Skip to main content

Thought For The Day will continue to exclude non-religious

The BBC Trust announced today:

The BBC Trust today announced its findings on a number of appeals about the broadcast of Radio 4's Thought for the Day and BBC editorial policy on non-religious content.

The Trust found that the editorial policy of only allowing religious contributors to participate on Thought for the Day does not breach either the BBC Editorial Guideline on impartiality or the BBC's duty to reflect religious and other beliefs in its programming. Go here.

Comments

Toby said…
There's a lot of comment on this on the Guardian's article. Most of the comments are against the Trust's decision. As they would be; I don't see how the ban can be justified without taking the line that religious beliefs are somehow "special" and normal rules don't apply to them.

The question is, Where dopes the campaign against TFTD go next?
November 18, 2009 at 6:55 AM
wombat said…
OK TFTD is reserved for religious output much in the same way that "Poetry Please" is reserved for poetic output, but why should that limit the contributors? Cannot agnostics or atheists express religious thoughts in the same way as a non-poet mights occasionally produce verse? What next - not being allowed to add up because you are not a member of the Guild of Mathematicians?
November 18, 2009 at 11:24 AM
AD said…
This is easy. Atheism is a religious belief, even if it negates the existence of god, it is still a belief directly concerned with religion - and indeed is itself a "religion".

Once we convince them of that, then there is room to have an "Atheist" or "Agnostic" or "Skeptic" though of the day in the programme.

"The Trust found that Thought for the Day is religious output and that it is a matter of editorial discretion for the BBC Executive and its Director General as Editor-in-Chief as to whether the BBC broadcasts a slot commenting on an issue of the day from a faith perspective."
November 18, 2009 at 12:05 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

EVIDENCE, MIRACLES AND THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS

(Published in Faith and Philosophy 2011. Volume 28, Issue 2, April 2011. Stephen Law. Pages 129-151) EVIDENCE, MIRACLES AND THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS Stephen Law Abstract The vast majority of Biblical historians believe there is evidence sufficient to place Jesus’ existence beyond reasonable doubt. Many believe the New Testament documents alone suffice firmly to establish Jesus as an actual, historical figure. I question these views. In particular, I argue (i) that the three most popular criteria by which various non-miraculous New Testament claims made about Jesus are supposedly corroborated are not sufficient, either singly or jointly, to place his existence beyond reasonable doubt, and (ii) that a prima facie plausible principle concerning how evidence should be assessed – a principle I call the contamination principle – entails that, given the large proportion of uncorroborated miracle claims made about Jesus in the New Testament documents, we should, in the absence of indepen...
159 comments
Read more

The Evil God Challenge and the "classical" theist's response

On another blog, FideCogitActio, some theists of a "classical" stripe (that's to say, like Brian Davies, Edward Feser) are criticisng the Evil God Challenge (or I suppose, trying to show how it can be met, or sidestepped). The main post includes this: In book I, chapter 39 , Aquinas argues that “there cannot be evil in God” (in Deo non potest esse malum). Atheists like Law must face the fact that, if the words are to retain any sense, “God” simply cannot be “evil”. As my comments in the thread at Feser’s blog aimed to show, despite how much he mocks “the privation theory of evil,” Law himself cannot escape its logic: his entire argument requires that the world ought to appear less evil if it is to be taken as evidence of a good God. Even though he spurns the idea that evil is a privation of good, his account of an evil world is parasitic on a good ideal; this is no surprise, though, since all evil is parasitic on good ( SCG I, 11 ). Based on the conclusions of se...
446 comments
Read more

Sye show continues

I was sent a link to this , for those interested in the never ending saga of Sye TenBruggencate and his "proof" of the existence of God. Hit "sinner ministries' proof of the existence of god" link below or on side bar for 30+ earlier posts on this topic that I wrote during an extended interchange with him last summer (check the literally many hundreds of comments attached to these posts if you really want to get into how Sye thinks and argues). Sye's amazing intial "proof" is available here . PS. For those interested, my own "presuppositional" proof, parodying Sye's proof by his principle "the impossibility of the contrary" (which turns out to be the key to Sye's proof) is: My claim: Sye's mind is addled and his thinking unreliable because he was hit on the head by a rock. Prove this is false, Sye. Try to, and I will say - "But your "proof" presupposes your mind is not addled and you can recognise a pr...
250 comments
Read more