Christian Values and Intelligent Life at the BBC

There were two significant programmes on BBC television on Easter Sunday night (4th April) that highlighted one of the major challenges we face as Christians in education

Nicky Campbell investigates whether Christians are being discriminated against Nicky Campbell, Are Christians being persecuted? BBC1, Sunday 04 April, 10.50 - 11.50 pm

In a BBC 2 Documentary Prof. Brian Cox explored how the search for aliens has followed the search for water. Last in the series (5/5) Prof Brian Cox, Wonders of the Solar System 5 Aliens, BBC2, Sunday 04 April, 9-10 pm.

In a two minute segment (05-22 to 07-24 minutes into the BBC1 programme on iplayer) Nicky Campbell looked at what is happening in schools. He mentioned a recent report that looked into the teaching of RE in schools (can anyone identify this report?) The report found that most Christian student teachers thought that sharing their beliefs in the classroom could be unprofessional. But it was a different story for agnostics and atheists – they believed that sharing their lack of beliefs or questions could be a positive contribution. Nicky then went and talked to education students at Canterbury Christ Church University (a Christian foundation!) and found this to be exactly true.

This highlights the most important thing that my colleague Mark Roques and I (www.realitybites.org.uk) always want to get across. There is no neutral position – everyone is thinking, speaking and acting out of a worldview position, even if (as in our world of a fundamentally uneducated populace, i.e. worldview ignorant) that worldview is eclectic, self-contradictory and unrecognised. The trouble with agnosticism, atheism and secularism is that they are essentially negative positions, whereas their proponents will actually all have positive beliefs that (aware or unaware) they are living out. They may deny (agnostically) that they have any worldview, but actually they cannot avoid living as if a particular worldview is true. Our worldview is what we live, not what we profess (these are often very different – another reflection of the lack of worldview education – of the ignorance of the relationship between beliefs and life) So the key question is: what is their worldview (their faith, their divinity belief à la Roy Clouser’s The Myth of Religious Neutrality)? Then let’s have that worldview on the table and open to the same searching critique that Christians are expected to face.

Secularists treat their position as a default starting point that doesn’t need to be scrutinised. We have seen this in almost all of the recent Darwin Year programmes. A Richard Dawkins or Colin Blakemore is given free reign to (negatively) critique religious beliefs, but their own materialism is not exposed to similar critique. Implicitly, the different varieties of secularism are positions of science and reason that don’t need to be critiqued.

Brian Cox’s BBC2 programme illustrated this. There was nothing new in his programme, but it was interesting to see key assumptions laid out unapologetically, but without any rational (never mind empirical) justification being offered.

In the first place he assumed that physicalism is true – that in the end there is only physics, that the universal laws of physics create everything.

He also assumed that life is just chemistry (we are 96% just four elements: C,H,O, and N, he noted). All we need for life to be possible is chemicals, an energy source (such as the sun) and a medium (water). However he did concede that, even on this view, the creation of life on Earth was probably due to “the rarest combination of chance and the laws of physics”.

Thirdly he assumed that because life can exist in the most extreme (‘alien’) environments on Earth, therefore life may exist in extreme environments elsewhere in the Solar system (such as in a possible ocean beneath the icy crust of Jupiter’s moon Europa). This is a proposition that requires a lot more justification: that organisms now live in such environments does not demonstrate that they could arise in such environments (granting, for the sake of the argument, that life can ‘emerge’ from purely chemical systems).

At no point (like Dawkins, Blakemore et al.) did he consider the materialism-busting problems of free will (agency), consciousness, intelligence (etc.). If we are just chemical machines, wholly governed by some combination of chance and the universal laws of physics, then from where do we get human free will (to follow the evidence, to follow an argument …), reason, science, morality ….? What, then, do we teach the children in school? At present it is actually still Christian assumptions that govern much of the teaching in citizenship, PSHE etc. We can’t allow that dishonesty and deception to continue can we? Are we ready for a truly Godless world?
Arthur Jones

Telegraph blogger finds Lovelock worrying and confusing

'Only global fascist tyranny can save us now' says nice old man

Although Lovelock says some good things about science and climate change all is not so well under the surface. According to Delingpole he writes in The Vanishing Face of Gaia;

"We need a more authoritative world. We’ve become a sort of cheeky, egalitarian world where everyone can have their say. It’s all very well, but there are certain circumstances – a war is a typical example – where you can’t do that. You’ve got to have a few people with authority who you trust who are running it. And they should be very accountable too, of course.

But it can’t happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What’s the alternative to democracy? There isn’t one. But even the best democracies agree that hen a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while."

Perhaps under the hood of every nice liberal tree hugger is really just a lust for power and control, all in the name of the pagan idea of 'mother earth.'

James Lovelock on Science and Climate Scepticism

James Lovelock believes that there is a place for scepticism in science, especially when it becomes overbearing and monolithic - although he doesn't have confidence that human beings will stop climate change from happening.
James Lovelock: 'humans too stupid to stop climate change', says maverick scientist

As reported in the Telegraph "that the recent events surrounding the topic had left his thoughts about climate change “sceptics” thawing. ...“What I like about sceptics is that in good science you need critics that make you think: 'Crumbs, have I made a mistake here?' If you don't have that continuously, you really are up the creek,” he said....“The good sceptics have done a good service, but some of the mad ones I think have not done anyone any favours. ..."You need sceptics, especially when the science gets very big and monolithic." "

and in the Guardian - James Lovelock: 'Fudging data is a sin against science' he comments that "I don't know enough about carbon trading, but I suspect that it is basically a scam. The whole thing is not very sensible.

Science and uncertainty

Scientists need the guts to say: I don’t know - From climate change to swine flu, we must rebuild trust by being honest about risk

David Spiegelhalter writes; "Acknowledgement of uncertainty may even increase public confidence in pronouncements. Recent events, whether the justification for the Iraq War or “Climategate”, have reinforced the fact that trust is the crucial factor — although this may be even more difficult to achieve than certainty. "

Jonathan Chaplin on the Equality BIll

Chaplin of the Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics argues robustly that there is a need for Christian Churches and organisations to retain their freedom to hire people on the basis of their beliefs. This he believes is a matter of conscience and it is not for a secular state to prohibit such freedoms. He wonders why political ideology is not subject to the same campaign.

Chaplin also wonders why the liberal para-church 'think-tank' Ekklesia is campaigning for Christians to be denied their freedom in this way. He writes "But [Jonathan Bartley of Ekklesia] is not entitled to call upon coercive law to force churches to conform to his views of sexual ethics – getting the state to succeed where he has failed. It's incredible that such a position should be advanced in pursuit of the principle of equal regard."

These amendments should stay: The equality bill must not be used to undermine the right of religious organisations to govern themselves

Is Michael Ruse flogging a Dead Moral Horse?

Ruse asks us to believe that morality is subjective, a product of our genes. We only believe it is objective because our genes determine that is better for us. Let’s be frank, atheism kills morality, and any attempt to get it up and running in a godless system is futile. He writes in this article; God is dead. Long live morality: Morality is something fashioned by natural selection. That doesn’t diminish its usefulness, or its comfort

‘God is dead, so why should I be good? The answer is that there are no grounds whatsoever for being good….Morality then is not something handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai. It is something forged in the struggle for existence and reproduction, something fashioned by natural selection….Morality is just a matter of emotions…So morality has to come across as something that is more than emotion. It has to appear to be objective, even though really it is subjective.’

There a number of angles to respond to Ruse. Firstly, what is moral? It isn’t enough to say that evolution can make us moral, we have to ask what is good morality. Why should we consider murder to be wrong at a foundational level. As Ruse notes lion’s are often multiple murders so Darwinism doesn’t help us decide. Is morality just about social cooperation? In Hobbes state of nature every man is against every man, or with Darwinian filial affections, every tribe is against every tribe in a state of nature. But that doesn’t stop tribes fighting, whether they be football supporters, Africans or Caucasians. In a state of nature how do we determine what is moral? Darwinism could lead to family or tribal cooperation in exterminating a rival tribe, but not to good morality. Morality has to transcend human emotions to be at all real.

Secondly, what of truth? A commitment to tell the truth is good morality. But if our genes have evolved to lie to us, then how can we know anything moral with confidence, or trust that what our genes are telling us really is the good? This is an argument for relativism and confusion in ethics. Modernism opens the door to post-modernism. Ruse would do well to read Phillip Johnson’s article Nihilism and the End of Law

"Arthur Leff had a deeper understanding of what the death of God ultimately means for man. He saw modern intellectual history as a long, losing war against the nihilism implicit in modernism’s rejection of the unevaluated evaluator who is the only conceivable source for ultimate premises. Leff rejected the nihilism implicit in modernism, but he also rejected the supernaturalism that he had identified as the only escape from nihilism.”

Posted also at Uncommon Descent

Greens under attack

Environmentalists have come under some unpleasant attacks in the press following some research that shows that they are meaner than others and more likely to break important social rules.

Liars, cheats, thieves: the terrible truth about the mean greens: The right-on brigade has been unmasked. About time too, says Iain Hollingshead

He writes "Do Green Products Make Us Better People?, a paper in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science, argues that those who wear what the authors call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. Faced with various moral choices – whether to stick to the rules in games, for example, or to pay themselves an appropriate wage – the green participants behaved much worse in the experiments than their conventional counterparts. The short answer to the paper's question, then, is: No. Greens are mean"

and

"We've always suspected they were bullies. In the Seventies British film Nuts in May, Mike Leigh hilariously skewered the sort of couple whose supposed love of the environment ... is really just a device to stop everyone else having fun."

Perhaps this is a bit over the top. But one thing I have noticed is that green campaigners often seem to have little interest in upholding rights and benefits for people and society, but instead over emphasise the need to protect some animal or plant that could live just as well somewhere else. Sometimes it seems that stopping a social benefit is more imortant than protecting nature. There can then be an anti-social lack of balance in their work.

I do wonder whether the need to be alternative and dictatorial towards others in this way is perhaps due to a repressed desire for recognition and acceptance in the community.

Dawkins gets it so wrong Down Under

The Uncommon Descent blog is reporting Dawkins' activity in Australia. Dawkins down Under

Dawkins is up to his usual trick of attacking Christian belief with little substance and fore-thought. He makes out that a world full of atheists would be sweetness and light, while religion is responsible for all the bad things that happen. He carefully overlooks the fact that atheistic regimes top the league table for numbers killed. This is because a world without transcendent values must make up its own, and who is to decide? The Humanist society, or a new Hitler or Stalin, or is it everyman for himself in a Darwinian utopia? Dawkins adopts broadly Christian ethics, although he doesn't admit it, but that need not be the case for atheists. If Dawkins and friends manage to get rid of Christian belief, then what moral conscience is going to stop the new pagans from banning atheism? Atheism attacks rational faith and merely opens the door for all sorts of irrational beliefs where people pray to trees and idols made by a craftsman.

Are Government and Ekklesia using the law to bully faith communities?

As if allegations against bullying in No.10 aren't bad enough, it might be seen that faith communities are now being bullied by an over bearing government machine, with vocal support from Ekklesia.

Of course bullying of all forms is wrong, faith communities understand that. But Jonathan Bartley of Ekklesia launches an attack on faith schools, in an attempt to strengthen the law, that itself looks like bullying. Why they should attack their Christian brethren in this way is beyond me, they appear to me to have a liberalising social agenda that seeks to deconstruct and undermine Christian institutions and appear to have little belief in God's transforming love and grace for individuals and society. But Ed Balls makes the most telling statement where the only prescription about morality is to be from government dictat - the word of government is becoming god to us.

Balls writes "All schools will be required to cover in their teaching of personal, social and health education the full range of content prescribed in the statutory programme of study for secondary schools and in the relevant parts of the new primary curriculum."

While respect for those we disagree with is important, Labour is really advocating the secularisation of schools, which will ultimately lead to post-modern relativism in ethics because it is really treating religious beliefs in a pluralistic manner. Sadly, such relativism will only lead to tyranny in the long run because it destroys any objective basis for value (that was also Popper's argument against relativism in his book The Open Society and its Enemies). I would suggest that faith communities have a better understanding of morality than the secularising Labaour administration that is constantly undermining people's freedom to believe.

Of course there are claims and counter claims about what the new law will mean with the Daily Mail reporting a victory for faith schools in an amendment Victory for faith schools as Labour's new sex education laws are 'watered down'. However, I think that there will only be increased confusion.

Tory education policy -Buddhists In, Creationism Out

I see the Conservative Party education spokesman Mike Gove wants to allow Buddhists to set up schools, but is adament creationism will not be allowed into schools.

Goldie Hawn talks to Tories about setting up schools

He is reported to have said that an independent body would manage schools "to make sure that extremist organisations, or people who have a dark agenda, are prevented from doing so. The other thing that we will make sure is that schools are inspected rigorously...To my mind you cannot have a school which teaches creationism and one thing that we will make absolutely clear is that you cannot have schools which are set up, which teach people things which are clearly at variance with what we know to be scientific fact."

Otherwse; "anyone who teaches in a way which undermines our democratic values can be brought to light, challenged and if necessary, closed down".

The BBC reports that the "Hawn Foundation teaches the Buddhist technique of Mindfulness training, which emphasises social and emotional progress over academic testing and the use of simple breathing exercises to boost learning power."

So a belief in a loving designer will not be allowed to be discussed in school science lessons, but a Buddhist group that doesn't like tests will be allowed in. It was belief in design that actually led to the growth of science in the first place, and there is a conflict between a rational belief in order and design on the one hand that informs science, and a belief in romantic naturalism on the other that will ultimately undermine science. Furthermore, the idea that creationism should be excluded for democratic reasons is offensive and counterproductive to education.

One wonders what has happened to the Conservative Party. The only choice at the next election will be which liberal party we want, the real liberals, the tory liberals or the socialist liberals.

A shame Ann Widdecombe is leaving parliamant.