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.

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.

We're Not Anti-Religion, But... (Part 2)

In part one, we introduced the (now hidden) page on the BCSE website "A Rough Guide To Fundamentalism".

In this page, the BCSE explained their understanding of those whose religious views they oppose. This was, of course, in the days before the BCSE decided to present themselves as being a purely scientific, religiously-neutral group ...

... but not in the days before "BCSE Revealed" was taking snap-shots of their website!

Fundamentalism?

Before looking at any of the details of the page, it's worth talking for a bit about the label "fundamentalist" which the BCSE routinely use.

For a "Centre of Science Education" which has no opinions about religion, the BCSE have rather a lot to say about "fundamentalists" and "fundamentalism". The words turn up on 74 and 22 pages respectively:

(http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/index.php/Main/HomePage?action=search&q=fundamentalist)

The BCSE's use of this label, though, clearly marks them out as being driven by an anti-religious agenda. Let me explain what I mean.

What Is A Fundamentalist?

There is a sub-section of Christianity within the American scene that designates itself by the label "fundamentalist".

The origin of this label is from the controversy that arose with the rise of "Liberal Christianity" in the 19th century. Those who believed that "Liberalism" was ditching or re-writing essential Christian doctrines began calling themselves "Fundamentalists" to indicate that they were still holding on to the "fundamentals" of the faith.

However, over time the label became attached to a smaller sub-section of that movement, so that today a "fundamentalist" within the Christian world is a particular type of American Baptist, with a commitment not only to various beliefs shared with other evangelical Christians, but also to others besides which aren't. (For the record, I am not a fundamentalist - I am an evangelical Baptist, though like most Christians I prefer to make the main thing the main thing and just be called a Christian - a disciple of Jesus Christ).

In The United Kingdom

The fundamentalist movement is almost non-existant in the United Kingdom. I do not recall ever coming across a church that belonged to it, though I can remember on a couple of occasions coming across people whose views fitted in pretty well with it. None of the people listed on the BCSE's website that I am aware of agree with the particular distinctives of contemporary fundamentalism.

It is clear, then, that the BCSE are not using the label as it is used within the Christian world.

So, What Are The BCSE Up To?

The other way in which the label fundamentalist is used is by rabid Richard-Dawkins style atheists, to smear any and all religious folk. The idea is that by lumping them all in under the heading "fundamentalist", you start to imagine that there's no difference between Islamic terrorism and any other kind of belief in God.

You can see an example of this somewhat unsubtle line of argument by visiting Dawkins' own website. Scrolling a little way down the front page (http://richarddawkins.net/home), there are some leaflets which the Professor suggests you print off and distribute.

The text of the leaflets: "Imagine No Religion".

The image? The twin towers of the infamous 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks.


A sophisticated intellectual argument, it isn't!

Does anybody wonder why Professor Dawkins didn't write "Imagine No Islam"? Possibly he would then get into trouble for spreading a bigotted stereotype?

Ah well... "Imagine No Religion" it is then - no bigotry or stereotyping there! (?)

Ah well. In case anyone did find that poster an irrefutable argument, here's an equally irrefutable reply.

I would have chosen Mao Zedung who also murdered millions in the cause of atheism, but I didn't suppose his face was so instantly recognisable.

Fundamentalism?

None of those described on the BCSE's pages that I am aware of actually are fundamentalists according to the meaning of that term within the Christian world... and neither are any of them planning to fly aeroplanes into skyscrapers any time soon either as far as I know.

The BCSE are using "fundamentalist" as a religiously-loaded insult. If they cared to describe those they oppose accurately, then many of them would be evangelicals, Pentecostals and/or Baptists.

Using deliberately pejorative (insulting) language to describe those whom you oppose is something of a give-away. Those who feel that they have heavyweight arguments do not need to do that. Re-defining language is the resort of those who know they're in trouble. Let me ask - just why does the defence of Darwinism need to stoop to this kind of level? If the scientific evidence is so good... then why doesn't the BCSE just stick to that? Of course, if you've been reading "BCSE Revealed" long, you'll know the answer (see here).

Add in two further facts...

• It's only Bible-believing Christians that the BCSE uses this pejorative approach to...
• and that it does it so very often...

... and there's only one reasonable conclusion. This isn't your normal group of science educators.

"That's where we need to be - that being a fundamentalist christianis as [sic] socially as acceptable as being a paedophile."

Ian Lowe, BCSE Committee Member, 25th June 2006

http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/BlackShadow/messages/1029 - until the BCSE deleted it. I have a copy for any researchers who would like to verify.

David Anderson


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

We're Not Anti-Religion, But...

Or: Surely The Fellow Doth Protest Too Much?

The BCSE is keen to point out that it is religiously neutral. Very keen. In fact, the front page of their website devotes space to pointing this out.

The BCSE's religious neutrality is also something that the BCSE's leadership point out on its forum. Often.

This apparently needs to be done because that same BCSE's leadership keep coming out with statements which, well, seem just a little anti-religious. I would parody the recurring conversation like this:

Committee member #1: All religious people are idiots! Morons! I hate them! Die!

Forum visitor: Hey! That's the kind of rhetoric that really turns people off. I thought the BCSE was a scientific organisation?

Committee member #1: Don't be silly. I'm not speaking for the BCSE. The BCSE is a single-issue organisation. We don't have any opinions on religion.

Committee member #2: That's right. We've got to pull together in this fight. We all have different positions and are working together with people we disagree with. Personally I hate all religions and would like to remove the toe-nails of those who propagate them with a fork, but that's nothing to do with the BCSE.

Forum visitor: OK......

If you've got time to read that kind of thing, here are a few links:

• http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5192#5192
• http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5308#5308
• http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5427#5427

Well, there was a time back in late summer 2006 when the BCSE was having internal discussions about whether it was going to campaign on an explicitly anti-religious platform or not.

At that time, some parts of the BCSE website looked a bit different. But before I show you those, let's remind ourselves of something Ian Lowe said at around that time:

I don't know if you guys are aware, but large sections of the web get archived, and these older versions of websites can be highly embarrasing when dragged out at just the wrong moment in the future.

(BlackShadow Yahoo Group post 2289, 18th August 2006)

What kind of thing might the BCSE be embarassed by if it were to be dragged out again? Why was Mr. Lowe so worried? We'll see...

But first, a test. I have no idea as to whether the BCSE's website is still configured to block you if you follow links from my blog. But whatever way you can, try to visit this URL: http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/index.php/Main/RoughGuide

What you'll see is that the page exists, but is password protected:


(If you try to visit a page that doesn't exist, you'll just get something like this:)



So what is the content hiding behind that password? Ah....

Back when the BCSE website sported a different colour scheme, a visit to the same location would have brought you this:


Yes, my good readers - the renowned religious scholars at the BCSE were previously offering the public their very own "Rough Guide to Fundamentalism"!

Before they had fully settled on the "we have no opinions on religious matters" position, the BCSE was offering in no uncertain terms their opinions on several matters religious. Before claiming to be religiously neutral, the BCSE was instead spreading its own take on various religious questions.

That's in October 2006 - a whole 3 months ago! The screenshot above was taken the same day that "BCSE Revealed" launched. We might well wonder: "So, you're religiously neutral. Since when, exactly? Is that a new policy?". And for another "making it up as they go along" story, see here.

So, exactly what is written on that page? That's a story that'll have to wait for another time...

Follow this link for part 2.

David Anderson


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