Sorry for those people who were following me, I realise that I haven’t posted anything for a while but I’m back and I hope to get going again in the coming weeks.

So far, I’ve managed to avoid contracting Covid-19 and, now that I’ve had the first instalment of the vaccination, I feel a lot more confident about going out in public and mixing with people, whilst still maintaining social distancing.

I had the Astra-Zeneca version of the vaccine, which gave me about a day of feeling rough. I gather that others have had variable experiences with that same version…

Can you die of a disgraceful disease?

There should be no shame in death. Any death is a shame but we all know that it’s got to happen sooner or later, so should we be ashamed when someone dies?

The concept of disgrace in death has been around for a long time. When military might and success in battle were seen as the defining concept of a country or race, one’s death in battle was either seen as heroic or ‘disgraced in battle’, depending whether you were on the winning or losing side and who got to write the history…

I haven’t always been an atheist and I have been, what you might call ‘a Humanist’, for even less time than that.

As the title suggests, I sometimes think of it as my slow realisation of the truth, which sounds a little like some sort of Damascene Conversion — it certainly isn’t that because that’s not what Humanism, or atheism is about. There’s nothing special about Humanism, it’s just a set of philosophies from which you can pick and choose, with certain strong underlying themes, such as compassion and responsibility to yourself and everyone and everything around you.

I was…

I’m sure that everyone has wondered these things, or is it just me?

Maybe most people ‘just don’t like to think about it’. Well, sorry but I find all sorts of things fascinating and, yes they are often some of the ‘Yuk!’ things that I enjoy finding out about.

Training as a funeral celebrant, it is probably important that I know a little about crematoria, because sometimes people ask. Sometimes people tell me as well, they’re often very authoritative, and wrong!

There are a lot of myths about crematoria and cremations, the sorts of things that people will tell you…

I wonder how many people have read ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle’ by Charles Darwin.

It’s actually a surprisingly easy read, despite its full title being so long-winded. What amazes me is how readable it is for anyone with a basic knowledge of biology, although that was Darwin’s intention. He always had an eye on sales and he wanted his books to be read as widely as possible, so he went to a great deal of effort to make them readable.

For some people, the book…

or — How Do You Know that You’re a Humanist?

Do Humanists Worship anything?

Are you born a Humanist?

Do Humanists have a Holy Book?

Are there any core Humanist beliefs?

Do Humanists sing hymns?

The answer to all those questions and probably several more, as well as the title is; No!

So if the answer to all those questions is no, the next ones have to be;

What do Humanists believe and how do you know whether you are one?

There’s no simple answer to either of those. You could say that we believe in the essential goodness of…

You learn how to grieve…

It’s a lesson that everyone needs to learn and it’s something that almost all of us find out about as we grow up. It’s actually an essential part of growing up.

When you raise children, it’s natural to try to protect them from the hurt and pain that exist in the world and shield them from the unpleasant parts of life. The easiest thing to do is to say, ‘Well, they’re too young to find out right now. Perhaps when they’re a bit older.’ …

No, I had no idea what it meant either. I stumbled across the phrase in a biography of Freidrich Nietzsche that I’m currently reading. The book had been residing for several years in my stack of unread Christmas presents and I finally reached it. I’m not sure that I would have picked it out in a bookshop but I knew nothing about him and it was there, so I’m reading it. (It turns out that he was barking mad and a chronic hypochondriac, who ultimately went completely mad and died quite young. …