The Pope and the Catholic child abuse cover-ups

In the last year, Catholic child abuse scandals rarely seem to have disappeared from the headlines. In Ireland, the Ryan Report and a later enquiry by a Commission of Investigation threw much light on the horrific abuse perpetrated by priests there, along with the disgraceful lengths taken by senior Catholics to cover-up the crimes of their subordinates. Writing about these reports in our magazine in January, Laurie Taylor described the abuse he both witnessed and was subjected to at a Catholic boarding school here in England in the 1940s.

At the centre of all this lies the question of Pope Benedict XVI's responsibility. In February he described the abuse in Ireland as a "heinous crime" and condemned the way in which Irish bishops handled the allegations. Just yesterday, to mark St Patrick's Day, he wrote an open letter which he hoped would "help in the process of repentance, healing and renewal". But at the same time, Rome is often seen as dodging responsibility for the scandals, most recently (and bizarrely) in the form of its chief exorcist suggesting that the child abuse is the result of Satan being at work in the Vatican.

In the last week allegations of Catholic child abuse have come from across Europe, with those emerging from the Pope's native Germany posing a particular challenge to his reputation. It is alleged that the Pope, when he was Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger of Munich, may have known that a paedophile priest was resassigned to another parish, where he was able to abuse again. The Pope's official spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, has dismissed this as a failed attempt to link Benedict with the abuse scandals, while the Archdiocese of Munich has moved to point out that he knew nothing about the priest's reassignment, and that the diocese's then-vicar general Gerhard Gruber "takes full responsibility for the wrong decisions". Meanwhile, the Pope's older brother, Georg Ratzinger, has admitted to, and apologised for, slapping pupils when he was choirmaster of a boarding school in Regensburg, Bavaria, and failing to act against violent acts perpetrated by others, but denied knowledge of sexual abuse that is alleged to have taken place there.

So should Pope Benedict XVI bear some of the responsibility for the child abuse scandals? In a damning article, even by his own standards, Christopher Hitchens argues that he must. The piece, published on Slate, is titled "The Great Catholic Cover-Up" and, in a sign of the case Hitchens presents, is subtitled "The Pope's entire career has the stench of evil about it". Hitchens argues that Benedict bears both individual and instiutional responisbility. With regards to the Munich allegations, Hitchens quotes a former employee of the Vatican Embassy in Washington, Rev Thomas Doyle, who suggests that Ratzinger, as a "micromanager", is likely to have known about the abusive priest's reassigment. Of course, this is not firm evidence that the Pope had knowledge of it, but much more concrete is Hitchens' case for the instituional responsibility he bears. As is well-known, in 2001 the previous Pope made the "Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" (which is often referred to as the modern incarnation of the Inquisition), then led by Cardinal Ratzinger, responsible for investigating the child abuse allegations. As Hitchens points out, the Congregation handled this task in the following manner:

"In May of that year, Ratzinger issued a confidential letter to every bishop. In it, he reminded them of the extreme gravity of a certain crime. But that crime was the reporting of the rape and torture. The accusations, intoned Ratzinger, were only treatable within the church's own exclusive jurisdiction. Any sharing of the evidence with legal authorities or the press was utterly forbidden. Charges were to be investigated "in the most secretive way ... restrained by a perpetual silence ... and everyone ... is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office … under the penalty of excommunication." (My italics). Nobody has yet been excommunicated for the rape and torture of children, but exposing the offense could get you into serious trouble. And this is the church that warns us against moral relativism!"

And having set out his evidence, Hitchens concludes with his verdict on the man more than a billion people are meant to view as God's representative on earth:

"The Roman Catholic Church is headed by a mediocre Bavarian bureaucrat once tasked with the concealment of the foulest iniquity, whose ineptitude in that job now shows him to us as a man personally and professionally responsible for enabling a filthy wave of crime."

As I said, damning words, even for Hitchens.

A ludicrous example for why we need libel reform

As the campaign for reform of English libel law continues to gather pace, this story on the Telegraph website provides a nice illustration of why change has become so necessary. In what would surely represent the most ludicrous incidence of libel tourism to date, reports in the Danish press suggest that Saudi lawyer Faisal Yamani plans to come to London to pursue his libel case against the 11 Danish newspapers that published the the Muhammad cartoons back in 2006. Given that Muhammad lived and died in the 7th century, you could at this juncture legitimally ask who could possibly have been libelled by the cartoons. Well, in Yamani's view that would be more than 90,000 supposed living descendants of Muhammad. And if you're wondering why he thinks this would be a matter for our courts, it's because the cartoons were published by the papers on their websites, and so were accessible in this country.

Yamani had initially hoped to pursue the case in the Danish courts, but they ruled it was not actionable. It's worth pointing out that there is no indication at this stage that he will be able to do so in London, but the Danish justice minister appears to be taking the prospect seriously, having complained to the European Commission.

As Padraig Reidy points out on the Index on Censorship blog, it seems somewhat unlikely that we will actually see this case pursued in the English courts, but the fact that it is even being talked about is surely a sign that things need to change.

Ireland to hold referendum on blasphemy

Here's some positive news regarding the blasphemy law passed in Ireland last year – the justice minister Dermot Ahern, who attracted a great deal of criticism for introducing it, has indicated that a referendum will take place later this year on whether to remove it. The referendum would allow Irish voters to choose whether to amend the Republic's constitution to remove a clause proscribing blasphemy. Ahern maintains that he only introduced last year's legislation in order to bring the law in line with this constitutional clause.

Atheist Ireland, which has spearheaded the campaign against the blasphemy law, welcomed the news:

"Atheist Ireland thanks everyone who has helped to make the campaign against this new law as effective as it has been to date. It is now important we maintain the pressure on this issue to ensure that the referendum happens as proposed and, more importantly, that it is won.

We reiterate our position that this law is both silly and dangerous: silly because it is introducing medieval canon law offence into a modern pluralist republic; and dangerous because it incentives religious outrage and because its wording has already been adopted by Islamic States as part of their campaign to make blasphemy a crime internationally."

If it goes ahead, the referendum will take place in the autumn, alongside another planned referendum on children's rights.

Regrowing the city

When I commissioned this article on the group of radical dreamers known as the Situationists, I got the impression that some of my colleagues thought it was a bit arcane and irrelevant. Didn't they just spend a lot of time drifting around Paris thinking pie-in-the-sky thoughts about impossible cities of the future where people could be really free? ButI went ahead anyway. And I was glad I had watching Julian Temple's brilliant documentary on the catastrophic demise of Motor City, Requiem for Detroit, shown on BBC2 this Saturday. In his powerful treatment of the story of how a major city was destroyed by the self-satisfied myopia of the American auto industry who thought the good times would never end, Temple provides a fascinating coda which details how the post-industrial landscape is being taken back - both by nature (plants sprouting in the empty houses and factories) and through the ingenuity and creativity of city gardeners and artists. Nothing would have made Guy Debord and the other Situationist dreamers happier, or better proved that their poetic radicalism can serve as a pragmatic model for building better worlds. [The image here is Contant's "symbolic representation of New Babylon" his never created ideal city] If you are in the UK you can see Requiem for Detroit here

What kind of an animal is man?

Is there a contradiction between being a humanist and being a Darwinist? Raymond Tallis doesn't think so, and using the example of the finger he points to what makes us special. But there are many who are critical of humanism's so-called "speciesism". Is thinking that we are higher than other animals akin to a kind of racism? We sent John Appleby to explore the borderlands between man and beast where he meets some strange species of anti-humanism, elephants with post-traumatic stress disorder and a philosopher with the heart of a border collie.

Let us know what you think by posting a comment here

Urge the Bishops to support Lords reform

A few weeks ago, I blogged about the Power 2010 campaign, and the attempt to find the top five political reforms favoured by the electorate. At the time a poll was open to determine the five, and I urged you to get behind the proposal for a fully elected House of Lords – in my personal view a worthy political cause in its own right, and one particularly relevant to humanism in that it would lead to the removal of the 26 unelected Church of England bishops from the second chamber.

In the end the proposal made the Power 2010 top five (it came in third, in fact), and so the campaign is now calling on politicians to pledge their support for Lords reform, along with the four other top issues – electoral reform, scrapping ID cards, a written constitution and a proposal to only allow English MPs to vote on exclusively English issues.

The British Humanist Association is a partner of Power 2010 and, along with the liberal Christian think tank Ekklesia, they're inviting people to support the Lords pledge by writing to the 26 Bishops, as members of the Lords, to urge them to get behind the democratic reform of the second chamber, and "call on them to engage positively with democratic renewal rather than burying their heads in the sand". You can do this easily via the Power 2010 website.

I wonder if the Bishops will go for it? You never know – after all, this is one set of turkeys that's actually quite keen on Christmas...

Creationist corner

I thought I'd share a couple of creationism-related links I've come across today. First up, here's an interesting little piece from the Telegraph on the annual field trip taken by students from the late US evangelist Jerry Falwell's Liberty University to the Natural History Museum in Washington DC. It's a trip that has its basis in a know-your-enemy style philosophy – in order to defeat the evolutionists, the creationists first need to know what the evolutionists think. In the words of the univeristy's paleontology teacher: "In order to be the best creationist, you have to be the best evolutionist you can be."

Following on from that, last week I blogged about the way in which creationists in the US have been looking to ally their cause with that of climate change denialists, in order to avoid accusations that theirs is a religiously-motivated campaign (the aim is to make it seem like it's about the science, not religion). It looks like this is working both ways, because this morning I read this Washington Post blog post on how global warming deniers are mimicking creationists. They want schools to teach both sides of the "controversy" in science lessons that mention global warming, just as creationists want to see creationism and / or ID wheeled out every time evolution is mentioned in lessons. In South Dakota, the state legislature has even passed a resolution calling on schools take this "balanced" approach.

We'll continue to watch this creationism/climate denial crossover with a keen eye. Wonder if we can expect the AIDS denialists to get involved at some stage?

Adventures in woo

We've just taken delivery of our new issue, which should be on its way to subscribers as I write. As a little sample, we've published our commissioning editor Laurie Taylor's Endgame column, in which he recounts a traumatic trip to a health farm he took earlier this year. It was a holistic world of chakras, auras and life force energy, and like a true rationalist Laurie lasted just a couple of hours.

And in a woo double-bill, this seems like an appropriate place to reproduce this news story from the new issue:

One chakra short of a guru?

What with one thing and another it’s not always easy to find a good guru when you need one, so New Humanist was delighted to come across a copy of EnlightenNext, which describes itself as “The magazine for evolutionaries” and is available for a modest £4.95.

This is not, however, a magazine concerned with such small-scale evolutionary matters as the latest fossil finds. It is aimed at those who want to live at the “very leading edge of evolution” itself. People, that is, who are sufficiently advanced to be able to bring “a new spiritual and moral paradigm into the heart of 21st-century culture”.

And – well, you’ve guessed it – to become one of those leading edge people you’ll need paid help from experts. You might, for example, favour Ken Wilber, who offers “integral coaching” and asks, “Are you serious about unfolding in a whole new way?” Because if you are, then Ken asks, “Where do you want to grow?” and promises that he’ll help “build the muscles to get you there”.

If that sort of growing doesn’t sound fast enough to fit into your busy life then you might prefer the “accelerated growth” offered by Saniel Bonder and Linda Groves-Bonder. The Bonders tell us that “The HEART” is our “human-divine essence” and that they “transmit whole-being nutrition through many means to help you find HEART-strength in these turbulent times”.

But even the Bonders seem small beer compared to Doctor Don Beck, a “rare Integral Design Engineer” who leads the way “in defusing and refocusing the dangerously high energy in global hot spots”. Yes, wherever there’s dangerously high energy around, Doctor Beck is on call: “In Israel/Palestine, Russia, Mexico, Chile, Latin America, South Africa and South Chicago” he is “on the ground and in the thick of it”.

One last word of advice though. Before you decide to move to the leading edge of evolution it might be a good idea to check your mucoid layers. These, according to the Arise and Shine advertisement, are the “long dark rubbery ropes” which people expel towards the end of 40 days of fasting. There’s a helpful picture of some black ropey looking objects and even though we’re no expert on these matters, from the look of them they’re definitely better out than in. Not that we want to be too dogmatic. As Avona Carttier, who runs the mucoid cleansing business, reasonably says: “If these mucoid layers are left inside your body, that’s your business. If you want to get rid of them that’s our business.”

An insight into home-schooling

Last week, I reported on the forthcoming grand opening of the New Life Academy in Hull, a fundamentalist Christian private school which will use the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum (something the school's website cheekily claims is "OFSTED approved", even though OFSTED doesn't "approve" curricula).

In that post, I quoted a passage from an ACE science textbook, which pertained to the existence, or not, of the Loch Ness Monster:

"Could a fish have developed into a dinosaur? As astonishing as it may seem, many evolutionists theorize that fish evolved into amphibians and amphibians into reptiles. This gradual change from fish to reptiles has no scientific basis. No transitional fossils have been or ever will be discovered because God created each type of fish, amphibian, and reptile as separate, unique animals. Any similarities that exist among them are due to the fact that one Master Craftsmen fashioned them all."

Informative stuff, I'm sure you'll agree. I was reminded of this this morning when I read this San Francisco Chronicle article, from the Associated Press, about the textbooks used by home-schooling parents in the US. Home-schooling is extremely popular with fundamentalist American parents, who see it as a useful way of avoiding exposing their children to corrupting influences, such as science. But as the article points out, not all parents who home-school do so for religious reasons, and some of those have been shocked to find that the bestselling home school science textbooks tend to have an anti-scientific bias. For instance, we learn that in Biology: Third Edition, from Bob Jones University Press (a quick Google shows Bob Jones is a fundamentalist college in South Carolina), the introduction states the following:

"Those who do not believe that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God will find many points in this book puzzling. This book was not written for them."

And then later in the book, young biologists are told that "Christian worldview ... is the only correct view of reality; anyone who rejects it will not only fail to reach heaven but also fail to see the world as it truly is."

When the majority of the 1.5 million Americans who receive home-schooling doing so because of their parents' religious views, that's a lot of children deprived of a proper science education. I'd be interested to know if there's a similar situation here in the UK.

So how vulnerable is Scientology?

When I interviewed Scientology defector Marc Headley for our January issue, I suggested it may be open season on the Church of L Ron Hubbard, with the work of online protest group Anonymous and the testimonies of former members helping to break down the wall that has long surrounded the fiercely litigious cult.

Then a story in the Washington Post last week suggested the Church was fighting back – it has hired a trio of respected investigative journalists to compile a report on the practices of the St Petersburg Times, the Florida newspaper renowned for its fearless coverage of Scientology's activities, the most recent example being last year's "Truth Rundown", a powerful exposé of the endemic violence at the heart of the Church's operations. The investigative trio is headed by Steve Weinberg, who used to run Investigative Reporters and Editors, a body dedicated to “improving the quality of investigative reporting”. Weinberg told the Washington Post he was paid $5,000 to edit the study (“I could certainly use the money these days”) but denied he was compromising his principles by taking it on, saying he “tried to make sure it’s a good piece of journalism criticism, just like I’ve written a gazillion times.” For his part, St Petersburg Times' editor Neil Brown doesn't seem too concerned, saying “I ultimately couldn’t take this request very seriously because it’s a study bought and paid for by the Church of Scientology,” but still, perhaps it isn't time to declare open season just yet.

Having said that, the latest journalistic exposé of the Church's mistreatment of its workers comes right from the top, with Saturday's New York Times featuring a piece on Christie King Collbran and her husband Chris, the latest ex-employees to the blow the whistle on the culture of violence, repression and negligible wages. It also features quotes from Headley, the film director Paul Haggis, who left last year, and former high-ranking official Marty Rathbun, who was at the centre of the St Petersburg Times report.

Interestingly, we learn towards the end of the piece that Christie King Collbran is still a Scientology believer – she just doesn't support the way the Church is run by top boss David Miscavige (who is named by many defectors as tyrant-in-chief). This is an intriguing element emerging from the testimonies of ex-Scientologists, with several claiming that they stand by the teachings of L Ron Hubbard, beleiving it has been corrupted by Miscavige. That's the position of Rathbun, who provided the foreword to Headley's book. It's incredible, given the experiences they simultaneously recall in their testimonies, and something I'd be fascinated to read more about.

Leeds University Students' Union refuses to allow student society to show Fitna

If you've been reading this blog today, you might have seen that I've been engaged in a strong debate on the post below about the merits of right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who's in town today to show his anti-Islam film at the House of Lords.

Funnily enough (perhaps they'd been reading my earlier post, I don't know), just this afternoon I received an email from the secretary of the Leeds University Atheist Society telling me about how Leeds University Students' Union banned the society from screening Fitna at an event. The screening had been organised as part of an event entitled "Fitna: The Big Debate", which was to consist of a screening, followed by a debate on the issues it raises. So the motives for screening the film can't be called into question – this was not to be a one-sided event, and you can't really debate something if nobody has seen it. In this respect, the case is reminiscent of what happened with Jytte Klausen's book The Cartoons That Shook The World, the book about the Danish Muhammad cartoons in which the publisher Yale refused to include the Danish Muhammad cartoons.

But try telling that to the Leeds Student Union authorities, who told the Atheist Society that this attempt to hold a reasoned debate about a controversial issue contravened the University's "freedom of expression policy", which reads as follows:

“[the university] tolerates a wide range of views, political as well as academic, even when they are unpopular, controversial or provocative” and “the University has an explicit duty in law to take such steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured for members, students, employees and visiting speakers. This duty includes a responsibility to ensure that the use of University premises is not denied to any individual or group on the grounds of the belief or views of that individual or any member of that group or on the grounds of the policy or objectives of the group.”

As the Atheist Society's Norman Ralph said:

“The entire situation is ridiculous. The university campus should be a bastion of free speech where we can openly debate controversial issues. Failure to do so only leads to a rise in extremist views."

It certainly looks like a huge own goal by the student union, and also by the student Islamic societies who were apparently behind the complaints. Rather than taking the opportunity to argue against the pernicious implications made about Muslims in Fitna, they have chosen to close down free debate. As another member of the Atheist Society, Nicola Jackson, points out, it risks making people "think they do have these [extremist] views and are just trying to limit the people that know."

This is an interesting story to come up, given the time I've put in to arguing against Wilders' views today. Just before the email from the Leeds students came through, I'd put my arguments against Fitna in a comment on the previous blog post. It seems appropriate to repeat them below, in a slightly tidied up version. Basically I think the film is a repulsive and misleading piece of propaganda, and it is essential that it (and by extension the political views of Geert Wilders) is challenged. But people can't do that if they haven't seen it.

So congratulations to Leeds Student Union for closing down what would no doubt have been a very challenging, but ultimately a very constructive and positive, debate.

Here's what I wrote about Fitna earlier:

"The implications the film makes are wrong. It is a typical piece of propaganda, which explores a complex issue entirely from one side, in the crudest manner possible. There is not a single point in the entire 17 minutes where an alternative viewpoint is offered. If this was a documentary on TV, it would be slated for this. Even a polemical journalist, if they are any good at what they do and have confidence in what they're saying, would acknowledge counter-arguments.

So Fitna is nothing but crude propaganda. And let's look at what it's saying. The most obvious criticism, and one that's been said in many, many places, is that it's a standard piece of cherrypicking. You could sit down and make the same thing with a Bible. Throughout the film, every Muslim we see is an extremist, from the terrorists, through the preachers, to the young girl who says she hates Jews. Not one bit of the film recognises that not all Muslims think like that. The implication of the film is that all Muslims are extremists, or potential extremists, or at the very least acquiescent in extremism. This is false.

And the big implication of Fitna is that Muslims are taking over the Netherlands and Europe. There is a scene headed "The Netherlands in the Future", which implies that one day in the future, Holland will see Saudi-style executions, stonings etc. To support this view, Wilders uses graphs of demographic statistics, and implies that the Muslim population in Holland and Europe is growing exponentially. The future bar for Europe grows until it is off the screen, implying that the Muslim population will continue to grow until it is in the majority. (Wilders' political statements also imply this). In this, Wilders is certainly wrong. Demographic projections suggest the Muslim population of Europe will be at around 10-15 per cent by 2050. It is common for those who talk of Eurabia to misrepresent demographic data."

Geert Wilders to show Fitna film in House of Lords today

Geert Wilders, fresh from success for his far-right Freedom Party in Dutch local elections this week, arrives in Britain today for a screening of his anti-Islam film Fitna in the House of Lords, at the invitation of Lord Pearson of Ranoch, the leader of UKIP. Well, what a glorious moment in the history of the world's oldest Parliament that will be. For those of you who might have missed out on the existence of Fitna (and well done if you have), it's a short film juxtaposing Islamist atrocities with some choice verses from the Koran. You might summarise the plot as follows: the existence of terrorism + the presence of some violent lines in the Koran = cause to be very afraid of Muslims. (If you really feel the need to watch it, just Google it and have a look at online.)

With a general election looming in the Netherlands in June, the Freedom Party's acquisition this week of its first local government seats, in The Hague and the town of Almere, suggests that Wilders could play a key role in determining the nature of the country's next coalition government. He could even end up as Prime Minister, say some. But a useful counterpoint is provided by an Amsterdam-based writer, Mark Fonseca Rendeiro, on Comment is Free, who says that Wilders' gains are not as significant as the headlines suggest – Dutch politics has a long history of short-lived successes for parties from the far-right and far-left, and other parties, such as the Greens and a moderate conservative party, made big gains in this week's poll (but don't provide the shock headlines like Wilders).

Protests are expected outside Parliament by Muslim and anti-fascist groups. If you have any interest in reading more of my view on Wilders, his brand of politics and his self-appointed status as a "free speech martyr", I've written about it in more detail on this blog on several occassions in the past, most recently in this post. But on this occassion I'll leave you with one point – there'll be a counter-march in support of Wilders in London this afternoon. By the English Defence League.

That, surely, tells us what we need to know about Geert Wilders.

US creationists adopt climate change denial

There's a piece in the New York Times describing how some US creationists have widened their campaign to have "criticism" of evolution taught in schools to asking for dissenting views on man-made global warming to also be taught. Last year the Texas Board of Education, in the words of the NYT, "adopted language requiring that teachers present all sides of the evidence on evolution and global warming", and now a bill is passing through the Kentucky legislature that would "encourage teachers to discuss 'the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories,' including 'evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning'."

It's an interesting development for a couple of reasons. On the one hand, it suggests creationists are trying to strengthen their chances of success by marrying their cause to one less explicitly associated with religion. They've run into trouble in the past, most famously in the 2005 Dover Case, in which a federal judge ruled that a Pennsylvania school district was violating the separation of church and state by requiring teachers to read out a disclaimer before teaching about evolution. By joining evolution denial with climate change denial, it seems creationists hope to avoid this accusation – it's not about religion, they can say, but about scientific "controversy" in general.

It's also interesting for the fact that proponents of one kind of scientific denialism seem to also be the proponents of another. It's not as though one necessarily follows on from the other – just because you think CO2 emissions aren't causing a greenhouse effect (or any other aspect of climate denial) doesn't mean you would think life on earth didn't evolve through natural selection. Which might suggest that someone who thinks both of these things has a mindset disposed towards distrusting what is presented to them as scientific fact, however strong the evidence – a denialist mindset, if you will. I wouldn't be surprised to find the same people claiming that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, or any other common kind of denialism.

On which note, whenever I find myself writing about denialism, of any kind, I always make sure I link to Seth Kalichman's piece on AIDS denialism, written for our November issue last year. Of course many aspects of it are specific to AIDS denial, but I think you can read it as a beginner's insight into all kinds of scientific denialism. As he says towards the end, "all denialism is entrenched in conspiracy thinking".

The Hitch Commandments

In his latest piece for Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens reviews and revises the Ten Commandments.

Well, it was only a matter of time, wasn't it?

Fundamentalist school to open in Hull this year

Update: When I was blogging about this earlier (see original post below), I was struck by a claim made on the New Life Academy's website for the Accelerated Christian Education technique:

"New Life Academy is a school that operates using the ACE system of individualised learning. OFSTED approved, and with an excellent track record, it means the school may look quite different at times to a main stream school, but produces excellent results."

What struck me was the phrase "OFSTED approved". Really? To my knowledge OFSTED only inspects schools, and doesn't "approve" anything per se. What could New Life Academy mean by this? Do they mean that the school itself "is OFSTED approved, and with an excellent track record"? Since the school isn't open until September, and therefore can't have a "track record" in anything, this statement clearly can't relate to the school.

In which case, it must relate to the Advanced Christian Education curriculum. But OFSTED doesn't "approve" curricula, does it? I went away and did some research, and was confirmed in my initial suspicion. OFSTED does not provide approval, and as far as I can establish does not have record of the New Life Academy. And even if it did, that is beside the point, as the statement on the school's website is implying that the Advanced Christian Education curriculum is approved by OFSTED. Which simply can't be true, because OFSTED doesn't approve curricula.

Quite a misleading claim for a school to make, wouldn't you say?

Original post - From September of this year, residents with a spare £2,000-a-year in the Hull area will be able to ensure their children receive an education according to a curriculum "written from the literal Bible Creation base" by sending them to the New Life Academy, a new private school which will use the controversial Accelerated Christian Education technique. Under ACE, the “core curriculum is an individualized, Biblically-based, character-building curriculum package”, which in plain English means that the children are taught individually rather than together in classes, in what critics say basically amounts to learning by rote.

It's a technique already used in other private Christian schools in the UK, as well as many more in the US, and while the Hull school's prospectus (PDF) throws little light on what's involved, it does contain the a clear clue in stating that it will achieve its aims by "giving a Christian perspective on academic subjects". In short, schools that use ACE teach creationism – take a look at the science curriculum on the American ACE website, and how it sets youngsters up for glowing careers in the sciences by teaching them "the facts of Creation as presented in the Bible" and the wonders of "Geologic changes after the Flood". And when they're a bit older they can learn how "attributes essential to life are seen in relationship to the Bible and biblical Creation" and all about "the perfection of God's design for the universe". All of which they learn in "their own learning station", which you might argue ensures that they simultaneously miss out on both a proper education and the character-building experiences that come with interacting with other children.

If you want to read more about ACE, the Wikipedia page is a good place to start. This quote from education researchers D. Flemming and T Hunt seems to sum up what goes on in these schools:

"If parents want their children to obtain a very limited and sometimes inaccurate view of the world — one that ignores thinking above the level of rote recall — then the ACE materials do the job very well. The world of the ACE materials is quite a different one from that of scholarship and critical thinking."

Of course, the New Life Academy (whose founders must have been delighted with this puff piece in their local paper) is a private school, so there's no cause for outrage at the encroachment of creationism into our state education system, but it's worth knowing that these things are out there. There was some controversy about ACE last year when it emerged that the curriculum's International Certificate of Christian Education qualifications had been recognised by a government agency as equivalent to international A-levels. The agency in question, the National Recognition Information Centre, pointed out that curriculum content was outside its remit. Reporting on it at the time, the Guardian quoted a passage from an ACE textbook, about the Loch Ness Monster, no less:

"Could a fish have developed into a dinosaur? As astonishing as it may seem, many evolutionists theorize that fish evolved into amphibians and amphibians into reptiles. This gradual change from fish to reptiles has no scientific basis. No transitional fossils have been or ever will be discovered because God created each type of fish, amphibian, and reptile as separate, unique animals. Any similarities that exist among them are due to the fact that one Master Craftsmen fashioned them all."

Just an example of the kind of knowledge that's on its way to the city of Hull.

Anti-abortion tactics in the Deep South

With the exception of the rosary-swinging nuns that hang around with their miniature plastic foetuses outside the BPAS building round the corner from our office once a week, I generally feel like we have a relatively reasoned approach to the abortion debate in this country. (And to be fair, even those nuns don't have much to say for themselves. They just put their mini-foetuses on the pavement and recite the odd Bible passage.) I know this isn't exclusively the case, and we do have some who take an extreme approach, but on balance we're better off than most countries in this respect.

This is something worth reminding ourseleves of when we see stories such as this in today's Guardian, which tells of shocking new tactics being used by anti-abortion campaigners to target African-American women in the Deep South. Here's a snippet, which quotes Georgia Right to Life's Catherine Davis:

"The abortion industry is targeting the black woman," she said. "There is no lynch mob wearing white sheets and hoods. What they've done is take off the hoods and put on suits and say: let's go and kill the black people. It's cloaked itself by talking about choice. But the industry has targeted the black community. If people were put on the endangered species list then certainly black children would be there because more are aborted than at any time in history."

You can read the rest of the story at the Guardian.

Is this really a free speech issue?

The MediaWatchWatch blog reports, via the Liverpool Daily Post, that a 59-year-old "militant atheist", Harry Taylor, is on trial for "three counts of religiously aggravated intentional harassment, alarm or distress" after repeatedly placing anti-Islamic and anti-Christian cartoons in the prayer room at Liverpool John Lennon Airport. If convicted, he could face a jail sentence.

MediaWatchWatch suggests it would be a blow to free speech if Taylor was convicted, saying:

"The fact that this case has gone to court is bad enough, but if Taylor gets prosecuted then it surely won’t be long before the Archangel Gabriel blows his horn and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse come galloping down a street near you."

I thought I'd blog about this myself, as I'm really not convinced that this is a free speech issue. I'm just not sure the right to criticise, satirise, ridicule and insult religious belief should really extend to deliberately putting cartoons of pigs excreting sausages labelled Qu'ran (one of several Taylor left) in a room where adherents to a religion go to quietly, and privately, practise their faith. And not only do it once, but on three separate occassions. I think there's certainly a case for saying that the aim of that it is to "harass, alarm or distress" religious believers by making them feel uncomfortable in an environment where they have gone precisely to be able to feel comfortable practising their faith in a busy public building.

Here, in case you're wondering, is Mr Taylor's justification for what he did:

"The airport is named after John Lennon and his views on religion were pretty much the same as mine. I thought that it was an insult to his memory to have a prayer room in the airport."

He says that in placing the cartoons he was just practising his own religion of "reason and rationality", which is certainly a new way of looking at rationality.

Ultimately, I'm not sure what I think with this. If free speech has its limits at the point where it becomes something like harassment, surely Taylor's behaviour was fairly close to that line? But at the same time, it hardly seems like something worthy of a jail sentence. Certainly at the age of 59 he should have known better (and for that matter have better things to be doing with his time). If he had an objection to the airport prayer room on account of his own "religion of reason and rationality", why didn't he express it rationally and write a letter?

I'm opening this one to the floor.

Dawkins forum closure: the true reason

As has been widely reported, Richard Dawkins has been at the centre of a spot of controversy over some technical changes currently underway at his website, where plans to replace the online forum with a new system has infuriated volunteer moderators and left users bemoaning the death of the web’s liveliest atheist community.

The moderators have accused website developer Josh Timonen of adopting some arbitrary and high-handed tactics in his implementation of the changes, causing Dawkins to step in and defend his man from the abuse levelled at him by some (You can read the view of one moderator here, and Dawkins's response to the criticism here).

However, here at New Humanist we are able to bring you the real reason for the closure, having chanced upon this post at Christian website Christwire.org:

"For years we warned atheists that we would take down their site entitled RichardDawkins.net, by the power prayer.

The atheists laughed and said prayer did not exist. They cursed us and said there was no God. I warned them time and again, and now, we see the true power of God as he has closed their sinful site, RichardDawkins.net."

So there you have it. And if you're wondering why they hate Dawkins so, here it is:

"For those of you who do not know, Richard Dawkins is one of the worst offenders before God. He promotes bestial relations. He thinks that a “less evolved” human man and a monkey woman had sexual relations to create us."

A fairly accurate summary of The Selfish Gene, wouldn't you say?

Update: Okay, so it turns out the Christian website is a spoof (thanks Jared). Still funny though, and to be fair we've seen plenty of non-spoof evangelical statements even more ridiculous than that, so you can see how it got us!

Encouraging day in court for Simon Singh

We're hard at work here producing our March issue, but I must take a moment to report that science writer Simon Singh experienced a very encouraging day at the Court of Appeal yesterday, in a pre-trial hearing on the meaning of words in his 2008 Guardian article for which the British Chiropractic Association are suing him for libel.

Before dipping into the positives, it's worth repeating some cautionary words from Singh himself, who last night pointed out that "we are still at a preliminary stage of identifying the meaning of my article. It could easily take another two years before the case is resolved". However, all the accounts from yesterday's hearing suggest the case could finally have taken an encouraging turn. The hearing was presided over by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger and Lord Justice Sedley, which Index on Censorship calls "one of the most high-powered panels of judges ever to preside on a single case", and according to legal blogger Jack of Kent, "the British Chiropractic Association's case received a sustained battering by three of the most senior appeal judges in England, all of whom made favourable reference to the need for scientific debate".

The panel reserved judgement until a later date, but accounts from those present in court suggest that they were sympathetic to Singh's case. Encouraging words came from the Lord Chief Justice, who stated that he was "surprised" that “the opportunities to put this right have not been taken”, for instance the BCA not taking up the offer of a right to reply in the Guardian. According to Index on Censorship, he stated that “At the end of this someone will pay an enormous amount of money, whether it be from Dr Singh’s funds or the funds of BCA subscribers.”

One of the key moments of the day seems to have come when the BCA's barrister was asked "What if Simon Singh had said there was no reliable evidence?" [in the article Singh wrote "not a jot" and replied "We wouldn't be here today." To this, Lord Justice Sedley replied "isn’t the first question as to whether something is evidence that it is reliable?"

So, some good news at last from the frontiers of British libel law. And to further brighten your day, I'd recommend Index editor John Kampfner's Guardian piece on the news that the culture, media and sport select committee's report on Press Standards, Privacy and Libel suggests the political tide may be turning in favour libel reform, with its chair John Whittingdale stating a desire to “to correct the balance which has tipped too far in favour of the plaintiff”.

On the Singh case, I strongly recommend you read Padriag Reidy's piece for Index and Jack of Kent's blog, as both were present in court yesterday. And if you find that you need filling in on the background of the Singh v BCA case, you should read Jack of Kent's latest Bad Law column for The Lawyer magazine, which provides an overview of the case's history.

[Pic: Simon Singh at Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People 2009, photo by Des Willie]

What would you say to ET?

This year is the 50th anniversary of SETI – the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence – and to mark the occassion science writer Paul Davies' new book The Eerie Silence looks at the history of the so-far unsuccessful search for intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe, and assesses its future prospects. The book's out in March, but having devoured our press copy in a matter of days, I can confirm that it's a fascinating read – we loved it so much we're running an extract in our March issue, so look out for that.

Davies is chair of SETI's Post-Detection Taskgroup, which I can only describe in entirely unscientific terms as possibly the coolest committee you could imagine – it's job is to work out what to do if (or when, for the optimists) we finally discover a signal from outer space. So if we're going to respond, the Taskgroup would play a major role in deciding what to say.

But there's no need to feel entirely left out – to coincide with the anniversary, the book and National Science and Engineering Week, Davies' publisher Penguin are running a competition where you can suggest the 40-word message you would transmit to an intelligent civilisation elsewhere in our Galaxy (as I learned from Davies' book, the idea of ever sending a message beyond the Milky Way is pushing it a little). 5,000 message will be sent out into space on 12 March during Science and Engineering Week, and the 50 best messages, chosen by a judging committee, will appear on the Penguin website, with the authors winning copies of The Eerie Silence.

So, if you fancy yourself as a potential Galactic Representative (don't we all...), go and submit your message over at the Penguin site, where you can also see the messages suggested by a few famous faces.

Of course, there's a school of thought that says we might like to consider whether we should be responding to ET at all, for fear of hastening our own destruction. After all, have all those sci-fi films taught us nothing? What do you think?