Birt supports calls for Godless God slot
With the BBC Trust expected to decide next week whether it will ask the BBC to make the 'Thought for the Day' slot on Radio 4's Today programme open to non-religious commentators, former director general John (now Lord) Birt has weighed in, in favour of the atheists. Or, rather, he is reported by The Daily Telegraph as supporting a call for humanists to be included in TFTD. The semantics here may be important as Birt is quoted as describing the humanist movement as "a loose network of individuals broadly exercised by questions of the spirit, concerned to optimise the sum total of human happiness here on earth" which strikes me as a broader, and not quite co-terminous, description than would be applied to atheists.
As an atheist myself, I confess that I do not think the TFTD slot should be broadened out to include non-religious viewpoints, nor do I think there is a compelling legal or regulatory case for change. The entirety of the Today programme apart from TFTD, and virtually all of Radio 4's schedule - apart from a couple of hours on Sunday mornings - is secular, so I hardly think we atheists can seriously claim to be excluded from the station's output. Too many atheists are offended by the mere existence of religion, which they consider to be a wild and dangerous delusion. Religious programmes which, by design and necessity, exclude us, are too readily considered threatening when they are nothing of the sort. We need, in short, to relax.
I invariably find Thought for the Day profoundly irritating - and very rarely do I find it remotely profound. But that is because it is too often presented by people who sound like they may only have one thought per day, not because it is a religious slot. Sometimes I do learn something new about what other people believe, or how they perceive the world, that is of interest or value to me. On occasion, particularly when the speaker is from a non-Christian faith, I will also learn a little about another culture. What strikes me very clearly, however, is that the slot is not one for proselytising. Never have I heard a TFTD presenter claim that their faith was better than the others, or that having faith was better than not. Instead, TFTD presents an alternative viewpoint on the world whose very value is in its distinctiveness which, in turn, derives from its exclusive religious nature. I do not deny that atheists have just as strong a sense of morality as religious believers, nor that there is a vast amount of non-religious philosophy to draw on. But what sets religious thinking apart, in a way that makes TFTD interesting, is that atheists do not all share a common canon of writing and thought. A Rabbi on TFTD can reasonably be understood to be giving a Jewish perspective (or, at least, a perspective from whatever strand of Judaism they represent). An atheist can only give an individual viewpoint - which may or may not resemble my atheist viewpoint.
That alternative nature, that distinctiveness, is surely a core component of public service broadcasting. As annoying as I frequently find Thought for the Day, I think it represents a particular worldview that deserves a distinct and separate hearing, and I think it would be a shame for the BBC to lose that.
As an atheist myself, I confess that I do not think the TFTD slot should be broadened out to include non-religious viewpoints, nor do I think there is a compelling legal or regulatory case for change. The entirety of the Today programme apart from TFTD, and virtually all of Radio 4's schedule - apart from a couple of hours on Sunday mornings - is secular, so I hardly think we atheists can seriously claim to be excluded from the station's output. Too many atheists are offended by the mere existence of religion, which they consider to be a wild and dangerous delusion. Religious programmes which, by design and necessity, exclude us, are too readily considered threatening when they are nothing of the sort. We need, in short, to relax.
I invariably find Thought for the Day profoundly irritating - and very rarely do I find it remotely profound. But that is because it is too often presented by people who sound like they may only have one thought per day, not because it is a religious slot. Sometimes I do learn something new about what other people believe, or how they perceive the world, that is of interest or value to me. On occasion, particularly when the speaker is from a non-Christian faith, I will also learn a little about another culture. What strikes me very clearly, however, is that the slot is not one for proselytising. Never have I heard a TFTD presenter claim that their faith was better than the others, or that having faith was better than not. Instead, TFTD presents an alternative viewpoint on the world whose very value is in its distinctiveness which, in turn, derives from its exclusive religious nature. I do not deny that atheists have just as strong a sense of morality as religious believers, nor that there is a vast amount of non-religious philosophy to draw on. But what sets religious thinking apart, in a way that makes TFTD interesting, is that atheists do not all share a common canon of writing and thought. A Rabbi on TFTD can reasonably be understood to be giving a Jewish perspective (or, at least, a perspective from whatever strand of Judaism they represent). An atheist can only give an individual viewpoint - which may or may not resemble my atheist viewpoint.
That alternative nature, that distinctiveness, is surely a core component of public service broadcasting. As annoying as I frequently find Thought for the Day, I think it represents a particular worldview that deserves a distinct and separate hearing, and I think it would be a shame for the BBC to lose that.
posted by Daniel Owen at
12:34 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home