Our January meeting was taken up with our annual tradition of ‘ethical discussion’. Instead of an external speaker, the meeting was thrown open to discussions about a range of ethical issues and questions; ideas which people brought along to the meeting and were written down and drawn out of a hat.
With the usual welcoming tea/coffee and biscuits – with the addition of Hester’s homemade lemon drizzle cake – sustaining us, we had an enjoyable and interesting exchange of ideas. Thank you to all of those that braved the cold and dark to join us.
Some of the questions that came up included:
Is it acceptable for a European government to take jewellery and other valuables from refugees, to pay towards the costs the government will incur?
Should Donald Trump be banned from entering the UK?
Should doctors strike?
Where is the boundary between free speech and incitement?
We also had some longer questions, this was our last one which promoted lots of thought:
If one of the principles of humanism is to promote the welfare of human beings and another that we use reason as a way of solving shared problems then does this lead to a particular political stance or as free thinkers can we with reason range from extreme right wingers to extreme left wingers on the grounds that we believe that in the long term these will improve the welfare of all human beings?
