TV and Video

Ariane Sherine (of Atheist Bus Campaign fame) was on BBC Breakfast this morning (3^rd December). She was discussing the Church's new Christmas Ad campaign (Nativity in a bus shelter) and the Christian representative made the most glorious defence of faith in God by saying, "I don't understand how TV works, but I believe it does."

As the kids say nowadays, I "LOL'D" all around the living room

From Suffolk Humansts & Secularists Chairman David Mitchell:

On this morning's Andrew Marr Show, Carol Vorderman reviewed the papers and made a comment that I for one am pretty fed up with hearing.

She described the young parents of the recently born conjoined twins, who decided to take the pregnancy to full term despite knowing the children were conjoined, as “devout Christians”.

Below is a comment I sent to the show via the BBC website. As yet it hasn't made it amongst the criticisms of Jackie Smith's dire performance and given there's far more evidence of the BBC being a Christian conspiracy than a Liberal one I doubt it'll get aired.

Carol Vorderman's description on today's show of the young parents of the newly born conjoined twins who decided to take the pregnancy to full term as 'devout Christians' cannot go unchallenged. The clear implication of her throw away comment is that atheist or Humanist parents would  have chosen to terminate the pregnancy. Moral decisions, difficult decisions, 'doing the right thing' and generally being 'good' are human characteristics and nothing to do with medieval religious superstition. Tens of millions of people know you don't need God to be Good so please stop equating good with Christianity. It's rubbish.

This year we get a choice between religious or non-religious Xmas stamps. The Royal Mail offers the Madonna and Child or some pantomime characters. I love the irony in the Royal Mail selecting various made-up characters as an alternative to the religious stamps!

The Atheist Bus was briefly mentioned on Ian Wyatt’s Sunday Breakfast programme on BBC Essex today (2 November), with comment from me and Francis Goodwin of the Church’s Advertising Network. A listener phoned in to say he was “offended”, apparently at the mere suggestion that there is no god.

I tuned in to tonight’s BBC Panorama programme [27 October] late, just in time to hear reporter Simon Boazman explain how the government plans to collect information on children. He asked his own daughter some of the questions that are included in a questionaire to test something or other. Did she go to church? What religion was she? Did she believe in God? I’ll watch the programme again to check (you can see it online for the next week using the BBC’s i-player), but my mind was boggling.

Sony has delayed the launch of a new video game because of fears that the background music may offend Muslims. The music, by Muslim musician Toumani Diabaté from Mali, contains a couple of phrases from the Qur’an. When their attention was drawn to this, Sony decided not to risk offending anyone. Whatever you do, if it’s anything to do with religion, you’re bound to offend someone.

On the BBC news, Muslim journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown said more or less the same thing. She was quoted as speaking for British Muslims for a Secular Democracy, which was founded in May this year.