Thought for the Day

The announcement today that the BBC Trust will continue to support the Radio 4 policy of discrimination against humanists and atheists is outrageous.

The BBC has an obligation to fairness and impartiality as laid down in its charter. The remit of Thought for the Day (TftD) is to reflect on the moral/ethical implications of current events. The assumption that religion has an exclusive insight in this area is astonishing. I have yet to hear an apology from any of the Catholic speakers regarding their church’s disgusting abuse of children in their care. I have yet to hear a Jewish speaker denounce the Israeli government for their war crimes in Gaza, I have yet to hear a Moslem speak out against their faith’s obscene treatment of apostates and homosexuals.

What I do hear banal platitudes about god’s love and how religion is the sole bulwark against a tide of immorality. The truth is that religion in many of its nasty, prejudiced guises is the problem, not the solution.

It is no surprise that politicians are afraid to confront religious privilege. Their grovelling pursuit of votes is to be expected, but that the BBC, an organisation revered the world over, should also demonstrate such a supine response is evidence of the moral cowardice and intellectual bankruptcy of its controllers and its management.

The BBC Trust may think it has drawn a line under this issue, it hasn’t. In restricting contributors to Radio 4’s Thought for the Day (TftD) to those who subscribe to a particular set of religious beliefs, the BBC clearly breaches the Equality and Human Rights Act.

The Act defines Humanism and Atheism as systems of belief and yet persons holding these beliefs are explicitly excluded from contributing to the programme. The BBC seeks to justify the status quo by saying that TftD is produced by the BBC Religious Affairs department. It is thereby promoting religious belief at the expense of any other system of belief like humanism.

The fight continues, watch this space.

It is time to stand up to the Islamic tide

Am I exaggerating by comparing Islam to the rise in Fascism in the 30’s? The similarities are remarkable, a supremacist ideology, a ruthless opposition to libertarian values and an aggressive policy of expansion along with a political class largely indifferent to the threat, Add to that the spineless capitulation by the likes of Faulks.

All religions would like to muddy distinction between church and state but only one, Islam, seeks to remove it altogether. Sharia is not a folksy neighbourhood arbitration service, it is a parasite that seeks to destroy our secular legal system and replace it with its own, misogynistic, homophobic and barbaric practices.

Take a look at Saudi Arabia if you want to see what Sharia is like for all but the privileged few. For many Moslems the goal is a global caliphate where no authority is tolerated other than their own. As the film Fitna aptly demonstrates the Quran provides ample justification to pursue any amount of barbarism so long as it is sanctioned by the word of “God”.

And what are we doing about it? Nothing and the reason is that we are not willing to assert the superiority of our own values. The fear of offending minority interests and the assumption that multiculturalism, so favoured by the left, is the only policy, has allowed the wooden horse of Islam to take root in many of our cities.

So what about moderate Moslems who simply want to get on with their lives? Of course they are not all fellow travellers of the 9/11 or 7/7 terrorists, but polls have shown that when push comes to shove many tacitly sanction the use of terrorist tactics when Islam is threatened, wherever that may be. The problem is that most Moslems identify primarily with other Moslems, rather than their fellow countryman, regardless of the country in which they live, their ethnicity or even the language they speak. Wherever they settle be it Bradford or Brisbane their allegiance is first to God. This is why creeping “islamification” needs to be confronted.

We Brits are famed for our tolerance and moderation but if they blind us to a threat to our way of life that is moving inexorably towards us, they will have served us poorly and we will live to regret it.

Religion still pervades the BBC

Religion still pervades the BBC more than 80 years after Lord Reith imposed his strict Presbyterian convictions on the new enterprise. That it should still have a Religion & Ethics department is an anachronism. As far as I know the BBC doesn’t have a Food department but still manages to make a huge number of programmes on the subject. 

Religion & Ethics is part of the BBC's Factual & Learning Division; Religion FACTUAL!!!! If the BBC insists on having a department that includes religion it should be honest and call it the Department of Myth and Magic and leave the important issue of Ethics to fend for itself.

The Humanist Voice

I have long campaigned for the inclusion of a non religious voice to be heard on Thought for the Day (see below) and it seems that the BBC has finally bowed to the inevitable, perhaps as a result of my pointing out to the BBC Trust that their previous policy was in defiance of UK Equality and Human Rights legislation. 

The BBC has created a new body, The Standing Conference on Religion and Belief on which Humanists will now have a voice. So why is this important? 

The proponents of religion have always sought to portray the godless as having no morals or at the very least no moral blueprint by which actions can be judged. In the public sphere the advice of religious leaders but never the Humanists is invariably sought when questions of morality are raised and this has enhanced their standing in society. 

The association of morality and religion is no accident. Those rules that many religions promote, although largely self serving, are invariably portrayed as the moral code by which the individual’s behaviour should be judged both here on Earth and later by the creator. Their authenticity is never questioned because it is claimed that they are the word of God himself and delivered to us, often in strikingly similar ways; the Quran dictated to Mohamed, an illiterate peasant and the 10 Commandments written in tablets of stone and given to Moses. 

However there has always been an alternative to God given morality and that is Humanism. Humanist values are an inevitable consequence of being human; they are in part hard wired into our biology and part learnt within the human family. They are necessary for our continued existence and not simply a code of conduct handed down to us by a superior being. Parental altruism is essential for the survival of our offspring and during their long development into adulthood; human beings simply learn their morality in the same way that they learn language and Humanism is not a new idea; it had been a part of Confucianism some 500 years before Christ. 

So let’s hear much more of the Humanist voice not just on the BBC but in public life in general.

Contraception Denial: The pope and crimes against humanity

During his current visit the pope has once again told millions of African catholics that if they use condoms they will go to hell. As most are poor and ignorant they believe this fallacy and so continue to have unprotected sex. But this time the catholic church has gone even further claiming the condom use does not protect against HIV/Aids.

Denial of the Holocaust is illegal in some countries. Perhaps claiming condom use does not protect against HIV/Aids should be regarded as Contraception Denial. 

The pope is responsible for this doctrine and he can change it; that he refuses to do so should be regarded as a crime against humanity. He knows that in the developed world most catholics ignore this doctrine and so is guilty of exploiting ignorance and poverty in order to enforce his will in the only region where he knows he will be obeyed. 

In any other sphere such behaviour would be regarded as deeply immoral and yet to a large extent it goes unchallenged. Add to this its attitude towards homosexuality and one must conclude that the catholic church is bankrupt of any moral authority.

Thought for the Day

The BBC policy of restricting contributors to Radio 4’s Thought for the Day to those who subscribe to a particular set of religious beliefs clearly breaches the Equality and Human Rights Act. Although the relevant legislation is set out at various government websites, it is most clearly presented at the Citizens advice site.

http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/index/your_rights/discrimination/discrimination_because_of_religion_or_belief.htm

To summarise (quoted verbatim from adviceguide)

1 What does religion or belief mean

You are protected by law from discrimination because of your religion or belief if you:

# Belong to an organised religion such as Christianity, Judaism or Islam
# Have a profound belief which affects your way of life or view of the world, such as humanism
# Take part in collective worship
# Belong to a smaller religion or sect, such as Scientology or Rastafarianism
# Have no religion, for example, if you are an atheist.


2 Religious discrimination by organisations providing goods or services

It's against the law for anyone providing goods or services directly to the public to discriminate because of religion or belief. The law applies to businesses, charities and public bodies such as government agencies, local authorities, education and health facilities.

Discrimination includes:

# Refusing to provide goods or services
# Discriminating in the way goods or services are provided.

The BBC is a public body and is clearly discriminating in the way goods or services are provided. The Act defines Humanism and Atheism as systems of belief. The BBC seeks to justify the status quo by saying that TftD is produced by the BBC Religious Affairs department. It is thereby promoting religious belief at the expense of any other system of belief like humanism. This is not an adequate defence any more than denying women access to hitherto men only club would have been.
The BBC should think again and reverse this indefensible policy or they will find themselves having to defend it before the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

BBC bias against atheists

The BBC has received an official complaint from the British Humanist Association regarding the biased reporting of a poll commissioned by the BBC Religious Affairs Dept by the BBC Religious Correspondent, Robert Piggot.

Report
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7906595.stm

BHA Complaint
http://www.humanism.org.uk/_uploads/documents/1BHA-complaint-about-reporting-on-bbc-site.pdf

That an organisation like the BBC should have a Religious Affairs Dept gives pause for thought. As a news organisation it is reasonable that they should have a religious correspondent who objectively reports news. Rather it is a propaganda department used to promote a religious message at the expense of a secular one. Just imagine if the BBC had a LibDem Dept or a Hamas Dept rather than politically neutral correspondents!

The Director General and the Controller of Radio 4 both wear their religion on their sleeve and have demonstrated contempt for the non religious voice as the recent complaints over Radio 4’s Thought for the Day exemplify. More than 500 complaints and not a word of apology or justification as to why the Humanist voice is denied access to this programme.

The BBC has a public service remit at the heart of all its operations and that demands scrupulous objectivity. And yet the BBC reports secularism and atheism as if it were a fringe cult, using terms like militant atheist for anyone who challenges the privileges enjoyed by religion in the UK.

The BBC is charged with blatant discrimination that would not be tolerated if on any other area of public debate. The top management of the BBC foster this inequity because some of them are active members of faith groups. This is a situation that cannot be allowed to continue and will be constantly challenged until the BBC ends this discrimination.

Geert Wilders and islam

If a film of Mein Kampf is made with images of the Holocaust would we ban its creator on the grounds that it insults all Germans? The quran is littered with obscene passages as is the old testament, the difference is that in Islam no one questions that they are the word of god whilst the old testament has been quietly ignored by most christians. In a conflict between the laws of Great Britain and those of islam most moslems, even the so called moderates, will choose islam. This is a state of affairs that cannot be allowed to continue.

Our government rather than stand up for secular values and the rule of law appeases and capitulates to moslems. As Wilders says (and I am no supporter of right wing views) a tide of islamofascism is gathering momentum across Europe and just like its precursor in the 1930’s we must stand up to it and if our government won’t do it then we as individuals must.

Censored on iPM Blog!

The following post has just been removed from the iPM blog. The subject is the long debate on Thought for the Day. So now we atheists are suffering not only discrimination but censorship too. Shame on you BBC.

478. At 5:06pm on 18 Jan 2009, GarethTh wrote:

“I refuse to engage with you on this simply because you have an endless capacity to denigrate the work of the Church and it is getting ridiculous. I have been disappointed to see that the real thrust of the atheist input here is still primarily about attacking those who hold religious views rather than simply seeking an equal voice on TftD, which I have already said was reasonable in itself. What more do you want, sir”?

I replied:

In case you make a surprise return your defence of the denial of condoms in Africa by the catholic church and the affect that this has had on HIV/Aids is well attested to. I have yet to hear any reputable health agency say that using condoms does anything but help in its prevention. I imagine the Terrence Higgins Trust does recommend the use of condoms, so which policy demonstrates greater humanity? Denigrate the church I don’t think so, it’s actions speak louder than my words.

I attack those policies that the religious accept but are demonstrably immoral. If I were to make a list islam would be at the top of it with catholicism not far behind. The reason I attack those policies is that I am continually being told that religion has moral authority; my purpose is to show that it doesn’t and pleasant though you appear to be you have said nothing that would change the mind of a reasonable person.

All the Best

Radio 4 Thought for the Day (TftD)

We can debate the existence of god for ever and it is usually a fruitless task for the atheist as it is all but impossible to reason a person out of an opinion that they didn’t reason themselves into in the first place. Belief in god is a statement of faith not reason.

As regards Radio 4 Thought for the Day (TftD) I sense we may be on the edge of a breakthrough. If there are to be non-religious contributors I think they should come from all walks of life and have expressed their humanity either in their work or their public statements. You may be surprised that I have not included Richard Dawkins, whilst I have the highest regard for him I think this might further antagonise those that we have to convince.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Woody Allen

Martin Amis

Lord Avebury

Baroness Blackstone

Professor Colin Blakemore 

Dr Susan Blackmore

Warren Buffett

Billy Connolly

Daniel Dennett

Jonathan Edwards

Stephen Fry

Richard E. Grant

Professor A C Grayling

Susan Greenfield

Germaine Greer

Rt Hon The Lord Hattersley

Sam Harris  

Professor Steve Jones

Sir Ludovic Kennedy

Professor Sir Harold Kroto 

Brian Eno

Ian McEwan

Richard Feynman

Bob Geldof 

Ricky Gervais 

Eddie Izzard 

Neil Kinnock

John McCarthy

Sir Ian McKellen

Jonathan Meades

Sir Jonathan Miller 

Desmond Morris

Baron O'Neill of Clackmannan (Martin O'Neill, former MP)

Professor Sir Roger Penrose

Steven Pinker

Terry Pratchett 

Philip Pullman 

James Randi 

Claire Rayner 

Salman Rushdie

George Soros

Lord Dick Taverne 

Laurie Taylor

Polly Toynbee

Professor Lewis Wolpert 

The TftD brief should remain the same; to comment on current events within a moral and ethical context. And before anyone says “do you seriously expect George Soros to turn up at Broadcasting House and do a 3 minute Thought?” No I don’t but maybe the producers could pre-record an occasionally more generic Thought from those outside the UK.

At last an atheist browser

Whilst testing out a new browser recently (Google Chrome), I was surprised when it threw up the following error message. 

You attempted to reach gsearch.vatican.va, but the server presented a certificate issued by an entity that is not trusted by your computer's operating system.

I imagine that the Holy See is on to this problem and is sending a team of digital exorcists to deal with it.

Atheist Bus

Sorry to spoil the party but much as I welcome an atheist “fight back” this one is a gesture not a campaign! And before someone says “look at the publicity” that will quickly fade, what is needed is a long term strategy.

A PR/marketing/advertising strategy first defines goals, it identifies the audience and only then does it embark on a creative approach.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that, with the exception of vociferous minorities the UK is not very religious, but many still think of themselves as culturally christian as evidenced by census results. But many of those who are not religious are not wholly rational either, they believe in conspiracy theories, alternative medicine, the Loch Ness monster etc.

Belief in something “outside ourselves” is regrettable but harmless so “god” is not the problem but religion certainly is. In my opinion it is the status and privileges that religion enjoys that need to exposed and undermined and the acceptance of the moral authority of religious leader that needs to be challenged. In my own small way that is what I have been doing in my correspondence with Mark Damazer over Thought for the Day (mentioned elsewhere on this site).
Getting back to the bus ads “probably no god” is about as unconvincing as it can be and as stated previously god is not the problem. So if money is still coming in then please get some professional advice on how to spend it more effectively.

Thought for the Day

My reply to the Controller of Radio 4 Mark Damazer:

Dear Mr Damazer

Thank you for your response to my correspondence. However I am astonished at its contents. In your opening paragraph you endorse the assertion that faith confers additional authority to the speaker and that morality is inevitably linked to religious belief.

Let me quote you: “Their authority is drawn from faiths that have survived the centuries, including periods of persecution and intense scrutiny and still proved themselves valid”.

As a private individual you have every right to hold these views but as the controller of BBC Radio 4 this partisan view is in opposition to your public service obligation of neutrality, objectivity and fairness. One is left in no doubt that the “authority is drawn from faiths” in your opinion justifies a ban on those who have no faith contributing to this programme.

You go on to say “So if you change the commissioning brief to allow in secular voices it would no longer be Thought for the Day” again your prejudice is staggering. The secular voice would include those who are atheist, agnostic and humanist, who are every bit as qualified and concerned to comment on current events in the context of an ethical and moral perspective as those of religious faith.

You continue “and I hear no appetite for such a change from Radio Four”. Perhaps you should visit the BBC forums and message boards where this complaint is regularly expressed.

You say “and serve the audience by giving them a chance to hear a perspective from the great faith traditions that have shaped our society and continue to wield enormous influence over current events”. These great faiths were also responsible for 9/11, 7/ll and countess other atrocities throughout human history and yet you still assert their moral authority.

As regards the extent of religious belief in the UK you state “The last census showed 71% declaring themselves Christian” and “In a survey a few years ago Radio Four discovered that one in four of its audience go to a worship”. I am happy to accept this statistic if it would result in TftD being delivered by a contributor who does not have a faith agenda on one day of every week that the programme is broadcast.

I ask you once more to change your mind

Yours sincerely
Graham Davis

Thought for the Day

After 2 years of writing to the BBC I have received a reply from the Controller of Radio 4 Mark Damazer, it is nothing short of extraordinary:

Dear Mr Davis

In response to your query about Thought for the Day on Radio Four, this reply is on behalf of everyone at the BBC you have contacted.

TfTD is commissioned as a theological reflection on current events. It is not an opinion piece. All contributors are told to ground their 'thought'
in their own theological tradition, using the words of scripture or liturgy that have been worn smooth as a pebble by centuries of repetition and devotion. Their authority is drawn from faiths that have survived the centuries, including periods of persecution and intense scrutiny and still proved themselves valid. It is therefore a unique voice on the BBC. I would contend that the BBC should strive to maintain its 'uniqueness' in an increasingly overcrowded market place and serve the audience by giving them a chance to hear a perspective from the great faith traditions that have shaped our society and continue to wield enormous influence over current
events.

So if you change the commissioning brief to allow in secular voices it would no longer be Thought for the Day and I hear no appetite for such a change from Radio Four.

I do not accept that the majority of the country are atheistic or agnostic.
The last census showed 71% declaring themselves Christian and another 8% spiritual. Since then with immigration continuing apace from countries more religious than our own I see no reason to think the religious majority has declined. In a survey a few years ago Radio Four discovered that one in four of its audience go to a worship service every week so we know there is a lot of interest in the subject.

Secularism has not swept religion aside as some would have hoped, indeed some academics are writing about the new visibility of religion, albeit more fractured and fragmented than before. With religion so high on the agenda it would be a strange time to change the one place where it is possible to hear the intelligent religious voice in a secular setting and understand something of why millions if not billions of people still put faith at the centre of their lives.


Yours sincerely

Mark Damazer BBC Controller Radio 4

Being Good Without God

"Religion usurps for itself a product of human development that has occurred without any need of divine intervention, it is the ultimate confidence trick, selling us what we already own."


There is a widely held conviction that being good is linked to religious belief. So is it possible to be good without God? To be good requires first having a moral blueprint by which actions can be judged to be good or bad and for the believer this blueprint is derived from God.

Most people would agree with the following assertion; that you should treat others the same way you want them to treat you, this notion relies on reciprocity and is intuitive when your own self interest is evenly balanced with that of another. However there are many circumstances when you cannot rely on a matched response so why should someone behave in an altruistic or generous way when there is no guarantee that their behaviour will be reciprocated?

For many species, like most fish for example, after fertilisation of the eggs the parents take no further part in the development of their offspring. Other species like most birds have a different method. As neither the skeletal wings or the feathers necessary for flight can develop fully within the confines of a shell, the hatchling bird requires weeks of nurture and protection to enable this development and therefore cannot fend for itself for a considerable time.

Both these methods of reproduction have been highly successful as the ubiquity of fish and birds species testify. For the bird however reproduction has an additional responsibility, namely parenting. For the hatchling, survival is a race against time; the longer that it stays in the nest the more vulnerable it is to predators. Rapid growth requires a constant supply of food. For a typical brood of five or six chicks the demands on the parent birds are enormous. During this period adult birds may be near to starvation themselves as they devote all their energy to feeding their offspring. And in addition they will invariably put themselves at risk to defend their brood when it is threatened by a predator.

The bird’s behaviour is obviously altruistic as no reciprocation is likely but does this mean that it is good? It is obviously good for their offspring as their survival is dependent upon it, but can it be good in the general sense without having a moral dimension? If a bird is compelled by instinct to behave in an altruistic manner then can we regard this behaviour as morally good?

Even though their lifespan if usually greater, most mammals devote a proportionally much longer period to parenting, than birds do. And amongst the most devoted are we humans, spending around twenty percent of our lifespan rearing our own children. In common with all other species who are involved in parenting, we really have no choice as our species would not survive if we did not expend a huge amount of our resources in rearing our offspring.

Even in our changing society the majority of us are still reared by loving parents or at least parent. Almost every mother establishes a bond with her child soon after birth as do the majority of fathers. The human family is the crucible where altruistic behaviour is forged, not out of a desire to please a distant god but out of biological necessity. The human family is the base unit of human society; its structure is echoed in almost all human organisations, whether social, legal, political, sporting or religious. Within the family is the archetype of all human relationships.

Whilst parental altruism is inevitable this cannot be said of our offspring. As soon as it is able an infant will take what it wants at the expense of anyone else. Usually this behaviour is challenged by parents, particularly if other siblings are involved, bad behaviour is chastised whilst good is rewarded. It is within this transfer of the biologically motivated behaviour of parents to the culturally acquired behaviour of their offspring that the notion of morality can be said to emerge. Good that is inevitable becomes good that is preferable.

The notion of good (and therefore of bad) has become a cultural meme, it has evolved and spread into all human activity. It has resulted in the concept of fairness and justness and a system of law based on the concept of natural justice, natural because we know it to be true.

So do you need God to be good?

Religion, in most of its theistic invocations, usurps for itself a product of human development that has occurred without any need of divine intervention, it is the ultimate confidence trick, selling us what we already own. Yes we would have been good without god! So how has it got away with this fraud for so long?

Religion offers its adherents a simple deal. It trades the promise of a life after death for obedience and deference in life before death. In order to buttress this compliance religion has sticks as well as carrots, and foremost of those sticks is the prospect of hell for miscreants or at the very least the absence of heaven.

In common with other tyrannies religion has policies to maintain its grip, it embroils the young before they a capable of independent thought, it requires tithes and regular worship of its particular God but foremost it has a set of rules that must be obeyed. Many of these rules are hostile to competing religions and some require punishment and even the abuse of infants as in the practice of circumcision; but smuggled in amongst these abhorrent “laws” are many that anyone will intuitively accept, you should not steal, you should not kill, you shall not bear false witness etc. This seduces the believer into accepting the entire package and convinces them that they cannot be good without it. It is no surprise that the notion that you should treat others the same way you want them to treat you is a precept of nearly all religions as well as secular, naturalistic doctrines, reciprocal altruism is simply common sense.

In many countries, like the USA and Iran for example, morality based on religious belief has been conjoined with political dogma in order to undermine or drive out the secular alternative, to the extent that many ordinary people genuinely think that, in the absence of their religion, they would behave like savages. The usurpation of humanist notion of good and the claim that it emanates from god is a disgraceful sham. The truth is that we humans are programmed to be good.

Thought for the Day

Today I have renewed my complaint to the BBC regarding Thought for the Day. Following is the letter. I will post their response, but don't hold your breath!

Dear Sir

I registered a formal complaint to the BBC on 1/12/06 regarding “Thought for the Day” and it has still not been addressed satisfactorily, for this reason I am now addressing this complaint to the BBC Trust.

The “Thought for the Day” feature broadcast during the Radio 4, Today programme offers a few minutes of contemplation and reflection on current events set in a moral and ethical context.

A summary of the complaint is this:

“Thought for the Day” explicitly excludes contributions from those who profess no faith; this is extremely insulting to agnostics and atheists who probably account for the majority of the UK population. For all the issues that are examined on “Thought for the Day” there is a distinctive non-religious moral perspective.

One concludes that the BBC endorses the assertion that morality is inevitably linked to religious belief and that faith confers additional authority to the speaker. In a secular society such as ours, this is an unacceptable policy. I therefore ask the BBC Trust to ensure that in future “Thought for the Day” will allow contributions from outside religious groups.


In my various correspondences with the BBC it has been stated that the “Thought for the Day” feature is produced by the Religious Affairs Dept, therein lies the problem; again there is an assumption that a moral perspective is the exclusive domain of the religious.

Enc email correspondence

Yours sincerely


Graham Davis

Application to establish a new religion

Dear Sir

I hope you will look favourably at my application to start a new religion. I am sure you will be pleased to hear that like all religions mine has a deity, a prophet, a holy book and a set of guiding principles; they are:

• The right to distribute a deadly disease by denial of the use of contraceptive devices
  
• The right to mutilate the genitalia of all male offspring
  
• The right to kill animals for food by letting them bleed to death
  
• The right to deny our wives and daughters the opportunity to take part in any activities that we deem improper
  
• The right for us to deal sympathetically with our shamans that have been involved in sexual activities with children
  
• The right to advance the truth revealed in the holy book that our deity made the earth in a few days and that any so called science that refutes this is blasphemous and cannot be tolerated.
  
• The right to severely discipline our own believers if they contradict the teaching of our prophet
  
• The right to encourage the terminally ill and severely disabled to visit any of our conveniently situated shrines in order that they may be miraculously cured. And that our success rates will not need to be published in our annual accounts as this could produce a misleading impression.
  
• The right to wear our traditional costume even when it contravenes regulations that non-believers are required to obey

Once my application has been approved I understand that my new religion will receive the following advantages:

• The right to nominate our top shamans for automatic entry to the legislative chamber known as the House of Lords, so we may influence policies that may be in conflict with our own belief system.
  
• The right to exploit all the advantages received when the head of state also becomes head of our religion
  
• The right to receive tax breaks and charitable status.
  
• The right to insist on a daily act of worship in all state schools
  

I know that you will appreciate that if my new religion is ridiculed by non believers that grave offence will have been suffered and that this incitement to religious hatred will be subject to full rigor of the criminal law.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sivad Maharg

“You never ask questions when God’s on your side”

When Bob Dylan penned these words in 1963, we were in the midst of the cold war, now forty years on we are told that we are engaged in another war, the “war on terror”. Bush and Blair have characterised “our” opponents as evil, a word heavy with religious connotation. They have both claimed guidance from the “almighty”, an unfortunate irony as so do “our” opponents, the suicide bombers and beheaders.

We all know the origins of 9/11; it is the US support of Israel. When the PLO instigated their terror campaign against Israel in the 1970’s, there we no references to “jihad” or even to Islam. They saw themselves as freedom fighters struggling against political oppression, just as the Israelis did in their earlier conflict with the British.

The Islamification of the conflict can be directly paralleled with the rise of fundamentalist Christianity in the USA. The unfortunate use of the word Crusade by George Bush at the beginning of the conflict reinforced the notion held by Moslems that they are under threat from Christian/Western domination.

Religion always puts faith at the top of the list for true believers and faith is incompatible with reason. Faith is impervious to the notion that all human acts should be subjected to rational scrutiny in order to assess their validity.

In the UK even the timid Anglicans are becoming emboldened by demonstrations of their co-religionists Islamic and Sikh muscle. The UK population has always had a healthy scepticism, particularly of politicians, our problem is that the creeping desecularisation of our society may proceed unnoticed and unchallenged; the spread of faith schools is just one example.

In the US the problem is far worse. A majority of the population profess to be Christian, for a politician to acknowledge their atheism it is tantamount to an admission of eating babies, so even those “social” Christian politicians are loath to oppose the religiously motivated policies for fear of being outed. There are signs of a modest intellectual backlash but what is really needed is a respected public figure to declare their atheism and kick start a debate. Previously held prejudices can sometimes be overturned, as attitudes towards blacks, women and gays demonstrate.

Dylan got it about right, though I doubt that even he could have foreseen where we are now, forty years on

Thought for the Day

On the 21 April 2007 the Today programme was again forced to confront a long standing complaint regarding Thought for the Day. The producer was not brave enough to defend his policy sending instead a stooge to answer comments made on air by a listener. This is a summary of the complaint:

For all the issues that are examined on Thought for the Day there is a distinctive atheist moral perspective. One cannot help but come to the conclusion that the BBC considers that reflection on these matters is the sole purview of the devotees of the gods represented on the programme; this is very insulting to atheists and to the millions of Today programme listeners who profess no faith.

I know that this is a rather parochial subject, but for the benefit of those outside the UK this is the background. The Today programme on BBC Radio 4 is a daily news programme broadcast from 6-9am. It is generally regarded by politicians and others as a more important platform than TV for getting their message across to the “movers and shakers” and so has a large and intelligent audience. Every day there is a 3 minute slot called “Thought for the Day”, and although it could be seen as a throw back to a more paternalistic age, in the context of hard news it provides are rare moment of contemplation and reflection on current events set in a moral and ethical context.

The problem is that it provides an exclusively religious take on these subjects. For years many of us have complained to the BBC about the lack of an atheist voice but to no avail.