Sligo’s ‘loose’ connection to humanism

Dear Editor,

I spoke the other night in Sligo at the meeting of the North West Humanists on “Charles Darwin and humanism”. I forgot to mention that Sligo has a loose connection with humanism through John Butler Yeats (pictured).

Of course his wife was from Sligo and his sons spent a lot of time there.

Here is how he described his views of life which I hope readers might find inspiring no matter what their own beliefs. “Life is sometimes terrible and always sad, but we have to live and to live, one must make out some kind of happiness, for which purpose we have invented fables such as the immortal- ity of the soul and the good- ness of God. I have no such belief in what is called a personal God, but I do believe in a shaping providence and that this providence is what may be called goodness or love, and that death is only a change in a world where change is a law of existence.”

Regards, David McConnell

Honorary President, Humanist Association of Ireland.

Blackrock, Co Dublin