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.

Who Are The Members? (General Membership)

OK - back to a bit of research. Don't expect anything earth-shattering here - just the "grunt work" of researching and documenting.

The previous parts of this investigation:

1. Who Are The Members? (Part 1 - in the early days, the BCSE, despite making impressive claims for itself and being willing to make serious allegations about others, were reluctant to reveal the identities of those behind their own claims).
   
   
2. Who Are The Members? (Part 2 - in which I exposed the fraudulent method the BCSE used to claim artificially inflated membership numbers for itself).
   
   
3. Who Are The Members? (Part 3 - in the days before the BCSE had named any of its leadership, I named ten core individuals, documenting their lack of experience in science education, and their credentials as campaigning atheists. When the BCSE eventually named seven leaders, all seven of them turned out to be on the list I had revealed many weeks before).
   
   
4. A Note On The BCSE's Membership (Showing the evidence of the BCSE's failure to attract a broader membership).
   
   
5. Who Are The Members? The Website Editors (In which I revealed the identities of the BCSE website editors - all of are campaigning atheists).
   
   
6. (Also the series on the BCSE's de facto leader, who turns out to have no credentials or experience either in science or education: one, two, follow-up).
   

So far, I have provided evidence in four key areas:

1. The "British Centre for Science Education" is not composed of scientists or educators.
   
   
2. Its leadership contains no science educators at all, no educators at all, and only one scientist (retired). The evidence showed that 9 of its 10 core members were hardline atheists, many with experience in anti-religious campaigning.
   
   
3. This picture is also true amongst its website editors. Five out of five proof-readers are non-science educators who are also campaigning atheists.
   
   
4. The BCSE's attempt to persuade real science educators to lend it support has failed. In order to gain any members, the requirement for a monetary donation had to be dropped.
   

Today I will continue to document details of the BCSE's membership. We have seen that the BCSE does now have a defined membership - even if nothing definite is actually required of its members.

So who cared enough to join? What kind of membership would the BCSE attract? Who will feel drawn to it? Will the country's science educators be forming a queue? Or will it just attract the "usual crowd" of Internet atheists? These are questions which will give us more data - as we seek to document what kind of organisation the BCSE really is.

Gathering The Data

When someone joins the BCSE, they are then marked as a BCSE member in its forums. I think that this is so that forum participants can tell who is who - which is a good thing. Here, for example, is what you see when BCSE website proof-reader John Flemming posts in that forum:

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=52#52

So, for this analysis I decided to count the number of posts made by each and every person marked as a "BCSE Member" - and analyse the results.

Once the BCSE members already listed in previous articles are dropped out, the following names are, in order, the ten members who post most in the BCSE forums. As you can see, some of them are not willing to be publicly identified with the BCSE using their full names - I can understand that!

Dave Oldridge, George Jelliss, "wilmot" = Paula Thomas, "jon_12091", James Rocks, Chris Sergeant, "molecanthro" = Mark Whitten, "psiloiordinary" = Mark Edon, "Gwynne", Steve Denton.

Anybody not on this list of ten has averaged less than one message per week to the forum over the past few months.

Here We Go Again...

So. You know where this is going. How many of these individuals will be Bible-believing Christians? None, of course. How many will be atheists? The majority!

Remember what the point is here. I'm not saying that no atheist has anything to say about science or education. Neither am I saying that they can't be charming or talented people. I don't believe that for a moment. What I am doing is pointing out that the make-up BCSE's membership is too skewed to be anything like a coincedence. Like attracts like - and the kind of membership attracted by the BCSE tells us what we need to know. Here, then, they are:

1. 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
   
   
2. Paula Thomas, a political campaigner.
   
   "As I think is well known I am an atheist."
   
   Responding to a comment from another BCSE member: "... but that arises out of Christianity's complete lack of ability to view women as anything more than baby factories."
   
   http://www.justscience.org.uk/..._parentId=773
   
   
   http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4473#4473
   
   
   
3. James Rocks: Mr. Rocks is the founder of a similar group to the BCSE, "Science Just Science", and (like many of the BCSE's leadership) works in the world of IT. (Which I point out because you might expect that those who write to the press in the name of organisations with "Science" in their titles might, well, be from the world of science!).
   
   "I consider myself to be a militant atheist (I have been referred to as a fundamentalist atheist ...)"
   
   http://justscience.1.forumer.com/a/kyuuketsuki-kent-uk_post7.html
   
   
   
4. Chris Sergeant: Another atheist, describes Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" a piece of "rational science" !
   
   http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5729#5729
   
   
   
5. Steve Denton: Another atheist.
   
   
   http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5367#5367
   
   
6. "Gwynne": An atheist, explains that his reason for joining the BCSE is so that his children aren't influenced by religion.
   
   http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2418#2418
   
   
   
7. Mark Edon: Another atheist. Like BCSE committee members Brian Jordan and Ian Lowe, Mr. Edon signed the infamous petition demanding that the Prime Minister legislate to make any kind of non-atheistic child-rearing illegal:
   
   
   
   http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/freethinking/?showall=1
   
   
8. Mark Whitten ("molecanthro")
   
   Mark is the first BCSE member I have come across who actually has a graduate qualification in a biological discipline. I salute him! (He's only been in Britain a few years and so never attended a British state school... but still!).
   
   Having seen Rod Liddle's recent Channel 4 program "The Trouble With Atheism", Mark labelled it as a "anti-science nonsense". Mark also supports the "brights", a secular humanist group - "A bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview... A bright's worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements... The ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic worldview" (http://www.the-brights.net/).
   
   
   http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=590#590
   http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3909#3909
   http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2161#2161
   

The British Centre for Slandering Evangelicals

One more. Dave Oldridge is a Catholic (not Roman). So he is not an atheist. But the Internet appears to contain gazillions of quotes demonstrating a very deep dislike for evangelical Christianity. So he's very much at home in the BCSE. I won't go into that, as this article is long enough - you can turn up plenty in the BCSE forum along those lines if you want. Oldridge's acceptance by the BCSE does show up the BCSE's hypocrisy: Catholic doctrine is explicitly theocratic - it claims that the church has a head on earth, and that he is the rightful political and temporal ruler of the world. That is of course why the Vatican is a state and has political ambassadors. To those who've followed my series on "Theocracy" and the BCSE's vacuous claims that evangelical Christians are planning to replace democracy, this utter silence on actual theocratic doctrine is another clue. It tells us who and what the BCSE are really opposing.

Conclusion

OK, so that's 8 out of 10 who I was able to identify as being atheists. And generally of the militant variety. Let's throw that into the pot. Of the top ten leaders at launch-time, all the website editors, and the top ten most active members in the forum, there are 20 out of 23 whom I have identified as atheists - and generally of the militant, campaigning variety.

Let's run a similar calculation to one we've run before. The number of atheists in Britian is sometimes estimated at around 10%. Let's be generous, and say 15%. Let's be very generous, and ignore the "militant" factor. Let's do some maths. If you choose 23 people at random, the probability that it just happens that 20 or more would be atheists, is approximately equal to... just under 1 chance in 27 trillion. Or, just under 2 million times less likely than winning the UK's national lottery.

So - is the BCSE's make-up a coincedence? Is their science really independent of their religion? The answer's not hard to work out...

David Anderson



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