West London Humanists and Secularists - Ethical Jury
Challenging Happy Believers
These are a meetings in which a real-life moral dilemma of one of the people attending the meeting is discussed
and an attempt made to reach a consensus as to what would be the best way of dealing with it. Ours was facilitated
by Michael Imison who has held similar events for an number of Humanist groups. Michael is a trustee of the Brithish Humanist
Assoociation
Five dilemmas were offered but the one chosen was a situation which must be relevant to many humanists and so was
particularly interesting. In this case our member A had a sibling B who had recently "found God" and was greatly
comforted by the prospect of going to heaven after a hard life. A had been having some intense discussions with B
in the hope of replacing B's god delusion with a joy in the wonders of science and a fuller life. A's spouse was
opposing this attempted "conversion" on the grounds that B should be left alone to be happy, even if deluded. A
was beginning to have doubts.
Quite a lot of the discussion was directed at trying to agree what actually was a moral issue as opposed to tactics
for dealing with a situation. This was not a straightforward question. There seemed to be general agreement that
there could be circumstances when someone should just be left alone to think whatever pleases them. The acceptability
of this, it was suggested, depends on whether other people are being affected adversely by B's belief.
When the time came to vote on whether A should continue with the "conversion" or not, there was a small majority
in favour of ceasing. Michael Imison commented that ethical juries usually produce much greater consensus and asked
the question, "Was your decision based on reason or emotion?" About three quarters of those present said that
their decision was emotional.
It is hoped that ethical juries will play an important part in future humanist activity and this session was
certainly a useful step in trying to understand how to get the best from them.
P.V. - 13 April 2010