The author's grandfather (born 1832) was a farm worker and jobbing gardener who, unusually for the time, was a committed atheist. An autodidact, his education ended when he was eleven, but he became well enough read to be, from his soap box, a socialist scourge of Ayrshire aristocracy and to correspond regularly with Keir Hardie and George Bernard Shaw. His son, the author's father (born 1882), worked his way from poverty to Glasgow University and subsequent Training College to become a schoolteacher, but later decided to take a BD degree at Edinburgh University and was ordained as a…mehr
The author's grandfather (born 1832) was a farm worker and jobbing gardener who, unusually for the time, was a committed atheist. An autodidact, his education ended when he was eleven, but he became well enough read to be, from his soap box, a socialist scourge of Ayrshire aristocracy and to correspond regularly with Keir Hardie and George Bernard Shaw. His son, the author's father (born 1882), worked his way from poverty to Glasgow University and subsequent Training College to become a schoolteacher, but later decided to take a BD degree at Edinburgh University and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister. That did not find favour with his father, who told him never to darken the door of the family home in Girvan till he gave up ""that daft dog collar"". That he never did, but the author, his son (born 1930), eventually followed his grandfather's ways, rejecting his father's. In due course he came to write this ""apologia pro vita sua"" as an atheist humanist. The book presents the view that all human experience, behaviour, thought, understanding and productive activity are the products of or depend on healthy human brains, educated and trained, to some extent, in the arts, sciences and the scientific method. The book proposes that the concept of ""god"" is unnecessary and differences in understanding or using it are a source of conflict or even wars which continue to threaten human progress and indeed the species as a whole. There is no need to invoke gods as the creators of man, the cosmos and systems of morality. Evolution and history demonstrate that such systems would emerge naturally and progressively without any ""divine tutorials or interventions"". Rationality and the scientific method offer insightful and effective understanding and ameliorations of the human condition rather than dependence on supernatural and superstitious principles demanded by gods and their prophets. Humanists may sometimes adopt moral principles from religious precepts, but only if they can be validated by present human knowledge and experience.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, in the light of what he has written here, Dr Clark is rather ambivalent about his early history of having been a son of the manse, caught between religious orthodoxy and his natural inclinations. Brought up in the north of Scotland and educated at Banff Academy and Aberdeen University, he retired as a Consultant Clinical Psychologist after nearly 40 years in the NHS and followed that in 1990 with six years in part-time private practice and writing his other books. Now, after several years more than his sell-by date, he looks back on a varied but intereting and reasonably successful career. After a period of National Service in the RAF (from AC2 to Fying Officer) which provided the material for his 2006 book Stand by your Beds!, he worked first as an industrial psychologist at Leicester Industrial Rehabilitation Unit before becoming a clinical psychologist in the NHS, also in Leicester. He has taught and researched at the universities of Leicester and Aberdeen in the course of his work within a number of large NHS hospitals. He returned to Scotland in 1966 to take up a Consultant post in the Grampian Regional Hospital Board, eventually retiring as the Director of Grampian Health Board's Area Clinical Psychology Services and Hon. Clinical Senior Lecturer in the Dept. of Mental Health at Aberdeen University Medical School. For his work in that context he was honoured with the OBE in 1990, and having been active in one or another form of public service formost of his life, was appointed by the Queen as a Deputy Lieutenant of Banffshire in 1992. He was appointed as an Hon. Sheriff of Grampian and Highlands and Islands Sheriffdom and has sat on the bench at Banff for more than thirty-five years. In parallel with that he has been both a Children's Panel member and a Safeguarder in the Scottish juvenile justice system for 30 years. In his earlier life he has been a Town and County Councillor of Banff and Banffshire for nine years as an Independent. He has been a short term Consultant for the WHO in Sri Lanka and has also been invited to lecture on his research in India, Canada and twice to the USA. He is the author of a small collection of occasional papers and several more substantial chapters (at least one of over 100 pages) in academic texts as well as over 30 published professional articles in peer reviewed journals. Latterly he took to writing magazine articles and books--somewhat more hectically--as he is having to cope with increasing blindness which has already put paid to his painting and drawing, photography, playing music and, of course, reading. He depends more and more on his Kindle, computer and audiobooks. He lives with his wife of 65 years and has two daughters, two sons in law, four grandchildren and one great grand daughter, all of whom have afforded him his greatest pride and pleasure.
Es gelten unsere Allgemeinen Geschäftsbedingungen: www.buecher.de/agb
Impressum
www.buecher.de ist ein Shop der buecher.de GmbH & Co. KG Bürgermeister-Wegele-Str. 12, 86167 Augsburg Amtsgericht Augsburg HRA 13309
