Thought for the Day: my letter

Following my very successful pledge to have people support me in complaining to the BBC about Thought for the Day, here is the text of my own letter.

Dear Sir,

I am writing regarding the slot Thought for the Day, which appears within BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, as I believe it is in need of reform or removal. In this letter I will explain why. I will also address your previous justifications and explain why they are insufficient.

May I expressly request, first of all, that you do not forward this e-mail to your Religion & Ethics department. They are biased and naturally unlikely to ever consent to having their own slot reformed or removed. The Today Programme should have control over its own content, so this e-mail is for the editors of The Today Programme and may be escalated upwards to the BBC Executive Board as required. It is not for the attention of the Religion & Ethics unit (in fact, I consider this departmental conflation of yours to be confused).

The central problems with the Thought for the Day (TFTD) slot are:

1) It is incongruous
2) It masquerades as moral while excluding non-religious commentators

I will deal with these in turn, then with your previous defences.

The Today Programme is a news programme and as such you would surely agree that it values standards of evidence. The people who listen to it are likely to (or at least should) value standards of evidence too. To many people these days religious belief is, as one commentator has written, an “intellectual impossibility”. This is because:

• All the religions contradict each other, each believes they are right. Needless to say, they cannot all be right.

• Each is based on scant evidence. Indeed there is no solid evidence that Jesus Christ even existed, despite all the miracles he supposedly performed. For more information on this, please see here: http://www.bandoli.no/

• The kind of religions we see, and the God character in particular, are exactly what we would expect credulous and ignorant ruling men to create to fill a lack of scientific explanation for the world around them.

• Scientific discovery has repeatedly refuted and never endorsed the religious world-view (often at the risk of the lives of scientists) and religions are required to be ever more metaphorical even for religious people to believe their claims.

The credibility of religion has been further dismantled, of course, by Richard Dawkins in his book The God Delusion. He need no longer stand alone publicly objecting to the “respect” that religious belief is afforded, but has not earned. Please see here, too, for a moving letter by Professor Dawkins to his daughter, in which he explains at more length the virtues of evidence, and why it is a good thing to respect it:

http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/dawkins2.html

For some inexplicable reason, belief without (or even in the face of) evidence (“faith”) is still granted by some a perverse respect. I believe such belief is in fact ignoble, as the philosopher A.C. Grayling has put it, and the creators of a news programme should surely agree with me on this point. Religious claims are the same as any others and they should be subjected to the same scrutiny – especially as many people are dying and killing for them.

TFTD then, is utterly incongruous within The Today Programme because its commentators believe things that are contrary to the policy of evidence-based belief. It is not moral or appropriate for this programme to accommodate such a slot.

The second most obvious objection to TFTD is that it masquerades as a moral slot (though of course with a religious bent) and yet it excludes non-religious moral commentators, of whom there are many.

It can clearly be shown that religious people do not get their morals from their books. If they did, they would be, for example:

• Stoning unruly teenagers to death

• Stoning rape victims to death

• Stoning animals to death

• Selling their daughters as sex slaves

• Never working on Sundays, at penalty of death (I notice your Sunday programme presenters do this)

• Killing disbelievers (certainly never mixing with them)

• Beating women and treating them, roughly, as animals

The list does go on and on. You can see more examples here:

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/

And here:

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/

As we examine the instructions in the Qu’ran, we find that indeed they are followed more exactly than those in the Bible: this is because Islam is a younger and more virulent religion. Nonetheless, such dictates are of course unwelcome in any civilised society, as is any book which advocates them.

And here is the key point: the fact that religious people usually do not follow all of the instructions in their texts, but rather cherry pick those they like, means they can do away with the texts altogether. These books not only contain immoral advice, but also have nothing to say about the complex moral dilemmas we face today and will face in the future (for example those raised by artificial intelligence and genetic engineering). While they perhaps had their role maintaining order in more ignorant times, they have no role at all today.

Humanists make up their own moral codes. We decide based upon reason and compassion what is the right way to behave. We do not blindly accept the dictates of any text. I believe this is a superior way for humankind to proceed, and it is at the very least entitled to the same air-time that unquestioning religious dogma receives.

Most TFTD monologues are secular until the end. The commentator will try to make a moral point, but then will crow-bar their religion it at the end as if it somehow endorses their point. But it does not. Such points stand on their own. Furthermore, many moral arguments and principles were established by other philosophers before religious characters espoused them. For reasons such as these, it is wrong for the BBC to allow only religious commentators on a slot such as TFTD, which is essentially moral in tone. They do not and should not have a monopoly on this topic. Some (for example, me) would say that they are in fact more part of the problem than part of the solution.

If these reasons are not enough, I would also add that it is contrary to the BBC’s own guidelines to under-represent the Humanist, or non-religious moral viewpoint in this manner:

“we strive to reflect a wide range of opinion and explore a range and conflict of views so that no significant strand of thought is knowingly unreflected or under represented.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/edguide/impariality/

Many people have complained about TFTD in the past, and many more will complain in the future. The BBC has, to date, generally produced the same responses. I will now detail why these are insufficient:

1) It is only 3 minutes of a 3 hour programme.

Three minutes of monologue based upon superstition and unreason, and upon texts with questionable moral foundation, is three minutes too long, especially in a programme which supposedly values evidence-based belief, as already discussed.

2) Around 70% of the nation are religious, so this justifies the slot.

Undoubtedly many people would support the re-introduction of public lynching. Many people enjoyed listening to the likes of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross. Many people like watching Celebrity Big Brother and many people like taking cocaine. Quite apart from the truth or otherwise of the statistics, my point here is that just because people do something, that does not mean it is actually a good thing or something that the BBC should be encouraging. The argument used here is an argumentum ad populum. You can find a list of logical fallacies here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

(This also contains the bare assertion fallacy which people often inanely use to justify their acceptance of religious texts.)

Even if, however, the argumentum ad populum were accepted, this still does not impact upon the point that a religious slot is inappropriate in a news programme.

3) Thought for the Day has been on a long time.

This is a very naïve argument (if it can even be regarded as an argument at all), which I was surprised to see the BBC advance. It is another logical fallacy, known as the appeal to tradition:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition

Suffice it to say this carries no weight at all.

4) TFTD allows diverse faiths and only brief references to those faiths

I have already dealt with this point, in effect. All of the faiths are equally bereft of substantive evidence, and the fact that valid points can sometimes be made with only fleeting mentions of the faiths shows there is no need for the faiths at all: therefore the slot should at the least be opened up to include non-religious commentators.

5) Non-religious voices are heard on other programmes

This is great but does not impact at all on the points made in this e mail. TFTD remains unfairly restrictive and incongruous in The Today Programme. Also I dispute whether adequate and equal airtime is given to humanism on Radio 4 as is given to religious broadcasting. This does not seem to be the case. For example I have never even heard commentator Pat Condell mentioned, despite the fact he is a national hero of clear thinking reason and a moral champion with over 2 million channel views on the alternative medium YouTube.

6) Some atheists like TFTD

I doubt whether this true – these people are more likely to be agnostics. In any case, they are probably referring to the non-religious part of the monologues, which we have already established can stand alone. Furthermore, some self-professed atheists haven’t really thought their position through properly and in addition this repeats the argumentum ad populum fallacy. If this is to be your means for decision, perhaps you could arrange a survey to find out how many atheists like TFTD and how many object to it?

TFTD then, is clearly inappropriate in its current form and should not be foisted upon the listener at peak time during the BBC’s flagship news and current affairs programme. It needs to be reformed.

My view, as is no doubt already apparent, is that religious views have no place at all in a modern and moral society. I look forward to the day (though it will probably not happen in my lifetime) when human-kind looks back at religion as the “cry-baby” phase Christopher Hitchens has described. A mere superstitious period which could no longer be sustained. We can break free of these shackles of superstition. I have gone some considerable way to support my position in this e-mail.

But if Thought for the Day is to remain, it must at least admit non-religious commentators (A.C. Grayling would be one who springs to mind). It is otherwise unrepresentative as a moral slot, and it insultingly implies that only religious people have any moral authority. This is unacceptable.

I hope that you will consider the points raised by this e-mail with an open mind, and reform TFTD accordingly. I believe the rational public will enjoy The Today Programme far more as a result, you will be doing a service to society and better adhering to your own charter.

Yours faithfully,

Gavin Orland

Because these complaints are usually just forwarded to the Religious Department, who – of course – do nothing about the problem, I have sent this to these two addresses:

• today@bbc.co.uk
  
• todaycomplaints@bbc.co.uk

I’ve also sent my e-mail through the BBC’s official complaints gateway:

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/

And I’ve complained to Ofcom about the BBC’s obstinance on this topic, using this gateway:

• http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/progs/specific/

(I’ve had a reply.)

Other avenues are:

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/contact_today/default.stm
• The Feedback programme: feedback@bbc.co.uk

And if you really want to take it directly to those people who have so far flatly refused to do anything about this issue, they would be:

• The Controller of Radio 4: mark.damazer@bbc.co.uk
  (He’s now commented here.)
• The BBC Director General: mark.thompson@bbc.co.uk

Mr Damazer has said he hears “no appetite for change” regarding policy on TFTD. Well perhaps, with 1,500 e-mails coming in, he’s hearing it now.

Note: I want the BBC to receive e-mails re. TFTD, but not advertising spam, which I hate – these addresses are already over the web elsewhere.