Be Reasonable

Priest Idol. Bless Him

I just watched Priest Idol a programme in which Father James McCaskill, a naive middle-class priest from Pittsburgh in the US, takes over the last remaining church in Lundwood, Barnsley in Yorkshire. Lundwood is seriously rundown with high levels of unemployment and a serious heroin problem. The graffiti on the church reads 'Fuck God'.

I was all ready to be outraged by the attempt to manipulate people into thinking that God offers hope. However I couldn't really summon up any indignation.

I was highly amused by the comedy vicars. The previous vicar of the parish is a key character, he's incredibly camp and desperate for the new vicar not to succeed where he had failed. Meanwhile the boss vicar (or whatever they're called) enlists a marketing agency (Propaganda!) to try and sell God. The camp vicar is not impressed with this and says that Jesus made do with a few thick helpers. Yes, he called the disciples thick, this has to be seen to be believed.

I couldn't laugh at James though, that would just be cruel. I spent the whole program saying bless him, poor lad. If I'd been in the village, I think I'd have gone to church and rounded up a few people for him. He was so far out of his depth.

I couldn't even accuse him of indoctrinating school children. They weren't just disinterested, many of them actively disbelieved. One said they couldn't believe that God had created the earth and another compared God to the tooth fairy.

I did get angry at one point though. An interviewer asked James's mother if she thought he would succeed in increasingly the size of the congregation. She replied that James wouldn't do it, but the Lord would do it through him. Poor lad. He's going to work so hard to beg and bribe people into that church and his mum is going to give all the credit to God.

Now back to our regularly scheduled sarcasm and godless indignation.

God's bad influence

Amsterdam Forum, an English-language radio programme on Radio Netherlands has produced an excellent programme: God's Bad Influence which is available online to listen to. The transmission date given is tomorrow, not sure if that's mistake or if it hasn't actually aired yet. I listened to it yesterday.

The subject of the programme is Gregory Paul's study Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies in the Journal of Religion and Society. This is the study that was in the news a while back demonstrating that religion does not lead to societal health and in fact secular societies have less societal disfunction.

Gregory Paul himself participates in the discussion along with Bert Dorenbos (comedy fundamentalist Christian, I don't think he's trying to be funny, but he made me laugh) and Prof Peter Derkx (a humanist who is so laid back he doesn't seem to have any strong opinions to voice).

Paul is excellent and makes some interesting points. He's actually a dinosaur paleontologist by background, but has decided to apply scientific methods to the issue of religious influence on society. There's no doubt that Paul thinks that religion is the cause of societal disfunction - his study doesn't actually claim this, although lots of people seem to think it does. Paul plans to do further scientific research in this area. I hope others follow suit.

Hardeep does religion

I just watched an excellent programme that I had recorded: Hardeep Does Religion on Channel 4. Hardeep Singh Kohli is a comedian from Glasgow. He is a Sikh by background and he wears a turban. But he's not religious, he wears the turban because it's part of his cultural history (and his mum would kill him if he didn't). Not only is Hardeep not religious, he wants to see an end to religion.

Hardeep's basic premise is that religion is not needed in order to live a happy, moral life and religion does more harm than good by rejecting abortion and homosexuality. Hardeep talks to young people from a variety of religious backgrounds. Their main justification for religion is that it's needed to provide a moral framework. Is it really the case that such much of religion is based on the idea that people would be immoral without it?

Hardeep tries to start his own religion in which you have to be nice without any promise of heaven. He manages to get a few converts, but many don't like the idea of having to give up the idea of heaven.

Hardeep has an attitude of pleasant bemusement throughout the programme and allows the religious participants to make their own religions appear childish.

The really good part about this programme is that it's part of Channel 4's education output. It's listed on their site under PSHE (Personal, Social & Health Education). I'm really pleased that a programme like this being made for teenagers. It would have been nice to see some humanist young people though, their beliefs would have matched Hardeep's made-up 'religion' pretty well.

Are you a humanist?

Today there was a House of Lords Select Committee meeting in which the BBCs responsibilities with respect to religion were discussed. Hanne Stinson, Executive Director of the British Humanist Association was present and the Guardian reports that:

Ms Stinson said there was a growing number of people with no religious beliefs who share humanist beliefs but would not call themselves humanists, simply because they do not know the name, "and the BBC is partly to blame for that".

This is a good point. Most people have no idea what a humanist is. The British Humanist Association defines humanism as follows:

"Humanism is the belief that we can live good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs. Humanists make sense of the world using reason, experience and shared human values. We seek to make the best of the one life we have by creating meaning and purpose for ourselves. We take responsibility for our actions and work with others for the common good."

I think Stinson is right, that many people in Britain would identify with this description. I certainly do. I came across the term quite by chance as a teenager when a boyfriend's father explained that he was a humanist and what that meant. I'm not sure when I would have come across the term if it hadn't been for that event.

Humanism is rarely mentioned on television or in the media. I always have to explain the term if I mention that I'm a humanist, even to people who would describe themselves as atheists.

I think the BBC does have a duty to cover both belief and disbelief adequately. Surely it's not too much to expect that there should be sufficient coverage that the average Brit would come across humanism at some point?

Atheism in your own living room

Church News is reporting that the BBC is under fire over religious shows. Surprisingly the accusation is that there isn't enough religion on TV. The article quotes Nigel Holmes, author of the book Losing Faith in the BBC, as saying that as Christians make up a significant proportion of TV license payers, there should be sufficient religious coverage. I think this is an excellent idea provided that a proportional amount of coverage is given to atheism and agnosticism. (A 2004 YouGov survey showed that only 44% of the UK population believe in a god and 36% described themselves as atheist.)

I decided to take a look at the BBC listings for the coming week and found that it's actually a good week for atheism on the BBC. Of course there's a disproportionate amount of religious programming, but I don't feel too badly done by.

First we have the Heaven and Earth Show. This is mysteriously described as a 'topical magazine programme' in the BBC listings so it didn't come up at all when I searched for religious keywords. The Heaven and Earth show is primarily about religion and ethics and also covers wacky topics like water divining and non-belief.

I've found that Heaven and Earth is the best programme on TV for getting to hear the views of non-believers. You have to put up with a lot of new age clap-trap and Christians advocating beating their children, but it's the best we have. This week Richard E Grant is a guest and will apparently discuss losing his faith, sounds interesting. Over the years they have had many famous atheist guests.

Last week's show was excellent it had Robert Winston (who claims to be a believing Jew but does a very good impression of being a secular cultural Jew) and the atheist and philosopher A C Grayling. It was an interesting pairing the religious scientist and the non-religious arts enthusiast. Winston was promoting his upcoming programme The Story of God (the book is already out, the TV show will be on in December). I'm looking forward to the Story of God, Winston is very articulate about the science of belief.

Moving to Monday, it gets even better. The first episode of Jonathan Miller's Brief History of Disbelief is on BBC 2 at 7pm.  I watched this series when it was first broadcast (on BBC 4, I think). It's excellent. I'm a very big Jonathan Miller fan (one day I'll tell you about the time I met him). Jonathan is a polymath - he trained as a medical doctor, was part of the highly successful Beyond the Fringe comedy group (with Dudley Moore, Peter Cook and Alan Bennett), he is a theatre and film director, an opera director and creates sculptures from junk. He's also an atheist. The series is basically a bit of an excuse for Jonathan to have a chat to some other famous atheists and I'm more than happy that we get the chance to eavesdrop.

I wouldn't object at all to more religious coverage, provided we get proportional coverage for non-believing license fee payers.