Someone Gets It...

As a follow-up to my earlier post, I came across a blogger who gets it (emphasis mine)...

Just a quick note to further publicise this amusing "debate".

The BCSE (British Centre for Science Education) has been formed solely to try and stop Creationism or Intelligent Design being taught alongside evolution in our schools. It is seeking to do this by publishing "research" on people that believe in a young earth - so you will find much (what amounts to) dirt digging on individuals, churches, Bible seminaries etc.

The balance is being struck, though, by Derby minister David Anderson, who has started a blog to pick up on the inadequacies of the BCSE argumentation. The blog makes very interesting reading as you discover that the leaders of the BCSE have no scientific qualification (David has a science degree) and are proven to make up some of the contents of their articles.

In reading through both sites it quickly becomes evident that David Anderson is putting forward careful, reasoned argument, whereas the BCSE is quick to resort to blatant name calling when they run out of other words!

So, please have a read of these sites and be informed of the battle going on out there. I'm increasingly persuaded that atheists are the next "minority" group to be pushing for their voice to be heard, at the expense of anyone elses beliefs.

http://truthliving.blogspot.com/2007/01/bcse-vs-david-anderson.html

I would correct one thing in the above quote. I don't believe I have said that no BCSE leader has a science degree. I have said that no BCSE leader has any experience in science education. According to the BCSE website, there is one (just one!) member of the BCSE leadership who has a doctorate (in chemical engineering).

David Anderson



Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Some Pertinent Questions...

The purpose of this blog is to investigate the new body calling itself the "British Centre for Science Education". We've come quite a long way so far - if you're new here, follow some of the label links down the side for the basic material.

What's Been The Reaction?

Today I want to take this opportunity to take a step back and ask "How has the BCSE responded to the questions raised here?".

Firstly, we notice that the BCSE leadership and members have invested a tremendous amount of time and effort in responding to this blog. This has included:

1. Over 50 personal e-mails.
   
   
2. At least 3 brand new blogs or websites, and the promotion of these sites at many places across the Internet.
   
   
3. Plenty of material on 2 existing blogs.
   
   
4. Many and various edits to their own website, including whole new sections researching into my educational background and colleagues, and churches I have preached at.
   
   
5. Time spent researching such essential questions as "Which university did David's pastor obtain his doctorate from?", "Which web hosting company hosts David's wife's nappy business?".
   
   
6. Threats of legal action (still unfulfilled...) for alleged offences against the computer misuse act.
   
   
7. Communications to my colleagues in the Christian ministry to seek to persuade them to ask me to stop blogging.
   
   
8. Reconfiguring their own website to block any accesses which are referred from this blog.

I think that that constitutes quite a lot of effort.

The message which the BCSE want to put out from this effort is also fairly clear. Firstly, "BCSE Revealed" is not reliable; secondly, David Anderson is extremely wicked (which in general I'll grant - that's why I trust in Jesus Christ alone for the forgiveness of my sins...)

The BCSE's leaders have, in private e-mails to me, in their forums, and on their website, described me or my blog variously as a child abuser, "clown", "liar", "fool", "stupid", "fundamentalist", "completely without standards or [conscience]", "cowardly", "gutless", "little weasel", "god boy", "extremist", "lowest of the low", "[worse than] the dirtiest little sewer rat chomping away on a turd", having "screamed and raged", "sanctimonious crapola", "windbag", "there is a possibility that he will report you to the police if he disagrees with what you say", "thoroughly immoral", "deeply offensive", "wholly inaccurate", "a pack of lies", "a sanctimonious blustering windbag", "comprehensive smear campaign", "dripping with sanctimonious and condescending self-righteousness", "consists of unmitigated drivel from start to finish", "unmitigated rubbish", "vicious", "particularly vile and smug". I am called a "fundamentalist", a movement which the BCSE website (on a now hidden page) describes as "a movement of pig-ignorant inarticulate bigots, racists, xenophobes, anti-Semites, misogynists, homophobes, rape apologists, AIDS deniers, government haters, scientific illiterates, gun-lovers, murderous paramilitaries and others predisposed towards extreme violence, half-baked misfits and haters, all obsessed with their own religious and moral superiority."

Well, that's fairly comprehensive.

And?

But, you didn't come here to listen to me wallowing in self-pity. So what's the point?

The point is to compare all the activity and abuse above, with what the BCSE haven't done by way of response.

Firstly, the BCSE haven't ever taken up the offer which comes at the end of each article - to e-mail me with details of any documentable factual errors. I suppose though, that if you're convinced of the chain of allegations above, then you probably figure it's not worth it. I have observed through the BCSE website and forums that Mr. Roger Stanyard plays a particularly active role in convincing people that any non-Darwinist is necessarily a wicked liar. The majority of the quotes above are his.

Secondly, no BCSE leader has ever tried to post a comment on this blog. The BCSE website carries a complaint that I was "censoring" them by not having comments on the blog (http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/index.php/Main/Links). However, I've had comments for some time now, and it looks to me like this complaint was empty rhetoric.

Thirdly, though is the most significant point. Though the BCSE have spent many hours on all the activities listed above... they haven't actually spent time addressing any of the serious questions which this blog has raised.

That is, there's been a whole barrel load of time spent in trying to convince the Internet that I'm one of the biggest toads in existence... but all the real questions I'm asking have just been brushed under the carpet. That's a slightly curious strategy, isn't it, if the BCSE have all the facts on their side? If you have the truth and can document it - then why would you do that?

What If It's True?

So let's play this out. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that all the personal allegations about me are true. Let us suppose, even, that the BCSE have been too kind to me, and that I am even worse than they have said.

Now... what difference does this make to all that I have documented about the BCSE? Suppose I am really exceptionally evil... does the BCSE then become automatically credible or qualified as a result?

It seems clear to me that the BCSE's strategy to refute my documentation is a straightforward "them versus us - which side are you on?" play. A simple battle, with two sides - you're either for us or against us. If the BCSE can make clear that their opponents are desperately depraved - then the BCSE win the debate by default. All the issues over the BCSE's trustworthiness, credibility and agenda must come down to a simple polarisation - who do you trust? Surely not those insane and evil creationists or Intelligent Design proponents? Surely you trust us instead?

I don't think that intelligent observers will find this a very satisfying response. Even supposing that they are persuaded that I really do suck... the option is still open to them of deciding that it's also true that the BCSE is not a credible organisation in the field of science education, and has in fact been misleading the public about itself. The "either / or" dichotomy is a false one - we can both suck!

In a future article, I am planning to continue the process of taking this step back - and raising again some of those awkward questions which the BCSE don't want to answer. I will contrast the effort put into alleging that I'm a real bad egg, with the lack of effort in actually documenting what I've got wrong.

The BCSE's activity, listed above, is because they want to focus all the attention concerning the issues I've raised on me, instead of themselves. But why?

I think I know... do you?

(Part two: follow this link).

David Anderson



Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Who Are The Members? The Website Editors

I think I have picked up a few new readers lately, with all the attention to the Richard Dawkins parable, and the brilliant YouTube radio spin-off (which has been viewed 3,300 times in its first couple of days existence).

So let me remind my readers what the purpose of this blog is.

In September 2006, a new organisation made an appearance. Mentioned in the House of Commons by Graham Stringer MP, interviewed on BBC Radio Manchester, and with letters printed in the Times and Financial Times newspapers, it sounded like a very impressive authoritative body. Its name was the "British Centre for Science Education", and it made some very dogmatic pronouncements about what should and should not be taught in science lessons in the United Kingdom. The unsuspecting member of the public, reading such pronouncements, would assume that the nation's top scientists were speaking - which was, presumably, the intention behind choosing such a name.

(http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=31313)

The truth, however, was rather different - and I set about documenting it.

The Reality

In fact, the "British Centre for Science" turned out not to include a single individual within its leadership who had any experience in science education (one, two). Actually, its founder and leader were two men with no experience either in research science or in education whatsoever (one, two, three). Whilst the "BCSE" presents itself as an authority on what should be taught in state schools.... not a single member of leadership has ever taught in one. In October 2006 I documented the BCSE leaders, in their own words, confessing that they did not even know what the National Curriculum was, let alone what was in it.

Not only that, but I also proved that when the BCSE wrote to MPs, telling them that Truth in Science's material was "full of scientific mistakes" - they hadn't yet discovered what material Truth in Science were distributing. Read that story here.

Whyever, then, would such a bunch of lay people be attempting to hoodwink the British public and legislators in believing that they were the nation's leading authorities on science education? The answer to this didn't take too long to discover, as I documented how the BCSE's leadership is overwhelmingly dominated by Richard Dawkins style anti-religious activists. We have documented quote after quote in which the BCSE leaders have explained their own religious motivations, hard-line atheism, and such-like (one, two, three, four).

And it's gone on from there, as the BCSE and/or its individual leaders have been threatened with legal action by one UK university, launched various campaigns of abuse and spurious legal threats against me (one, two, three, four, five), taken part in their own political campaigning to make religion illegal, and so on (one, two). We've also documented the BCSE's now-hidden anti-religious rants (one, two, three), and their ineptness when it comes to research (one, two, three).

Today : Membership Update

In previous articles I have documented the lack of scientific/educational credentials of the BCSE leadership, and the BCSE's troubles with attracting members. Today I want to provide documentation on another handful of its core. Let us see - what are their credentials? What is motivating them?

If you look at the very last line of many of the articles on the BCSE website, you will see a capital P followed by further capital letters - like this:

(http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/index.php/Main/PeterSenior)

What do they mean? Simply this: The "P" stands for "proof-read"; and the following letters are initials. If there is no such line, then it means the article hasn't been proof-read. This is the system the BCSE are using to check on which articles have been reviewed. So, the above "PRS" means "Proof read by RS = Roger Stanyard".

I ran an analysis of the whole of the BCSE public website as it stood on the 1st of February (i.e. 4 days ago). The results were as follows:

Number / Signature
21 / PRS
17 / PJAF
8 / PTC
7 / PRV
2 / PTA

Analysis

Two of those names are familiar to us already. RS - Roger Stanyard, a management consultant and atheist, the individual responsible for the majority of the BCSE's activity. TC - Timothy Chase, a software engineer and atheist, one of the BCSE's committee.

Who are the there others?

1. JAF, John Flemming

Describing his own religious position in his own words:

"I'm an atheist, and proud of it. I am atheist, hear me roar. Godless and glad of it."

"I have a t-shirt that says 'Godless, and glad of it'."

"According to the bible, god killed over two and a half million people. Satan, only ten. It makes you wonder."

And making quite clear his own understanding of the connection between Darwinism etc. and atheism:

"Knowing what we now know about the origins of Life, the Universe, and Everything (pace Douglas Adams), god is unnecessary. As is discussion of his/her/its existence/non-existence."

From the above sentence, it sounds as if Mr. Flemming knows the answers to the knotty problems of life arising from non-life (i.e. abiogenesis), and the origin of time and matter (cosmogenesis). That's news me - and to all the real scientists still toiling fruitlessly in those fields!

Here is the graphic which Mr. Flemming uses as his emblem in the BCSE's forums:

If I was an atheist, I don't think I'd want to say that. Because if atheism is the "default" setting ... then the overwhelming majority of human beings throughout history have abandonned it for something else - including 11 in every 12 (92%) of those alive in 2005, according to http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html.

Mr. Flemming advertises his e-mail address as "anarch at ntlworld fullstop com". I suppose that "anarch" is short for "anarchist", but I'm only guessing.

I was able to find the above information on Mr. Flemming quite easily. But could I find any data on his qualifications to be a proof-reader for such an august body as a national centre of science education? I did a search of the Internet for any reference of Mr. Flemming in a scientific context... I could not find a thing. I suppose that I may be looking in the wrong places.

My default assumption when I find a new name in the BCSE is that I might have a good chance of finding more about them by going to Richard Dawkins' website, or on the website of the National Secular Society... and Mr. Flemming didn't disappoint me.

http://www.secularism.org.uk/letterstonewsline23.html
http://bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4467#4467
http://richarddawkins.net/forum/search.php?search_author=jaf

Same old story here then. Who's next?

2. RV, Rudy Vonk

Born in the Netherlands, Mr. Vonk is in his 50s and lives in Oviedo, Spain.

I was not able to find his name in connection with any scientific research, qualifications or the like.

Mr. Vonk hasn't had a very visible profile in the BCSE (just 30 or so posts each in the BlackShadow group that preceeded the BCSE, and a similar number in the BCSE's forum). But there was enough in those few posts to find Mr. Vonk ridiculing the Bible, Christians, etcetera, and professing his own atheism.

Talking about former education secretary, Ruth Kelly, Mr. Vonk wrote: "remember these people are by definition very theist ... they are, OTOH [On The Other Hand], generally also very intelligent."

Another quote (censorship mine): "What the f*** are 'basic religious rights'?".

And in another place:

"I agree with you, except that Dawkins doesn't actually say that science can weigh in on the existence of a god. It can't. Reason can, and in that I agree wholeheartedly with Dawkins." Actually, Professor Dawkins wrote the following in November 2006 in Time Magazine: "The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no." (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1555132-1,00.html). Vonk goes on to say, "You become an atheist not by 'not knowing', but by applying reason to the religious phenomenon [sic] that man has created for himself." It is not clear to me whether Mr. Vonk includes the universe, self-replicating life, meaning, love and morality amongst the phenomena which "man has created for himself"...?

Links:
http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5172#5172
http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1817#1817
http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/BlackShadow/1748 (since removed from the Internet by the BCSE - available on request)
http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1819#1819

3. Tim Atkinson

There was very little material on Mr. Atkinson available - no posts in the BCSE forum or BlackShadow group (and only 2 articles marked as being proof-read by him).

However Mr. Atkinson is attributed as the author of one part of a page on the BCSE website - http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/index.php/Main/CreationScienceMovement, in which Mr. Atkinson reports on his visit to the "Genesis Expo" in Portsmouth - a report that was published in the "Freethinker", "The British monthly journal for Atheists, Secularists, Freethinkers, Rationalists and Humanists" (http://www.freethinker.co.uk/). Mr. Atkinson explains that he had no previous knowledge of the creation/evolution controversy, and learnt all he did about it from the Internet. He concludes: "And, more hopefully, I have discovered the National Secular Society, TalkOrigins, and many similar organisations, learning through them of the efforts still being made to turn our supposedly free society into a theocracy."

Ah, a theocracy. Haven't we been here before? (One, two, three, four).

Conclusion

I hope that my readers will understand the point of this article.

The point has not been to launch arguments against atheism, or against any of the statements or positions of the men mentioned above. I am happy to do that, but that is not what this blog is here for.

The point has been to document what kind of membership the BCSE has - whether they are credentialed scientists or educators or not; and so to gather more data for the investigation into whether or not the BCSE is a true scientific body or a grand deception.

We have documented that not one of the five listed proof-readers of the BCSE's website is a scientist or an educator - but that in fact all five are atheists, generally with form in secularist campaigning, to be found on the Richard Dawkins website, etcetera etcetera.

The effect on me of such evidence is that it confirms what I began believing - that the origins debate is about philosophy and religion as much as it is about science. Darwinism is not a neutral scientific fact, based upon empirical observation. It is a religious doctrine, underpinned by unprovable philosophical presuppositions of the atheist variety. That is why its most outspoken adherents are militant atheists. That is why those who don't share materialist assumptions are far more likely to reject it. This materialist agenda is subverting science, and it is time it was exposed.

I do not know whether the men named above are aware of to what extent Darwinism pre-supposes a materialist philosophy. I suppose it is well possible that they have swallowed the viewpoint that materialistic philosophy represents a "neutral" approach to the issues and is the only allowable paradigm within science. On the other hand, they may have a different slant.

Whether they have or not, though, it's becoming clearer and clearer as to what kind of organisation the "religiously neutral" BCSE are. Actually, I don't have a problem with not being "religiously neutral". The idea of religious neutrality is a myth - either we worship God, or we don't: no neutral territory.

What I would like to see is the BCSE becoming more honest - and let the worldviews fight it out, in open debate. It's my belief that the reason why that can't happen, is because then Darwinism can't win. Only if the decks are stacked by insisting on materialism as "neutral" or "science" can Darwinism make its case. And that's not the mark of a winning position.

David Anderson


Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Richard Dawkins - The Plot Thickens!

Readers may remember my parable, "Does Richard Dawkins Exist" ( http://david.dw-perspective.org.uk/does-richard-dawkins-exist.html). So far it's had 1,750 hits and counting.

Towards the end of January, I was sent an MP3 inspired by the parable. I told the author I thought it was brilliant, and encouraged him to publish it.

It's now out there, so here it is: Does Richard Dawkins Exist? A radio interview with Dr. Tommyrot...



Or: http://www.uncommondescent.com/audios/Dawkins_Delusion.wma (Windows Media Audio)

A number have asked - is the interviewer William Hague? I asked this question myself when I listened to the preview... the answer is, "loosely, yes".

And whilst we're on the subject, here are a couple of amusing quotes I received from the proprietor of a website devoted to G. K. Chesterton:

I liked your "parable" on Richard Dawkins! You might like to take a look at my G.K.Chesterton page. I found a couple of relevant quotes:

"The atheist told me so pompously that he did not believe there was any God; and there were moments when I did not even believe there was any atheist."
-- Autobiography

"A man wrote to say that he accepted nothing but Solipsism, and added that he had often wondered it was not a more common philosophy. Now Solipsism simply means that a man believes in his own existence, but not in anybody or anything else. And it never struck this simple sophist, that if his philosophy was true, there obviously were no other philosophers to profess it."
--St Thomas Aquinas

Meanwhile, for the right combination of words, the summit of Mount Google has now been reached...


We're not quite there for "Dawkins" yet - still languishing in the 20s... so come on, give us a link! :-)

David Anderson

What is the BCSE's competency, exactly?

We already know that the "British Centre for Science Education" don't have credentials that would allow them to speak with any kind of authority about science education (one, two, three). But just what is their specialist area of knowledge? Again, despite their large output on religious questions, it's certainly not this either (one, two).

In recent days I received an e-mail from a creationist scientist, who had some comments to make on what he had seen on the BCSE's website. I thought that the e-mail made so many telling points about the BCSE's lack of knowledge of the things it seeks to critique, and about the quality of the BCSE's research, that I asked him for permission to publish it.

My correspondent is a qualified scientist and a fellow of the relevant society, and has published a good deal of material. Or in other words, he knows what he is talking about.

Here it is:

Hi David,

I thought you might want to capture Roger Stanyard's latest post on the BCSE forum before it disappears - because it's just possible that it will be deleted once his friends realise how off-the-wall it is!

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=717

Roger's stated aim in his posted article is to describe "intelligent design theory" for the general public as they browse the BCSE website. As we've come to expect from the BCSE, the errors and misrepresentations are numerous - so much so that it's difficult to know where to begin putting it right - but Roger manages to make this contribution even more hilarious than usual. Here are just a few things that immediately spring out:

1) It's only a draft, I know, but Roger's English grammar and spelling are extremely poor - ironically something that the BCSE used to claim was a characteristic of those poorly-educated "fundies". This suggests that the article was written in a hurry with little attention to accuracy or detail - surprise!

(David comments: My correspondent is referring to some of Mr. Stanyard's mocking words on the BCSE's now hidden "Rough Guide To Fundamentalism" page, which I have covered in previous posts: one, two, three. I have not drawn attention to this myself as I have had it suggested to me by someone else who noticed Mr. Stanyard's consistently poor spelling that he has a mild form of dyslexia - but his hypocrisy in abusing others (as he does on the afore-mentioned page) for the same fault is blameworthy and justifies the mention of this).

2) Roger repeats the standard nonsense about creationists believing in the separate creation of individual species - but, as informed creationists point out ad nauseam in articles and talks, the diversification of species within the created kinds is an integral part of the creationist model of the history of life. A cursory browsing of any major creationist website (AiG, CMI, BCS, etc) would have revealed that inconvenient fact to Roger.

3) One claim (presented by Roger as a creationist belief) is truly bizarre: "existing species suddenly start producing offsprings of a completely different species and then, after a short while, revert to back breeding their own species. So hippos suddenly start giving birth to whales or tigers to lions or foxes to wolves. Or dinosaur eggs suddenly start hatching into mammals or birds." It's difficult to imagine where Roger could have picked up such an extraordinary notion - perhaps he's confusing creationist views with the evolutionary "hopeful monster" theory of Goldschmidt? It's certainly not from any creationist literature I've ever read.

4) He says of creationists: "The majority believe that all life was zapped into existence on a single day, within a few hours, 6,000 years ago." On a single day? You'd think the term "six-day creationist" would be a giveaway even to the BCSE!

5) Roger seems to think that God individually created species such as mammoths, tigers, lions, sabre-tooths, etc from the very beginning. In fact, creationists regard these species as having arisen by the diversification of the created kinds after the Flood. For example, lions and tigers are varieties of cat probably descended from an ancestral pair of cats taken on the ark.

6) And then Roger makes another bizarre claim that he attributes to creationists: "And all of these creatures would be sterile and incapable of breeding...They would never have any young. None of the birds would produce eggs, raise chicks or eat insects." Now why on earth would creationists believe such an odd thing? Roger has the answer: "That’s because, in the opinion of the proponents of Intelligent Design, the bible says so." I wonder, then, what he makes of Genesis 1:22?

7) After all this, Roger has the brass-neck to say that "intelligent design" is "a seriously bent scam", "an insult to religion", "devoid of even basic common-sense and honesty" and promoted by those who are "deliberately deceptive, evasive and completely dishonest. They lie, out of necessity, repeatedly and habitually to promote their beliefs." He concludes: "If you believe in Intelligent Design, you have been had and therefore a mug." Reading this extraordinary article, the words "pot", "kettle" and "black" come to mind.

Now, of course, Roger has only offered this as a "draft" for "feedback". But it's embarrassingly bad even for a first draft. As a piece of "research" or even a critical summary it's shambolic. If a creationist author had submitted an article of equivalent quality to our journal, (snip), I'd reject it immediately. Not that any of Roger's colleagues have so far managed to point out these failings to him. So far they've advised him to use a spell-checker, suggested that he's really describing creationism rather than ID, asked him to qualify his use of the word evangelical, and invited him to take into account the fact that there is a Muslim creationist movement - but the blindingly obvious mistakes, errors and misrepresentations have gone completely unremarked! It suggests that Roger and his friends in the BCSE actually know next-door to nothing about the very movement they are seeking to criticize - which hardly inspires confidence in their campaign!

I hope this might spark some useful thoughts for your blog.

David's comments:

My correspondent is completely correct, but I think that his corrections will be lost on Roger Stanyard. Mr. Stanyard's standard response to the revelations from this blog has been to claim, in effect, that he knows better than his opponents do about their own beliefs. If you try to correct him by explaining what you really believe, he will tell you that you are lying! (This was Stanyard's response to the "Theocracy" series!).

My correspondent was, however, wrong in his suggestion that some member of the BCSE would eventually jump in to point out how embarassingly ignorant Stanyard's understanding of ID and/or creationism were...

David Anderson


Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.