Not even trying to pretend any more...

When the BCSE first launched, it presented itself to the world as a body of scientific educators, taking pains to tell us all that its interest was all to do with science, and not religious at all.

However, I had been tracking the BCSE before its launch, and this was about as convincing as a man with no legs announcing that he was going to be next the Olympic high-jump champion.

We have already many times displayed the evidence that, far from being a religiously neutral bunch of science educators, the BCSE:

• Didn't even have one science educator within its membership.
  
  
• Was led and run by a management consultant who had never worked in the world of science at all.
  
  
• Was dominated by hard-line atheists of Richard Dawkins variety.

Any remaining pretence of being unmotivated by religion was blown away when "BCSE Revealed" exposed a hidden page on the BCSE's website, in which BCSE leader Roger Stanyard laid bare his ignorance and prejudice in all its none-too-attractive glory:

• Part one
• Part two
• Part three
  

Well, nowadays the BCSE hardly bother with the pretence any more. Maybe this is because of what I've blogged a couple of times already: the statistics show that nowadays the BCSE are just a subset of their original founders who talking to themselves, having failed in their attempt to gain a larger membership by covering up their true nature: one, two. So, might as well stop pretending.

Exhibit One

Here's Ian Lowe, BCSE committee member and membership secretary (note too the "Forum Admin" under his name). He'd like to hire a graphic designer, to help him with some atheist activism. Ian doesn't even try to pretend that this is separate from his interest and involvement in the BCSE (which would be hard for him to do, as Ian has never been involved in scientific research), and so asks you to e-mail him at his BCSE e-mail address, ian@bcseweb.org.uk, if you're interested. Possibly Ian wants some help with the "Scottish Atheist Council" (www.scottishatheistcouncil.org.uk), another organisation with a grand sounding name, but for which Lowe himself appears to be the only active member.

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=8644#8644

Exhibit Two

The BCSE's "More about the BCSE" page (http://bcseweb.org.uk/index.php/Main/MoreAboutTheBCSE) page contains various bits of blurb about how the BCSE are a single-issue organisation, with no interest beyond defending Darwinism within schools. e.g.:

"Our strategy is to raise public awareness of the fraudulent science (and lack of science) behind both creationism and intelligent design and the attempts to get both taught as science or in science lessons in publicly funded schools.

...

BSCE has no other agenda that the single issue stated above. ... We are not here to back any one political movement or any one view on religion. ... We do not object to or support religion or atheism. We do not object to the teaching of creationism or intelligent design outside of the science lesson or as non-scientific subjects.

We do not promote any religious or atheistic viewpoint."

Well, anyone who's been following "BCSE Revealed" for any length of time will know just how much that assurance is worth.

Roger Stanyard himself wrote those words; but even he doesn't even try to pretend that he believes them any more. One long-time poster on the BCSE forums opined that too many in his denomination doubted the Darwinian story, and that he would like to do something to combat it:

"A friend who's an elder in a neighbouring Presbyterian church (not a YEC one), has told me that I should raise the issue for debate at the general assembly. Apparently I need only two signatures to do this (1) the clerk of session and (2) another elder."

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9045#9045

Stanyard's reply?

If you care to contact me off-site I can give you a senior name in the Presbyterian Church of Ireland who should be able to help you.

Roger

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9046#9046

That's a bit off-message, isn't it, for someone who pretends that his organisation has no interest in what goes on outside of schools?

Unfortunately for the inquirer, though, as "BCSE Revealed" has been reading his posts over the months, we've noticed that he has rather uncritically swallowed Stanyard's alternative version of Christian history. Stanyard has a habit of taking American atheist/Buddhist activist Lenny Flank's words as if they were unimpeachable truth, and as a result spreads a rather bizarre version of Christian history, according to which the historic doctrines taught by Christ and the apostles, recorded in the Bible, affirmed in the historic church creeds and confessions and so on, in fact only sprung somewhere out of a particularly darkened corner of America in the 19th century. Stanyard refers to all Biblical and apostolic Christianity as "fundamentalism", and tells his followers that a kind of easy-going theological liberalism was the norm.

I've chuckled at this many times, but as the intention of "BCSE Revealed" is simply to document the BCSE's incompetence as science educators rather than to correct their bizarre views on theology and history, I haven't said much about this. But if Mr. Henderson wants to ask his church to affirm the infallibility of evolutionary teaching, he's going to have a bit of an obstacle. The official doctrinal standards of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland say this:

"It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create, or make of nothing, the world, and all things therein whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days; and all very good." (Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 4, Paragraph 1).

"Question 15: What is the work of creation?

Answer: The work of creation is that wherein God did in the beginning, by the word of his power, make of nothing the world, and all things therein, for himself, within the space of six days, and all very good." (Westminster Longer Catechism, question 15)

SECTION III - THE STANDARDS OF THE CHURCH
10. The Word of God as set forth in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments is the only infallible rule of faith and practice, and the supreme standard of the Church.

...

12. The Presbyterian Church in Ireland, as a witness for Christ, has adopted subordinate standards in which is set forth what she understands the Word of God to teach on certain important points of doctrine and worship. These subordinate standards are a testimony for truth and against error, and serve as a bond of union for members of the Church.

13. The Confession of Faith (as approved by the Church of Scotland in her Act of 1647), and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, prepared by the Westminster Assembly of Divines, are the subordinate standards of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.

http://www.presbyterianireland.org/pdfs/The_Code_070124.pdf

These quotations highlight something significant. Christians in past ages were not unfamliar with the teaching that the universe and life within it was a result of purely natural, unguided processes which tooks place over vast periods of time. Before Darwin attempted a biological explanation of how such a thing could be, atheists had spent plenty of time trying to explain away the order, design and magnificence of the universe. And before Darwin, Christians had asserted that the origin of the world and life were supernatural (not natural), the result of divine activity, through definite and distinct divine acts spread over a short period of time. And so, the historic Christian confessions which mention the beginning, all do it in supernatural terms, often mentioning six days, as the doctrinal standards of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, above, do.

The lesson from this is that anyone lurking in the BCSE forums ought to take Stanyard's words with a large barrel-full of salt.

Summing Up

The BCSE's claim to be only interested in what goes on in schools, and to have no interest in what goes on elsewhere, and especially not to be interested in campaigning against Christian churches... not very convincing, is it?

David Anderson



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

You're Off Message! (2)

Last week, I published some research on the BCSE's general membership. As expected, it turns out to be heavily dominated by campaigning atheists, and seriously lacking in credentialed science educators.

http://bcse-revealed..../2007/03/who-are-members-general-membership.html

One of the few vaguely-active members was George Jelliss, about whom I wrote:

"George Jelliss: A prominent member of Leicester Secular Society. Mr. Jelliss maintains the LSS's website. In April 2006 the LSS organised a special outing to demonstrate in support of "Jerry Springer The Opera", a spiteful and gratuitous mockery of everything connected with Christianity. So I think I can tell where they're coming from...

http://www.leicestersecularsociety.org.uk/jstopera.htm"

Giving The Game Away...

Just a few days ago, Mr. Jelliss was involved in another of those "oops - I keep confusing our public stance with what we're really about!" moments which the BCSE apparently have such trouble avoiding.

In a post on the BCSE's forum, Mr. Jelliss discusses a short video on Richard Dawkins' website, involving philosopher Daniel Dennett.

It's not news that the BCSE's membership's favourite websites are those of militant atheists Dawkins and Dennett, but in commending a particular video, take a look at what Jelliss says...

On the Dawkins website currently there is a series of short videos in which Daniel Dennett talks on various Darwinian and religious topics that are well worth listening to:

(snip)

He continues on the need for evolutionists to make more of cartoons and other popular media to get the science across, since that is what our opponents, the creationists and evangelicals, are doing very successfully.
_________________
GPJ

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=7829#7829

Oops! That's a bit off-message! Read that carefully.

He didn't say "our opponents - creationists who seek to promote their ideas within state schools"; he didn't say "our opponents - creationists"; no, he said "our opponents - creationists and evangelicals". And not just "my opponents" - its "our opponents".

Jelliss' thinking is pretty clear. He's in the BCSE to oppose evangelicals; and as a member of the BCSE, his understanding is that his fellow-members are doing the same thing.

Now, unless you're completely new to "BCSE Revealed", you'll know that that's a pretty fair assumption. But the BCSE's members and leaders normally make some kind of attempt to avoid saying so quite so openly - in case either it damages the BCSE's credibility when it seeks to make authoritative public statements about science or education; or in case it scares away any of the "useful idiots" who they'd like to get to support them. Such "useful idiots" allow the BCSE to make the pretence that it is a religiously diverse body from a whole range of views... whilst of course the leadership remains solidly in the hands of campaigning atheists.

("Useful idiot" - "The tone of usage implies that the 'useful idiot' is ignorant of the facts to the extent that they end up unwittingly advancing an adverse cause that they might not otherwise support." - Wikipedia)

An Honest Mistake?

Could it be the case that Mr. Jelliss is a newcomer to the BCSE, and hadn't yet had time to work out what it was really about?

Nope.

Take a peek at the graphic above - Jelliss joined the BCSE's forum on the first full day of its existence (October 7th). That's because Jelliss was a member of "BlackShadow", the BCSE's parent. His first post in the "BlackShadow" Yahoo group was on the 26th of May, 2005 - nearly 2 years ago:

(BlackShadow post 130)

Jelliss has been involved in the BCSE's discussions from the very start. He didn't just turn up in the last week or two. If anyone should know very well what the BCSE's real agenda is, it would be him.

But Why?

George Jelliss

Mr. Jelliss, however, has in previous posts shown that he does not know or understand the first principles of evangelical Christianity. Now, that's something I take no pleasure in at all. I'm a preacher - my role is to teach the Christian faith. And to not understand the basic principles of salvation is the most awful position anyone could be in.

In October 2006, amongst other things Jelliss wrote: "However, Luther said that while everyone should do their best in whatever role they were allotted in life, only God could judge. This was known as "justification by faith alone"." (http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=52).

On a purely historical and cultural level, it is a tragedy that someone could be approaching 20 years old, let alone approaching 70, without understand the fundamental principles of the most significant and far-reaching event in world history, religion, politics and culture in the last millennium, namely the Protestant Reformation, at the heart of which was the doctrine of "justification by faith alone". But when the matter of which one is ignorant is of eternal consequence, it is infinitely more so.

The principle of "justification by faith alone" has nothing to do with and is almost the opposite to the outline which Mr. Jelliss describes above. Let me explain.

• God is our Creator. In him we live, move and have our being. We owe everything to him. He has set the bounds on our lives, their beginning and their end.
  
  
• As such, we owe to God worship, honour and glory. He is before all things; we depend upon him. He made us, and gives us life and breath each day. He is worthy of uninterrupted loving obedience.
  
  
• But, none of us has given to God this obedience. Our race is fallen, and we are corrupt. Our first parents rebelled against God. Every day we prove this to be so, as corruption comes out of our hearts. There is much in human life that is dignified, and admirable; all of which God designed; but there is also continual corruption and uncleanness and rebellion, which the Bible calls "sin".
  
  
• As such, we all stand in a position of condemnation before God. He is the righteous judge of the universe, whether we rebel or not. He will judge us. But the verdict is already known - we are condemned.
  
  
• But God, who is full of mercy and kindness, has done something unspeakably wonderful to rescue us from this predicament. He himself came to earth, in the person of his Son, Jesus. Born of a virgin and so not inheriting the corruption that is common to humankind, Jesus lived out the perfectly righteous life that we all owe to God.
  
  
• Much more than that, when Jesus died on the cross, he offered up to his Father a sacrifice, an offering, for sinners. He willingly offered himself up to endure the wrath of God, paying the price which infinite justice demanded - a price which we can only pay through an eternity in hell.
  
  
• The good news of the Christian message - which is known as "justification by faith alone" is that we may freely receive the benefit of what Jesus has done. That is:
  
  
  1. We may be "justified". The Greek and Hebrew words translated "justified" in the Bible work like the English one - to be "justified" is the opposite of to be "condemned". It is for God to declare that he is fully satisfied with us, and completely accepts us. Instead of condemning us, he announces that we have fulfilled all of his requirements.
     
     
  2. But justification is not by "works" - it is not by doing the right thing. We cannot do this; we have already failed to. Our works are corrupt in God's eyes. But instead, we may be justified because God accepts Jesus in our place. He sees Jesus' perfection - and counts it as ours. He sees Jesus' death - and accepts it on our behalf.
     
     
  3. How do we receive this free gift? Simply by trusting. "Faith" in the Christian message is something quite simple. It means to firstly understand the good news about Jesus, then to accept it as true, and then to trust oneself wholly to Jesus himself. This is faith - to rely upon him for acceptance with God, and not on anything else. When we have trusted in Christ, we now belong to the family of God: we are justified.
     
     
• Justification is by "faith alone", because nothing else plays a part in our acceptance with God. We cannot contribute anything - Christ contributes all. Therefore the only thing of any use for getting us "right with God" is to rely on Christ - alone.
  
  Read more: "Two ways to live: the choice we all face": http://www.matthiasmedia.com.au/2wtl/
  
  

James White, PhD: "The God Who Justifies"

The best full-length treatment of the doctrine of "justification by faith alone" currently available. Reliable, informed, readable.

Get it from Amazon




That is the great doctrine of justification by faith alone. I have staked my eternity on it - but it is no gamble. It is the truth of God, written in the Bible. It is proved by Jesus' resurrection from the dead. It was re-discovered in the Bible by Luther after many centuries of lying dormant during the Protestant Reformation. It has been tried and tested by millions of people from the nations of the whole world. Its effects on the societies and cultures it has touched have been phenomenal. It is the most precious truth in all the world. Jesus Christ loves us, and offers us a free pardon. So why not trust in him?

David Anderson



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

Inflating Your Credentials (Part 1)

There have been a few interesting and revealing changes to the BCSE website of late, and I hope to say a few things about them at a later stage.

Today, though, I want to begin talking about the subject of inflated credentials. If you want to be taken seriously by people from beyond your own sphere, it's pretty fatal to be caught inflating your credentials.

As such, the BCSE is very interested in trying to persuade the public that those who question Darwin do so on insufficient credentials. The BCSE's researcher Roger Stanyard takes this to rather extreme lengths. Whereas the BCSE claims to be devoted to the single issue of what goes on in state school science lessons, a quick browse around the BCSE's website shows that he appears to have something of an obsession with looking into where the UK's evangelical pastors got their degrees from, and whether they're of the standard they ought to be.

Prejudice And Absurdity

Sometimes this leads Mr. Stanyard into quite absurd statements. Here is one on its page about "London Theological Seminary":

"BCSE is in no position to comment on how high the standard of training given is. However, LTS’s web site says that some of its students have had no formal qualifications at all. That ranks it very low indeed. The web site states that “the examination system with its attendant emphasis on diplomas and degrees has been rejected. If the threat of examinations is what keeps a man diligent in his studies, it may certainly be questioned whether he has been called of the Lord. The same thing applies if his supreme aim is the possession of some qualification.” Clearly exams and qualifications are of no concern to this educational institution.

...

It seems astonishing that in the first decade of the 21st century the LTS trains some people who then walk into the word of responsibility with no formal, recognised, qualifications at all."

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/.../LondonTheologicalSeminary

This may all be "clear" to a hard-line materialist like Mr. Stanyard, but I think it'll be somewhat less convincing to those without his anti-evangelical agenda!

The qualifications which a God-honouring church will recognise will be that a man is well-taught, able to teach, and personally godly. These things are laid down in the Bible. Whether this is best achieved by having formal academic training with a validated degree from a recognised university (which I have - BA, University of Glamorgan), or by on-the-job training supervised within the local church, or by any combination of different options in between, is a matter of debate and to some extent a matter of personal preference.

But that's not so Mr. Stanyard and the BCSE - apparently these atheists have determined that unless you have a formal academic training with a validated degree, then you are some kind of charlatan. They have settled once and for all for us what is a proper training to be a pastor and preacher - so we don't need to discuss it any more.

One wonders at just what point Mr. Stanyard and/or his fellow atheists at the BCSE became authorities on theological education. Of course, one also wonders the larger point - just what kind of organisation is the BCSE really that it takes it into its hands to comment on such matters anyway? What's this got to do with it?

I'll also pass a comment on the BCSE's complaining that LTS apparently takes students without prior qualifications. What Mr. Stanyard is (deliberately?) forgetting is that many men who enter the Christian ministry do so as mature men. They might be in their 40s, or their 50s. Their might be many reasons for this. The Christian ministry is not a career - it is a calling from the risen Lord. What qualifications they gained before leaving school at 16 are pretty irrelevant by that stage. As such, Mr. Stanyard's attempt to use this as a grounds on which to smear LTS tells me two things: 1) What Mr. Stanyard real agenda is and 2) How little actual real material he has to carry it out. Why stoop so low unless you really need to?

OK...

I'll pass on from this. Anyone with a passing knowledge of evangelical theology will already know that the BCSE's website is an appalling sink of prejudice and ignorance on related matters. The BCSE could do with a good deal of theological education itself before it says anything more about related matters, much less sets itself up as an authority on the subject.

We have documented such things at length. I bring it up again to show that it's the same old story - the BCSE pretends that its agenda is science - but the the side-track into efforts to discredit Christians keeps taking over the show.

More on that subject: one, two, three, four.

Another Example

I documented another example of the BCSE's attempt to insinuate that those questionning the dogmas of materialism have false credentials in relation to its page on "Creation Ministries International" (CMI).

Here, Mr. Stanyard in listing the names and roles of CMI's staff decided that he would put the word "scientist" in quotation marks every time it was used - just to let you know that in his opinion they're not.



This was despite the fact that if you chose any one of their staff scientists then you'd have someone with more credentials than the BCSE's leadership combined - and even if you looked at their staff who weren't employed as scientists you still found vastly more credentials than the entire BCSE committee put together!

When I pointed out this inconsistency, do you think the BCSE re-named themselves The British Centre for "Science" Education - in case anyone started doubting their strong belief in fairness? ;-)

Read the full story here.

Who's Inflating Their Credentials?

If you live in glass houses, then you ought to be careful about throwing stones.

One wonders if Mr. Stanyard, who is a management consultant, has any sense of irony when he seeks to discover if anyone is inflating their credentials. It is, after all, Mr. Stanyard himself who has written to MPs and newspapers and got himself onto the radio, claiming to speak on behalf of a national centre of science education. One wonders what the phrase "frauduent misrepresentation of your own credentials" would mean if it doesn't cover calling yourself "The British Centre for Science Education" when you don't have a single science educator on-board... ?

A classic case of this is on the BCSE's page about Dr. David Tyler. Anyone who doesn't have an agenda to smear Dr. Tyler will have to admit that his multi-disciplinary expertise is considerable. He has qualifications in education, in science, is a chartered physicist, has been or is a senior lecturer at a UK university in manufacturing systems and in management education, and writes with impressive knowledge across a wide range of subjects. You can read some of his regular writings here: http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php?author=11.

The BCSE, though, obviously feel that their case is a bit weak, so their article on him says very little about this.... the body of it takes the "he-has-never-denied-beating-his-wife" "so-loaded-with-unwarranted-assumptions-it-can't-even-be-refuted" approach, and then concludes with "He is not even a practising scientist. He's in management education." If Mr. Stanyard, a management consultant who's never been a practising scientist and yet who writes to legislators in the name of one ever needs to find out what a hypocrite looks like, then where shall we direct him, folks?

More on that story here.

Where's This Going?

Today I have introduced the subject of inflating your own credentials. The BCSE are rather desperate to suggest that those who question Darwinism are doing so. I say "desperate", because the above examples show that they have felt the need to over-step the line rather a lot in their present attempts to do so. On the other hand, the BCSE itself has been one great exercise in inflated credentials. Do they have no sense of shame in presenting themselves to MPs etc. the way they have done?

As I continue this series, I don't want to carry on talking about the BCSE's allegations. I want to shine the light on the BCSE themselves. Are they being honest about their own credentials? The evidence is pretty damning, and I have it - come back soon!

David Anderson



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

Theocracy: Giving The Game Away

When the BCSE's founders were holding their pre-launch discussions, there was one thing they kept saying. The BCSE's ultimate aim is to save the UK from the threat of a theocracy.

But no, by that they don't mean Islamic Jihadists, or the like. They mean, those people from the local evangelical church. According to the BCSE, the real reason why people disagree with naturalism in its various forms is that it's part of a master-plan to abolish democracy...

In my mind, a somewhat surreal future scene floats before me. It is the year 2156, and the month is October. The people of the UK are gathering together to mark "Roger Stanyard day". They gather round busts of the BCSE's first leader in their town squares. Speeches are given. Toasts are made. The whole country is remembering that momentous day 150 years earlier, when the BCSE launched - and saved democracy! At the time, nobody realised that freedom was under such severe threat. But happily, a few alert Internet atheists spotted the danger - and saved our country! Here in the year 2007 we may presently be remembering evangelical Christian William Wilberforce, and his efforts to abolish the slave trade. But in future years, the world will toast Mr. Roger Stanyard - rabidly anti-evangelical, the saviour of democracy!

OK. That's just a bit ridiculous. But that's the point, isn't it? If the BCSE really are the guardians of our democracy...

Where We've Been

I've shown you plenty of quotes documenting this immense silliness. Here are a couple of reminders. BCSE committee member Timothy Chase:

As for their dishonesty, it runs very deep. When you consider what they are after -- indoctrinating students in science classes with a religio-political ideology intended to establish a theocracy ... well, I don't know what other word to use, I can only describe it as evil. [BlackShadow 1273]

and Chase again, suggesting an alternative name for the BCSE before it had picked its present title:

Science Education Coalition United Regarding Evolution

SECURE

... because we are defending education against the threat posed by creationism and creationist ideology, and both the UK and democracy against the threat of theocracy. The name would draw attention to the threat posed by what it is we are against. [BlackShadow 1506]

The front page of the BCSE's website presently carries words written by Mr. Roger Stanyard, committee member and de facto BCSE leader:

Moreover, the [creationist] movement includes extreme political objectives, one of which is the replacement of democracy with a theocracy based on its extreme religious opinions.

I have been documenting the BCSE's position on these issues - and the fairly obvious contradictions between such political/religious statements and the BCSE's statements that it is a non-political and non-religious organisation! For most people, statements like the ones above will be quite sufficient to mark the BCSE out as belonging to the Dawkinsian lunatic fringe of Internet atheism. That's why I blog - to point out who they really are.

Theocracy?

Most of my previous articles on this theme have arisen from a challenge I made to the BCSE - and their attempt to meet it. If those questioning Darwinism in the UK really are aiming for "the replacement of democracy with a theocracy" - if the BCSE isn't telling enormous falsehoods - then why don't they document it for us? Why not show us the evidence? Those listed on the BCSE's "Who is Who" page have produced a great number of books, tapes, leaflets, etc. between them. Please show us we can find this political program reflected!

In response, the BCSE put up a page on its website entitled "Theocracy". In the BCSE forum, its author, Dr. Brian Jordan, confirmed that it was a response to my challenge.

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3210#3210

I then proceeded to analyse the page, quote-by-quote. The main thing that came out was this: the BCSE have no evidence ffor its allegations. In case after case, we found that Dr. Jordan hadn't produced quotes that said anything about the replacement of democracy. He had produced quotes which in some way or other stated the truthfulness of Christianity - or disagreed with secular humanism.

The application to the political sphere, and the inference that therefore Christians ought to rise up against democracy, existed only in Dr. Jordan's head. It provided more evidence again that the main driving force of the BCSE's ideology isn't science, or education - it's to oppose the expression of authentic Christianity.

What's New?

The point of today's article is to point out that the BCSE have now taken a step which gives the game away.

After my series of articles on their "Theocracy" page had ended, they took a significant step. They re-named the page. It is now called: "The Theocratic Tendency".

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/index.php/Main/Theocracy

In that change, we see two significant concessions:

1. They have no evidence
   
   The front page of the BCSE's website continues to allege that the creationist movement in the UK is aiming for "the replacement of democracy with a theocracy".
   
   But where's the evidence? All the BCSE is now offering us is a few quotes in which Christians affirm Christianity - but say precious little about how this affects their political outlook, and nothing at all about any desire for a different system of government.
   
   So - we're back where we started. We have all these allegations from the BCSE - but nothing to back it up.
   
   Or in other words - the BCSE have again been caught out in making vacuous claims. And on issues which are their the reason for their very existence!
   
   
   
2. It Is About Christianity After All
   
   The BCSE now have a web-page (linked from every single page of their site) entitled "The Theocratic Tendency", containing quotes in which Christians affirm various tennets of historic Christianity - the supremacy of God, our duty to worship him, the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and Christ's return as judge at the end of the present age. This is what their page details: Christian doctrine.
   
   The BCSE have now implicitly admitted that these quotes do not explicitly advocate the replacement of democracy. They say next to nothing about politics. But now they have taken a new position - these quotes contain a "theocratic tendency".
   
   Or in other words - orthodox Christianity must be opposed, because its doctrines have theocratic "tendencies".
   
   The problem with evangelical Christianity, according to the BCSE, as that it isn't secular humanism. It doesn't agree that man is self-sufficient. It doesn't agree that man should act independently of God. It doesn't agree that whatever God there may be should be ignored, and all of public life should be carried out on stricitly non-religious principles. It tends towards the idea that man should bow the knee to his maker. Well, blow me down!
   
   To this charge, guv'nor, I, as a Christian must plead "guilty as charged". The Christian faith is indeed, not secular humanism. It has a tremendous amount to say about God, his rule, and our duty to him. All the following are statements which I believe to be true, and fundamental to a right view of the universe and ourselves. And I would love to debate them with anyone - providing that they're willing to admit what they're really debating about, and not do it under the pretence of being scientists or educators. Here are some key assertions of Christianity:
   
   
   • God is indeed God. He rules. Everything is under his authority.
     
     
   • Because God made us, that includes us. We live under his sovereign rule.
     
     
   • Because God made us, we owe him total obedience. The idea of human "freedom" to behave as we please, such that even God cannot forbid us, is atheistic bunk.
     
     
   • God has given everybody a conscience, as a testimony to the truth of these facts. We are unavoidably moral beings. Even atheists, when promoting atheism, usually do so by borrowing the tools of theism, and arguing that this or that religion is morally defective. Try as we might, we cannot get away from the centrality of moral law in the universe which God has made.
     
     Naturalism cannot explain this phenomena. We all act and behave as if morality is an undeniable fact - and when we do that, we testify that God is.
     
     
   • God could have damned us all for our wrong-doing... but instead, he has in mercy set up a kingdom of love - through Jesus Christ. Instead of sending his Son to condemn us, he sent his Son to save. God has now established the kingdom which will never end. This kingdom is the one which is ruled by God's Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is Lord, and rightful ruler of the entire cosmos.
     
     
   • Jesus Christ will one day judge both the living and the dead. God has proven this fact by raising him from the dead. (Yes, I know that in the news today a film-maker claims to have proved this false ... but please take the time to notice the contradictions between this year's new conspiracy theory and last year's... they can't both be true... and if this year's is true, next year's, which will also be contradictory, isn't...). Those who refuse God's offer of mercy and determine instead to continue in rebellion against their maker and against his Son's rule can only hope for eternal justice - which means eternal damnation.
     
     
   • The final rule of Jesus Christ is not yet established. It is established in principle - he is at the right hand of God. It is being established in practice gradually and inwardly, as people are persuaded to receive his gracious offer of free and full forgiveness for all of our wrong-doing and rebellion - and as their lives are changed into lives of love by his Holy Spirit.
     
     
   • The final outward form of Jesus' kingdom will indeed be outward, and total. It will be a theocracy! But that final outward form is explicitly not to be established by his followers using politics or any other outward means. It is not to be established until Christ himself returns and establishes it by his own power - not ours. Only prayer and persuasion - and these only - are our legitimate tools today. Christianity is radically different from Islam. Over 3,000 years ago the Israelite prophets prophesied that the nations of the world would come to worship the God of Israel, because of the coming Messiah. Today, the Christian message is spreading throughout the world, and people out of all countries are worshipping the God who first revealed himself to Israel - because of Jesus Christ. Coincedence? I think not!
     

Doesn't that sound like a "theocratic tendency" to you? Of course. Because God rules, whether we let him or not. Newsflash: Christianity is not secular humanism! For a time, God allows us to rebel - but he has set limits on that time. During that time, he opens wide his arms, and lovingly offers us a totally free pardon. What love! What kindness! He has been offended - but offers us grace. He, 2000 years ago, gave his own Son to the death of the cross, to bear the sentence the offence deserved, so that we can go free. We deserve damnation - but are offered freedom. But make no mistake - if we determine not to go free, his rule will remain.

This is orthodox Christianity. This is what you will find if you read the words of Jesus in the Bible. This is what you will find taught by the apostles in the New Testament. This is the consistent perspective of the Bible. This is what is affirmed in the historic creeds and confessions of the Christian church. This is Christianity. It is true. Millions of true Christians have relied upon it, and found Jesus Christ to be a wonderful friend - and a mighty Saviour.

The BCSE don't like it. It's not the secular humanism which they arrogantly insist everyone must conform to. They call it "the theocratic tendency".

But now they do that full-well knowing that their problem is not about "the replacement of democracy". Now, they do it full-well knowing that it is about their own resistance Jesus Christ. They oppose Christianity, because its tendency to teach that man is not the ultimate ruler - God is. They oppose Christianity, because it teaches that humanism is a false religious system that leads to misery and damnation. They oppose Christianity, because it teaches that however much we rebel against him, God still rules.

The mask has come off... the game has been given away.

I hope that the BCSE will be honest enough to stop pretending that their problem is with science. Their problem is with the claims of Jesus Christ. When they've stopped pretending - we can have a proper discussion. I'm all up for it.

David Anderson


I presume that none of my readers imagine that I think the above belongs in state school science lessons. I have to say that, because the BCSE's web-site is full of the following non-sequitor: 1) Mr. X makes scientific criticisms of Darwinism 2) Mr. X also believes certain religious doctrines 3) Therefore, Mr. X thinks that his religious doctrines should be taught in science lessons. Err, no.

BlackShadow posts have been pulled by the BCSE from the Internet. I am able to provide a copy to researchers - e-mail me.

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

Is This A Pork Pie I See Before Me?

Readers who've been with us for a month or so may remember our exposure of the "Rough Guide to Fundamentalism" page on the BCSE website. (Recall that the BCSE do not use "fundamentalism" in its proper sense to describe the movement which actually uses this label - it is their label for evangelical Christianity in general).

This page, now hidden behind a password, well and truly exploded the BCSE's claims that it was religiously neutral.

If you want to know what the BCSE's leaders really want to tell people about Bible Christianity (and were telling the public for some time), you should read our three articles:

1. http://bcse.../2007/01/were-not-anti-religion-but.html
2. http://bcse.../2007/01/were-not-anti-religion-but-part-2.html
3. http://bcse.../2007/01/were-not-anti-religion-but-part-3.html
   

This investigation also gave us some more data about the quality of BCSE's research. Instead of doing something reasonable like, say, purchasing and reading some of the books written by evangelical Christianity's most respected authors... they decided to trawl the Internet to quote-mine the absolute worst they could find - and then present that to the public as a fair picture. Way to go!

I'm glad they did this though - because it gives the discerning reader a hint as to how the rest of the BCSE's website is constructed.

Why They Took It Down

Why did the BCSE password-protect the offending web-page? (http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/index.php/Main/RoughGuide)

It did so in response to an e-mail from a semi-anonymous member of the public who identified himself only as "Iain", which it received on the 13th of October. He had some comments about the BCSE's website in general. Here is Mr. Roger Stanyard introducing it.

I just got this through my private email. What does everyone think of it! (Grin)

I don't know much about Rushdoony, but I thought the web-site was truly appalling in its tone and disrespect.

I found particularly offensive the page "Rough guide" (to fundies), http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/index.php/Main/RoughGuide where they have deliberately selected postings from the complete lunatic fringe of Christianity, some of them attacking atheists with bad spelling and in one case replete with F words. It also came across at the end as pretty arrogant and anti-American, given the following sentence at the end:

"If you ever want to see an advert to the effect that the average American is seriously stupid, this is it. This is a country at the bottom of the OECD pile when it comes to acceptance of evolution. The web site shows why – it's at the top when it comes to a combination of arrogance and ignorance. Most Americans we have met in life we like and respect. So what's gone wrong?"

One might well counter that if you met the average British yob who hangs around outside shopping precincts and if you look at then says "WOT CHOO F---IN' LOOKIN' AT?" that the average Brit was also seriously stupid. By contrast, most of the fundamentalists I've met have been gracious and humble & would never behave like the lunatics quoted on that page.

On other pages, creationists are described as "Creationuts" etc. This is just as bad as Answers In Genesis, who repeatedly use derogatory language like "Goo-to-you evolution".

If you want to oppose the growth of Young Earth Creationism (and I do), then you must take the moral high ground and behave with proper humility and respect. But if you just indulge in name calling, then you're just as bad as the other side.

Iain

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=402#402

The thread goes on from there. At various points:

• Michael Brass, one of the BCSE committee, brushes aside the entire criticism as a mistake.
  
  
• Another poster (who like Iain disagrees isn't a young earth creationist) says that Iain, having received Mr. Stanyard's reply (which isn't recorded), had forwarded it on to him, that it was "rude and silly" and that Roger needed to "get real".
  
  
• The same poster sought to educate the BCSE on the fact that Rousas Rushdoony is actually dead (six years now!). (For the unitiated, the BCSE's whole premise of operation is that a) Rushdoony was a would-be mass-murderer and b) the bulk of anti-Darwinist activity is traceable back to him. At various times there have been attempts by various individuals in the BCSE forum to point out that a) the BCSE's interpretation of Rushdoony's theology is explicitly rebutted as a mis-construction on the websites which would be the primary sources for anyone making such an investigation and b) Rushdoony was such a fringe figure that the great bulk of evangelicals in the UK will never even have heard of him, let alone been influenced by him. Such attempts have turned out to be quite futile though. That's as we might expect... if this thesis is bunk, then the BCSE's whole raison d'etre falls apart - and that's a whole lot of pride that would have to be swallowed).
  
  
• Iain himself turns up, having been informed that Mr. Stanyard was publishing his private e-mails without permission (he describes himself as "incensed"). Here is a partial extract:
  
  "Then unfortunately I clicked on the "Rough Guide" link which displays examples of the most lunatic fringe of fundamentalist American society, and I sent back my impressions (displayed above) to ASA with a CC: to Roger's email, which Michael had put in his original post. I had genuinely (and I see now naively) believed that the BCSE were interested in feedback, and that negative feedback would be listened to. Instead, I got a silly and rude reply from Roger. Later Michael informed me that my feedback had been posted on this forum."
  
  and later on:
  
  "Suppose I pointed him at your website and he clicked on the "Rough Guide" link. How do you, as a Christian, think that would help our discussion? He's going to say "they're just a bunch of bigoted atheists". After the rude reply I got from Roger, I'm inclined to agree! (So does Michael)."
  
  Iain also makes the assertion, as "BCSE Revealed" has done many times, that the BCSE is guilty of "cherry-picking" its data - not a good practice if you want to present yourselves as scientists.
  
  
• Another BCSE committee member, Timothy Chase, also tries to justify the "Rough Guide" page as reasonable.
  
  
• Roger Stanyard says something that anyone who's read his various writings will know is too true - "I don't know much about Rushdoony".
  
  

Eventually, Mr. Stanyard ended the discussion of the page two days later, by saying:

In response to Iain's letter I have password protected the two pages "Enjoy Yourselves" and "Rough Guide" - that means the public can't read then - nor can group members unless they have the password.

I agree with Iain that they probably no longer help our cause.

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=521#521

Summary

Notice, then that Iain criticised the BCSE's web-site in general for being "appalling in its tone and disrespect", and the "Rough Guide" page as being "particularly offensive", a "deliberate" misrepresentation, "arrogant and anti-American", utterly untrue to his experience of "fundamentalists" who have generally been "gracious and humble".

Notice, too, that Mr. Stanyard said that "in response to Iain's letter" he had removed public access to this page (and another), because he "[agreed] with Iain that they probably no longer help our cause".


Bringing This Up To Date

Wind forward a few months. In the mean-time, I have exposed the hidden page, showing the world what the BCSE are really about. This has been picked up across various big blogs on the Internet, and a whole load more people now know more about what the BCSE are about.

On February 11th, on his own blog, Mr. Stanyard put up a post justifying the contents of the page. My guess (and that of a correspondent in my mailbox) is that the material that goes on Mr. Stanyard's own blog is the stuff that the BCSE veto as too obviously extreme or indefensible - but you can read it and make up your own mind on that.

In this post, Mr. Stanyard tries to justify his article as being accurate, and if anything, not going far enough. Here's a sample:

When I put together the wiki list for BCSE I stated the following:

"Most of the information for this article has come from the web site Fundies Say the Darndest Things (http://www.fstdt.com). The site has a vast number of quotes from fundamentalists, nearly all of them in North America. It presents a picture of 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."

I stick by my statement that this is what much of the American fundamentalist movement appears to be. ... In fact, though, the position is actually worse than this.

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-679QwMkib6enGIsUE2Z09ARZQczZ

The bit I'm really interested in, though, is further down the same article, where Stanyard seeks to explain why the BCSE pulled the page. Read it carefully:

For what it is worth, BCSE's wiki page of quotes was pulled for two main reasons. The first was that no one in the UK would believe that American fundamentalists are so extreme. Nor would they understand such things as Rapture Ready. Secondly, the quotes are so numerous and frequent that we couldn't find the time to select the best for our wiki.

Notice what Stanyard says. There were two main reasons why the page was pulled. They are as follows:

1. Though its contents were fair and true, they would be hard for UK readers to believe.
   
   
2. There were too many quotes to be able to find the time to select the best ones.

Can you believe your eyes? Mr. Stanyard really must think that the BCSE can say whatever it likes, and expect people to believe it. Even when the evidence proving the opposite is on the Internet for everyone to see. Truly, that takes some gumption...

I remind my readers again that the comments are open. If there is some way in which the above statements can be harmonised, then we're all ears! Seems like a bit of a task though... there's not much correspondence between saying that you have taken down the page "in response" to a critic who says that it's an obvious piece of extreme anti-religious bigotry, and saying that you have taken down the page because it didn't go far enough.

I think that it's pretty clear that the BCSE's leaders have once again been revealed telling pork pies... don't you?

The other point here is that the BCSE's main de facto leader and researcher has now stated on his blog that he completely stands behinds the contents of the page. Will the rest of the BCSE move a finger to contradict him? Can we, after all, take this anti-religion rant as being the BCSE's official position? I expect the silence to be deafening...

Conclusion

The BCSE's credibility is shot. It can only begin to think about recovering it if it dispenses with its entire leadership, issues a full and formal public apology for its many gross misdemeanors, and starts over again with a new website and wiki. (We note that the BCSE did nothing about Iain's larger complaint - the general obvious anti-Christian prejudice of its website). But the BCSE can't do that, because Mr. Roger Stanyard basically is the BCSE. Get rid of him, and the BCSE would not be.

David Anderson



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

You're Off-Message!

The BCSE has a page on Dr. David Tyler, a chartered physicist, member of the Institute of Physics and with a further qualification in education, senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University and centre manager at the "Hollings Faculty for food, clothing & hospitality management". Going from that description alone, Dr. Tyler is clearly a man with multi-disciplinary expertise. Of course, the BCSE "researcher" ignores these obvious multi-disciplinary skills, and merely announces ipse dixit that he is unqualified to discuss any subject outside of physics.... but we'll leave that aside.

What I want to point out is that the final line on the BCSE's page disappeared on the 10^th of February.

Presently, it looks like this:

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/index.php/Main/DavidTyler

(Yes, that last bit you can see is indeed a complaint from Mr. Roger Stanyard, management consultant, complaining that those involved in management education aren't qualified to speak about evolution...Yes, I know, I know... Mr. Kettle, the Pot is on line one - something about being black?)

Before the 10^th of February, it looked like this, with the extra line having been there for about five months:

"Welcome to the unreal fantasy world of protestant evangelical fundamentalism."

Oops! That's a bit off-message, isn't it? Aren't the BCSE meant to be a religiously neutral organisation? Whatever are they doing pronouncing a verdict on evangelicalism? They don't have religious opinions! Seems like Mr. Stanyard forgot his own propaganda when he wrote that bit...

The BCSE's home page. Oh really?
Why's there smoke coming out of your trousers?

The BCSE must think that we're pretty dim. Apparently they imagine that removing single lines like this makes it somehow less obvious that they loathe Bible Christianity and wish whenever possible to belittle it. As if that wasn't made pretty clear on nearly every page! The message isn't exactly subtle...

Or as we might say:

Welcome to the unreal fantasy world of unqualified campaigning Christ-haters masquerading as centres for science education...

David Anderson



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

The BCSE And The Recycling Of Anti-Christian Mythology

A great deal of the content on "BCSE Revealed" over the last few weeks has been to do with religion. This is because a great deal of the BCSE's discussions and output are religious or quasi-religious - protestations of "religious neutrality" aside.

I suspect that some of BCSE members are simply philosophically naive - they really do imagine that a hard materialist approach to science is "neutral" or "value free". For others, though, and particularly in the leadership, this is less so - as we've seen in the many quotes in which BCSE leaders explain their motivations quite explicitly (see labels "atheism" and "deception" for more).

Today's Article

In today's article I want to talk about the question - "Is the earth flat?".

Hmmm....

The fact that the earth is not flat has been known for over 2,500 years. In fact, in 276BC, one astronomer (Eritosthenes) made a calculation of the size of the earth, to within an impressive degree of accuracy (either within ½% or 17% of the modern value, depending on the question of how his units translate to modern ones).

And contrary to modern mythology, nobody tried to dissuade Christopher Columbus from travelling round the world because of the danger of falling off the end. Columbus' critics and Columbus both acknowledged that the earth is spherical - but protested that the world was too big for him to reach his intended destination by sailing west. As one author writes, " The common impression that Columbus proved that the world is round is completely destroyed when one realizes that he probably never sailed farther west than Cuba, falling far short of circumnavigating the earth." (http://www.creationresearch.org/creation_matters/97/cm9711.html)

That the earth is not a flat piece of land is also implied in the Bible. Indeed the book which may be the very oldest book in the Bible states that the earth is suspended in space:

[God] stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing.

Job 26:7 - http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%2026:7&version=50

(Aside - skip if you like...

Some critics allege that the phrase "four corners of the earth" in Revelation 7:1 implies that the earth is a square. This isn't very convincing - modern people regularly use this expression, without implying any such thing. One writer says, "Actually, the reference is to the cardinal directions: north, south, east, and west. Similar terminology is often used today when we speak of the sun's rising and setting, even though the earth, not the sun, is doing the moving. Bible writers used the "language of appearance," just as people always have. Without it, the intended message would be awkward at best and probably not understood clearly." (http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/3842#6)

My own understanding of the book of Revelation gives a much simpler answer, but the correct intepretation of Revelation is probably a bit beyond the scope of this blog... e-mail me if you're interested!)

But...

Despite these facts, though, it is a staple of atheist propaganda to allege that:

• "The Bible teaches a flat earth", and/or that
• "denial of Darwinism is akin to believing in a flat earth!".

Constant repetition of these myths leads to many accepting them at face value. But as we have already seen, knowledge of the earth's true shape is very ancient - and never contradicted by the Bible. Where, then did the "flat earth" myth first originate?

In fact, this myth ought to have been "dead and buried" a long time ago, because in 1991 Jeffrey Burton Russell published the authoritative work, "Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians", answering just this question.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Inventing-Flat-Earth-Columbus-Historians/dp/027595904X/

Publisher's Synopsis:

Neither Christopher Columbus nor his contemporaries thought the earth was flat. Yet this curious illusion persists today, firmly established with the help of the media, textbooks, teachers, and even noted historians. This is Russell's attempt to set the record straight. He begins with a discussion of geographical knowledge in the Middle Ages, examining what Columbus and his contemporaries actually did believe, and then moves to a look at how the error was first propagated in the 1820s and 1830s and then "snowballed" to outrageous proportions by the late 19th-century. Russell also discusses why we allow this error to persist. Do we prefer to languish in a comfortable and familiar error rather than discover the truth?

Notice just when the error really began to accelerate - the late 19th century. Why was that? One creationist writer explains:

"The two people that Russell holds most accountable in accomplishing this are John W. Draper and Andrew Dickson White. While not indicating any sympathy with creationists, Russell very convincingly argues that the motivation of these two men and others was to demonstrate how foolish Christian leaders were to oppose evolution. The masterful lie was that earlier church leaders had also opposed the belief in the spherical earth, despite overwhelming evidence for it. By linking the earlier fictional event to the debate of the time, it gave the appearance that science, reason, and logic were on the side of evolution. The truly sad thing is that this totally fabricated history persists even today, as evidenced by the oft-stated comparison of creationists with flat-earthers. Given the exposure of the truth, it is nothing short of shameful when our critics attempt to tie that albatross around our necks." (http://www.creationresearch.org/creation_matters/97/cm9711.html)

Did you get that? The real reason why the "flat earth" myth persists is because of a deliberate and deceitful effort by Darwinists to propagate it in order to discredit Christians. The truth about the earth was known and accepted - until Darwinists set off on an anti-Christian propaganda campaign to muddy the waters.

... and the BCSE

Of course, you know where we're going next, don't you? Where else do we find the "flat earth" myth, that staple of atheistic propaganda, being peddled - but on the BCSE's website and in its forums?

Exhibit A: Here's the BCSE's "For Teachers" page, written by Dr. Peter Hess of the American NCSE:

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/index.php/Main/ForTeachers

Exhibit B: Here's George Jelliss, BCSE member, atheist and member of the Leicester Secular Society:

"The so-called intelligent design theory should not be taught in biology lessons for the same reason that the flat earth theory is not taught in geography and the earth-centred universe theory is not taught in astronomy, and the phlogiston theory is not taught in chemistry, and the caloric theory of heat is not taught in physics."

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=364#364

Exhibit C: One (anonymous) BCSE sympathiser wasn't satisfied with this, but takes it a step further - questionning of evolution is not only like flat-earthism, but Holocaust denial!

What is remarkable is that in our own time even the fact of evolution is vociferously denied by a Luddite minority. Intellectually (though not morally comparable), this to me seems akin to Holocaust deniers, or flat earthers.

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3153#3153

When one considers the Darwinian basis to the theory of eugenics which inspired the Holocaust, such ignorance is truly amazing.

This quote provoked Roger Stanyard to produce one of the trademark tirades which followers of the BCSE forum will be familiar with. This ties in with our demonstration last week of the utter failure of the BCSE to provide anything even resembling documentation or proof of its various bizarre claims about Christianity and theocracy (because, of course, again the documentation from Stanyard is missing):

Hitler looks like a moderate liberal compared with the largest financial backer of the Intelligent Design movement - Howard Ahmanson - he was on the board of the Chalcedon foundation for 25 years and provided it with finance. See our wiki on Rushdoony, the extremist who set it up. He was a close personal friend of Ahmanson as well.

Let's have a look at what Ahmason and Rushdoony have actively promoted -

1. killing children who are lippy or disrespectful to their parents.

2. killing adulterers

3. killing blasphemers

4. killing people who commit idolatory

5. killing women and girls who have sex before marriage.

6. apostacy

7. criticising or disagreeing with their religious opinions.

8. abolution [sic] of democracy.

9. formation of a theocracy (with them in charge)

10. Reintroduction of slavery.

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3283#3283

Maybe we'll say some more of this in other places. There are plenty of quotes floating around the BCSE forum and website where Stanyard and other BCSE members admit that they don't actually have any evidence that Howard Ahmanson is even involved in funding the Intelligent Design movement in the UK (much less in killing people who disagree with him!!), and that their attempt to t ie him in is speculation that they're still trying to find the proof for...

Anywhere, back to the BCSE's promotion of the "flat earth" myth. Here's Louis, a BCSE member, interacting with Ian Lowe (censorship mine!):

Ian,

I agree with what you've said. The one caveat I have is it really depends on HOW IDC is being taught. Like I alluded to above, in a truly comparative comparative religious education class, IDC has a place, as does flat earthism and any quantity of religiously inspired bull****.

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4416#4416

The "the Bible teaches a flat earth" myth was also peddled by another BCSE member and atheist to me in a private e-mail, but I'll spare his blushes. He knows who he is!


Conclusion

I find it quite revealing to note what kind of arguments the BCSE resort to in order to support Darwinism.

If there were compelling answers to the questions which proponents of "intelligent design", creationism" and other theories were putting, then it wouldn't be necessary to resort to straw-men. I have searched high and low, though, and the BCSE website still lacks any kind of interaction with the crucial issues. No credible explanations of why the fossil record supports discontinuity, not Darwinian gradualism. Nothing to tell us why the fossil record shows sudden and not gradual appearance of life. Nothing to explain how life could ever, contrary to all known science, arise out of non-life - and be self-reproducing life too! And so on. The silence, as they say, is deafening.

Even more revealing, though, is just where the BCSE do obtain their straw-men from - the stock cupboard of discredited atheist propaganda.

The lack of knowledge of the BCSE over the issues on which they present themselves to the public and to MPs as experts on is well and truly shown up by this. This is the same picture as we saw in the "alien research" debacle - the BCSE routinely don't even bother to do the smallest amount of homework to check up on how "the other side" rebuts their arguments. It takes a matter of seconds with Google's help to discover the flat earth facts above - yet the BCSE appear totally unaware of them!

Long discredited myths (invented by Darwinists!) are trotted out as a matter of course.

My view is that Darwinism is intellectually a dead horse. Its day is gone. It can still be flogged by those who wish to, but not to any great purpose or effect. The reason why the atheist branch of Darwinism's defenders have to resort to such means is... because that's all they've got left.

David Anderson


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

We're Not Anti-Religion, But... (Part 3)

In the previous parts of this article (one, two), we began revealing a now-hidden page on the BCSE website which blows apart their present claim to be religiously neutral: the BCSE's own "Rough Guide To Fundamentalism". And then we briefly examined the BCSE's use of the term "fundamentalist".

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/index.php/Main/RoughGuide - now passworded

And Now...

Today we will begin looking at this page in a bit more detail. Just what does it say about the BCSE's leaders. Will they prove their reasonableness? Or not?

In previous investigations, we have commented on where the BCSE source their "research" from. In one particularly egregious example, we saw that the BCSE entirely overlooked all the primary sources which pointed in one direction in favour of a single source of another campaigner of their own ilk which said the opposite. Not a great way to prove your own adherence to the principles of science or rationalism.

"Fundamentalism" seems to be the BCSE's pejorative way of referring to Biblical Christianity. What would be the best sources to go for to investigate what Biblical Christians believe?

Well, I am in a different "theological camp" to the following men on some questions, but I have to recognise that they have been the major spokesman and authors in evangelical Christianity in the last fifty years. I would say that the primary sources for investigating what evangelicals in the United Kingdom believe today would be Dr. John Stott, Dr. Jim Packer and Dr. Martyn-Lloyd Jones. Between them these three have written over a hundred books and Bible commentaries, pastored some of the UK's largest evangelical churches, preached at the most popular conferences, and so on. They've even had published their own summaries of Christianity, including "Evangelical Truth" and "What is an Evangelical?", by Dr. Stott, "What is an Evangelical", by Dr. Lloyd-Jones and "Knowing God", by Dr. Packer. At a more academic level, the writings of Dr. David W. Bebbington are most widely recognised as carrying authority.



So, what kind of sources will the BCSE's author (Roger Stanyard) go to in order to inform his readers of the true nature of evangelical Christianity?

But First...

But before we get into that, I want to introduce a certain website.

Some of you may remember that many moons ago in Internet time (about three weeks), I published a parable concerning the arguments employed by Professor Richard Dawkins in his own anti-religious campaigning. (Incidentally, that parable now appears around 30th if you Google for "Dawkins" - if you'd like to see it rise even higher, please blog it or link it from whatever websites you have!).

This parable has been viewed around 1,200 times so far - and had all kinds of response over the Internet. There was one response, though, that made me laugh out loud.

That response came from a website called "Fundies Say The Darndest Things" (FSTDT). This was not a website I had visited before. The idea of this site seems to be that people submit silly quotations from "fundies", and then everybody else gets to post their own comments on them. I assume that the users of this kind of web-site have more spare time than I do!


Well, somebody picked up the first paragraph from my parable - and posted it to "FSTDT". And then the responses came in.

What kind of response did the parable get? This: The readers of "FSTDT" took it completely literally. What kind of idiot could really believe that Richard Dawkins doesn't exist, they wondered? Look, it's really easy to prove! And so some of the commenters started providing counter-arguments to refute me. Here are a few samples:

"A birth certificate and a number in the census is enough."

"Go to his website and see him in action."

"go see richard dawkins speak, or watch him on tv"

"What an idiotic comparison. For one, Richard Dawkins does not claim to be an invisible being in whom you have to have faith. There are ACTUAL pictures of him. There are recently published books written by him. There is no way of verifying that an ancient tome was written by someone nobody has ever seen or spoken to. Crazy people and people in myths don't count."

Most of the comments, though, are from people who are obviously seriously angry about any mention of God or religion - and presumably hang out at "FSTDT" in order to vent that anger at those darned "fundies". Most responses are simply rants. I don't recommend you visit the page, as it's full of foul or crude language - but if you want to verify my quotes, here it is: http://www.fstdt.com/comments.asp?id=19327

It wasn't until the twenty-second comment that somebody pointed out that FSTDT's readers weren't quite grasping how to interpret my piece:

He obviously isn't serious. His write up is a parable warning of hyper-sceptism.

My other two favourite responses were these.

"If there is a Dawkins, why hasn't he shown himself to me?"

Because you failed the entrance requirements for the university where he lectures.

I did? Bother. I hate entrance exams! Still, they let me in anyway and I enjoyed my time there enormously. (I never met Professor Dawkins though).

And finally this one:

The fact that the book exists should be proof that Richard Dawkins exists as someone had to write it.

Brilliant! This one made me laugh out loud. Now, please complete the following sentence:

The fact that the universe exists should be proof that ... ?

My overall impression of "FSTDT", based upon the inability to understand the concepts of metaphor, parody or parable, and the level of abuse, was that it is basically populated by angry adolescents. Teenagers who had trouble parsing non-literal language, and with a lot of dislike of Christianity that they want to express.

Which Brings Me To...

But what's the point, David, you say? Here it is. Guess what Roger Stanyard writes at the bottom of page of "research"? Guess what his major source for showing us just what evangelical Christianity is, was? Oh yes...

Most of the information for this article has come from the web site Fundies Say the Darndest Things (http://www.fstdt.com). The site has a vast number of quotes from fundamentalists, nearly all of them in North America. It presents a picture of 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.

Much of it reads like something out of Germany in the 1930s. A lot of the stuff in it I couldn’t reproduce on my own blog because it is so extreme and offensive. With this evidence it is impossible for me to conclude otherwise than that the protestant evangelical fundamentalist movement is not a benign movement at all. Much of it is dangerous, obnoxious and vile.

Yes, my good readers. Mr. Stanyard's main source for his quality research is... a collection of angry adolescents.

My own personal library has over a thousand books by evangelical authors. And not one of them bears the slightest resemblance to anything that Mr. Stanyard writes above. But I suppose that you knew that.

And I suppose that Mr. Stanyard knew that too... which is why he doesn't go anywhere near them, lest they spoil the yarn he's trying to spin.

Frankly, I take the fact that Mr. Stanyard has to stoop to this level as a pretty good sign. After all, if that's how far you have to go to make evangelicalism look bad, then ... ?

Bringing This To A Conclusion

This isn't credible research, is it?

Rather, it is the same picture we've seen many times before - the BCSE cherry-picking the most unlikely sources, then distorting them, and then presenting them to the public as solid facts.

This isn't the way to make yourself seem credible. Isn't it rather the way to make yourself seem ignorant, prejudiced and bigotted?

In my opinion, this kind of thing is why present Darwinists of the campaigning atheist variety are on the road to losing the origins debate in the public mind. In the short term, you can create a lot of smoke and gather a raging mob of supporters by shouting about how some alternative theories are all promoted by "movement[s] of pig-ignorant inarticulate bigots, racists, xenophobes, anti-Semites, misogynists, homophobes, rape apologists (etc., etc., etc.)". But in the long term, this kind of extreme ad hominem just makes you look silly. Certainly those who call others "pig-ignorant" or "bigots" need to check just what kind of glass their own houses are constructed from. As supporters of intelligent design and other theories pile up more and more compelling arguments, shrill ad hominem becomes a less and less credible response.

But in my opinion, because of the BCSE's leaders' lack of actual science/educational experience, it was inevitable that this would be what was on offer.

David Anderson


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