Shorts out the window... and other Thoughts for the Day

The contributors don't necessarily talk about religion, but their critical qualification is that they practise one. What does the BBC think would happen were it to allow secular thinkers on this slot? Would we advise people to throw their shorts out of the window? Well, yes. Arthur Smith's tale about doing just that lingers in the mind far longer than anything Anne Atkins has ever come up with - and, as Arthur said to me the other day, could she hold her own in front of 100 drunks at the Comedy Store?

A C Grayling ponders the problems of an ageing society, Stephen Law considers discrimination and Julian Baggini makes the most interesting points about Rowan Williams's comments on sharia law I have heard so far.

Juliet Wilson is a Humanist Society of Scotland celebrant.

Arthur Smith Audio
Mrs Logan taught us PE in the school hall on the first floor. We didn't have any special kit, but for some reason we boys were required to remove our shorts, with their stains and comforting marbles, in order to do the exercises in our underpants. By the age of 11, this had become extremely embarrassing. We felt sheepish and vulnerable in front of the girls, who had no such humiliating requirement.

As we gingerly stripped off one day, Geoff Simpson got his shorts caught on the end of his foot. He kicked them off with such alacrity that they flew through the air and straight out of an open window, falling to the playground below.

There was a moment while everyone took in this stupendous occurrence. Then, of course, came shrieks of laughter. Geoff, stricken with shame, began to cry. All the embarrassment we other boys felt had suddenly rushed from us to him. The girls were laughing hard, too. Everyone except Mrs Logan and Geoff Simpson was screaming with hilarity. Poor old Geoff.

Eventually, Mrs Logan regained a silence (despite some stifled giggles). The lesson was in disarray until, in a moment of inspiration she surely never surpassed in her teaching career, Mrs Logan shouted: "Right! All you boys, throw your shorts out the window."

What a fantastic invitation! Geoff's emasculation was forgotten; he stopped sobbing as we queued up to launch our shorts through the window. Now it was funny in a good way, and even Mrs Logan and Geoff were enjoying themselves. Geoff now looked like a trailblazing hero. The children in the class below must also surely have relished the strange sight of the sky raining boys' shorts. As we trouped down to retrieve them, chortling and tittering, we learned the truth that one man in public in his pants is pitiable, but 10 is a posse of fun.

I wonder if anyone else who was there that day remembers this incident? Geoff Simpson might well do, and possibly Mrs Logan, if she is still alive, but I doubt the others do. The images of youth that stay with us into adulthood often seem to others arbitrary and without apparent significance. Or maybe it was the same astounding event for the rest of the class, and lives on in their minds, too.

At any rate, ever since that PE lesson the phrase has periodically returned to me, acting as a call to arms, a bold plan in a tricky situation, an invitation to creative mayhem. Boys, throw your shorts out the window.

Arthur Smith is a playwright and stand-up comedian. This story appears in his forthcoming autobiography.

A C Grayling Audio
When we are young, we feel immortal - but our first grey hairs bring the unpalatable truth home. We age from puberty onwards, and cannot avoid paying the last due to time. Although people in the West live longer than ever before, it is not only because the limits of age have been pushed back, but because we have conquered diseases that once struck early in life, such as smallpox and tuberculosis.

But are we ready for ever-increasing longevity? The very idea presents new ethical dilemmas, for although most of us wish to live long, we don't wish to grow old. Throughout history, quacks have profited from our hunger for prolonged youth, or at least healthy longevity. Yet though most of us in the rich west stay healthier for longer, we have not yet conquered the diseases and disabilities of ageing.

We might, to use one obvious example, wonder whether living to 120 or 140 in a state of decrepitude is an attractive possibility. If not, it raises the question of whether we should legalise voluntary euthanasia. For, in that state of affairs, many might legitimately desire an exit from what can only be burdensome, or worse.

If we do indeed conquer the disabilities of ageing, so that ladies of all ages up to 120 can have babies, we might have to consider rationing child-bearing: but how? And to whom? The Chinese one-child policy has shown what a bitter thing such rationing can be.

These are not idle speculations. Science has learned that there is nothing inevitable about ageing. Neither the timetables of life, nor its upper limits, are fixed anywhere in nature. Experiment has shown that the average lifespans of many different creatures can be hugely extended - and not in tottering dotage but in health and vigour. On this basis, scientists say there will indeed be a "cure for ageing" one day.

They also say that it's still some way off. That's just as well, because we need time to consider what the world will be like when the majority of its human inhabitants are over 100 years old. We are already as concerned about how we die as when we die; in the future, our problems might spring from the fact that, when we have pushed far back the borders of death, we will need new understandings of how to live life.

A C Grayling is reader of philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Stephen Law Audio
The past century or so has seen some huge improvements in our moral attitudes. Many of these improvements concern discrimination and prejudice. For example, it is no longer considered morally or legally acceptable to refuse to employ women, or homosexuals or those of other races.

Nowadays, many suspect they are being unfairly discriminated against. Take religious discrimination. Recently, some Christians have complained that schools are permitting Sikhs to wear turbans, but are not permitting Christians to wear crucifixes. They claim this is unfair discrimination against Christians.

In order to assess whether such claims are justified, we need to be clear what we mean by discrimination, and under what circumstances it is warranted. The kind of discrimination I'm going to focus on is where a society or organisation extends certain rights or privileges to some, but not to others.

Actually, this sort of discrimination is not always a bad thing. Adults discriminate against children, for example. We don't allow them to drive cars, or vote. But this is justified. There are obvious differences between adults and children that explain why this discrimination is fair - most children are not sufficiently mature and responsible enough to vote or drive.

Preventing women, or those of other races, from voting and driving, on the other hand, is morally wrong. Yes, women are different to men. But differences in, say, our sex organs have no influence on our ability to vote. Nor are differences in skin colour relevant to our ability to drive.

That's not to say that racial and sexual discrimination is always wrong. Women are entitled to breast screening. Men aren't. Is that unfair discrimination? Of course not: women are at vastly greater risk of breast cancer. This biological difference between men and women justifies this difference in treatment. Biological differences might be irrelevant when it comes to the vote, but they can be very relevant indeed when it comes to medical screening.

So, discrimination is not always wrong. In fact, discriminating on the basis of sex or race is not always wrong. What makes discrimination wrong is when it is morally unjustified.

The moral is this. If we want to extend rights and privileges to some that we then withhold from others, the onus is on us to identify not just some difference between the two groups but some morally relevant difference that justifies this difference in treatment. If we can't meet this challenge, we will rightly stand accused of prejudice.

Let me leave you with an example of this challenge in action. Suppose political schools start opening up and down the country - a communist school in Glasgow followed by a neo-conservative school in Billericay. Suppose these schools select pupils on the basis of parents' political beliefs. Suppose each day begins with the collective singing of political anthems. Suppose that portraits of political leaders gaze down from classroom walls. Suppose children are expected to accept the teaching found in the schools' revered political texts.

What would be the public's reaction to such schools? Outrage. These schools would rightly be accused of forcing children's minds into politically approved moulds. They are the kind of schools we find under totalitarian political regimes, such as Stalin's Russia or Mao's China.

But notice that, if we simply cross out the word "political" and write "religious" instead, we find that there are already many hundreds of such schools up and down the country. Parents seek them out. Many are state-funded.

Is this discrimination justified? Why, if political schools are totally unacceptable, do we deem their religious equivalents to be acceptable, or even desirable? What is the difference between religious beliefs and other political beliefs that justifies such dramatically different attitudes?

Perhaps there is such a difference. But unless we can identify it, we will rightly stand accused of pro-religious prejudice.

Stephen Law is the editor of the Royal Institute of Philosophy journal Think.

Julian Baggini Audio
How strange it must feel to be Rowan Williams right now. On the one hand, almost everyone has come down like a ton of bricks on the Archbishop of Canterbury for saying that the introduction of some aspects of sharia law in Britain was unavoidable. But on the other, almost everyone has prefaced their condemnation with remarks to the effect that they greatly respect his humanity and intelligence.

Bishop-baiting may be in, but special respect for religion is not yet out. As it happens, I have rather less respect for Dr Williams, but I also think that, on this issue, he so nearly said something both true and important.

The question he was addressing was how to accommodate deep and real plurality in society without threatening its essential unity. The wrong answer to this is that there should be different laws for people who hold different beliefs. This is a clear non-starter. For one thing, who is to decide to whom such laws would apply? We can't bind people by the religion, or lack of it, of their parents. So the only alternative would be for people to choose themselves which legal code to opt into. This is just absurd. Spirituality has already become something of a pick-and-mix supermarket: law cannot go the same way.

But Williams doesn't want this. For all the stones hastily cast in this debate, the right to throw literal ones was not on his agenda. As has become clearer in recent days, all he meant was that people should have the option of settling some civil disputes through voluntary means of arbitration, and agree to be bound by its conclusion.

There is, and should be, room outside the law for some diversity in how we choose to relate morally to one another. The key distinction here is between laws we all must obey, and practices that can be legally recognised but do not need to be followed by everyone.

A good example of this is gay marriage: the law could recognise this, but that wouldn't, of course, mean there was one law for gays and another for heterosexuals; or that gay marriage was being forced upon the straight community.

Williams's mistake was failing to make clear that the principle of one law for all is sacrosanct. Secularism requires a neutral public space in which people of all faiths and none can come together to debate and legislate as equals. As long as we maintain this, there is plenty of room in private and community life for people to live by their very different, deeply held beliefs.

Julian Baggini is a writer and philosopher, and the co-founder and editor of The Philosophers' Magazine. He will begin a regular column in The Herald later this month.

Audio clips

A C Grayling
Arthur Smith
Stephen Law
Thought for the World

• For more information on Darwin Day and humanism, visit www.humanism-scotland.org and www.thoughtfortheworld.org .