Is that not a problem though?
Barry Duke at The Freethinker reports that the BBC recently appointed James Purnell Radio and Education Director at the BBC, and then word got out that he’s…hold onto your hats…A Natheist.
He was talking to Nick Robinson on Radio 4’s Today about the BBC’s plan to set up a new unit for improving religious coverage, and Robinson asked him if he’s a godbotherer. (Not his exact words.) Purnell said he wasn’t.
I’m not. I’m an atheist but I think the issues around belief are incredibly important to how we live.
Robinson asked him:
Is that not a problem though? You are head of the BBC’s religious programming, you got the job because the BBC decided to abolish the post of head of religious programming as a separate post usually held by a Christian, recently held by a Muslim.
No, it’s not a problem. Why is it not a problem? Because it’s possible to do a job of that kind without being a follower or a devotee or a submitter or any other kind of obedient partisan of the subject in question. Why is it possible? Because people at that level should be able to understand subjects without having a personal emotional stake in them.
This is especially true of religion. Religion demands a knuckling under, a credulity, of its adherents that work against good intellectual practice. Religion is rather like Trump repeatedly badgering Comey to give him loyalty, which would have meant not doing his job properly.
The interview came as the BBC pledged to “raise our game” by increasing portrayal of all religions in mainstream shows. According to this report, it plans to increase prime-time coverage of non-Christian festivals including Rosh Hashanah and Passover as well as Eid and Diwali.
The corporation said the move was to address concerns that it does not reflect British society.
The plan includes proposals to inject more religious themes into mainstream TV and radio, with viewers seeing protagonists of popular dramas grappling with dilemmas caused by their faiths.
Well that sounds horrible.
Agreed. Atheism isn’t the opposite of religion — atheism is a position of neutrality. It’s like the question of whether Jesus is an historical person, or a celestial being who was turned into an historical person in the fictional gospel of Mark. You shouldn’t even bother with historians who are Christians — they are hopelessly biased. Read the historians who are atheists, who don’t have a personal stake in the answer.
Hah! I wonder if that last comment was to tweak the noses of the UKIP types – UK society is multi-religious, much to their annoyance.
Huh? If a Christian can give fair coverage to a Muslim, and vice versa, and ditto Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, etc, etc, then an atheist is just as capable of doing it too. (In principle, I mean. Unless he’s one of those “Religion is all undifferentiatedly stupid and none of it is worth understanding from the viewpoint of its adherents because they’re all stupid brainwashed sheep” kind of atheists. But you get that kind of self-satisfied shallow thinking bigot in any group, and they don’t belong in journalism. Except on Fox News, where it’s a hiring criterion).
‘…the BBC pledged to “raise our game” by increasing portrayal of all religions in mainstream shows.’
Really? If they have any honesty and integrity about the process it’ll mean the death of religion in the UK.
Realistic portrayal of the amount religion plays in everyday life in the UK, at least in proportion to the amount that going to the toilet plays, is none at all. No-one would dream of asking another person what their religion is, or which place of worship they frequent; the reaction to such questions would be exactly the same as being asked how frequently they have a bowel movement and what colour their urine is. Both subjects are, rightly, pretty much taboo in mainstream shows and should remain so.
@tigger:
In my circles, yes. In the sort my religious fundie sister frequents, it is commonplace. At her wedding, several of her husband’s friends and family asked about my religion and were visibly shocked when I told them I was an atheist. His brothers tried to pull off a presto-changeo conversion on one of my nephews. They went as far as presenting him – with much ceremony – with an obviously cherished bible. Ugh.
It didn’t take, thankfully.
Well that’s certainly true, especially around here. We north-easterners tend to be a practical lot and even the religious types are often a little bit embarrassed about religion or at least about evangelising. My parents, for example, are Christians. They wouldn’t dream of going out of their way to advertise this fact and are deeply suspicious of what they call “high church”. By which they mean Catholics. They don’t hold with no mumbo-jumbo Latin or waving incense around or genuflecting etc. Oddly, they do go around extorting money out of people by singing carols at them, though.
Fun fact: at the aforementioned wedding our car – and as far as I could tell ONLY our car – was egged. This was in a village with a population of about 300 and not something you’d usually expect. I’ve no idea whether it was due to the fact that the water in the font boiled when I entered the church, whether someone in the village recognised and disliked me (I used to live there) or some other reason. But I secretly like to think I was persecuted for my atheism.