It was with great sadness that the Board of Trustees learned of the death of Sir Ludovic Kennedy, one of the Society's Distinguished Supporters.

Margo MacDonald MSP is to deliver a keynote speech at the Humanist Society of Scotland’s annual conference on Saturday 7th November 2009.

The MSP’s keynote speech will focus on her campaign to have an individual’s right to die with dignity enshrined in Scottish law through her proposed introduction of the End of Life Choices Bill in the Scottish Parliament over the coming months.   

The British Humanist Association (BHA) has echoed the Government’s response to a debate on the 4th November 2009 in the House of Lords on the BBC, Humanism, and Thought for the Day, saying that it ‘hopes the BBC has been listening’. The debate, called by Lord Harrison, and in which a number of peers declared their interest as ‘Happy Humanists’, took place on the eve of the BBC Trust’s deliberations on whether to allow non-religious contributors to the Today programme’s…

“Since I don’t believe in any God may I be excused from Christian assemblies and use the time to study for my highers which are rapidly approaching.”

This simple request, made by a sixteen year old pupil at a Scottish school in 2009, was rejected by the rector. Just one in a long catalogue of instances in which the law is being broken which were reported to the meeting held by the Glasgow Group of the HSS on Sunday 10th…

THEY are a rejection of God and officialdom at a time when marriages are at their lowest level since Victorian times. While traditional religious and civil weddings in Scotland declined by nearly 1,000 last year, the number of couples opting for a humanist ceremony surged by 45 per cent, official figures showed yesterday, writes Alastair Dalton in The Scotsman

Baroness Manningham-Buller, giving a lecture in London last night, said the US was "very keen" to prevent Britain discovering how they were getting vital intelligence, report Lewis Smith and Robert Verkaik in The Independent

A new election law issued by Burma's ruling military bars pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from joining a political party and thus from running in upcoming elections, reports The Independent .

Religious influence on the political process is at its most pernicious when it is hidden, writes Terry Sanderson in The Guardian

Elderly and terminally-ill patients will have the legal right to die at home if Labour wins the next election, health secretary Andy Burnham pledged today. At present more than 80 per cent of people express a wish to die in…

The Catholic Church has been plunged into a renewed crisis over how it has dealt with child abuse after it emerged that the Pope's brother, Georg Ratzinger, ran a renowned choir at the centre of some of the latest claims,…

There is no simple way to battle public hostility to climate research. As the psychologists show, facts barely sway us anyway, writes George Monbiot in The Guardian