Humanism is a diverse movement that broadly represents the views of millions of people around the world. The HSS represents the views of  people in Scotland who wish to lead good and worthwhile lives guided by reason and compassion rather than religion or superstition. Humanists aim to create an open and inclusive society, so we campaign for a secular state and for secular education. At a local level, our groups provide an opportunity to attend talks, film nights and lectures and discuss moral and ethical issues  with other free-thinking people.

Our volunteer members campaign actively in a number of areas. More than twenty will become honorary chaplains or hospital visitors as Pastoral Care rolls out in the NHS. Our Public Affairs sub-committee is regularly consulted by the Scottish Government on the policy issues that effect all our lives. New opportunities are emerging both in the development of our Education Strategy and in the formation of the new Equality and Human Rights Commission, in which we are invited stakeholders working alongside organisations like Age Concern, Save the Children and Stonewall.

Our ever growing network of trained, registered celebrants provides a range of  dignified, personal ceremonies to mark life’s main events that are civil,  legal and extremely popular. Humanist weddings have been legal in Scotland since June 2005, and people now travel from all over the world to marry in one of our ceremonies. In 2007, one of our celebrants was appointed as the first  ever Humanist Chaplain at Glasgow University.

The HSS is a registered  charity, run by a Board of Trustees elected from among its membership and supported by six sub-committees; Education, Ceremonies, Membership Services, Media & Publications, Community Humanism and Public Affairs. In April 2008, the award-winning novelist Christopher Brookmyre was elected the society's first President.

 

 

 

Scots novelist Iain Banks sprang to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, The Wasp Factory, in 1984. The Times acclaimed him as 'the most imaginative British novelist of his generation'. In late 2004 he was a prominent member of a group of British politicians and media figures who campaigned to have Prime Minister Tony Blair impeached following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
http://www.iainbanks.net/biog.htm

“Darwin’s Rottweiler”, Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and popular science writer who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford. An outspoken secular humanist, and sceptic, he  first came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, and has since written many best-selling popular books including The God Delusion.
http://richarddawkins.net/

Polymath Stephen Fry is a writer, actor, novelist, filmmaker and television personality. In 2001 he began hosting QI, an intellectual panel game that has become one of the most-watched entertainment programmes on British television. He has spoken publicly about his experience with bipolar disorder and presented a documentary on the subject, Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic-Depressive.
http://stephenfry.com/

AC Grayling is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has written and edited many books on philosophy and other subjects, including a biography of humanist and literary critic, William Hazlitt. For nearly ten years, he was the Honorary Secretary of the principal British Philosophical Association, the Aristotelian Society.
http://www.acgrayling.com/

After serving in the Royal Navy in World War II, Ludovic Kennedy became a campaigning investigative reporter, going on to present the BBC’s flagship Panorama programme for several years.  A prominent campaigner against the miscarriage of justice, he was a co-founder and former Chair of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, and is the author of many books including All in the Mind: a Farewell to God. He was knighted for his services to Journalism in 1994.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludovic_Kennedy
 
The originator of the Gaia theory, Professor James Lovelock is an independent scientist, author, researcher, environmentalist, and futurologist.  A lifelong inventor, Lovelock has created and developed many scientific instruments, some of which have been adopted by NASA in its programme of planetary exploration.
http://www.jameslovelock.org/

A former President of the British Humanist Association, Claire Rayner is best-known as an agony aunt and  was awarded an OBE in 1996 for services to women's issues and health. Diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 71, she became an activist on behalf of the Cancer Research UK, and is president of The Patients Association.
http://www.humanism.org.uk/site/cms/contentviewarticle.asp?article=2261


Guardian Columnist Polly Toynbee is a journalist and writer. A former BBC social affairs editor, she was associate editor of the Independent and co-editor of the Washington Monthly. Her many books include Hard Work: Life in Low-pay Britain and Lost Children: Story of Adopted Children Searching for Their Mothers (1985). She was appointed President of the British Humanist Association in July 2007.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/polly_toynbee/profile.html

Iain Macwhirter is the award-winning political commentator for The Herald and Sunday Herald. He has also been a presenter of BBC political television programmes from Westminster and Holyrood for nearly 20 years.
http://iainmacwhirter2.blogspot.com/

 

HSS President since April 2008, Christopher Brookmyre is an award-winning novelist and playwright, often credited with the invention of the genre 'Tartan Noir'. At the launch of the society’s education policy, he said "Children necessarily must invest the sincerest trust in what their teachers tell them. Thus the same institution that tells them one plus one equals two should not then be telling them that three persons add up to one God."
http://www.brookmyre.co.uk