonstrate this by admitting to those who’ve been hurt the most that the recommendations and decisions made were the wrong ones.

But I’m not holding my breath.

Reading some of the reactions to it, I am again reminded that people who’ve never been part of an internet forum community don’t have a clue about how important are these places that allow people from all over the world in engage with each other. To thousands of atheists they are a godsend, so to speak. And many of those who do know the benefits and spend most of their free time on one just can’t comprehend why not everyone feels as they do.

I know from my own extensive experience of internet discussion boards that the benefits reaped from them are immeasurable. They help people learn how to think critically and debate rationally. They provide a place where people can test and develop their ideas. They inspire people to educate themselves about important topics. I’d estimate that thousands of books on science, history, philosophy and whatever else are bought and read because of a discussion had or followed on an internet forum. I’ve lost count of the number of religious people I’ve seen deconvert through engaging with atheists on discussion boards.

The benefits are not just intellectual. Loneliness and isolation (often isolation because of their atheism), health problems, bereavement, family problems, marriage breakdowns and depression — I’ve seen all of these aired in supportive internet communities. I’ve seen more than one suicide prevented (according to the testimonies of the suicidal) and one kidney donated (don’t ask!) through participation in various boards. I’ve seen people reduced to tears plenty of times but many more times I’ve seen people having fun and sharing laughter. I also know that countless real life friendships only exist thanks to internet boards.

To put it another way: the social interaction and intellectual stimulation that people all over the world get from being members of internet communities is as important to us as the social and intellectual life Richard Dawkins enjoys in his own rarified circles surely is to him. Furthermore, internet communities break down barriers and allow people to interact with those whom they would never meet in real life,  enabling the development of mutual understanding and tolerance.

Thus, humanists should be in favour of internet communities and making space for one on his website was absolutely appropriate for a vice-president of the British Humanist Association, whereas the manner in which that same community was closed was absolutely not.

It seems incredible that Richard Dawkins doesn’t realise all this but what other conclusion can be drawn from his dismissal of the matter as “trivial” and his incredulity at the strength of feeling?

This quote is from his announcement.

Was there ever such conservatism, such reactionary aversion to change, such vicious language in defence of a comfortable status quo? What is the underlying agenda of these people? How can anybody feel that strongly about something so small? Have we stumbled on some dark, territorial atavism? Have private fiefdoms been unwittingly trampled?

Private fiefdoms? I don’t think so. Simply a vibrant and nurturing web community run by a dedicated team who put in countless unpaid hours to keep it going and who are suddenly told their project is closing and they are surplus to requirements. They are not feudal lords; they’re just human beings.  And they’ve been deliberately — not unwittingly — trampled on.

That said, I have some sympathy for the paid staff member who is widely considered to be responsible for the debacle and who is being villified accordingly.

To quote PZ Myers

Josh is a good guy, and he’s neck-deep in work for the RDF — not just the richarddawkins.net site, and not just the forum, which only represents about a quarter of the daily visits to the site overall. Yet the forum represents most of the drama and trouble in maintaining the whole business.

I don’t know if  ’Josh is a good guy’* or not but I can imagine that the forum must have seemed like a millstone round his neck. I gather that there were frequent technical problems, which must have taken up time he considered would be usefully spent elsewhere. He didn’t see the value of that internet community. Like his boss, he is one of those who just don’t get it.

For the record, I’m not suggesting all discussion forums are wonderful or useful. Some of them seem so horrible I can’t understand why anyone gives them the time of day. Some are dangerous.  Then there is PZ Myers point:

It takes a lot of work to keep a forum afloat. Every one I know of follows one of two paths: a slow decline into quiet apathy, or a rapid growth in membership and activity which leads to an eventual implosion into chaos, acrimony, and drama as disparate interests try to tug the forum in different directions.

Hmm.  So things come to an end. Does that mean they are not worth having at all?

I’ve known forums that faded away and others that imploded in acrimony. I’ve known yet others that have been rescued and gone on to thrive. When Internet Infidels Inc wanted to get shot of their huge and lively internet community, IIDB, one of the users took it over and turned it into FreeRatio.

Here’s what the organisation said at the time:

Although we have hosted a bustling discussion board as a service to our readers for nearly a decade, IIDB has been so successful that it has grown beyond Internet Infidels’ ability to manage it. Because we recognize that IIDB has been a valued resource to many of our readers for several years, we feel that it is in the best interest of everyone to turn the bulk of it over to capable administrators who can give it the attention it deserves, rather than either letting it fall into neglect as absentee landlords, or shutting it down altogether.

(Of course, there’s a lot more to that story than meets the eye, but you see where I’m going with this.)

The terrific Heathen Hangout has gone through several changes of hands since its first incarnation as an off-shoot of IIDB. The very civil and friendly ThinkHumanism forum evolved from the tiny forum on the Humanist Society of Scotland’s website, which all the regular posters abandonded when (in their view, of course) a bunch of numpties took over the HSS a few years ago. All of these are examples of how internet communities can be saved and developed, provided there is the will to do so. I’ve no doubt the community of posters at RDF had the will if only they’d been given the opportunity.

That they weren’t, beggars belief.

Here’s a few useful blogs, I’ve come across:

RDF moderator, Peter Harrison’s done a few posts. The latest is here: My reaction to the overreaction

From a former poster:  On the RDF’s demise

Detailed analyses from Gurder at Heathen Hub, the latest is here:

A deeper look at the RDF self-immolation and public reactions to it

Update 1/3/2010

From Richard Dawkins: An apology

*Update 24/10/2010

Podblack Cat’s latest blog helps us with the question of whether Josh Timonen is really a good guy:

Dawkins’ Employee Charged With Embezzling $375,000 From RDF Charity

My oldest brother was assigned to visit the vicar in advance of the ceremony. We were atheists who had no idea what normally happened at vicar-led funerals in crematoria. Would we have to sing hymns? We hoped not but, in case we did, I suggested Jerusalem because I’d once heard Dad — a great music lover — say he quite liked it.

The funeral, as it turned out, was horrible. In a monotonous voice, the vicar raced through the minimal notes he’d taken about Dad from my brother: where he was from, who his family were, what he liked doing his spare time. He got one place name wrong. Never mind — it was only the place where my Dad loved walking and where his ashes would be scattered. There were no hymns and just one prayer, if I recall correctly. Then there was a bit of twaddle about eternal life as my Dad — an atheist with no hope of resurrection — was “popped in the oven”, as the Rev Ed Tomlinson puts it. (More of him in a moment).

I came away from my father’s funeral feeling flat and vaguely betrayed. Was that it? I was embarrassed for those of  his friends — his former work colleagues, now retired — who’d given up their time and travelled some distance because they wanted to show us — Dad’s family — how that they had liked and respected him and to say their goodbyes. And this was the miserable send-off we’d given him! I won’t dwell on the abysmal failure of that particular rite of passage to fulfil the emotional needs of the bereaved as expected of such occasions; suffice to say I carried the bitterness of my regret for 14 years, until my mother’s funeral provided an opportunity to make things right, at least in my mind.

The Rev Ed Tomlinson, vicar of St Barnabas’s Church in Tunbridge Wells, recently launched a rather unseemly attack on humanists and their funerals. I don’t think Mr Tomlinson would have approved of my father’s funeral, even though it was conducted by a vicar, rather than by one of the humanists he disdains. No, to be “sincerely Christian in character” funerals should be theatrical occasions full of music, ritual and mumbo jumbo, it seems. The pop song chosen by the bereaved because it meant something to the deceased and means something to them has no place in a funeral, whereas the “gorgeous liturgy of the Requiem Mass” does have a place even if the deceased hated it. It’s not the bereaved people’s feelings that matter here. Of course it isn’t.

Mourners who chose a non-religious ceremony were conned by “humanists” making money from death. “I am not the one who suffers,” he said. “Along with my fellow Christians, I will still have the gorgeous liturgy of the Requiem Mass to look forward to. Whereas the best our secularist friends (and those they dupe) can hope for is a poem from nan combined with a saccharine message from a pop star before being popped in the oven with no hope of resurrection.”

The risible comment about humanists “making money from death” is a charge he repeats in a second post here, in which he says,

I am not, like the humanist, running a business and seeking financial gain from funerals. Rather I was and am ordained for the advancement of God’s kingdom on earth.

Post proof or retract, bitch! Yes, humanists do get paid for conducting funerals and so do vicars. Unlike vicars, however, humanist celebrants do not receive a salary and lodgings, etc, from their employer though they may pay a levy to their humanist organisation, if they belong to one. If Mr Tomlinson waives his fee — as one might infer from all that ‘financial gain v advancing God’s kingdom’ stuff — then he’s the exception, rather than the rule. In any event, for the amount of work that goes into a typical humanist funeral ceremony, humanists receive meagre recompense. It is not the thought of financial gain that inspires people to become humanist celebrants. They do have to eat, though.

The suggestion that people are being “duped” by secularists is screamingly funny coming from a peddlar of religion, of course.

Having attended a number of religious funerals — and many more humanist ones — I am satisfied that one of the better decisions I have made in my life was, on the death my mother, to ensure that she didn’t fall into the hands of any religious clergy and to conduct her funeral myself using the humanist model. The music I chose and the words I spoke before commiting her body for cremation reflected her bereaved family’s feeling about her. The centrepiece of the ceremony was a tribute to her life that celebrated the vibrant person she was. It included a poem from her youngest grandaughter. And, because I was running the show, I took the opportunity to make reparation to my father’s memory for the betrayal that was his funeral, saying:

Thinking about her led me to also think about my father, Bill, and that I should include him in today’s tribute. I never felt the eulogy delivered at his funeral did justice to such a decent and such an accomplished man.

So I made the eulogy at my mother’s funeral about each of them and about both of them and the life they shared together. Thus, he too finally received a tribute that befitted him and properly expressed our feelings for him. That it took place 14 years after that production-line vicar’s ceremony means I can only imagine how my experience of bereavement at that time would have been helped, had he had a humanist funeral instead of one that Mr Tomlinson might reasonably describe as insincerely Christian in character.

In fairness, Tomlinson’s bugbear isn’t so much that more and more people are wanting to have less and less religious content in the funerals they arrange — though that obviously bothers him a lot too (snigger). It’s more that cultural Christians are still showing deference to religion by asking for vicars and then expecting them to conduct what are essentially non-religious funerals. On that I am in total agreement with him.

People who are attracted by the idea of a funeral ceremony totally unfettered by the dead hand of religion might like to check out the ceremomines information on the website of the British Humanist Association who today issued a press release in response to Mr Tomlinson’s rantings. Tana Wollen, BHA Head of Ceremonies, said,

Committing the dead to a god or gods that you don’t believe exists or sending them off to an after-life you believe is fictional, even with the accompaniment of a sonorous liturgy, doesn’t feel right. Humanists hold that we have just one life: this one. A humanist funeral which pays tribute to how someone has lived, to what they have done for themselves and for others, with music and words particularly fitting to them can be a joyous occasion.

OK, that was my bit to publicise the BHA. My absolute favourite response to the vicar’s hissy fit comes from another clergyman: none other than the Rev David Robertson of the fanatical Free Church of Scotland who, beneath Ed Tomlinson’s second post, comments:

Ed, Ed, Ed,

What business is it of yours what music is played at funerals? You’re just there to go through the motions. Who really wants the commemoration of their death to be marred by the tuneless caterwauling of the elderly adherents of some ghastly Middle-Eastern death cult, anyway? People have priests at these things only for the sake of tradition. You religion is not relevent anymore, nor are your opinions.

Amen. Well said, David.