Ghosts, God and the Trouble With Ghosthunters.
Right, a quick post today, which will cheekily incorporate in the second half a re-post of some material I posted years ago on this very topic, because let’s face it, no one is going to click on a link to read another entry. Many of you know I have great respect for the sceptic writer/researcher Hayley Stevens, especially as she constantly manages to actually get out there and do real research, and to write more than I can. I put it down to my age – “it’s never how it used to be/what happened to all that energy?” Today Hayley has written an interesting piece on a site for young atheists, skeptics and freethinkers, The Heresy Club. I had to have a nose, despite being neither young, nor as it happens an atheist.
As usual Hayley’s article is excellent, well written and informative, and deals with real issues – an issue I care deeply about, the damage that poor research ethics in amateur ghost groups can do when they are let loose in private houses or even businesses and upset or scare people badly. Now I’m not going to quote Hayley’s article in full, because I want you to go read it for yourself. Do that now. No summary I give would be fair, because she makes several points.
However I am notoriously contrarian (freethinking?) so I’m going to disagree with one fundamental thing Hayley wrote, which is at the heart of the article for me, as an Anglican and a “ghosthunter” of sorts. She writes –
Looking back now, on those early years, I can see that the whole culture surrounding ghost hunting that I became involved with was a mish-mash of religious practices and beliefs that were all geared towards convincing the people involved that their very soul was in danger from evil at all times, and that invisible enemies were around us just waiting for us to mess up so that they could attack us psychically.
Now given in the past I have suggested that ghosthunting groups do sometimes take on the attributes of a religious group, and in fact enjoyed once a great discussion on the phone with Jeff Belanger where we talked about this, I can’t disagree too strongly. However, s always I’m going to raise issues.
Number one is the fact that in the sociology of religion defining what a religion or religious group is really proves difficult. Patriotism, political parties and ideologies, even perhaps scepticism or atheism are defined by some as having the same kind of principles involved, and hence “secular religions”. I don’t mean by this the people who used to turn up to sneer on Richard Dawkin’s forum and say “Atheism is a religion: he is your guru.” I’m talking about serious academic sociologists desperately trying to pin down what defines something as a religious behaviour. I happen to have spent a lot of my life as an academic studying religion: so I’m not going to get sidetracked in to a huge discussion of this, which would bore everyone. However it raises another point, which Alex Gabriel has already highlighted in the comments much better than I ever could! We can clearly see the Roman Catholic Church, or the CofE, or various other religions denominations are “religious” because of what they do and their detailed creeds. Yet those groups inpose really strict behavourial codes and ethical requirements on their members, and while I may claim to be an Anglican, many Anglicans might say “hey CJ you are not – you don’t go to Church enough/have shabby morals/dabble in the occult” or whatever. We know what these groups stand for – they are authoritarian in a real sense, and people who don’t do the “right” things get kicked out, or told they are “bad” members of the group.
Now some religions have very little in the way of formal dogmas, theology, doctrine and imposition. Hinduism is incredibly diverse, and hard for me to comprehend as a religion cos I’m used to this rather more authoritarian structure, but there are core beliefs, and social measures to ensure consistency of practice as far as I can see. Wicca is perhaps the best example of a theological anarchy – the various “wiccan denominations” have core theological beliefs, but those outsoide of the formal coven-structures, which in the 90′s I think though do not know comprised most of the self-proclaimed adherents of the Wiccan religion could believe an incredible diversity of things about the nature of the divine, afterlife, and karma etc. This “folk wicca” ran the risk of being mistaken for the coven traditions, and just because a complete loony did something vile in the name of the religion, well it was not in any way the fault of any other adherents of that faith. As Alex Gabriel wrote
“You hear a lot from New Agers and ecumenicals, don’t you, that the coercive and oppressive elements of religion are all from the institutional structures? But this is a brilliant example of how bad beliefs themselves can be oppressive.”
Yes I agree totally, well said Alex, and I’m no fan of heavy authoritarian religion, but I am painfully aware of the dangers posed by liberty of conscience. I absolutely hold the principle of freedom of religious belief and non-belief, but as anyone who knows me know I distinguish between beliefs and practices/behaviours. If a practice is illegal, and damaging to others, your freedom of belief does not make it right in my mind. Still we could disagree on this and still we are no closer to my actual issue with Hayley’s article.
Many ghosthunting groups do adopt a sort of “folk spiritualism”, and in some cases other religious beliefs, In the USA we see a lot of very religious ghosthunters – they often term themselves demonologists, and look at things in terms of a very religious paradigm, because the base culture there is profoundly religious compared with the UK. Yet in all my ghosthunting experience nearly none of the participants have been Christian believers, or held to any of the other mainstream faiths — with the exception of David Carter-Green, and on the social and academic side David Sivier. And in fact, belief in the paranormal does not seem to map well to what most people would see as “religious belief” in any way — in fact quite the opposite.
Now years ago I wrote a piece I consider one of the most important ton this blog, called “Are Education and Atheism Enemies of Reason”. The title was half joking half serious, but it’s so directly relevant to what we are talking about here i’m going to reproduce it before moving on to discuss the implications…
“The majority of Britons believe in heaven and life after death, new research suggests.” The BBC News story here is well worth reading, and shows some interesting things. Firstly we are a lot less sceptical about New Age ideas and certain fringe practices like astrology and tarot cards than we used to be – what Randi’s people categorize as “woo”. However we are more sceptical about certain aspects of the supernatural than a decade ago in 1998 – in short popular belief in the supernatural is constantly waxing and waning; I think I could have told you that. The popular culture of the 1970′s was far more sympathetic to parapsychology say than the 90′s were – and yet the 2000′s saw a sudden interest in Spiritualism connected with certain TV shows.
I have a rather heretical thought about ‘paranormal’ beliefs, and their relationship to atheism. I originally posed a question on Professor Dawkins forum as it was inspired by his show The Enemies of Reason. I am sure the Professor has better things to do than answer my questions though, (and he didn’t) and so I have revised it and asked it here.
I had been reading The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener (1983) by noted mathematician, science writer and skeptic Martin Gardner. In 1976 Martin Gardner was a founder member of CSI(COP), which has done a great deal over the years in debunking paranormal claims and fighting the rise of superstition. Many readers of this blog may have his enjoyed his Fads & Fallacies In the Name of Science.
In Chapter 3 of The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener – “Why I am not a Paranormalist” – Gardner mounts a blistering attack on superstition. It contains many of the themes touched in Dawkin’s The Enemies of Reason, and one curious disagreement.
Martin Gardner, 1983 wrote:
As always with such manias, causes are multiple: the decline of traditional religious beliefs among the better educated, the resurgence of Protestant Fundamentalism, disenchantment with science for creating a technology that is damaging the environment and building horrendous war weapons, increasingly poor quality of science instruction on all levels of schooling, and many other factors…
I found that first bit fascinating. Now Gardner is not Fundamentalist obviously, he is not a Christian, though he is a Fideist rejecting all special revelation, but remaining a theist. Like most scholars he sees Fundamentalism as arising recently (within the last century pretty much) and a bad thing– but he regards the “decline of traditional religious beliefs among the better educated” as a key factor in the rise of pseudo-science, cults and superstition?
It in no way justifies religious belief, but it is very interesting as a claim. OK, so I doubted. Gardner is a theist – he must be biased. What are his sources? Luckily he references them. It is the article Superstitions Old and New by William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark in The Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 4, Summer 1980.
Gardner says they
…reported on their surveys of how beliefs in certain aspects of the current occult mania correlated with religious faith. They found people with no professed religion were the most inclined to believe in ESP and extraterrestrial UFOs. Paranormal cults were strongest in areas where the traditional churches were weakest.
Never trusting anyone’s opinions I have just been through the Sheep/Goat tests from my 1993 Paranormal Beliefs Survey of attendees at a lecture series in Cheltenham. The test used by the group was an early Sheep/Goat test which measured some religious claims as well as paranormal ones. Later we adopted the 1979 New Australian Sheep/Goat Test by Michael Thalbourne, but this earlier version suited my purposes. There were 83 respondents, and while I have not had time to perform a proper statistical test – the data is on stapled questionnaires, not in electronic format and it’s too late to type it all in tonight – there does appear to be a very strong correlation between non-belief in God and belief in UFOs as alien visitors, and between non-belief in Jesus as divine and belief in both ghosts & magic, to give a few examples. I recall now being once asked asked if many parapsychologists were Christian – and I said none at all that I knew of, they were all atheists. I have just looked at my “psychics” who I sometimes work with on testing – only one identifies as Spiritualist, two as atheist (Atheism is VERY common among Spiritualists following the example of Arthur Findlay – indeed Roll’s Campaign For Philosophical Freedom is an atheist organization which makes Dawkins look like a vicar) and seven “none”; six more are unclassifiable.
Not one professed belief in any “orthodox” faith. Now I’m sure Dawkins would regard my Anglicanism as just as much superstitious woo as does say crystal power, so this is a false distinction to him: but the evidence seems to suggest to me that the modern irrationalist supernaturalism is inversely related to traditional (non-fundamentalist) religious beliefs. I think whoever misquoted G.K. Chesterton was right, even if as is possible Chesterton never actually said it “when a man stops believing in God he does not believe in nothing: he believes in anything”. Correlation is not causality – and of course the better educated college students are more likely to believe in ghosts etc -
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/060121_paranormal_poll.html
assuming the Skeptical Inquirer is cited correctly! So perhaps the increase in woo is just a by product of the decline of traditional religious belief, increased secularism and atheism, and better education? The evidence certainly seems to point that way???
I find this both interesting, amusing, and deeply ironic.
So I wrote a few years back, and I have discussed at length elsewhere the issues. What concerns me is that actually while Hayley as a rational sceptic may be an excellent investigator, “atheism” as a non-belief does not actually necessarily imply scepticism of any claim but the existence of a God. There are plenty of loony and not bright atheists, just as there are plenty of loony and thick as two short planks Christians out there. Furthermore, rationality does not always map to good personal ethics, as I think we all recognize, and even rational people make mistakes – though like the Christians who confess they are crap at it by definition (we are all sinners), they may spot the problem and be able to do something about it.
Still, it’s peoples right to believe what they like, and no one has a monopoly on how to investigate spooks etc, or say what we should believe. The actions/behaviours/practices which are damaging to others should however clearly be subject to scrutiny, and I’m absolutely in favour of higher ethical standards in the field. I just don’t think that religiosity, in the normal sense, is much to do with a lot of this — and I hope I have somehow made that point. Yes my personal research ethics may be terrible, as I often joke, but that stands completely independent of the actual religious framework I exist within (Church of England liberal, in case you wondered.)
So as Martin Gardner said, I think the decline of traditional religious belief may actually underlie, rather than be the opposite of, this explosion of popular ghosthunting. Still a great article by Hayley, and got me thinking as normal. Now I really must go do some work!
cj x
Dawkins.net Meltdown — New Forum for Exiles; rationalskepticism.org
A brief post for me, but a very important one. I know (from emails and comments) that a large number of ex-Richarddawkins.net forum members are passing this way in search of information. After a few days of gracious hosting from Rationalia.com and Thinking Aloud Forum, we now have a new forum of our own — Rationalskepticism.org
I am a mod over there (yes a Christian mod on a sceptic site!) and would like to take this opportunity to invite any of my readers, atheist, agnostic or religious, and anyone who enjoys good debate and good company to come join us there. It’s been a hectic few days, and I am still recovering — the British media have taken up the story, but I’m happy to move on and make something new. (I also have ghosthunting forum - email me if interested in such matters)
Thanks for reading! I really must move on to other topics soon. 
For very intelligent commentary on the affair (saying things I as a theist dare not!) from an atheist activist perspective do see Gurdur’s blog at Heathenhub.
cj x
There’s probably no Forum – Now relax and enjoy your Life: Richard Dawkins on changes at the forum
(Title nicked from brilliant Twitter post by someone, mentioned on Rationalia.com The image is by Gurdur)
OK, OK, I know I said I would not write on this tedious topic any more. But the despondency of this morning at seeing a lot of hurt unhappy people and musing over ‘rationalist’ websites ability to explode has no turned to mild good humoured amusement. Richard Dawkins managed to cheer me up – not because I agree with him or anything he says on this topic; completely the opposite — but because it was good old bellicose belligerent Dawkins coming out fighting, and because now we know not to blame Josh. PZ Myers has washed his hands of the matter, not wanting to get dragged in, but Richard Dawkins has now posted on his forum (shame nobody else can!) You can read his modest opinions on there…
A Message from Richard Dawkins about the website updates
Imagine that you, as a greatly liked and respected person, found yourself overnight subjected to personal vilification on an unprecedented scale, from anonymous commenters on a website. Suppose you found yourself described as an “utter twat” a “suppurating rectum. A suppurating rat’s rectum. A suppurating rat’s rectum inside a dead skunk that’s been shoved up a week-old dead rhino’s twat.” Or suppose that somebody on the same website expressed a “sudden urge to ram a fistful of nails” down your throat. Also to “trip you up and kick you in the guts.” And imagine seeing your face described, again by an anonymous poster, as “a slack jawed turd in the mouth mug if ever I saw one.” (More there…)
All of the quotes he ascribes to posters are not from the few minutes between the letter being posted and the locking of the forum – they are all from Rationalia.com I can’t get on rationalia at the moment – the server is overloaded, but you can see there a discussion of how each quote was originally framed, and I note that many of them applied to Josh the administrator, not Richard. I’m not apologising – I never said any of those things.
Richard says in Ruth’s piece
‘I do think that the cloak of anonymity under which so many posters on the internet hide does encourage a culture of rudeness and extreme language which people would never indulge in if they were writing under their own name. I think anonymity does have bad consequences and we see them all the time. On the other hand, there are times when people genuinely need to be confidential. So I can see why, for example, people in America who lost their faith and do not want their families to know, or perhaps more seriously, people of an Islamic background who have lost their faith or become Christian, have every reason to be anonymous. But the culture of anonymity whereby the default expectation is anonymity does encourage rudeness.’
Death of an Atheist Forum; the lessons of history
Following the bizarre collapse of the Richard Dawkins forum, I posted this on the excellent Rationalia and Thinking Aloud Forums. It will be my last blog entry on atheist forum politics 
I am after all not actually an atheist!
OK, I think I’m giving up on the whole atheist forum thing. I’ll tell you why, then move on to other topics tomorrow…
Firstly, I am still shocked, saddened and miserable about the demise of the wonderful RichardDawkins.net/forum. The problem is I have seen it ALL before, and not so long ago. If I thought this was Josh Timonen’s fault, or Dawkins, I could just laugh and move on, and help fight. The thing is I can’t any more. It’s something fundamental and deeper.
Years ago I knew a wonderful cryptographer, medium, and cynic, who I will call James. James joined a psychic research group I belonged to, and noted that every group tends to do the same thing: the leadership cock it up, it fragments, and two new groups appear. A few years later the pattern occurs again. James was an atheist spiritualist (there are a LOT of them, and one often sees their stuff cited by other atheist who are unaware of their rather strange ideas to modern atheists minds) and in a thoughtful moment he confided in me that exactly the same was true of every atheist group he had belonged to. I guess it’s true of gardening clubs, poetry societies, fan clubs and stamp collectors as well. As he noted, there must be something wrong with human nature. (In fact one sees it less in religious groups – because they can appeal to external authorities and impose their will by divine mandate, which makes them even nastier when it all goes tits up). Of course many groups do survive and prosper, but one thing ghostthunting groups (not parapsychological organisations) and atheist forums have in common is this incredible failure rate.
Now in fact Old Soul posted on my blog entry, and reminded me of something. We have seen this all before, just two years ago. Here is the Encylopedia Dramatica version of events back then on IIDB – http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Iidb The interwebs are serious business.
Many of the IIDB exiles fled to RD.net, and discussed what was happening there: and in fact the response was largely one of disinterest, mild sadness, and modding to stop the fight spilling over on to our forum. In fact it is much like the very ambivalent if not positively unsympathetic responses one sees from the JREF today – http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=168039 (There are of course many deeply sympathetic JREF members, including tsig and Darat, and RD.net exiles should seriously consider registering there>)
Let’s face it, its the internet. No one will die of this. Still we can learn a lot from it, maybe…
Now Internet Infidels and Secular Web had a history going back to 1995, and were absolutely huge. I think it is fair to say that IIDB was in its day the largest Atheist site on the web – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Infidels- and it’s collapse left a vacuum that RD.net quickly filled, along with the Rational Response Squad. The RRS had its own problems in 2008/2009 including a highly publicised (physical, literal) punch up and a falling out with Richard Dawkins over allegations of his having an affair (even if true, who gives a f*ck, and it wasn’t anyway…) However the IIDB melt down,mass deletions, sacking of mods and general shittiness gave birth ot a number of forums, including Rants n Raves, a splendidly irreverent place which is sort of 4chan meets Atheism — http://www.rantsnraves.org/
All of this may seem by the by, but in fact you probably really need to look at this whole mess on IIDB, that we all chose to ignore.There are threads on RD.net – maybe someone with access to the database can find them? However the same things happened – admins sacked, mods dimsissed, members expelled, complete meltdown.
http://spaninquis.wordpress.com/2007/10/31/internet-infidels-seems-to-be-melting/
http://www.daylightatheism.org/2007/11/a-note-on-the-iidb-situation.html
http://rantsnraves.org/wiki/index.php/Category:IIDebacle
Hey there must be people here who lived through all this, and know first hand what happened? Old Soul wrote on my blog –
In 2007, the Internet Infidels Inc, a nonprofit educational group, shut down their extremely popular “IIDB” Internet Infidels Discussion Board, driving away thousands of people, many of whom had donated money to the group for both its regular operations and the upkeep of the forums. When the II, Inc. began banning and silencing its forum users, it lost very little real revenue, as the major donors who supported the organization did not care one bit about the teeming masses on the message board. The II, Inc. did not lose any real income or its reputation amongst the atheist elite. It sold the IIDB to a woman from New Zealand, who changed the forum name and continued to silence all dissidents. The II, Inc. did not suffer any loss or long-term damage after divesting itself of its forum. No problem there, either.
Yep, that was my understanding.He also has a very long term perspective –
Decades ago, Madalyn Murray O’Hair shut down every chapter of American Atheists, alienating thousands of people, but doing no long-term harm to herself or the group. No problem there.
I suspect the young and British influenced RD’ers may not all know about the tragic and bizarre story of Madalyn Murray O’Hair — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madalyn_Murray_O%27Hair Some of the links like the Time article are REALLY good reads. Anyone spot similarities with how AA was run and the current situation? OK, we don’t have claims of fraud and dodgy accounting, or blatant theft. Yet we have exactly the same pattern of self-proclaimed atheist leaders fleecing members, f*cking over the organisation and so called rationalist acting like compete arseholes.
Even after the great October Purge, when many of us left, I eventually drifted back to RD.net. TAF and Rationalia split: I can’t help but being reminded of the South Park episode Go God, Go! where the United Atheist Alliance (UAA) fight the United Atheist League (UAL) and the Allied Atheist Allegiance (AAA) –sure it was a shit episode by South Park standards, but there was more than a grain of truth in it.
Old Soul really hit the nail on the head though when he wrote
This is just business as usual for atheist organizations, why are you all so surprised? This is how it is done. Richard Dawkins will not lose any face. He will not suffer a publicity backlash. As far as his staff is concerned, you are all ungrateful for complaining about not being able to use the forums any more. Guess what? They do not care. They will make new websites, write new books, and speak at new conventions. Where thousands of you dare not tread, thousands more unsuspecting atheists will fill the seats you won’t occupy, and buy the books you won’t read, and visit the websites you won’t support. No problems.
It gets bleaker
There are millions and millions of atheists worldwide and no major atheist group has ever lost any money by not accommodating all of them. For every hundred of you who leave in disgust, two hundred more will take your place. For every post that is deleted… the same. The outcry of atheists who are offended by being silenced is not a problem in the grand scheme of organized atheist groups.
These groups operate in a realm that none of you occupy. It is a world in which *you* do not exist, and none of them (on the national or international level) are focused on “atheist community” or “the needs of nonbelievers.” They are money-making operations supporting authors, lecturers, philosophers, and publicity hounds, all in the name of atheism, and all for naught.
If you are operating a large atheist organization, shutting the internet out of your atheist group will not hurt you in the long run. This is demonstrably true, and the RDF staff certainly knows it. Now you all know it too. Visit this page again in 2 years, when Dawkins’ books are selling like hotcakes, his lectures are standing-room-only, and his new website discussion area is busy and bustling with passionate atheist activity. All of this complaining is not going to change anything.
There will be no problem for the RDF. Atheist herd migration will not disrupt the activities of any major atheist group, certainly not the biggest moneymaker of them all.[
He is indeed a wise old soul.
This has seemed I am sure to many of you yet another betrayal, but really, I am deadly serious. If we can’t get it together, are we (and I guess it’s not really we is it, I’m a Christian, but I count myself as one of you lot in that I remain a loyal member of the Richarddawkins.net internet community) any better than the religious groups etc? Sorry, it seems that the loss of the forum is irrlevant to most atheists, and will remain so, based on the examples of history. We will be a footnote ina wiki article, and spawn threads on a few secular websites, but no one is listening, and the RDF will laugh all the way to the bank. If you think people really care, look again at the JREF thread, or look at the Skeptics Guide to the Universe one – http://sguforums.com/index.php?topic=26298.0 Think about how much you heard, or cared, about the demise of IIDB – now sucessfully running as a series of small forums from what I can see, with new names, and a new identity.
People don’t just not care, THEY DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT. It’s just like us at RichardDawkins.net when IIDB went down – some one lese politics, proof the rationalist dream crashed when it meets the reality of messsed up humans. Good people will carry on and have a laugh, but the majority of the atheist population will just say “shut up and stop whining”. Bleak I know, but do a Google search and you will find its true… http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=99807
In fact even the blogosphere only returns Darkchilde, myself and Peter Harrison’s blogs. This is not going to hurt the RDF, or makke any difference; We lost, people got treated like shit, and no one will care outside of TAF and Rationalia.
I have had enough. I’ll find better things to do with my time
j x
The End of an Era: Richard Dawkins forum to close
I was going to write a brief piece tonight on my new board game “Earth: Our Home” I created for the the Richard Dawkins Science Writing Contest. I test played it with Luke, Kev and Tom tonight, and we had a wonderful time slaughtering each other species and fighting for control of this pale blue dot. 500 million years passed in two hours, and at the end it was incredibly close, but I won.
Unfortunately I popped over to RD.net to see what was going on, and found that an announcement had been made that the forum is to close. It will remain live for 30 days to allow us to retrieve anything we want to save: given I had written over 10,000 posts (7,000+ remain after an earlier purge) and I guess many million words as I am not known for my brevity, that will prove immensely difficult. Given that the search has not worked for months, in order to protect other parts of the website and keep the bandwidth manageable, well it will be next to impossible. I have tried waybackmachine: no good.
My RD.net avatar designed by Thwoth to mark my Science Writing victory...
I had a hilarious exchange on this blog once before with someone who had a rather bizarre view of the history of RD.net: the details don’t matter, but I will briefly now discuss the matter. A few years ago the great man Dawkins0 became aware that there were forum posts which were rather er, colourful (“What does sperm taste like? was the infamous example always cited) and suddenly over night a large part of the forum was just deleted. The bit which went comprised the chatty silly areas - I lost about 20% of my posts, as i tended ot post mainly in the Faith & Religion and General Science areas anyway. This led to a major row, with a number of atheist who saw this as censorship buggering off to create their own communities: it was not really the imposition of community standards which did it, but the clunky way it was handled. We lost the original admins (OBC, Kevin Ronayne) about that point, and by 2009 a new set of mods had taken over. It was still a great site though, though I miss the early days – but nostalgia ain’t what it used to be…
Tonight the proverbial has really hit the fan. Again the closure of the forum may NOT be all it seems: a new kind of heavily moderated discussion area will exist, and approved topic can be discussed. What it does mean is the death of the forum community, and like the end of the Living TV Most Haunted forum dozens of new forums will spring up, but I’lll lose touch with most of the friends I made in my years over there since December 2006. We can’t even talk about iot now – I tried to log back in and found a message telling me “Sorry but this board is currently unavailable.”
It is such a blasted shame: to try and name them all would be impossible, but my thoughts really go out to all those who worked so hard to make it a success – firstly Sciwoman, so long a mod, then an admin, and a good friend. We shared a lot of laughs and a lot of misery, and she has been a good friend to me. Then there is the excellent CJ – no not me, CJ was an admin or possibly just a mod I think and was one of the best, and used to welcome every new poster. In the great purge he was demoted to ordinary member status for something that had nothing to do with his work as a mod: the backstairs politics of the forum was always machiavellian, but CJ happened ot have publicly discussed things which were considered verboten from his own personal life – ironically things this CJ discusses just as openly. Who else? The Old Farts were all great, and much missed – they were a loose collective of posters who had a great time. JimC was always one of my faves, a wonderful Australian biologist with a sharp sense of humour.
My life will be poorer for not hearing from the splendid Aussie atheist Goldenmane: I’ll miss Hackenslash, Ilovelucy, Durro, MedGen, Mechtheist, MacDoc, FlyingScot, Natselrox, and me and Tim O’ Neil had a wonderful time together fighting Jesus Mythers and the terminally ill informed. Mercer is a thoroughly fine fellow: and my companions in faith Imperiatorium and of course my good mate Grahbudd, plus the really decent Jewish engineering student whose name I just can;’t for the life of me recollect right now.
There are SO many others – Darren from Canada, whose profanity was always laced with awesome humour; Mazille, who brought me back to the forum with the science writing contest I have invested so much time on, Thwoth the brilliant artist and sharp wit, Hyrax a truly lovely guy and great mod, Campermom who was always great on science, the simply awesome FedupwithFaith, and one of the sharpest minds of all Spaghettisawus who is a really top bloke.
So I’m sad: rather than carry on with the litany of names, which is so difficult as i’m missing dozens of really great people out (Topmum?- I just can’t recollect user names right now) I’ll make a few general comments… (but not forget Jerome Serpenti, Homo Economicus, Matalnifesto, Dave C, Pdavid…) The sad thing about the death of an internet forum is in some sense all these people become part of your life, and they touch you. I really got to care about people I only ever knew as words on a screen. Sad? Maybe, but its a part of life in the 21st century – some of our friendships are with people we may never physcialy meet. (I was lucky enough to meet three members – sadly the accounts of our meetings were lsot in the first great purge.)
I enjoyed being Jerome (a contraction of Jensen Romer), the Anglican who always had something controversial to say. I enjoyed my arguments with the great and the good, my ill fated challenge to Richard Dawkins to a debate on the history of Science, my fun debates on the rationality of theism and on life after death. Most of all though I enjoyed the people, the new ideas, the constant challenge to my beliefs, and the ability to ask others to question theirs.
Apparently the new website to replace the forum will only allow posts clearly in the areas of Reason and Science, and that is in itself interesting. I wonder what that means? Will Atheism cease to be a major plank of the new website? Will religious believers like me now be officially banned? In my more more egotistical twat moments I’d like to think my success at arguing for actual history over myths may have hastened the demise of the old forum, and this is a ridiculous attempt at censorship — but I VERY much doubt it: in fact it’s absurd. What I doubt will ever happen on the new website is that someone will win the say writing contest with an essay ripping to shreds the nonsense about the conflict of religion and science, or we will have a sensible discussion about parapsychology, or the evidence for the historical Jesus, or any of the things I spent so much time writing about on the forum.
That’s a damned shame. Reason and Science were furthered by those discussions I think: people came to examine their personal beliefs (I certainly did) and were exposed to opinions sharply divergent from there own. I learned a helluva lot, but above all I learned tolerance and respect for my opponents, even if I still disagreed with them after all the shouting.
So why has it happened? No one actually knows. The mods have been dismissed, or rather given notice, and the website administrators made a unilateral decision to withdraw the forum for the new website. My utterly cynical guess is simple: it comes down to money. I have no idea how well offf the Richard Dawkins Foundation is, though it’s a registered charity so the accounts are public domain I think: but ultimately the forum must have eaten a hug amount of resources and bandwidth. I have no idea if the Rational Response Squad is till going after their troubles in 2008 , but running an atheist forum is probbaly a license to lose money. People loved the forum, but did they buy from the shop, read the main pages and support the RDF? I don’t know, but I suspect most forum users went staright to the forum and ignored all that stuff.
And so I appreciate this may have well been a sound commercial decision: to support the RDF, more traffic needs to be routed through the main site. Looking at ALEXA the site had continued to grow slowly in popularity, and was ranked 14,799 in the world (top 2000 in New Zealand and South Africa, top 4,000 in the UK, top 9,000 in the USA) – a tremendous success. Yet the search function had gone, and as always the forum often fell over through sheer weight of numbers. It desperately needed investment in servers and infrastructure: instead it has been decided to kill the forum, and create a new streamlined website. I can see why — but it does not help those of us who invested so much in making the site what it is.
Ultimately the decision is one man’s: Richard Dawkins. I never really got to know the bloke in all my time on the forum, as he posted less and less, and when he did it was often after something like this, when he gets the stick. The Great Purge was necessary to protect his reputation and that of the rDF when it was going for charitable status: some of the stuffon the site might have upset the Charity Commissioners, but I think they could differentiate between what the RDF stood for and the opinions voiced on an internet forum – but maybe not. Still, if he is digging deep in to his own pockets to support the forum, and would rather spend his money on “God probably does not exist” adverts on the side on buses who are we to complain. Ultimately it’s Richard’s site – and Richard calls the shots.
Still, I think a lot of people are as usual not so much upset that it has happened but at the usual complete lack of communication that have left us with thirty days to save what we can and make our escape plans. And that si really not something i can forgive lightly. Oh well, so be it…
I returned to the forum to say my good byes and found I could not actually post any more. What I found was a hilarious piece of craven cowardice and stupidity. A notice appended to the previous announcement, which reads –
Update: We had intended to leave the forum fully-funtioning (sic) for 30 days, but due to the inappropriate posts by some users and moderators, we have decided to leave the forum in a read-only state. You can still download and archive your posts and private messages, but the ability to enter new posts has been disabled. It’s unfortunate that it had to come to this. We know that change can be difficult and sometimes frightening, but we are all very excited about the direction of the website and the future.
I’m not, and I suspect over 85,000 other forum users will join me in calling on Richard Dawkins to sack those responsible for what has been a lousy piece of absolutely moronic administration, and boycotting the new website entirely. I don’t mean the decision to close the forum – I can understand if that is necessary – I mean the appalling, insensitive and now frankly ridiculous way it has been done. I wait with interest to see what Dawkins himself makes of all this. To be honest it is a particular kick in the teeth for everyone who has worked so hard on their entries for the Science Writing Contest — voting was due to start tomorrow.
If any one from the old forum reads this, please do comment, I want to stay in touch!
I’ll end with a public service announcement
Atheist forums you might want to try
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/
(a forum specifically set by poster Life up for ex-RD.net folks, where I also happen to be a mod)
http://forum.herd-of-cats.com/
http://thinkingaloudforum.com/
http://www.thinkatheist.com/
and forums that are intelligent fun and atheists may enjoy, but which are NOT atheist forums
http://www.ukskeptics.com/forum.php
have fun guys, and may your gods go with you… 
UPDATE: Former mod Darkchilde’s blog offers inside perspective on this extraordinary mess: http://tenebra98.blogspot.com/2010/02/death-of-forum-death-of-rdnet-forum.html
UPDATE: Hackenslash rallys the refugees! – Good on you man… (YouTube link) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyLnxu19DM8&feature=player_embedded
UPDATE: Several mods deleted, along with all their posts.. Mazille, CJ (the other one), Valden, kiki and Darwinsbulldog — about a 30.000 posts gone in this most peculiar purge.
http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=8864
UPDATE: Former mod Peter Harrison blogs on events at the forum -
http://realityismyreligion.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/locked-entry-will-open-soon/
Update: Richard Dawkins responds
http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=110356
As I have engaged in no such vitriolic attacks i will not be apologizing: they are ridiculously over the top, and i’d love to know where they were posted and take the idiots who said it to task. I will apologise I personally villified Richard Dawkins in anyway. Yet I stand by EVERY WORD I wrote: this whol ematter was dealt with dreadfully, and the deletion of the mods posts was shameful.
J x (who is an Anglican: prejudice declared!)
Christmas Shopping, CJ Style
Bah Humbug! OK, I have to accept that now it’s December people are going to talk about Christmas. Unlike Lisa I love Christmas – and as her birthday is three days before and no one is ever available to go out or do anything for that reason, I can see why she is not keen on it. I have favourite Christmas Songs – I think Greg Lake’s I Believe In Father Christmas (Youtube: contains sound) is my favourite, which will surprise nobody. Still having to listen to them every time I leave the house is enough to kill anyone. If I had the money buy a copy of Lou Reed’s album Berlin and Pink Floyd’s The Wall just to cheer myself up. (Incidentally if you don’t know those records, don’t try this at home. I mean it folks!)
So we are back to that time of year when I have to listen to all the bollocks about the pagan origins of Christmas from people who think QI is a reputable source on second and third century Roman Festivals – yes I like Stephen Fry, but he dislikes Christianity intensely and lets his prejudices show occasionally. I will blog on this later, I can’t be bothered today, but anyone mentioning the word Mithras round me may end up brutally slain, unless they can actually come uo with some hard evidence, or indeed any evidence, other than the generations of pseuds who misread Cumont. OK, rant over.
Yet I still like Christmas. Admittedly, and Greg Lake excepted, because he did it with wry humour, I can’t stand to be told again “Christmas is too commercial”. In the first case, sure, I agree, but what are you going to do about it? Live a life of monastic austerity through the whole season and refuse to step outside the door? Stop sending cards? (or perhaps in my case, start?) Become a Jehovah’s Witness? Or if already one, avoid every shop in town? I admire the JW’s courage in avoiding Christmas sometimes, even if think their reason – that Christmas has pagan origins- is a complete nonsense historically. I know! I know – take a flame thrower to Marks & Spencers and blow up Tesco?! I guess my problem with people who think Christmas is too commercialized is that they lack courage in their convictions – we can all resent it maybe, and yearn for something simpler, but have you actually tried it?
The Simple Non-Commercial Christmas As It Really Is
Flashback a few years: on the way back to Suffolk for Christmas, Christmas Eve. Hugh driving, and Lisa has decided to come with us, but Liz (now Jake) remained behind. It’s in the days when we lived at Pete’s. About twelve miles out of town Lisa gets really ill – she had been feeling bad before we left – so we turn back, and Hugh drops us off. We wander in, to find the freezer has broken down sometime in days before I presume, and in the hour or so we have been gone it has leaked all over the floor. Not that we actually had any food, we were planning to go to my family for Christmas. Hugh got back safely to Exning, and at about eleven on Christmas Eve I went out in search of food. I somehow talked a pizza shop manager who was juts closing up in to giving me a big discount, opening up, and cooking. Given my sob story his heart must have melted – anyway we got a lot of pizza. And we ate it that night, and as I recall Christmas Day, sitting around a house with just an electric fire for heat while Lisa lay in bed ill, watching the rain hit the window. I even overslept and I missed church. On Boxing Day I braved the couple of miles walk to Sainsburys-on-the-edge-of-forever as they were open, bought a load of shopping, and in the absence of buses trekked back. It sleeted and rained, freezing me, and I became really ill and was miserably unwell over New Year, as was Lisa. We did not have any presents (they we gave were in the back of Hugh”s car and Hugh dropped them off) we had precious little money, no decorations, no heating and almost no food as most shops closed. So I have done the simple noncommercial Christmas, and I would not wish it on a banker. It’s a romantic ideal – so is dying young of tuberculosis, which to be fair may well feature in this Christmas plan. Seriously, forget it. Campaign to get a bylaw passed banning Christmas window displays before December 1st by all means, and feel free to moan at Christmas shoppers, but unless you are going to start blowing up Santa’s Grottoes or holding hunger strikes against it, I’m just going to out whinge you. Because I can… you think you can do bleak and cynical? Hell I’m like the lovechild of Leonard Cohen and Charlie Brooker. Oh no, sorry, that’s Lisa…
What Christmas is Really About
Anyhow where was I? Oh yes, full of festive jollity! Actually one more whinge – people who say “people forget what Christmas is really about”. Usually this is followed by “it’s for the kids” or “it’s a time for sharing” or sightly more accurate “it’s remembering the birth of Jesus”. Actually Christmas is about whatever you want it to be about. Ronald Hutton’s superb Stations of the Sun will give you a good overview of the last few centuries of history of the festival in England, and it’s a fascinating story. There may well be other books which deal even better with the pre-Reformation Christmas — if anyone has one, I’d like to read it. Obviously it’s a religious festival, with a clear Christian context – but that does not mean that people should not celebrate it however they want, and indeed many folk of other faiths which acknowledge Jesus in some role do mark it, but even devout atheists should have a good and enjoyable Christmas season, even if they must call it Winterval or Festimas or whatever. Hey, just, eat drink and be merry, I doubt the Archbishop’s secret police are going to kick your door in for sacrilegious consumption and exchange of gifts without proper theological license. Though if Rowan Williams does I want to be there to see it! I know some atheists seems to believe the CofE wants nothing more than the godless roasting on an open fire but it’s a bit nippy for open air barbecues and would you really want a slice of Dawkins with Cranberry sauce? I’ll stick to the turkey.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams - not Santa Claus, us Anglicans don't ask children to sit on our knees.
Anyway, woke up this morning to a rejection letter – always a good start to the day, only two weeks after the interview, a triumph of good administration that – actually pretty typical of the wretched state of British universities, but hey anyway – so I decided to go out and as the rent has gone out and I have paid the bills I thought I’d take the little I had left and get my chicken kebab.
It is NOT the Thought That Counts
Except then as I stood on the High Street under the Christmas Lights a wonderful thought hit me, and it came as a stunning revelation – “it’s almost Christmas!” Somehow I had sort of failed to take this on board, so I realised I must do shopping. OK I’m lousy at cards, if anyone has ever received one from me frame it, it might be worth a lot of money, but I do usually buy my family and friends little presents. And boy are they little – my shopping budget is rather sparse. Still I try, even if not really convinced it is the thought that counts. I know when presented with a pullover which does not fit or something which doe not work I say that, but I’m not sure if I actually mean it or not? I think I may do.
So with that in mind, to any of my friends and family, let it be known that this year I have Thought long and hard about all the wonderful presents I want to buy you. As I no longer have any money left that is all I am going to do though. I hope you appreciate my Thought,and it counts, and if you don’t like it parcel it up, send it back, and i’ll send a replacement Thought ( –like “what an ungrateful bastard.” )
Oh and just in case anyone was thinking that I might like to count on a Thought myself for Christmas this year – actually, I am rather overrun with thoughts right now. I have so much thought I am often lost in it -please don’t send me any more. Just money would be nice, or better still non-fiction books on almost anything, or roleplaying game products (Sartar Kingdom of Heroes anyone?), from http://www.leisuregames.com, or blondes in Christmas stockings tied up with a nice ribbon. But please, please, please — no more thoughts — I have plenty!
So What Went Wrong With CJ’s Christmas Shopping?
So I was standing there on Cheltenham High Street, suddenly struck by the Christmas lights (not literally or I would sue Cheltenham Borough Council and be a lot richer), with a tenner in my pocket, thinking I needed to buy Christmas presents. OK, a tenner might have not gone far, but still – what happened? Er, I spent it. On myself. Yeah I know.
I went in to Banardo’s charity shop to get out of the cold, and inevitably I bought books. Erasmus wrote “When I get a little money I buy books; if any is left I buy food and clothes”. Oh too true, too true! Still at least Tiny Tim will benefit – it is hard not to think of the orphans at Christmas, yes? For a tenner I got a copoy of The Book of Common Prayer, The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories, Trolley Wars: The Battle of the Supermarkets, Chorley & Smart’s Leading Cases in the Law of Banking and finally NASA’s Selected Documents in the History of the US Civil Space Program, Volume III: Using Space – hence covering a number fo my interests. I’m sure i’ll still scrape around to buy my parents and friends something but if you planned to buy me something, then previous jokes aside, please don’t!
Christmas Shopping for CJ
Instead go to a charity shop, and spend that money buying yourself something you really want, so that the charity benefits, and you benefit, and I’m happy that I did not leave you out, even though I could not afford to buy you anything. Christmas is a hard time when you have little, and I really can’t afford to buy people much this year, there are so many of you, so I hope you understand. This is the best solution.
So I wish you a Merry Christmas, and will sign off with the lyrics of Greg Lake - do buy a download of his song if you can –
I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave New Year
All anguish pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear
They said there’ll be snow at Christmas
They said there’ll be peace on Earth
Hallelujah! Noel! Be it Heaven or Hell
The Christmas you get you deserve.
cj x
Sunday Sermon 1: Should Atheists Have No Morals? Yes!
An old post, from Richard Dawkins forum. Thought might amuse…
As many of you know, I am a Christian. I post on many atheist and sceptic sites, and often discover Christian posters who arrive, post a few Bible verses and depart. On one such forum I became immensely bored by my co-religionists seeming to believe that morality was dependent upon theism. Not so, as a moments thought will suggest. Did Sartre not say that no really pressing moral problem would be solved by the existence of God? Anyway that forum also has a strict “No Preaching” rule, so I decided that flaunting it to make my point, and making a few serious points with bad humour, might entertain. So in my persona as the Rev. Jerome, I offer this little piece, and welcome comment. Don’t bother telling me I will burn in hell, I won’t care, or that I am a theist delusional moron – I’ll just laugh, and remember, I have no morals either. 
Should Atheists Have No Morals?
Here is the Rev. Jerome’s Sunday Sermon delivered to the Reformed Church of Dawkens, Mole-Station on the Marsh. near Greater Whittering, Barchester…
“As you all know, gathered here in the sight of the Mods, I have for the last 75 weeks preached upon the classic Anglican axiom, ‘God is Nice.’ I thought this week as I was sitting on a bench watching young skinheads escorting some nice old lady down a dark subway, anxious to assist her with her heavy shopping no doubt, that I would continue on the same theme. However I found some delicious fruit, hops, which well prepared allow one to quaff deeply of the well of knowledge, so after several pints I decided to write a slightly different sermon today.
So today I will preach a bit. I don’t do this often, not least since it is technically illegal, immoral and fattening. Nonetheless I see no real harm in it: what follows is my opinion, a lengthy rant on how I see the world, and an exhortation to righteousness as I perceive it. I would like to begin by noting that if you pay attention to me you are a bloody fool – truly it has been written “Think for yourself schmuck.” Still that does not mean what I say is without value, or unworthy of due consideration. I just have no time for sheep, or i would not attempt the lonely life of a goat herd.
Here at St. Dawkens we don’t much care what you believe about the nature of ultimate reality, so it may come as a shock to some of you that I have spoken out, but there are only so many bloody coffee mornings and jumble sales a minister can stand announcing. We have joined together in the rousing hymn “Oh come all ye Faithless” – now you can listen while I drone on a while — because I have things to say.
We often hear members of the congregation bleat on about theists who say they have no morals because they don’t believe in God. Well, I think they have a point. I don’t think we should have any morals. I strongly suggest you give up on this old fashioned morality nonsense immediately. After all, do Christians have morals? I think we should take a leaf from their book.
In the Good Book (wikipedia: morality) we read that morals are
“…are basic guidelines for behavior intended to reduce suffering in living populations.”
In other words a moral is a rule. There are many commandments, and if you wish to abstain from polycotton blend underwear, shellfish or public frottaging on tube trains, so be it. I am not chap to lead my weaker brethren in to sin. And killing is right out, got it? However, the problem with rules is this: the Law is an Ass. if you set up a code of rules designed to cover any situation, then surely enough following them will lead to disaster. It is wrong to run in the school corridors – but the presence of a maniac with a shotgun immediately leads to a problem – do I break the rule? or get shot? It is wrong to steal — but if you are stealing a terrorists plans for a bomb, is that wrong? In civil societies laws are mitigated by other laws – speeding is wrong, but ambulances may do so to save life. Yet in our personal morality we are enjoined to obey moral absolutes: while none would wish an ambulance speeding them to hospital to travel at twenty miles an hour, we rigidly apply laws to ourselves which lead to moral quandaries of a far more sinister type. While we can apply common sense to our law codes in the State, we seem unable to see that the same inflexible understanding of morality can be deadly if applied to our own day to day existence.
So do I advocate moral anarchy? No at all! Then the centre can not hold. Let us look at what the Good Book has to say about Ethics. (Wikipedia:ethics) “Morals are a practice of different sorts of ethics.”
Think about this a moment. A moral is a practical expression of a principle, the principle being an ethic. I have no morals, in the sense of a consistent inflexible response to all situations. I have ethics however – ethics I regard as deeply important and fundamental to my sense of who I am. A long time ago a Jewish carpenter summarized his ethics as follows –
1. One should love Yahweh with one’s entire heart, soul, mind, and strength
2. One should love one’s neighbour as one would love oneself
Now if you don’t include 1, because you don’t believe in Yahweh, you might not regard 2 as absolutely authoritative – as it is not “given on high”. To this JC bloke 2 followed naturally from 1. However, 2, the Golden Rule negatively defined (not don’t do to others what you would not like done to you”, but a little stronger, is I believe acceptable to most of us. What follows is that we should treat ALL others with compassion, love, and forgiveness. If you are a guilty little turd obsessed with your own sin, ritual impurity, tiny manhood or income tax return, then it fails. I don’t want you if obsessed with guilt and misery and hating yourself to love me as you love yourself – it will prove a rather unpleasant experience. I want you to love yourself, be loud, joyful, confident, and embrace others the same way. This is what Christians call the Kingdom — a place where ******** authority, demeaning self flagellation and the divides of race gender and class are swept way in a full and loving reciprocity.
So my first point: morality stands in the way of all this, if by morality you mean an absolute inflexible code of behaviour. You should adopt good ethics, and apply them in the light of the situation, be all things to all men and women and stoats and breakfast cereal and (skip a bit Brother Maynard…) live by an ethic of love and benevolence and acceptance, not some petty collection of ancient tribal laws. Paul of Tarsus understood this beautifully – what may be loving in one situation may be the complete opposite in another. That is why the Law is an Ass. That is why so many feel utterly unnecessary guilt. I don’t much care if your laws forbid it, as they forbade David and his hungry companions to take the sacred bread from the altar, or purportedly (though I very much doubt it – I think 1st century Jews were pragmatists like most people in history) forebade the aforementioned carpenter from healing a chap with a paralysed arm on the Sabbath. Love as an ethic requires intelligence and personal choice: what free will have we if we are bound to a single prescriptive set of applications?
So I suggest firstly you join me in giving up on morality, lest you become a dogmatic wanker. Love each other, and do as you will, bound by that love.
Still lest I sound like a pacifist facing Hitler and giving him flowers, or like i have decided “all you need is love” and have spent too long on an ashram before i roll away in my Rolls Royce to another celebrity party funded by my rock star lifestyle, nope. I believe there is evil afoot, and that I am a sinner, and so are all of you. I believe those who espouse love uncritically as good sheep will be the first fleeced, and that those who follow shepherds invariably end up in Wednesdays mutton stew. Assuming I am not banned for this preaching, or relegated to the dismal wastes of Off Topic, for despite vague stabs at humour my message is deadly serious as many of you who know me will realize, I will explain further.
For now I simply remind you that taking ideas on board uncritically is an abdication of your Free Will, intelligence and moral responsibility, and encourage you to rip my thought to pieces. Doubt is a great virtue in matters of the head – and Faith in our relationships, as I will explain in my third sermon if I am still among you, MV (mods willing.)
Thank you. We will now sit, rise, do hand stands or whatever else we feel like, and sing hymn 666, “To Be a Sceptic”…
cj x
Accepting the surrender of the USA; and finding someone more intelligent than me…
Got in late tonight, and started looking at the atheist forums — think I was in a silly mood.
An American poster on RD.net wrote
Q. “At what time in our nation’s history, thanks to the ideals and precepts of Christianity, does this nation need to return to? When, in your estimation, because of Christianity, were things the closest to Christian ideals?“
CJ replies –
A. Prior to 1776. You should immediately surrender to Her Britannic Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, or failing that, me.
Allow me to explain. Jesus only endorsed one economic governmental system.
He said “render unto Caesar what is Caesars, what is God what is Gods”.
In doing so he clearly endorsed the governmental situation in colonial Roman occupied Palestine, that is taxation without representation of a subject people by an Imperial authority.
In other words the American situation under the British, prior to 1776.
However the British were in this situation under Canute’s Danish Empire, so as a Dane in Britain I figure we may as well just save everyone hassle by paying me danegeld, preferably in attractive young ladies – a sort of maiden tribute. Alternatively I’ll consider BigMacs or cash sums in lieu of formal taxation.
Now we have cleared this up, just pm me for my paypal details. 
Another poster in a different thread on how atheists were the elite lamented –
“Many theists I know seem to have a negative view of individuals who could be considered more intelligent than them.”
My reply was simple - ” I don’t — I worship Him”
Hope they realize I was joking and I’m not quite that arrogant!
j x
God in School: a US oddity
Just an observation really. Whenever I read about American religion I encounter the “God was removed from school’s in 1963: Bring back School Prayer” groups.
Yet does prayer in school actually lead to theistic belief? I attended an English state school, where religious observation, in the form of a school assembly and “corporate act of worship” is actually a legal requirement. I prayed every morning, afternoon and lunchtime with my class mates. I also studied Religious Education (mandatory to 16), and continued with it to postgrad level.
Yet all these things did was render me an avowed atheist. It was many many years after I left school before I returned to my religion… So if school prayer and religious education are in fact desirable from the viewpoint of proselytising, why is the UK so overwhelmingly secular compared with the US?
I have asked this question repeatedly on Christian forums, yet never recieved a sensible answer. Any thoughts? England is a “Christian Nation”, with an Established Church. Does education in religion really serve the purposes of evangelism? Or is quite the contrary true?
If so, did the Religious Right make a tactical error to try and put God back in school?
cj x
3 comments