A lighter side of philosopher Grayling

British philosopher Anthony Clifford "A.C." Grayling has discovered the meaning of life and he revealed it to a rapt audience last Saturday at the Singapore Writers Festival.

"The meaning of life is what you choose to make of it," the 64-year-old said to an audience of close to 500 at the School of the Arts' Drama Theatre. "The really significant thing is choice, living a life that is considered, which is your own, not choices you've adopted because you were born in a particular community or place in time."

The one-hour afternoon lecture, A Good Life In A Bad World?, covered his well-known position as a secular humanist who does not favour organised religion but believes humans have a moral duty and responsibility to one another nevertheless.

It was sold out, as was an Eat Your Words With A.C. Grayling session later that evening, where 20 ticket-holders got to share a meal with the writer.

Plenty of food for thought was also dished out at the afternoon lecture, which ran 30 minutes over time as listeners peppered him with questions.

Some asked him whether he thought a study of philosophy should be part of school curriculum. The former professor of philosophy at London's Birkbeck College replied: "The answer, emphatically, is yes. After all, the great aim of education should be to teach people how to think, not what to think."

This was reportedly why, after teaching philosophy at the college for 20 years from 1991 to 2011, he founded an independent university two years ago. The New College Of The Humanities in London boasts a star-studded faculty including famed evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.

The desire to encourage thinking over unthinking acceptance makes organised religion anathema to Grayling, a father of four who is married to novelist Katie Hickman, 53. "It's a constant recurring theme in religion that you must submit and that's not different in its structure from Stalinism or any other totalitarian regime," he said in response to the question of why he thought people would be better off if they were less religious.

He made it clear, however, that it was not only religion he was against, but any "coercive ideology, monolithic ideology" that tells people what to think and how to live, instead of how to come to their own conclusions.

This has led to criminalising otherness, from targeting homosexuality - accepted in pre- Judeo-Christian societies - to burning people at the stake for heresy during the Spanish Inquisition, he said.

Asked what were the virtues he considered essential for the 21st century, he said: "Kindness, thoughtfulness, being open constantly - not so open that your brains fall out because you must have some principles."

An author of more than 30 books, he goes into greater detail in volumes such as this year's The God Argument, which presents arguments for and against the existence of religion, and The Good Book, which unites moral teachings from various religious and philosophical schools of thoughts, and is provocatively subtitled A Humanist Bible. Both books are published by Bloomsbury and are available at Books Kinokuniya.

The lecture distilled the essence of both volumes and brought in philosophers from Socrates and Aristotle to Albert Camus and Bertrand Russell. The heavyweight names and concepts were dropped lightly and to ripples of laughter.

"One of the things you might have been reading in the bath last night, Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics," he would say, or perhaps: "I know you know the story of Plato and Meno," before giving fuller explanations.

His own bathtime reading does extend to ancient Greek philosophers - he devoured the complete works of Plato at age 12, while a precocious schoolboy in Zambia; alternating that with the complete works of Jane Austen, who remains one of his favourite writers.

He presented philosophy as the natural successor to blind faith, saying that according to historical evidence, religious beliefs began as primitive tribes sought to find explanations for natural phenomena such as the wind and rain, and decided all required agents to make these things happen.

This is why Greek and Roman myths are full of dryads or tree spirits, nymphs or water spirits and supernatural forces lurking in every forest or hill.

"The more our ancestors came to understand the world, the more these agencies moved away. Throughout history, the gods have gone further and further away, just over the horizons of our ignorance, till they vanish forever."

His pronouncements were greeted with scattered applause and a line of at least 60 queued up after the lecture to have him sign copies of his books. However, not all in the line were convinced fans.

Business analyst Sophie Syed, 22, said she would read some of his books and discuss them with her father, a devout Muslim. "I thought it was interesting. I feel I'm on the trajectory where I'm losing belief but my father is on a different trajectory, so I would want to discuss these ideas with him."

Her colleague Taryn Mook, 30, said she was pleasantly surprised by the tone of the talk, since Grayling's online columns are more direct and even offensive to people of religious faith. "Being religious is a very human thing - that's something people have to accept. Religions have helped people, pushed them beyond disadvantages, and his own humanist ideas are also full of holes."

Indeed, at one point in the lecture, Grayling said globalisation began in the 15th century with the Portuguese explorers, while most Asians conversant with their history know of the Silk Route.

Singapore, in fact, owns the contents of a ninth-century shipwreck off Belitung Island in Indonesia, which proves the existence of maritime trade between China and South-east Asia via Arabia even at that time.

However, as Grayling himself pointed out, even the greats have their flaws.

Scientist Isaac Newton, known for his laws of motion, based his theories on the premise that "the universe is the same everywhere because it was created by God and God is an economical workman". So what happened in one corner of the world, such as an apple falling from a tree, would also happen elsewhere.

"There are at least three big assumptions there: that there is a God, that she created the universe and she is an economical workman," he said. "One thing that philosophy does is ask people to look at the assumptions, look at the framework of thinking and sometimes, there are surprises, like in Newtonian physics.

"We must unearth the assumptions, unearth our most cherished beliefs, ask ourselves, is this right, is this defensible thinking that can stand up to hard examination?"

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