The British Centre for Science Education: Revealed

The Final Curtain!

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:15:00 +0000

Notice To All Readers

"BCSE Revealed", the blog, is closed.

For a comprehensive database of articles of information about the gigantic fraud known as the "British Centre for Science Education", visit www.bcse-revealed.info.

I also have a new personal blog, "More Than Words" - http://mothwo.blogspot.com

Well, this time it really is it, folks. Two things are now clear:

That the BCSE have been well and truly revealed.
The BCSE for the present time do not merit any more attention.

For the evidence for the latter assertion, see this recent "Decline and Fall" post.

Hence, I formally announce "BCSE Revealed" to be completed and hence closed. I'm not ruling out sticking up the odd bit here and there as needed, or responding if the BCSE, zombie-like, rises again. For now, though, it's mission complete.

I don't see the BCSE going anywhere at the moment, but some of its members are young, and I've noticed that the same little group of atheist and secularist campaigners tend to pop up all over the place (National Secular Society, anti-academies campaigns, RichardDawkins.Net, the BCSE, etc.). I suppose it's well possible that some of those in the BCSE at the moment may turn up again wearing different hats in future. So I think it will be useful to have information on them easily available. Here, for your amusement, for the informing of anyone else who wants to know, for you to point anyone who might need to know to, and for the inducing of spluttering sounds over at the BCSE HQ, is the collation of everything I've said over the last year and a bit. I am relieved to finally be able to present "BCSE Revealed: The Website". Please stick lots of links to it up where you can (blogs, websites, mailing lists), so that Google gets to know about it and serves it up when asked for info on the BCSE.

Visit "BCSE Revealed : The Website" - www.bcse-revealed.info

And finally... here's my new blog, "More Than Words". Do drop by for a visit.

Many thanks to all those who lent me support over the last 15 months. It's taken about a year longer than I aimed for, and you made a real difference. Thank you.

David Anderson

P.S. If you want to read a book-length parable about atheism, intelligent design and evolution, or if you enjoyed my Richard Dawkins parable, you might like this: Roddy Bullock's "The Cave Painting".

Do you like our new deck-chair arrangement? (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:05:00 +0000

In the previous article, I commented on the fact that the BCSE's deckchairs have changed colour, and they sport a re-written front page of their website. In that piece, I pointed out a number of the claims which the BCSE no longer make - because they were exposed. Don't expect to find any link on the BCSE website where they explain or apologise for any of the misleading half-truths or downright falsehoods, though - that's not their way of doing business.

Let us now examine what the present BCSE front page (as of 10th January 2008) actually does say.

The British Centre for Science Education (BCSE) is a group dedicated to promoting and defending science education in the UK.

This statement is misleadingly general. In fact, the BCSE has no other agenda that to silence criticism of Darwinism. As documented many times, its leaders have no experience or credentials in science education, and none of them are currently practising scientists or educators. The thing about the Darwinism debate though is that so much of it depends on philosophy rather than science, that the BCSE feel able to talk to that specific area.

It is run as a cooperative organisation by part-time volunteers with paid membership and a public forum where the general public can debate the key issues involved.

I exposed last year that the BCSE had had to change its policy of asking members to pay for their membership, apparently because hardly anyone was willing to join under such conditions. In fact, the membership page of the new BCSE website also still says that no payment is necessary, so here is a contradiction. I'll refrain from commenting much on the level of co-operation that actually exists within the BCSE! (A majority of its committee resigning within one year of opening...).

We have become deeply worried about attacks on science education, particularly from creationists funded from the USA, and our campaign is dedicated to keeping all forms of creationism including Intelligent Design out of the science classroom in the UK.

This statement is also misleading. Creationism and intelligent design are in fact the BCSE's sole actual interests in the realm of science education. The impression is given by the above statement that the BCSE have long been involved in science education, and that here is one particular present issue. In fact, the BCSE has never done anything about any other issue at all other than creationism and ID. The BCSE's activities have also gone far beyond the science classroom, and for the last year they have been involved in various campaigns of slander and intimidation against religious individuals (ministers, seminary teachers and the like) who have not had any kind of involvement in school science. The BCSE is simply an organisation which exists to silence any criticism of materialism's creation myth not with reasoned argument but simply with insults and smears, whether it occurs within 100 miles of a classroom or not.

Notice too the BCSE's description of intelligent design as a form of creationism. Such rhetoric is just a way of advertising your own ignorance. The concepts of intelligent design have been held and discussed by a wide variety of scientists and philosophers down history, by such names as Plato and Aristotle amongst others. It is supported by people who are neither creationist nor even Christians. To seek to write off the whole concept as merely being a form of creationism is simply to reveal your own ignorance and bigotry. In that regard, I don't really have a problem with the BCSE advertising it on the front page of its website - it's a fair warning sign to those without the BCSE's non-too-subtle agenda.

The membership is open to all who support our aims. Members, in practice, are professional and managerial people from all walks of life who have been through the education system, understand it and have benefited from it.

It is interesting to compare this statement about the BCSE's membership with the one that their website used to make. It is one of the areas in which the pressure from "BCSE Revealed" has paid off - though, as always, there is no recognition nor apology. The BCSE's front page used to say, "Our members come from a broad variety of fields - science, business, theology, education, academia, engineering, IT and research." The mention of a "broad variety of fields", with science put first, gave a completely inaccurate impression. In fact, the BCSE has only a tiny membership, and its leadership is overwhelmingly dominated by IT workers and businessmen. The BCSE now acknowledges this on its website - but is it likely to do so in its lobbying of MPs and newspapers? Though the BCSE now acknowledges that its members are generally not scientists or educators, its practice has always been to send letters with such authoritative-sounding sign-offs as "Chairman, British Centre for Science Education", with no explanation that the signer was, when this letter was written, a 30 year-old IT worker!

We wonder though, what is meant by "professional and managerial people from all walks of life"? Are not "professional and managerial people" from the "professional and managerial" "walk of life"? Obviously the desire is to give the impression of variety and largeness - of which in reality the BCSE has a very short supply, being overwhelmingly dominated by non-science educators who are campaigning atheists.

We are aware of the key issues involved in education both as beneficiaries of it and also because our own children are currently benefiting from it.

This paragraph is obviously intended to explain the reason why the BCSE, though lacking credentials in science education, are lobbying the public as if they were experts. It is meant to explain what their qualifications actually are. Let's take a look. The qualifications are apparently two:

They have been to school.
They have children who go to school.

Yes, that really is it! Apparently, not getting expelled and being able to procreate are now sufficient qualifications for masquerading as experts. Reality, this ain't. In fact, were I a betting man I'd wager that the majority of the past and present BCSE committee don't even have children. I have very little evidence to go here, but from the little asides I've picked up, from noticing who has enough time to be on the Internet on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's, and my knowledge of the ages of several of them, I'd say that probably only five of the eleven of them at most have children. I don't know how many of those children would actually be at school.

Whilst there is no evidence to hand concerning children, there is, on the other hand, plenty of evidence of these same individuals doing plenty to promote secularism and atheism. Websites, involvement in the National Secular Society, the British Humanist Association, RichardDawkins.Net, signing petitions to make various manifestations of religion illegal, etcetera.

You don't have to be a genius to sum up the balance of probabilities. Lots of evidence of anti-Christian activism; varying from little to no evidence of involvement in children's activities... which is the more likely to be the real motivation, Sherlock?

"It's for the children" is a favourite refuge of many activists. It's also one which the general public see through the shallowness of pretty quickly.

As such, the BCSE holds a robust position on endeavours without any scientific merit and whose proponents attempt to negatively influence scientific and educational activities.

Again, this is just bluster. The BCSE's leaders generally have neither professional knowledge nor experience in judging what ideas have scientific merit. Some of them do, but this is rather tangential to their work in the BCSE. The BCSE's sole interest is in silencing criticism of Darwinism.

Our public forum allows proponents of creationism and Intelligent Design to put their case forward and debate it.

Indeed it does. Such proponents though, have with only the very tiniest number of exceptions, surveyed the BCSE forum, adjudged it to be a sewer of atheistic ignorance and prejudice, and concluded that to even bother beginning participating would be a monumental waste of time. Who wants to "debate" when that means receiving several insult-laden replies for every responsible one?

Members and participants in our forum include teachers, academics, scientists, members of the clergy, engineers, archaeologists, scientists, students, management consultants, professional managers and businessmen, as well as people of a wide variety of political and religious persuasions.

As we saw in a recent post, in fact over the last 3 months there have been only 23 participants of any kind in the BCSE forum. Dropping those who only posted once, we're down to 19. If you make the mark of being an actual, active participant to have posted 10 times in a 3-month period, then in fact the BCSE forum only has 12 participants. In the most recent complete month, December 2007, there were in fact only 9 people who people who managed 5 posts in the month.

"[T]eachers, academics, scientists, members of the clergy, engineers, archaeologists, scientists, students, management consultants, professional managers and businessmen" is a description which contains 11 different types of people, and they are all in the plural. We are then told that in addition to this ("as well"), there are "people" (note plural again) with a "wide variety of political and religious persuasions." That's quite a lot to fit into only 9, 12 or however-you-want-to-slice-it people, isn't it?

If each of those plurals in fact only means two people, and if the "wide variety" means only three then we'd have a minimum of 25 people. Even on that most generous score, two of the participants completely forgot to ever actually participate.

The BCSE is open to all, irrespective of religious or political affiliations, who wish to oppose the tide of creationism in the United Kingdom.

Well, at least that's accurate. If however your religious affiliations aren't overtly atheistic, you'll probably find you don't want to stay long.

We are then treated to a list of the BCSE's present committee. There's not much need to comment on that, as we know most of them well enough already.

The BCSE believes in the tools for everyone to think for themselves - Science, Education and Reason

You will of course note the conspicuous absence of philosophy or theology as being a useful tool in thinking for yourself; the BCSE are generally followers of the Richard Dawkins-style positivism and empiricism which believes that science is the ultimate arbiter of reality, and that any other field of philosophy or theology must either give way to or preferably be completely replaced by it. Science is the sole source of human knowledge, and all the other fields can go hang.

- and the outcome – Democracy, Pluralism and Liberty.

We've seen before that the actual beliefs of the BCSE leaders are that democracy, pluralism and liberty should be not be extended to those parents or educators who question Darwinism, whether at home or school. The majority of the presentg BCSE committee has at some point voiced support for the position that the state should take active steps to prevent even parents from telling their children that Darwinism can be questionned. The BCSE's "pluralism" is a pluralism of people like themselves - disagreements are permissible are over whether religious people should be hated but tolerated, or hated and exiled from any public life, but not much more than that!

Conclusion

So, what do we learn from this? The BCSE continue to spin, and to present themselves as something they're not. They continue to puff their own credentials to make themselves sound big and authorative, but in the small print we have plenty of hints that the truth is the opposite - and "BCSE Revealed" has documented just what lies behind those little caveats.

The BCSE has relaunched its website, but it's nothing more than the deckchairs being moved around. Same old, same old.

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail (bcse-blog at dw-perspective dot org dot uk). Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Do you like our new deck-chair arrangement?

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 11:57:00 +0000

As demonstrated in this post, the BCSE has been maintaining up an impressive rate of decline in recent months.

But, do not fear - our brave science educators have moved to mitigate the decline by reorganising their website. It now sports a slightly altered colour scheme, and the structure of the content throughout the site has undergone some re-arrangement.

The work was done by Michael Brass, the BCSE's chairman:

(http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=15021)

That fact alone is another indicator of the BCSE's decline. Back one year ago, the BCSE's IT manager was Mr. Ian Lowe, and Mr. Brass announced that by autumn 2007 he would have to step back from the BCSE because he would have no time to be its chairman. By the time a year had passed, though, Lowe had resigned and there was hardly enough of the BCSE left to need any chairing, so Brass was able not only to continue but take over Lowe's job as IT manager too! (You will recall from a previous series of exposes that whereas the BCSE website used to advertise Brass using cleverly-constructed words that would lead you to believe he was a leading archaeologist, he was in fact an assistant IT worker whose BCSE-advertised book was published by... himself, using a notorious vanity publisher: see here). More that that, another member was going to help the BCSE put together a better website - but he also left.

(From the BCSE website's front page, February 2007).

What I want to briefly comment upon is the fact that the BCSE has again rewritten the text on the front page of its website with which it seeks to introduce itself to the world. In fact, one of "BCSE Revealed"'s very first activities was to focus attention on the innaccuracy of the BCSE's self-description (see here and here). It is valuable to review what claims no longer appear on the BCSE's front page. The BCSE's practice is to silently delete embarassing material whenever they're caught out, so you won't find any explanation or retraction of any of these claims - you have to rely on "BCSE Revealed" to point them out. Here's what they no longer say about themselves but once did:

That the BCSE is a "new group". Of course, such claims become out of date; but at launch time I exposed the truth - that the BCSE was an existing group of secularist activists, renamed.
That the BCSE had 83 members. I exposed the fraudulent counting method that the BCSE used to devise this number; as sen recently, even in its hay-day the BCSE had only around 30 interested participants (not all of whom were members), and nowadays has scarcely double figures.
That the BCSE was an international group. This claim was deleted after I pointed out the improriety of Americans, Spaniards, etcetera, being members of a campaigning group whose sole stated aim was to influence what was taught in schools funded by British taxpayers.
That the presence of creationists at Leeds University had done so much damage that the university had had to introduce remedial courses to re-educate their students. The BCSE had to delete all material about Leeds University from its website after Leeds threatened the BCSE with legal action over its material! At the same time, another section silently disappeared from the BCSE website - the bit where they promised to print in full any threats of legal action that they received!
That the goal of those who doubt Darwin in the UK is to overthrow lawful government and institute a theocracy. I exposed firstly the fact that the only basis that the BCSE had for these claims was their own atheistic prejudice which infers that any mention of religion outside of the private sphere is inherently theocratic, and second exposed the fact that more than one BCSE leader was actually lobbying the prime minister to make any non-secularist approach to upbringing illegal! That's not the kind of thing you want to be caught out doing if you're pretending to be committed to pluralism and democracy, as the BCSE's website claimed at the time.
That the BCSE had members "resident in the UK, North America, Australia, South Africa and the mainland of Europe". In the last three months, the 15 most active participants of the BCSE active in the BCSE forum (not all of whom are members or even supporters) who together with accounted for 97% of the activity in that forum all lived in the UK.
The hilarious claim that the Discovery Institute in the USA "has a clear agenda to take political power" ! Get those tin foil hats on now, everyone!

That the BCSE had a "lively" web forum. In fact, as a recent post demonstrated, a tiny number of die-hards is about all that remains, and the BCSE leader had to recently resort to begging any passing creationist to debate with him! Interestingly, the claim that the forum was "lively" wasn't added until June 2007, by which time the rot had well and truly set in. Methinks he doth protest too much?

May 2007 : it's a discussion forum. But by July 2007 it had become a a "lively discussion forum". Except that it hadn't.

That the BCSE chairman, Michael Brass, was a "published archaelogist". The reality: Brass was at the time a 29 year-old assistant IT worker who had self-published a single book with a notorious vanity publisher.

There are a whole series of other statements too which are easily demonstrable as nonsense, but most likely have been withdrawn simply to keep the length of the page down rather than because the BCSE wishes to withdraw them. That may go for some of the above as well, of course. Examples would be the claim that the BCSE has a proven track record (of what, exactly? A disintegrating membership, perhaps? Of making not-even-slightly-plausible legal threats against "BCSE Revealed"?), or has no atheistic agenda (apart of course from the majority of the leadership of course, who we documented as saying the opposite!).

In the next article, I take a look at what the BCSE front page does say.

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail (bcse-blog at dw-perspective dot org dot uk). Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

For completeness sake (the updated BCSE committee)

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 11:35:00 +0000

For Completeness' Sake...

There have been three new names added to the BCSE committee recently, to replace the continuing stream of resignations.

I can't do much apart from yawn at them, as it's now obvious enough that the only qualification necessary to get onto the BCSE committee is that you are 1) not dead and 2) willing to join. If you happen to have any experience in teaching science then that is of course good, but it's quite sufficient if all you've done is put up some websites to promote atheism then that's definitely a bonus. Well, on that score we've already commented on new member Mark Edon (see here).

For completeness' sake, that just leaves Dr. Jeremy Hodge and Chris Hyland to add a few notes on.

Dr. Jeremy Hodge

Dr. Hodge joined the BCSE committee in late 2007. He has a doctorate from Oxford University in chemical engineering, and runs an electrical manufacturing company. The BCSE presents itself as an expert source of information on questions about biological origins. Dr. Hodge, though, apparently has no qualifications in biological origins or in science education in general - but he is, as with the BCSE leadership in general, an outspoken atheist. Dr. Hodge was a supporter of the infamous petition which sought to forbid parents to instruct their children in any way of life except for secularism and atheism. In fact, he went as far as to argue that this was required by the UN convention on human rights! So, it's obvious where he's coming from. I'm sure our children all look forward to being carted away to the nearest council home in order to enjoy a better life, free from their religious parents, and they'll certainly thank Dr. Hodge and those of his ilk should it ever come to pass. Ho hum.

(http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=5216#5216)

In the following paragraph, Dr. Hodge shows us that he makes the classic atheist division of religion from science and reason, as if they were mutually exclusive, not to mention some obviously whacky political ideas, and drops in the hallmark of Dawkins-style fundamentalist atheism: the suggestion that Christianity is really little different from Islamic terrorism:

"I think we may be seeing the early stages of the Second US Civil War here, or at least the breakup of the USA into two groups of states, one which follows reason and science (e.g., California and the North East) and which is the dominant economy, and the other which is religion-dominated (e.g., Mid-West and South). Thinking as a secular European, this may be to our ultimate advantage. I don't particularly care if they delude themselves, or whatever else they do, as long as they don't turn dangerous, as some Islamicists appear to have become, and as long as they don't try to peddle their nonsense over here.''

(http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?t=1548)

In other words, Dr. Hodge is a good fit at the BCSE.

Chris Hyland

Finally, Chris Hyland. Mr. Hyland may be Dr. Hyland by now for all I know, as I suppose that most doctorates are finished by age 25 (which is what Mr. Hyland's age is).

Chris Hyland joined the BCSE committee in later 2007. Now aged 25 (end of 2007), he began campaigning with the BCSE as a 23 year-old biology PhD candidate at Leeds University.

Hyland has from the beginning been the only evolutionary biologist of any kind belonging to the BCSE. That fact alone would be enough to convince most investigators that it's probably not his love of biology that drew him to the BCSE!

See these stories for more on Mr. Hyland:

"The BCSE Caught Lying To MPs" - Hyland was involved in the first major BCSE scandal, as they were caught having lobbied MPs, asking them to condemn the materials of Truth in Science as being "full of errors" before they even knew what was in them.
How the BCSE changed its story about its lobbying of MPs - and gave itself more problems - Hyland was then involved in the BCSE's attempt to spin a story to cover itself up; which only created new questions and highlighted new aspects to the apparent deception.
Hyland's own university, Leeds University, threatened the BCSE with legal action over the article on the BCSE's website about it and one of its non-Darwinist professors. The BCSE pulled the article without putting up any fight to defend its contents. See here.
Hyland was complicit in the BCSE's pre-meditated slander campaign (based upon allegations which I easily proved false) against me. See here. For this, Hyland has never offered any explanation or apology.

Mr. Hyland is taking a major risk with his credibility by being involved with a group of imposters such as the BCSE; the only conclusions I can draw from this is either that Mr. Hyland does not intend to be involved in academia any more after his PhD, or that he is so blinded by atheistic zeal that he believes the price is worth paying. Hyland himself appears to know this, because he gave the following effective testimony to the effectiveness of my exposures of the BCSE. Before he joined them, on another website he wrote this about his advice to the BCSE:

"We did also advise that they get their website in order BEFORE starting thei lobbying, which they failed to do. The result = BCSE 'revealed'." Hyland: Yeah I was willing to write that of as the ramblings of some idiot but as it stands now it's a major problem for their credibility."

What changed? When did the BCSE recover its credibility? Or, more likely, is it Hyland that changed? Is it not a "major problem" for Hyland's own credibility that he was prepared to join the BCSE leadership despite knowing all that "BCSE Revealed" had shown about its nature? Note, though, that it's not the nature of the BCSE that was worrying Hyland; it was the fact that unless they re-wrote their website to cover up certain sections, that that nature might be made known to others.

So, the BCSE has added some new committee members - each with demonstrable track records in at least one of atheist campaigning, being caught telling pre-meditated lies without apology, or both. In other words... they'll be right at home in the BCSE.

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail (bcse-blog at dw-perspective dot org dot uk). Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Not Even Good At Being Nasty!

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 11:28:00 +0000

I've briefly mentioned a Mr. Mark Edon before. I haven't taken much notice of him, as I don't think it's a good use of time to go around refuting every atheist-rant blogger who decides to take a pop at me on the Internet - I'd have to give up sleeping.

However, Mr. Edon was recently appointed to the BCSE committee, so I'll provide a little documentation just for completeness (I'm sure there can't be many people left on the Internet who need any proof of what the BCSE are really about).

All You Need To Know...

Mr. Edon joined the BCSE committee in the second half of 2007. Suffice to say that:

Like most of his colleagues, he has no qualifications in science or education that would qualify him to pose as any kind of science educator, let alone a national expert who should be lobbying newspapers and MPs.
Like most of his colleagues, Mr. Edon's motivation is obvious, as he is a rabid supporter of Richard Dawkins.
Again, like most of his colleagues, Mr. Edon is seriously equivocating in his involvement in the BCSE, because whereas:
- the BCSE claims to be a scientific body and not driven by religion, and to believe that science and religion are broadly complementary ...
- ... Mr. Edon's own personal beliefs are exactly the opposite: science and religion are irreconcilably opposed and it is the purpose and destiny of the former to replace the latter. Mr. Edon's own Internet activities are motivated in the most obvious possible way by his own deep dislike of theism.

It is apparent enough too that there were two reasons why Mr. Edon was invited to join the BCSE committee:

The BCSE's collapse by that point was so advanced that, if they wanted to still have a committee, they were more-or-less obliged to offer a place to anyone who was willing, and
Mr. Edon's polemical activity on the Internet made him a friend of the BCSE leaders. This is all really we need to know about the BCSE; there is no need to have any real understanding of science education to join it - a bit of experience in atheist polemics is quite sufficient.

So that you can judge for yourself whether I'm justified in identifying Mr. Edon as an "atheist-rant blogger", I offer the following in response to Mr. Edon's prize claim about my integrity.

A Response to Some Of Mr. Edon's Polemics

From examining Mr. Edon's polemical efforts to discredit my research, his prize claim is apparently that I am dishonest because in one place on the Internet I described my degree in more general terms as being in science, whereas in another place I described it more specifically as being in mathematics.

Mr. Edon writes that these two claims are obviously contradictory (he did a straw poll in his office to establish that mathematics cannot be described as a scientific subject), and that therefore I am a liar. He then proceeded to promote his claim in several places, including the BCSE, around the Internet.

http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?t=932

I don't know whether to laugh at this claim for its silliness, or cry at the tragedy of pursuing such a pointless set of goals. What cause could be such a bad one that it requires this to help it?

My course was described as a scientific one by the university which awarded me the degree, where the mathematics department that taught me describes itself on the front page of its website as teaching "Mathematical Sciences", and on my university application, five of the six universities to which I applied awarded a Bachelor of Science (BSC) degree for their mathematics course.

My UCAS application: note the right-hand column

A letter from my college

Even if Mr. Edon had bothered to look up on Wikipedia, he would have found maths described as a science!

That Mr. Edon:

Never thought of doing such basic checks,
had no idea that mathematics degrees in the UK are generally awarded with a Bachelor of Science degree,
but instead rushed into print to try to discredit me,
and apparently believes that scientific questions are settled by taking a straw poll of people in his office...

... is all the evidence we need about what kind of people are leading the "British Centre for Science Education", and what level of competence they have in their purported sphere of expertise. They're not even any good at smearing!

I will leave it to Mr. Edon to decided whether or not the UK's top universities are also pseudo-scientists and liars... or whether it's not the case that his attempts to discredit me have rather scraped the barrel.

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail (bcse-blog at dw-perspective dot org dot uk). Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Decline And Fall (3)

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 11:31:00 +0000

Decline And Fall

How is it with the BCSE? As far as its present incarnation goes, it's all over bar the singing. All that is left is the die-hards talking to themselves. Not that they won't try to pull a few more scams, I'm sure; but it's abundantly evident that the 2006 launch failed.

Evidence-a-plenty of that disintegration is obtained by comparing the BCSE committee of January 2007 with that of January 2008:

Then (both images from http://www.bcseweb.org.uk):

Now:

Only a minority of the original committee made it through the whole of the first year - and one of those who did survive, Roger Stanyard, resigned and rejoined in the meantime (see here for the gory details). This reflects what happened to the BCSE's support as a whole: the majority of those who supported it in January 2007 pulled out, fell out, were chucked out or just plain saw some sense and left.

The present front page of the BCSE says the following about its online discussion forums:

"Members and participants in our forum include teachers, academics, scientists, members of the clergy, engineers, archaeologists, scientists, students, management consultants, professional managers and businessmen, as well as people of a wide variety of political and religious persuasions."

How many people is that? The plurals must mean at least two - and there are eleven different categories there, and then a "wide variety" of others. What's the reality? Here's the reality, in pretty colours - the result of statistical analysis of the online forums...

Number of People Posting

This graph shows the number of different individuals who posted in the BCSE forums in each of the last 5 quarters (i.e. October 2006 until December 2007, split up into 3-month chunks):

That graph though fails to distinguish between posters who posted once, and those who are regulars. If we are very generous and say that a "regular" is someone who posted more than 9 times in a quarter, then the graph looks like this:

The figures for the respective quarters are 29, 25, 17, 14 and 12. If you've read any of their website then you'll know that the BCSE like a good spin - but I think that this set of figures might be beyond even their ability. Remember what I said the BCSE claim on their front page for their forum - did it lead you to believe that there were only actually 12 regular posters in there?

The decline is equally stark when you compare the total number of posts made and put October 2006, November 2006 and December 2006 side by side with the same month from the year just ended:

My estimation, based on the figures available from the in the forum itself, is that there are around only 20 people regularly reading the BCSE web forums. Which means, dear reader, that if you are one and I am another... then together we're 10% of the total!

When I looked at the total number of posts made over the course of the whole of 2007, the decline was more moderate. How can there be a more moderate decline in the total number of posts than in the number of people making posts? It must mean that the remaining BCSE leaders are doing more and more of the talking. And indeed it is so.

In the first three months of 2006, 10 individuals accounted for 70% of posts on the BCSE forums. In the last three months, it took just five individuals to do the same. Over half the posts were made by one of just three individuals, and the top ten individuals accounted for 91.1%.

Summary

In the last 3 months of 2007, a grand total of twenty three individuals participated in the BCSE forums - and that includes four people who only posted once. Allowing a generous measuring stick, there cannot be said to be more than 12 active participants. Compare this with the BCSE's boast back in 2006 that it had 83 real members, and compare it with the spin on the BCSE's home page. As we've seen, the "83 members" claim wasn't even slightly true at the time; and neither is the new statement on the website.

The BCSE's new website claims to have 11 different categories of people in its forum, each with multiple members, plus a "wide variety" of others in addition. In truth, it scarcely has 11 people at all, let alone variety within that grouping.

The BCSE have yet given us again a good dose of evidence as to its own utter inability to deal straightforwardly and honestly. If the Darwinian case is so strong, why does it need such a large does of spin, misdirection and downright falsehoods to help it along? If evolution is such an undoubted fact, why does it require such tactics as this to boost its public image? Of course it is true that the BCSE's porkies do not affect the truth of Darwinism one way or the other. It is also true, though, that the BCSE's leaders are not stupid people, and that they are very strongly motivated to put the best case that they can in order to discredit any questionning of materialism's creation story - and that this is the best they have been able to do. If that doesn't make you at least smell a rat, then nothing will!

David Anderson
Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail (bcse-blog at dw-perspective dot org dot uk). Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Some Feedback

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 08:44:00 +0000

Here's something I received in my mailbox recently. It's from a real scientist, with a real qualification, doing real research in a real university - not someone working to gain a qualification, but someone who's been long established in his field. i.e. The kind of person still utterly missing from that body which fraudulently writes to MPs, newspapers, etcetera, pretending to be a national authority, a.k.a. the "British Centre for Science Education". Of course, so that he doesn't get his name dragged through the mud on the BCSE's website, I've trimmed it off.

David,

Having laughed so much I wanted to send you a note to say thank you: this evening I discovered your blog and analysis of the so called British Centre for 'Science' Education. There's may be horrid mischief but you certainly have a knack for confronting and humorously demolishing it.

I was a bit alarmed when I first saw the BC'S'E website earlier this year, but fortunately aside from the obvious religious zealots like Dawkins and Jones, in my experience academics have too much integrity (and are too busy) to bother with this sort of nonsense. They are probably far less gullible than I fear MPs may be over the output of BC'S'E.

I think my correspondent is right; the BCSE, generally being outside the world of real science themselves, is only going to con people who aren't in that world - anyone else will smell the rats pretty quickly.

I like getting this kind of feedback. The BCSE is essentially a con game; their procedure is to: 1) invent authoritative-sounding name for themselves 2) put up spin-filled website 3) profit!!! Until you dig a little deeper, you might well be worried, or taken in; that's what "BCSE Revealed" is here for. On the Internet, any man and his dog can pretend to be a leading authority; but it's also true that on the Internet, any man and his goldfish (actually, I keep chickens now, but it used to be goldfish!) can point out the scam.

David Anderson

In case you were wondering...

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 07:57:00 +0000

Sometimes, you have to spend several hours digging through different sources to piece things together. Sometimes, the BCSE just hand it to you on a plate.

Here is Roger Stanyard, the founder, de facto leader, and official spokesman, of the "British Centre for Science Education", posting over at RichardDawkins.Net and making a few things quite clear for us. Note that Stanyard is posting in his official capacity, beginning his post with "We at the British Centre for Science Education" and finishing with the tag-line, "Roger Stanyard, British Centre for Science Education". Read it through for yourself:

We at the British Centre for Science Education have done some estimates of the proportion of Christians in the UK who are fundamentalist (extremist if you like). A rough definition of extremism is that the accept Sola Scriptura as extended into all public domains. In English that means into science - creationism if you like.

On a head count of churches it is somewhere between 5% and 10% of all churches. In terms of individual believers it seems to be around 400,000 out of a regular church going population of 3.5-4 million.

However, it ain't no good asking people if they are fundamentalists. No matter how much they foam at the mouth about creationism and hell fire and brimstone, most of them will deny it.

Sadly, in any society there are a lot of authoritarian extremists. Seems to me that you only have to scratch a fundamentalist slightly and underneath they are all the same as hardline fascists, BNPers, white supremicists, Abu Hamza fans, Marxists, racists, homophobes, Trotskyites, Leninists, Maoists, Northern Ireland paramilitaries, KKKers - all birds of a feather.

They all have a 'worldview' that they want to impose on others without consent.

It is silly, though, to suggest all religious believers are of that ilk or that religion is the platform off of which extremism rides. It is like saying that communism is the natural outcome of the beliefs of people who are in the Labour Party or fascism of those in the Conservative Party. The overwhelming majority in both parties believe in liberal democracy, are pragmatic and not prone to authoritarian extremes. Same with religiou believers.

Roger Stanyard, British Centre for Science Education

(http://richarddawkins.net/articleCom...insnet,page1#82332)

Some pertinent questions and observations, for anyone who hasn't yet worked out what the BCSE are really about:

How is it that a purported centre for "Science Education" which pretends to operate independently of religious questions, is taking surveys to work out what percentage of Christians are "extremist"? Which branch of science, exactly, is this part of?
Why is the spokesman for a body which presents itself to its lobbying targets as a bona fide scientific institution with expertise in biological origins doing offering us definitions of religious extremism? What branch of biology is this from, please? Or have I missed something - maybe Mr. Stanyard has had his work published in a scientific journal somewhere? Because it looks to me like Stanyard's "science" is nothing other than his atheistic philosophy in a not-very-cunning disguise. My point is not that science and philosophy are separable fields; my point is that Mr. Stanyard's purports to have a scientific viewpoint which is free of all philosophical bias, which is clearly not the case.
Notice too how extremely broad Stanyard's definition of an extremist is - it includes 100% of classical Protestants, being defined by acceptance of the defining Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura - i.e. the belief that the Bible is the highest, unrivaled, authority - the belief that God exercises his own authority through speaking to us in the Bible. The phrase "Sola Scriptura" was coined at the time of the "Protestant" Reformation, to "protest" against the teaching that church, or the Pope, had an equivalent or greater authority than the Bible. According to Stanyard, though, this doctrine is the sina qua non of religious extremism. Has it occurred to Stanyard that whether or not a viewpoint is "extreme" or not also depends on where you are viewing it from? i.e., why is Mr. Stanyard so blind to his own anti-supernatural extremism?
Does not the comment "They [i.e. all classical Protestants] all have a 'worldview' that they want to impose on others without consent." indicate a severe personal antagonism against Christianity, which is the real driving force behind Mr. Stanyard's quest to pass himself off as a legitimate spokesman on science education? (Mr. Stanyard is a life long business consultant who has never been involved in science education or research at any level).

This comment itself is self-contradictory; how can someone accept a view of the world without consenting to it? What does that mean? Or is Mr. Stanyard really saying that the Bible-based Christianity is really a brain-washing and mind-control program in a poor disguise? That Christian preachers are really would-be hypnotists? (Watch out - on this blog I'm not really trying to persuade you with rational arguments in these lines - my real aim is to reprogram your mind using pychadelic images which pop up when you're not expecting them! Wu-ha-ha!) It seems pretty clear that Mr. Stanyard has spent a long time drinking at the Dawkins fountain, because to him all efforts to persuade someone of a religious idea amount to brain-washing.
The BCSE's purported objectives are to prevent any criticism of Darwinism (which they believe is irrefutable truth) in 100% of public schools - even though the percentage of the public who pay for those schools and who share their certainty is very small. How, exactly, is this campaign of theirs different from "imposing a worldview without consent"? Is not the very raison d'etre of the BCSE to ensure that their own view is unchallenged, contrary to the beliefs of the public at large? Does the word "hypocrisy" figure in Mr. Stanyard's lexicon?
Does not the same comment also indicate a severe misunderstanding of Christianity? It is a "fundamental" belief with Christians that becoming a Christian is a supernatural event - the Holy Spirit applies truths to the mind and changes the heart. The method is through supernatural persuasion, as Christian truths are proclaimed. The idea of externally "imposing" on someone "without consent" is foreign to this way of thinking, and is effectively a denial of essential Christian truth claims - the claim that Christian conversion is a real, supernatural phenomena that involves all the immaterial faculties of the person - the rational mind included. That is why Christians like me blog, and author presentations - to persuade.
In other words, do not Mr. Stanyard's words provide more solid evidence for the case that "BCSE Revealed" has been making - that the BCSE is really a badly-disguised atheist/anti-supernaturalist crusade, run by people not with scientific or educational standing, but driven on by their own personal grudges? Mr. Stanyard has such a deep hatred of Biblical Christianity, that his prejudice prevents him from even describing it accurately - all he knows is that he hates it and wants you to do so too!
Notice, as we have continually pointed out on "BCSE Revealed", that Mr. Stanyard's chosen vocabulary is the standard vocabulary of campaigning anti-theists, such as Richard Dawkins. Stanyard poses some conspiracy or mystery as to why those who he calls "fundamentalists" do not themselves accept the label. The real reason is quite simple; the term "fundamentalist" has only two normal usages; in the religious world, it is used one to identify the sub-segment of American Baptists who hold to a number of particular beliefs who developed in the late 19th and early 20th century (distinctive beliefs which Mr. Stanyard's targets do not generally share), and the other is the usage by Dawkins et. al. to try to posit an equivalence between any consistent belief in supernaturalism and the maddest excesses of militant Islam.
Notice too, that Stanyard follows that second course - the Dawkins line. The "fundamentalists" are really "hardline fascists, BNPers, white supremicists, Abu Hamza fans, Marxists, racists, homophobes, Trotskyites, Leninists, Maoists, Northern Ireland paramilitaries, KKKers" in a poor disguise. Mr. Stanyard has forgotten to index for us the scientific paper which has the proof for all this laid out... either that, or he's again confused about the difference between actual science and his own metaphysical prejudices.
Mr. Stanyard is firstly apparently stumped at why someone convinced that God has spoken in the Bible would not want to accept the label "fundamentalist", and then secondly explains that a "fundamentalist" is basically the same thing as a member of the Ku Klux Klan, etcetera. Does Mr. Stanyard not possess enough grey matter to work out the answer to his own question?
Is there any science at all in Mr. Stanyard's screed? Do not Mr. Stanyard's comments rather bear out the thesis of many of us on the Internet that one of the major problems in the science concerning human origins (Darwinism, origin of life, etcetera), today, is that there are just too many dogmatists like Mr. Stanyard who start with the assumption that their own philosophy is correct and then seek to drown out any other voices?

Mr. Stanyard pretends on the BCSE's website that his organisation is religiously neutral. When he's doing something other than authoring that website, he tells us what he really things - that people who believe that God has spoken are all murdering mullahs at heart, and that the goal of scientific organisations it to oppose them. That's what the BCSE's there for - and that's what I'm here to reveal.

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail (bcse-blog at dw-perspective dot org dot uk). Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Being An Internet Investigator

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 11:53:00 +0000

(If you've come here to read research about the "British Centre for Science Education", you should skip this post).

I think I've learnt a few things over the time that I've been investigating and documenting the activities of the non-British non-centre for non-science non-education. It may be useful for others if I write a little about some of those lessons. I've seen other investigative blogs on the Internet; the quality varies greatly! It's an interesting and challenging personal experience too, especially if those whose activities you look into start trying to play nasty.

Here, then, in no particular order, are some of the things I've learnt or questions you ought to ask:

1. You will become a public person

Once you go live, you become a public person. Other will comment on your work, and on you. Some will take remarkable liberties in making all kinds of speculations - even if the only contact they've ever had with you is to read a handful of blog posts. This might make you realise that you've done the same about others; it certainly gives you a different perspective from "the other side of the fence" and teaches us to be a bit more reserved in our own wild speculations!

I recommend not even thinking about doing this kind of work anonymously. Investigative work is about integrity - you are questioning the integrity of someone else or their organisation. If you don't want to be held accountable for what you say (which for me means I list on my blog my name and which church I belong to), then probably you shouldn't be saying it. Maybe if you're investigating the Mafia and your targets are likely to hire hit-men, then anonymity might be an option. Otherwise, remember that if you're going to question someone else's credibility, they're likely to at least wonder what yours is too.

Following on from this is...

2. Are you ready to become a public person?

If you are, like me, seeking to expose a bunch of people who have no qualms about playing dirty, then you really need to think about whether you're ready for the comeback. Either you need to grow a thicker skin, or you should probably consider never starting. Are you ready for a hate-mail, having counter-blogs and websites set up with no discernible purpose other than to insult you, and having small-minded people with infinite amounts of time on their hands run all round the Internet to say about you whatever bizarre inventions their brains can concoct? Are you ready to have them seek to peer into your personal relationships, contact your friends and churches, make bogus legal threats and so on? Are you the sort of person who will have trouble sleeping and develop ulcers because of the strain it'll put you under? If the whole premise of your investigation is that the organisation or whatever that you're researching is in fact a nasty piece of work, then it shouldn't be much of a surprise if instead of responding to the message they attack the messenger instead, should it? If you're not ready for that, then you might want to think again before you start out.

I rejoice that I have a sovereign God who, for some unfathomable reason, loves me is able to help me through all such things. I also had the help of already, as a Christian minister (though a very obscure one!), being a public person in the world beyond the Internet. But nobody should underestimate the challenge.

3. Do your homework!

This is obviously the cardinal rule of research, of whatever kind. Your opponents might think nothing about making the most bizarre allegations about you and offering no evidence for it. Your credibility, though, depends on doing the opposite. (The Bible also forbids us to spread allegations about others without evidence - Leviticus 19:16).

It is tempting once you get into this kind of thing to have a "them and us" mentality. You may develop speculative ideas, and then start interpreting the evidence in the light of those ideas. Suddenly, you see your pet theory everywhere! Don't do this. When you write up your research, you must make sure it is evidence-based and evidence-led. When you make speculations, make it clear that you are doing that. If the main burden of your belief in your opponents' lack of credibility is correct and you can show it, then you don't need to indulge in pointless speculations. Your opponents will, if they cannot rebut your case, instead seek to seize upon and make a mountain out of the tiniest little error or misleading statement. Hence, it's a good idea to make as few of those as possible. Be ready to correct your errors; show an openness to look into any mistakes which people can show you. For this reason I advertise my e-mail address and policy on correcting errors together with an invitation to inform me of them after every post.

4. Remember that most of your audience is unseen.

As a blogger, you now have a public profile, and so do your opponents. You will write up your research; your opponents will do what they decide in order to refute you - whether honestly or through dirty tricks. You should remember, though, that the great majority of your audience watches and listens silently, forming its opinion and never telling you about it. They will vote with their feet, and maybe talk about it on some other forum or more likely just keeping it to themselves. The would-be supporters and insiders of the BCSE didn't generally contact me to tell me that they had decided not to join, or been persuaded to leave - but over the course of the year, I watched the BCSE move from being an organisation with big hopes and dreams into a tiny remnant, smaller even than on the day it launched - people voted with their feet.

You should be realistic about convincing the main players amongst your opponents. The powers that humans possess for self-deception are immense. Once someone has committed to something in a public way, it is very hard for them to change course. If their public enterprise is actually founded on deceit and/or wilful self-deception, then you should not be surprised if when you point this out they don't see it. In many ways, you are not writing for them - you are writing for the onlooking world. As a Christian I don't expect Satan to pack up and go home just because I preach sermons. The point for those of us who are Chirstians isn't that we will easily win the world to our message; it is often more that as preach it, it will make the division between right and wrong, and who is standing on which side, much clearer. The sides might not change - but the existence of those sides and the actual principles they stand for will become much more obvious.

Ultimately the most important audience - your maker - is unseen. Whatever integrity or lack of it we show to the world, and however much they fail to detect it, he will. The judgments and opinions of others matter little, because they're not the ones with power to decide our eternal destinies (see the gospel of Luke, chapter 12). That's another reason to not be anonymous - it helps to keep us honest, remembering that ultimately one day there will be no secrets left at all - everything will be revealed. The all-seeing eyes of God are ultimately very comforting; as a Christian I don't have to resort to suing the BCSE for slander (which they gave me very strong grounds to do on several occasions), because I know that there is already a court that will decide on the matter, and which I can wait patiently for.

This point leads on to another:

5. Be careful and patient in responding to critiscm

We are human beings. We have been made in such a way that we are intended to live in society with other human beings. There are very few people who can really and truly shut themselves off from others - I believe that those who manage to do so completely are known as "psychopaths"! Our natural tendency, particularly fueled by our sinful pride, is to want to respond to everything bad sad about us, and defend ourselves to the hilt. It is often necessary to respond to attacks on us because otherwise we co-operate in the spoiling of our own reputations and join in the ruining of our own future usefulness. However, it is never necessary to respond to everything said against us.

I've found that it's rarely a good idea to make a swift response to something malicious said against us or that reflects badly on us. Much better to wait, ponder on it, pray and sleep on it, and seek to come to a more objective viewpoint. Some attacks on you as an investigative blogger will be so obviously groundless and malicious that the best thing to do is simply to ignore them - rise above it. If you start descending to the level of every muck-thrower, you'll soon find that you've become one. The world does indeed have an excessive quota of people who behave like unthinking zombies with vast amounts of time to waste, and if you make it your task to rebut them then you'll have to give up eating and sleeping. Swat one here, up pops another one there. Simpler just to ignore them, and only respond to challenges which are in some way worthy.

6. Be careful about what you reveal

I've found that some opponents of my work were ready to behave in a very deceitful way - contacting me, or maybe a colleague in the church whose e-mail address they'd obtained from the Internet (or even putting up smears on them in order to pressurise me), pretending to be someone that they weren't or disguising their true purpose.

If someone starts fishing for personal information, you have no obligation to reply to them. You have no obligation to reply to anyone who e-mails you privately at all unless you actually asked for such e-mails (e.g. asking people to point out any mistakes in your research).

Some private e-mails I've received have been frankly little more than invitations to have a bar-room brawl. Often such e-mails have no name on them (or just a first name), and the author doesn't even bother to introduce himself before he piles on in. E-mail seems to be a medium which brings out the worst in some people. I eventually learnt that the best response to anonymous e-mails or deliberately and pointlessly insulting ones is the delete key, together with a "block future e-mails" filter in your e-mail program. I was amused to find one supporter of the BCSE bragging in a forum that my latest blog post was provoked by something he'd e-mailed me... when I'd added his e-mail address to my "block" filter some time before!

Basically this rule is about remembering that you're in control. Unless they are in fact the Mafia or live next door, their powers to compel you to play along with whatever game they're up to are pretty limited.

7. Record everything!

The BCSE are a pretty unscrupulous bunch, and the usual response when I caught them out in some unguarded comment about their true motives or if I documented some obvious and gross set of lies was not for them to apologise or publish any retraction, but simply to whitewash the evidence (e.g. see here). The various pieces of damning evidence that I started drawing attention to would simply disappear, without a word of explanation - whilst, of course, all the parts of the BCSE's website, including the front page, proclaiming their honesty and integrity would all continue to say just what they'd said before. Basically, the BCSE just wanted to pull the wool over everybody's eyes, hoping that people would forget if given enough time.

To counter-act this, you need to take a copy of everything you come across. You need to note down everything potentially interesting or useful as soon as you come across it. This is helpful too for when you later come across something that ties in with something you'd seen earlier - if you didn't note down the earlier thing, then you'll have to waste time in searching for it again. The golden rule here is archive, archive, archive! Which leads me on to...

8. Know the law

When I started quoting the BCSE website and making my own copies for my research use, the BCSE responded with a series of bogus legal threats and attempts to ruin my reputation by publishing their allegations, without accompanying evidence, on their website - in all but one case, without making any attempt to contact me beforehand (e.g. see here and here).

If you don't know the law, then you can end up either being intimidated by such bully-boy tactics, or into restraining your activities because you believe your opponents. In my case, I already knew what copyright law allowed, and knew that the BCSE were either badly mislead by someone or simply making it up as they went along in order to further their own ends. (Their own website violated the standard they had said I should be keeping to many times, e.g. see here).

It is worth pointing out that copyright law has specific provisions for researchers. The BCSE sought to keep certain very revealing materials out of peoples' hands by claiming that I had no right to own and/or distribute them. This was wrong. The law has provisions to prevent the kind of bully-boy tactics the BCSE employed from being effective - but they're only of use if you know about them. I am not a lawyer - so make sure you get your own advice if needed.

9. Don't descend to their level

I think I must have said this a few times already. It's worth saying again though. Don't be reactive; there's no need to respond to everything said. They might even try to bring you down into the sewer as a tactic to discredit you - to show the world that you're as bad as they are and so haven't got a case to make. Avoid it at all costs! If you find it hard to avoid responding or implementing any of the above things, you might want to recruit someone wise to run all your blog posts past before they are published.

And finally, the most obvious one:

10. Make sure your cause is a good one!

Otherwise, all the good and bad advice in the world is just a waste of time!

"For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth." - 2 Corinthians 13:8.

Obviously, in the above I am describing an ideal. How well I met it, I leave others to judge. I hope though that the advice will be useful to someone in some good cause. Take care!

David Anderson

New Presentation - Is Belief In Divine Creation Rational?

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:25:00 +0000

This is off-topic for the main research done on this blog (into the true identities and activities of those involved in the "British Centre for Science Education"), but will be of interest to anyone involved in the debate over evolution, intelligent design, creationism, atheism, materialism, etcetera.

As most of you will know, in my "day job" I am a Christian minister. I have just put online a major new audio-visual presentation: "Is belief in divine creation rational? (responding to atheist claims)".

http://david.dw-perspective.org.uk/is-belief-in-creation-rational

The talk is 77 minutes long, accompanied by slides (combined courtesy of Google video), and goes over quite a wide field - rationality, morality, laws (or not?) of logic, Richard Dawkins, the scientific method, world views, the definition of the mind, etc. It's meant to be popular level but stimulating for anyone. You can watch the presentation with audio, or download it to your iPod, etcetera. Lots of links and resources provided. Of course it's a lot more heavyweight than the previous Richard Dawkins parable, but much more stimulating and rewarding and hopefully life-changing for it.

If you like it, please link it. Put it on your blogs, websites, mailing lists, etcetera. As with the previous Richard Dawkins parable, the success of this depends on it getting linked.

David

Who are the BCSE? (2)

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 16:30:00 +0000

When the "British Centre for ~~Slandering Evangelicals~~ Science Education" launched last year, there was one thing that any interested individual would notice pretty quickly. They were almost entirely anonymous. This didn't prevent some more gullible MPs and newspapers from printing their letters, or taking them at face value in some other way - but it's something that I pointed out as a huge question mark over their credibility pretty quickly.

In only my second article, I asked the question, "Who are the BCSE?", and then in the next article on the theme, I concluded as follows:

So, observation number one is that whilst the BCSE are very keen to give you their opinion on a number of other people (including individuals with apparently more qualifications than the entire BCSE membership combined, they're very reluctant to tell you anything about themselves. I look forward to them beginning to read my website, and addressing these criticisms; however, from my research so far I am confident that the more details about themselves they expose, the lower their plausibility as a group of "Science Educators" will sink.

Who They Really Were

After that, I started naming and describing the true identities and their (lack of) credentials to be masquerading as experts on either science or education. The BCSE responded to this pressure by beginning to publish a little information about themselves.

In general, this information only confirmed the accuracy of my research, as even with the best spin that the BCSE could put on it, its descriptions of its committee only confirmed their lack of standing. Some of this "spin", though, we later provided documented proof as being little different to outright fabrication (e.g. see here).

Screenshot from BCSE homepage, December 19th 2006

The More That Changes...

One year on, though, the situation is again that the BCSE have become basically anonymous. A large part of this is certainly due to "BCSE Revealed"; it became a regular occurrence that after I posted a new article, the BCSE would scramble to edit its website to cover up whatever embarrassing revelation had just been made. (e.g. See here). A large part of it is certainly because the internal rumbles that "BCSE Revealed" has caused and other factors have meant that over the course of that year, four of the original seven committee named have resigned (one returned); and the BCSE are rather nervous about us knowing just how bad their internal squabbles have been - so apparently, they decided it was just simpler to delete the list of committee members so that we couldn't know. (See here for more of that).

So basically, one year on, we find that the BCSE have become anonymous again. That's very bad for their attempts to appear credible. If you receive a communication from an organisation you've never heard of, and then seek to find more by checking out their website, and find that their website tells you basically nothing about their identities - what would you conclude? Why ever would a bona fide organisation need to take such measure to not let you know who they were?

So, that's good news for "BCSE Revealed". The BCSE have been forced back into a semi-secret mode of operation. If you visit the BCSE website today, then you will find, in a situation almost identical to a year ago:

The section "What is the BCSE", on its front page, contains lots of spin, but no actual names or their credentials.
If you then follow the link to the "More about the BCSE page" (here), then you will find approximately 1800 words - approaching 3 pages of A4 - which, amongst all the spin there, still manages not to find any room to give more than two names: informing us that in the BCSE's past, Alan Bellis handed over the reins to Roger Stanyard - whoever they might be - and then telling us that Ian Lowe (whoever he is!) brought them some IT help; and omitting to mention that Lowe resigned some months ago...
Go to the "Contacts" page (here) and there are no names, no postal address, no information on any credentials... just an e-mail address, admin@bcseweb.org.uk. They offer to help the media with any help they need... but no information on just why the BCSE might have any credibility that the media should rely on.
In terms of identifying any serving officers of the BCSE, there's just what you can find on the front page: "... phone our press officer, Roger Stanyard, on 07724938890." As we've seen before, this description is itself bogus; Stanyard basically is the BCSE, or at least half of it in terms of foundation, direction setting, putting in the hours of work, and so on. But notice, no mention again of what Stanyard's credentials might be to talk about this or any other subject.

Dotted throughout the website, you can find a few individuals named in the odd place, described with the adjective "BCSE Member": but many of these are out of date, as the individuals in question have resigned once they'd perceived that the BCSE was spouting bigoted nonsense, was doomed, or they fell out, etcetera.

Looks a bit odd, doesn't it? They want you to believe them - but they're unwilling to tell you anything at all about themselves. Why would that be? "BCSE Revealed" readers will know: because the facts about themselves are damning.

As I write this today, though, I do find that Roger Stanyard recognises that this is an unsatisfactory situation to be in, because I find him complaining that some other organisation hasn't published a list of its committee members.

"How convenient that the Causeway Creation Committee just doesn't happen to name who are its members and doesn't have a web site.

...

I suspect that if they did disclose who is involved we would have a field day in pulling it apart."

http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=13284#13284

Well, you might think from that that irony isn't Stanyard's strong point. He certainly ought to know a thing or two about trying to hide the identities of your committee, because of being ripped apart, by now...

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Happy Birthday!

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 21:44:00 +0000

I missed it! Yesterday was the anniversary of the launch of "BCSE Revealed". It all began here.

Several bogus legal threats, lots of atheist panic, and a whole dictionary full of nasty words sent my way, and it's time to have a mini review of what's gone on.

One year ago, the "British Centre for Science Education" had launched itself publicly, and had quick success in managing to persuade newspapers and MPs to accept its pronouncements as if they came from a real scientific body. I, though, knew better - and began blogging. The pressure's told, and the BCSE's suffered the following set backs, largely I believe, to the pressure that our revelations have put on them:

We pointed out their semi-anonymous nature, revealed the real people behind them, and forced them to put up a list of names on their website.
Of that list of names, around half have subsequently resigned from the BCSE during the course of the year. I haven't documented much of that, because the BCSE has imploded so impressively that it's almost removed the need to have anyone document it at all.
And now, the BCSE has been forced to go semi-anonymous again; search the website; who are the BCSE? You can't find out. Who are the credentialed scientists and educators and what are their qualifications? None who can be named. Not good if you want to appear credible.
We now have several dozen documented, verifiable articles demonstrating to anyone who cares to find out, that:
1. The "British Centre for Science Education" is basically a two or three man band, in terms of anyone willing to put real hours into it, with a website.
2. None of its leaders are, or have ever been, employed, or received credentials as, science educators.
3. Its chairman, Michael Brass, is now exposed as a charlatan who sought to promote himself as a "published archaelogist" when he was in fact an assistant IT worker with a vanity-published book. Oh, and his degrees are in archaeology and history - not the primary fields that the BCSE claims to be experts in.
4. The other leg of the all-but two-man band is Roger Stanyard, a management consultant who has been a businessman all his working life; never a scientist or educator of any stripe. What Stanyard and Brass do have in common, though, is a deep hatred of any kind of belief that the supernatural might affect day to day life, and evangelical Christianity in particular. We've documented some of Stanyard's more extreme anti-Christian rantings in some depth.
5. The BCSE are a really nasty operation. When caught lying, they simply delete the material - no corrections or acknowledgments. When caught slandering, they do the same - no apologies. They are classic bullies; they make big threats which they never carry through on, and when the teacher comes they run and hide.
6. The quality of the BCSE "research" is appalling, almost never documented and often stating baldly the very opposite of what the primary sources actually say. In very recent times, it appears that a new policy has been agreed that articles need to be based on primary sources (gasp!), but there's no indication that there will be any retrospective re-writing of the present website.
7. The leadership of the BCSE in general are not motivated by science, in which they lack qualifications and experience; they are generally hardline atheists of the Richard Dawkins variety, taking part in such activities as signing petitions to persuade the government to outlaw parents from teaching their own children about religion until the age of 16. We exposed some of the pre-launch discussions in which various of them stated their campaigning goals or ideas, such as trying to persuade the media to portray Christians like paedophiles, or turning the UK into a fully secular state. Science isn't apparently what we thought it was, folks!
These revelations thwarted the BCSE's plans to gain real science educators, or other helpful figureheads, to boost its credibility. It began with the cupboard bare, hoping that it would attract support; but too much of the above ruined its chances. It's one thing to start small and hope to gain support; but a year later to be smaller than you started means only one thing: it's been a disaster. Do you know why the BCSE spill such venom when they talk about me? Is it because my revelations have been totally ineffective and they see no need to care about anything I blog? Would that tally? ;-)
This set of articles has now basically put the BCSE into a position whereby they form a convenient litmus test: people now know what they're like, and anyone whose reality meter is still even vaguely functioning will avoid being seen to be associated with them like the plague. Whenever someone credits them or refers to them, it tells you that that person has a metaphysical agenda to promote naturalism and/or atheism; nobody who didn't have that agenda would ever find any reason to refer to the BCSE as any kind of credible source. In short: they've been revealed.

I believe that the last year has been a fantastic success for "BCSE Revealed", and I give God all the glory for helping me to press on through it. I've seen the BCSE all but implode due to the pressure which plain, documented evidence of their true thoughts and agenda has brought to bear on them. I've pretty much done what I aimed to do: put myself out of a job, blogging wise. Oh yes, and we've had the Richard Dawkins parable too: approaching 120,000 views on YouTube, and 11,000 in written form.

Does that mean that my work is over? Is it time to wallow in past success? I don't believe so. The BCSE's general response to revelations about what's going on has been to delete the evidence, go silent on the topic in question, and wait for the storm to pass. In short, they hope that nobody will notice, and that I'll get bored and leave them alone, and that they'll then be able to go on passing themselves off as real authorities. The corpse keeps twitching, and there's the danger of zombie attacks. I'm determined that their strategy won't work. The Internet has a long memory, and for now, I'm going to carry on turning the screws as and when it seems necessary to do so.

I plan in the near future to supply more evidence of the BCSE's deep decline, and the reasons behind it. Keep in touch!

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

The BCSE Guide To Silencing Criticism

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 09:43:00 +0000

The BCSE continue to be extremely worried by the threat to their credibility posed by the information revealed on the "BCSE Revealed" blog, and with good reason. Because, we keep highlighting the religious agenda, lack of scientific/educational credentials, and downright falsehoods which are part of their modus operandi. People who read "BCSE Revealed", will consider the BCSE as so silly that it's not even worth listening, let alone responding.

Just how worried the BCSE are can be seen in the steps they're willing to go to discredit me. If you flick through the archives, you'll soon find plenty of material - bogus legal threats, campaigns of insult both by private e-mail and in public, and downright fabrication.

Last week I pointed out that the BCSE had had one of its press releases picked up by the National Secular Society, and run as a news item. The same press release was also blogged by James Randerson, a Guardian columnist. Over the last year, Randerson's name is one that I've soon come to recognise: his own metaphysical naturalistic bias naturalism shines through very clearly (take a peek at his blog to see what I mean). So, it was no surprise at all to find that Randerson was the only mainstream reported of any kind who picked up the BCSE's press release and gave them some publicity from it (albeit in a blog rather than in the newspaper), here.

In the last line of Randerson's blog, he credited the BCSE, with these words:

"For more on TIS check out the British Centre for Science Education."

Those words blow away Randerson's hopes of credibility in the eyes of any neutral observer: the BCSE are the very definition of a bogus scientific institution, driven by their own metaphysics rather than science itself. As I've said before, they serve as a good litmus test: anyone who credits them has given the game away about their own prejudices. One commenter, whose identity I don't know, picked this up, remarking:

Ah, the British Centre for Science Education. So much less ironically named than "Truth in Science" - well worth an uncritical plug in this column, methinks.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/..._classroom.html#comment-713146

I then took the opportunity to add a link to my own blog, so that people could see what he meant. One commenter asked me if I was the "famous David Anderson", mentioned on the BCSE website, a creationist, and said that if I was then therefore "I would say that". I pointed out that the only reason why I was mentioned on the BCSE website was because I run this blog: it is what, in the BCSE's eyes, makes me famous So, somewhat of a circular argument. I "would say that", because I run a blog which does say "that"!

I do wish now that I'd saved a copy of my own comments so that I could re-post them here. I didn't though, because I didn't anticipate what would happen later... which was quite revealing.

What happened next was that Roger Stanyard and Brian Jordan of the BCSE complained to the Guardian that my comments were "malicious libel", and the Guardian dutifully removed them. (Whether that was Randerson himself or not, I don't know).

http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?t=1379

My guess is that the Guardian probably routinely deletes comments on receiving such threats, just to cover their own backs. It's not worth the time to investigate when you get many such complaints, as a huge website like theirs may well do. The BCSE, however, know far better:

As I've been making statements about the BCSE's bogus credentials in public, known to them, for over a year, very easily accessible (just Google for "British Centre for Science Education" and I'm right up there), linked from very popular blogs, the BCSE have lost any feasible opportunity to sue me for libel: they'd have to explain why they made no formal complaint to me about any specific statements or asked to have any such specific statements removed or corrected, during that time.
To be "malicious", a statement has to be known to be false. But, seeing as I've documented all the allegations I've made so that anybody can check their accuracy, this obviously can't apply.
And of course, the main point is that... truthful speech, no matter how damaging to your cause, cannot be libelous. Duh!

I cannot remember exactly what I put on the Guardian blog; my memory was that it was pretty general. But, I'll try my best again here to say all the things I can think of, just to show you that they have no intention of suing me for malicious libel because they know these things are all true:

The British Centre for Science Education has nobody known in its leadership with any credentials in science education.
The BCSE is so inept in its actual knowledge of education, that when it launched, it was easy to prove that its members didn't even know what the National Curriculum was, let alone having read it or implemented it as teachers.
The BCSE has a proven and continuing track record in gross deception.
The BCSE has run personal campaigns of the nastiest and most personal kinds against me based on utter falsehoods, which it knew in advance to be falsehoods. That's the kind of operators they are.
They only have one PhD scientist in their leadership - now retired. (Dr. Jordan - he who signed the infamous Richard Dawkins-backed petition to make it illegal for any parent in the UK to instruct their children in any world view except atheism).

Obviously, then, in complaining that I have spoken "malicious libels" about the BCSE, the BCSE are indulging once more in bogus legal threats which have no chance of being carried out, and plain old fibbing once again. You'd think that if the BCSE did have credentialed science educators amongst their number, their website might want to tell you a little about them? Why the almost entire silence on the BCSE website about their true identities and credentials? Because the things I've been telling you are too true...

It is amusing to remember that when I first launched this blog, without a comment facility (because my aim has always been to journal, not to have yet another Internet debating forum), the BCSE complained that my running a blog without comments constituted outrageous "censorship". Here's James Rocks of the BCSE over at RichardDawkins.Net peddling this line:

Yes, he appears to have set up the blog "BCSE Revealed" as nothing more than a deliberate attempt to smear our friends over at BCSE. What's really interesting is the censorship he applies to bloggers (some of which gets revealed at BCSE). I'm also a member there BTW.

http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=75901#p75901

(If you search back through my archives, you will find a little material on Rocks. He's not a qualified scientist, but is a militant atheist, and like the BCSE (of which he is a member), he founded a campaign group which seeks to lobby the public representing itself as an authority on science. Notice too the tag-line in his post at Richard Dawkins' website: "Religion! Something to comfort those who live in a world torn apart by religion!").

Note the "censorship" complaint. How does this tally with the BCSE's own strategy of having links to critical material about them removed from websites on the grounds that it is libelous? How does it measure up with their own panic to prevent anyone from discovering the criticism of them that exists?

The BCSE know that my material isn't within a million miles of being libelous, and they know that they have no intention of taking any legal action over it, because they can't. (I expect they have a range of bogus excuses to cover that... too expensive (not heard of no win, no fee?), too time consuming (yet they have lots of time to run their own smear campaigns against me and write letters to the Guardian complaining about libel!)).

In other words, the BCSE are again caught acting in premeditated deception. So, again, note the hypocritical double standard: The BCSE seek to discredit "BCSE Revealed" by telling you that I censor and smear; the BCSE on the other hand seek to prevent anybody hearing about criticisms of themselves by censoring them based on bogus claims about libel. Ho hum!

The BCSE certainly ought to know what smears are, having had little else to say in response to me. However, Rocks and the rest of the BCSE are stilling failing to get over the reality hurdle: When facts are documented in triplicate, it is not a smear: it is a fact, documented in triplicate. By continuing to point out that the BCSE send press releases to national newspapers like the Guardian, etc., calling themselves a national body of scientific experts, and failing to point out their true identity as a group of atheists, management consultants and junior IT workers etc., I am not smearing them: I'm holding up the mirror of reality. That reality isn't kind to them or their agenda, but reality it still is. Deal with it!

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

The BCSE and the National Secular Society

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 17:06:00 +0000

The few die-hards left in the "British Centre for Science Education" are still at it: seeking to scam anyone who will let them.

The BCSE's problem, though, is that its own agenda and motives have become so obvious, that the number of those who'll let them do that is pretty low. They've been exposed. The BCSE are basically a good litmus test - anyone who is disposed to refer to them as an authority is almost certainly abusing science to further their own anti-religious crusade, and is willing to get help from wherever they can - any standards of truth or honesty can go take a hike.

You don't have to take my word for that - just pop along to Google Blogsearch, and see who's talking about them. The top four posts, when sorted by date, are by:

1. Mark Edon, a BCSE member and campaigning disciple of Richard Dawkins, who we previously mentioned on this blog as having signed the infamous Dawkins-backed petition to make it illegal for parents to raise their children in any way except in atheism. OK!

2. The blog of the Dorset Humanists, "humanism - a positive alternative to religion".

3. I don't speak the language necessary to decode the third one!

4. An atheist called "Andrew Hawkins" (unknown to me) who introduces himself with the words "I'm an ex-christian atheist and I'm often filled with wonder about how I was deluded enough to be a Christian in the first place" and has set up a blog to chronicle his attempts to debate with a local Baptist minister to justify his position. Andrew sought to call in the BCSE to give him some help - he obviously knew where their sympathies lay!

And so, today we have another example of this phenomena, courtesy of the National Secular Society, which has printed a piece which I'm pretty convinced from the language in it is just a BCSE press release. Anyone without a religious agenda would be likely to just bin this kind of press release because the rhetoric is so loaded it's just too obvious what's going on. But of course if you are the National Secular Society, then the BCSE's output is going to be much more acceptable than to a more impartial publisher.

The piece is 3 paragraphs long and the BCSE is mentioned in both the first and third paragraphs. In the first paragraph, we read: "The British Centre for Science Education strongly supports this move and hopes that it will be effective in preventing children being misinformed about scientific ideas." This mention, without any qualification or explanation, of the BCSE, marks it out as a press release; as the BCSE are basically about up to a dozen (but more like 4 in terms of active ones) individuals with a website but without credentials in science or education, no authentic article could possibly mention them without saying just who the whatsit they are. The who?

Then in the last paragraph, we have this: "Mike Brass, Chairman of the British Centre for Science Education said", followed by a paragraph-long quote. Note: no mention of who Mike Brass is as a scientist, or his experience in the world of education. The authority on which we're meant to take his words seriously is that he's the chairman of the afore-mentioned "British Centre for Science Education". So you should listen to him!

No mention, then, of the facts that Brass has never been employed within science or education, and is in fact a 30-ish year-old IT worker whose degrees are in history and archaeology. No mention of the fact that Brass is a now-exposed academic fraud who used the BCSE website to advertise himself as a "published archaelogist" when in fact, as I revealed, his sole book was self-published (the BCSE have since deleted this description). No mention either of the fact that the organisation with the comprehensive-sounding name (they're experts on science education!) is in fact a single issue pressure group, with no activities except for promoting evolution and slandering those who point out the flaws. Nope - he's just introduced as if he were one of the country's leading authorities on science, now giving his distilled wisdom from examining this particular controversy. Ho hum indeed! Read more about Mike Brass's problems with his forked tongue here.

The Bogus Centre for Selling Evolution

So, the BCSE are still at it - putting out press releases which are written to make themselves sound authoritative, to scam the unwary - or the willing. It's full of the usual BCSE pork pies, too; saying that the group "Truth in Science" has been promoting explicitly creationist theories. Either Brass has never read the Truth in Science website, which explains criticisms of Darwinism and the theory of intelligent design, or he's too ill-equipped with the mental furniture necessary (or too prejudiced ahead of time) to understand the difference between promoting creationism and intelligent design. Take your pick! Whichever way, it doesn't end up looking good.

I'm not a secularist, and I don't mind the NSS relying on the BCSE to help their case - if that's the best they can do, things must be grim. That's why I say that the BCSE have become a litmus test - if you find someone who refers to them, that tells you all you need to know.

So, the remains of the BCSE haven't given up yet. Looks like I'll have to bring some more stuff out of the vaults for those who aren't yet convinced. Stay tuned!

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Darwinism and Hitler: a look at the quality of the BCSE's "research"

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 17:49:00 +0000

Move along please...

I'm not saying much at the moment. My files are full of damning material on the BCSE that can be written up and published if necessary. However, as I look round the Internet I find that convinced Darwinists and atheists agree with me that the BCSE is not a credit to any cause and that those supporting it are shooting themselves in the foot. So, that material can remain in my files until the BCSE give some evidence that they're still worth opposing.

The BCSE's "Research"

Having said that, this one needed very little work to get it publishable, so here it is. It's an examination of some more of the BCSE's "research". In science, the quality of your research and the inferences you draw from it is crucial. However, in previous investigations, we've shown the BCSE's minds are made up long before that stage: the point of the evidence is not to draw us towards a rational conclusion, but to form the raw material for smearing and slandering anyone who questions materialist dogma in general or Darwinism in particular.

I've not generally wanted to document the errors of any of the BCSE's articles in detail, because that would normally involve dragging someone's reputation through the mud again by repeating the BCSE's innuendos. But there have still been good opportunities to document the appalling quality of the BCSE's research:

In a now-hidden anti-Christian article that the BCSE hope people won't know about (from the days before the BCSE had decided that its official stance was religiously neutral), the BCSE revealed that its main source for its allegations about what Christians believe was not the books, sermons or websites they had written... but "a collection of angry adolescents". http://bcse-revealed.blogspot.com/2007/01/were-not-anti-religion-but-part-3.html
In one particularly egregious example, we saw that the BCSE entirely overlooked all the primary sources which pointed in one direction in favour of a single secondary source of another campaigner of their own ilk which said the opposite. http://bcse-revealed.blogspot.com/2006/12/more-alien-activity-at-bcse.html
Many times (we found 13) the BCSE has put out the line that the group Truth in Science have announced that anyone, especially a teacher or lecturer, who either agrees with Darwinism or fails to agree with a particular interpretation of the Christian faith must be a charlatan. When, however, we took the effort to research the source of this allegation, we found something quite different: its author was an adviser, not a spokesman or director, of Truth in Science, and what he actually said was that anyone who was deliberately subverting science in order to promote atheism as the only scientific position needed to be exposed as a charlatan. The quote didn't even mention Christianity! I can understand why the BCSE would not like anyone who seeks to expose fake scientists (the BCSE themselves being category one religiously-motivated charlatans); the fact that they took such offence is rather revealing! http://bcse-revealed.blogspot.com/2006/12/anybody-here-speak-english.html
In a rather amusing and very revealing incident, we showed how the BCSE had rewritten its biography of a particular individual. When they suspected him of not being a Darwinist, the biography sought to portray him as an adulterous buffoon; when they discovered that he did believe in evolution, the biography dropped all the innuendos and awarded him a doctorate! And when the BCSE realised they'd been caught... they changed it all back and hoped nobody would notice. Fair? Impartial? Scientific? Ha!
http://bcse-revealed.blogspot.com/2006/12/bits-and-pieces.html

What to make of this absymal incompetence? It isn't particularly surprising, because as we've documented many times, the BCSE is not a collection of experienced researchers who have credible publication records. They are simply a group of self-publicising con-men who have given themselves a grand sounding name and seek to use it to trick the public and the politicians. Essentially, it's a false appeal to authority - you receive a letter from them, and you're meant to think it's from the experts, because you wouldn't suspect that anyone would be so audacious as to pose as a national centre of expertise with hardly a relevant qualification to go round between them.

And Today...

Today I have an article written by Mr. Andrew Sibley of the "Creation Science Movement" (CSM). The CSM is one of the world's longest running anti-Darwinism movements, and its first president was Sir Ambrose Fleming, the inventor of the thermionic valve and hence the pioneer of modern electronics. Another obvious clown who forgot to spot that Darwinism is the basis of all true scientific progress. ;-)

I'm grateful to Andrew for sending me this article. It deals with a particular piece of research on the BCSE's site entitled "Charles Darwin and Adolf Hitler". This piece, written by BCSE chairman Mr. Michael Brass, seeks to deal with the question of whether the "science" (as it was then considered) of eugenics in general and Hitler's own plans for breeding a "Master Race" and eliminating the unfit (especially Jews in the "Final Solution" of the Holocaust) in particular were inspired by and/or a logical conclusion of Darwinian thought. This is a very legitimate and obvious question. If Darwinism teaches that the struggle up from bacteria to human beings was achieved through solely through genetic selection, then the question arises - "and may we not progress much further through giving help to this selective process?". Hitler sought to help the selective process along by sending the disabled, gypsy and Jews to a premature death, that the pure Aryan "race" might rise to greater heights unhindered by admixture with inferior genes. His implementation of this idea was horrific; but the question is, can the logic which leads to such actions be faulted? Whether it causes us to feel moral outrage or not, is it rational and reasonable? Is our moral outrage itself irrational? Why did eugenics become an accepted part of science in the early 20th century?

You won't, unfortunately, learn the answers to any of these questions from Mr. Brass's article. Mr. Brass's aim is solely to discredit opponents of Darwinism, whatever subject or evidence is under discussion. Brass restricts his investigation to cherry-picking four short quotes out of Mein Kampf, adds a couple of Internet links, and then concludes "It is clear then, once again, creationists ... have opted to flog a dead horse." Maybe that's clear to Mr. Brass, but...

There's no examination or even quotation of any contrary arguments; no discussion of the primary source material that tells a different story, and no indication that Brass even knows it exists. For sources, we get the distinct impression that Brass used Google to tag on a couple of links after he'd written the piece - none of them are primary sources at all. The reader of Brass's article could come away not even knowing that eugenics existed. Brass did, however, find space in his word limit to irrelevantly laud Darwinism as "the framework for all biological sciences". His conclusion on the "key roots" of the Holocaust? According to Brass, Hitler was seeking to implement a particular vision of Christianity.

Right! Not exactly a surprise to discover that conclusion given what we know about the BCSE. And Brass's reference for this claim? An anonymous, 1 page article on the Internet, collected by a Darwinist activist with no other discernible qualifications in the area. Great stuff!

I invite all readers to have a look at Brass's article for themselves. Anyone who's ever made the slightest effort to interact with primary sources and document claims will know pretty quickly how to evaluate this piece of output: http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/index.php/Main/DarwinAndHitler

Get On With It!

Ah yes! The article kindly sent me by Mr. Sibley. Here it is. The contrast in the areas I've pointed above with the BCSE's output hardly needs to be pointed out. The conclusions speak for themselves. All, from this point onwards, is Andrew Sibley.

* * *

Hitler’s link with Darwinism

Mike Brass of the British Centre for Science Education has produced a short piece entitled ‘Charles Darwin and Adolf Hitler’, which attempts to show that Hitler was not influenced by Darwinism. But does this claim fit with what is known about Darwinism and Hitler?

Brass claims that Hitler was not influenced by Darwin and provides apparent religious quotes from Mein Kampf, [My Struggle] where Hitler asserts for instance that he is acting with the will of the ‘Almighty Creator’ (Hitler 1933:262). It is well known that Hitler used religious language in this way in his speeches and writing, and often appealed to German national sentiment that linked the established Lutheran church with his nationalistic agenda. However, it was Hitler’s skilful use of rhetoric that blinded so many to his very un-Christian cause, although a number of German Protestant scholars, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Karl Barth signed the Barmen Declaration, and reject Hitler’s fascism.

Was Hitler influenced by Darwin?

Sir Arthur Keith for one thought that Hitler was an evolutionist. He comments

‘The leader of Germany is an evolutionist not only in theory, but, as millions know to their cost, in the rigor of its practice. For him the national “front” of Europe is also the evolutionary “front”; he regards himself, and is regarded, as the incarnation of the will of Germany, the purpose of that will being to guide the evolutionary destiny of its people.’ (Keith 1946:9)

In order to understand Hitler it is necessary to look beyond the simple rhetoric that has blinded Mike Brass. Hitler was in fact a pantheist believing that nature and god were one and the same with nature giving creative power over itself. This was a tradition in German philosophy stretching back to Spinoza, and Darwin’s German acquaintance Ernst Haeckel was for instance a pantheistic monist. This pantheism comes out in Hitler’s comments.

‘No more than Nature desires the mating of weaker with stronger individuals, even less does she desire the blending of a higher with a lower race, since, if she did, her whole work of higher breeding, over perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, might be ruined with one blow…When man attempts to rebel against the iron logic of Nature, he comes into struggle with the principles to which he himself owes his existence as a man.’ (Hitler 1933:260)

No, there is only one holiest human right, and this right is at the same time the holiest obligation, to wit, to see to it that the blood is preserved pure and, by preserving the best humanity, to create the possibility of a nobler development of these beings. …and finally to put an end to the constant and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give to the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created.’ (Hitler 1933:262)

In other words, for Hitler, the ‘iron logic of Nature,’ was the process of evolution, or ‘the principles to which he himself owes his existence as a man.’ For Hitler, nature, through the process of evolution was one and the same as ‘Almighty God,’ because he believed Nature had creative power over itself. Hitler also hated Christianity, claiming that he wish to abolish it.

‘I do insist on the certainty that sooner or later—once we hold power—Christianity will be overcome and the German church, without a Pope and without the Bible, and Luther, if he could be with us, would give us his blessing’ (Hitler 1942:369).

Can we link Hitler directly to Darwin?

There are likely a number of links from Darwinism to Hitler’s fascism, but perhaps the most notable is through Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton. Darwin himself corresponded with Ernst Haeckel, but it was Galton who developed eugenics and was converted to atheism through Darwin’s Origins book. Galton wrote to Darwin shortly after publication of Origins that he felt.

‘…initiated into an entirely new province of knowledge…Its effect was to demolish a multitude of dogmatic barriers by a single stroke, and arouse a spirit of rebellion against all ancient authorities whose positive and unauthenticated statements were contradicted by modern science.’ (Galton: 1908:287)

Galton’s eugenics work written in Heredity Genius has come in for severe criticism with Brookes for instance commenting that ‘Galton’s central thesis’ was ‘deeply flawed’ and notable for ‘its lack of objectivity’ (Brookes 2004:142). But many were won over to eugenics. Galton wanted to improve the human race believing this is what nature (i.e. evolution) determined. He didn’t have much respect for democracy either.

‘It is the obvious course of intelligent men – and I venture to say it should be their religious duty – to advance in the direction whither Nature is determined they shall go, that is towards the improvement of the race….But it [Democracy] goes farther than this, for it asserts than men are of equal value as social units, equally capable of voting, and the rest. This feeling is undeniably wrong and cannot last.’ (Galton 1873:119,127)

It is interesting to note from the above how closely Hitler’s writing reflects the writing of Galton. One of Galton’s German supporters was Alfted Ploetz. Eugenics began to take off in Germany, and in 1904 Galton received a letter from Alfred Ploetz who founded a journal of eugenics in Germany entitled Archiv fǘr Rassen – und Gesellschaftesbiologie. Ploetz wrote to Galton that ‘We take the highest interest in your eminent and important Eugenics’ (Brookes 2004:275).

A year later Ploetz founded the German Society for Race Hygiene in Berlin. Heinrich Himmler also publicly embraced the eugenics of Alfred Ploetz, Galton’s German admirer (Brookes 2004:289). Whereas Brass comments from a preface to Mein Kampf that Hitler picked up many of his racist and fascist ideas from catholic Vienna, Weikart asserts that time spent in Munich played an important part in Hitler’s thinking (Weikart 2004:221).

According to Weikart, Ploetz was active in Munich and although there is no clear evidence that Hitler met Ploetz, both were close friends of Julius Lehmann, a publisher of medical, racist and eugenic material. Lehmann was a leading member of Ploetz’s organisation and publisher of the German nationalistic journal Deutschlands Erneuerung. Lehmann had been interested in eugenics from the 1890s and joined the German Society for Race Hygiene prior to 1914. During the 1920s Lehmann had regular contact with Hitler, and was at this time publishing racist and eugenic material (Weikart 2004:221).

Was Darwinism a purely scientific theory?

It is noteworthy that Darwin was influenced by social and political thought in writing, such as work by Malthus on population growth, Adam Smith on free economics and a general Victorian attitude to liassez-faire economics. Darwin’s theory also influenced the social Darwinist Herbert Spencer, who coined the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ and justified exploitation of workers. As such the assertion that Darwin’s theory was a purely scientific theory is not entirely plausible. Himmelfarb for instance notes that.

‘The theory of natural selection, it is said, could only have originated in England, because only laissez-faire England provided atomistic, egotistic mentality necessary to its conception. Only there could Darwin have blandly assumed that the basic unit was the individual, the basic instinct self-interest, and the basic activity struggle. Spengler, described the Origin as “the application of economics to biology”, said that it reeked of the atmosphere of the English factory…natural selection arose…in England because it was a perfect expression of Victorian “greed-philosophy”, of the capitalist ethic and Manchester economics.’ (Himmelfarb 1962:418).

Summary

Despite the assertions of Mike Brass, it is quite clear that there is a link between Darwinism and Hitler’s fascism through for instance Francis Galton’s eugenics, although it is not established that this was Charles Darwin’s intention. However, Darwin took ideas from economics and applied them to biology, and did not object to Herbert Spencer and Francis Galton applying those biological ideas of evolution back to society. As such Darwinism cannot be seen as a purely scientific concept, but was a theory of its time embedded within Victorian economic, political and social thought.

It is also regrettable that the British Centre for Science Education has produced such a poor piece of research that overlooks the mountain of evidence that exists that shows the influence that Darwinism had on Hitler’s brand of fascism. Such poor quality research damages their claim to be representatives of good standards in British education.

References

Brookes, M. (2004) Extreme Measures: The Dark Visions and Bright Ideas of Francis Galton, Bloomsbury Publ. Plc. London.

Galton, F. (1908) ‘Memoirs of my life: Chapter 20,’ Heredity, p.287 Methuen, London.

Galton, F. (1873) ‘Heredity Improvement,’ Frazer’s Magazine, Vol. 7, January.

Himmelfarb, G. (1962), Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, W.W. Norton, New York

Hitler, A. (1933) Mein Kampf, tr. [1969] R.Manheim, Hutchinson.

Hitler, A. (1942) Hitler’s Speeches, edited by Prof. N.H. Baynes, Oxford.

Keith, A. (1946) Evolution and Ethics, Putnam’s Sons, New York

Weikart, R. (2004) From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, Plagrave Macmillan, New York

When caught...

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 19:38:00 +0000

Previous parts in this investigation: one, two, three, four, five, six. (Please also support my appeal for education in a very deprived part of Kenya in Africa).

The Story So Far...

The purpose of "BCSE Revealed" is to document the reality behind the fraudulent group presenting itself to the public and law-makers as a credible authority on science education.

In the last month, we've had a great opportunity to show how this group works, as it launched its latest attempt to discredit "BCSE Revealed". As in previous attempts (e.g. here), this attempt didn't consist of producing any evidence that you can examine to show that any of my reports have been false. As before (e.g. here), the attempt basically consisted in sending a whole load of un-documented accusations and abuse my way, and hoping that somehow some of it would stick.

This latest attempt consisted of: 1) asserting that my report that Roger Stanyard, the BCSE's de facto leader, had fallen out with the BCSE and walked out, was false and then 2) heaping on the insults about what an appalling liar I was.

The wheels fell off this attempt rather badly, though, when I revealed some of the conversations of the BCSE leaders which demonstrated that I was telling the truth, and that the same BCSE leaders were indulging in a cynical, planned attempt to smear me based on allegations they knew were absolutely false.

And that is primary evidence for the "BCSE Revealed"'s investigations.

When Caught... Run and Bluff!

How would a credible body of scientists or educators respond to being caught out so spectacularly? I think heads would have to roll and groveling apologies might have to be made. However, I showed that a majority of the BCSE leadership were complicit in this deception, making any kind of repentance particularly hard; if those heads rolled, the BCSE would end.

So, what happened? Did Ian Lowe, who wrote that those who were caught lying and didn't apologise showed themselves to be very small men indeed, when caught lying, apologise? Did Michael Brass, who had such fine words to say about how you should never listen to a proven liar, resign when he was proved to be a liar? Did Roger Stanyard, who after making up with the BCSE went along with its "he didn't walk away - he merely had Internet access problems" story, retract and apologise for misleading the BCSE's supporters?

Nope. Two things happened. Firstly, the BCSE silently removed the page that contained all of the various statements that I proved to be outright and known falsehoods, locking it with a password (http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?t=1116):

Before: A page full of insults, innuendos and downright slanders.

After: Gone, gone, gone...

We've seen this before: when the BCSE are caught with their trousers down, they don't apologise, they don't explain; they simply delete the evidence, and pretend that nothing happened. See here for more of that. Not really the way to convince anyone of your credibility, and a real disaster if you want to take the moral high ground and issue allegations that everyone who questions Darwinism is a despicable rogue.

Secondly, the BCSE published a new policy, spoken through the lips of Ian Lowe, which they summarise in these words:

"Posts which contain links to, or material from, this blog will be removed by the forum admin team New Topics posted about Anderson, or his Blog will similarly be removed."

http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?t=1184

Lowe was careful to lock the post; a previous response to "BCSE Revealed" went a bit wrong when the responders started calling the BCSE's bluff, the response to which drew out more demonstrable falsehoods from the BCSE in trying to defend their position - which were later silently deleted (see here).

We wonder if Mr. Lowe has any sense of irony after such a sequence of events as this:

Lowe, Brass and their fellow BCSE committee members, unsolicited, launch a thread and e-mail campaign to refute "BCSE Revealed", and to slander me.
I then document that Lowe, Brass, etc., telling falsehoods, but that they were of the most cynical kind.
When caught in this way, the BCSE committee then silently delete the material...
.. and post a statement to express their displeasure that BCSE forum participants were talking about me. Well, duh.

Maybe Mr. Lowe is suffering from an advanced form of schizophrenia. One of his personalities launches campaigns to discredit me, and the other issues policies that BCSE members shouldn't talk about me? We do wonder just who Lowe's request to not talk about me was aimed at...

Lowe then went on to direct his readers to a website run by a BCSE member, some kind of copy-cat blog whose purpose is ostensibly to "reveal" the appalling truths about me. The individual in question e-mailed me privately some months ago, posing as an observer wanting a conversation about Christianity, evolution and a whole manner of other topics; but when the conversation didn't go as he was hoping, he then revealed that he was a BCSE member, and would, without permission, be posting from my e-mails in public - and did so, rather dishonestly representing them as if they were the answer to the question "what would David like to see taught in state school science lessons?".

The page is a bit puzzling from two points of view. From one, it doesn't actually contain any revelations - beyond the fact that I'm a Christian who thinks that other people should become Christians too. Well, blow me down! If this would-be reported had bothered to examine the very first post on this blog and my Blogger profile, or the church website which distributes my sermons, leaflets, etc., he could have been spared the effort needed to make this sensational expose or the bizarre conclusion that I'm trying to hide my beliefs and am therefore a "hypocrite". Even readers of "BCSE Revealed" alone will find plenty of explicitly Christian material (e.g. here).

The second point is that the page then forwards the argument that as a Christian, my beliefs make my opinions on science and/or education invalid. Now, I know that the blogger, and the majority of the BCSE do believe that the point of science is to completely replace religion. However the BCSE's official position is meant to be that religion and science are perfectly compatible and that they have no anti-Christian prejudice. To promote a site which explicitly argues that unless you're a philosophical materialist then you don't understand the basis of science is a bit off-message! That's precisely the kind of revealing anti-religious statement that "BCSE Revealed" exists to unmask - so, a bit strange for the BCSE to actually commend such a page when it's so at odds when his purported purpose. Maybe Mr. Lowe was suffering from schizophrenia again, and forgot whether he was wearing his "I operate the Scottish Atheist Council - all religion is evil" hat, or his "I work for the BCSE - we have no religious bias" one...

Summing it up

The BCSE has embraced moral nihilism. Its homepage boldly proclaims that the "BCSE believes in ... Righteousness"; but the reality is that this statement is not there to describe the reality but to substitute for it. When caught in the most execrable acts, instead of apologising (whether to me or to the members of their forum who they willingly deceived), they simply delete the evidence, announce a new policy, and pretend that nothing happened. Talk about me; be proved to have completely lied; then announce a convenient new policy that the BCSE doesn't talk about me!

It's cynical, it's ugly, and it's the fast track to empty yourselves of any membership except those who are ready to embrace moral nihilism themselves - those who believe that "the cause" of Darwinism is so important, that it justifies whatever indulgence in lying, slander, deceit, etc., that you care to partake in. Clearly if Charlie's theory is in such a mess that it needs this kind of help from its supporters, things aren't looking too good.

The BCSE: all we can say is, "yuk".

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

A plug - raising money for education in Africa

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 19:29:00 +0000

If you've come here looking for documentation on the real identities, (lack of) credentials and fraudulent activities of the "British Centre for Science Education", scroll down. This post is a commercial break!

Later this year I'm hoping to run my first marathon, and raise money to fund teachers and schools in a very under-developed part of Kenya (no electricity or water, terrible roads). A little money in that particular place will go a long way. Investing in children's education is one of the most effective to help people in places like these. Can you help?

I'm digging for water. I'd rather go to school!

I have a website up with more information (including dozens of photos), and can take debit/credit card donations securely, and re-claim gift-aid to boost the value of UK gifts by 28%. Please consider donating what you can, and passing on this link to anyone and everyone you know who has an interest in Kenya, development and/or education. Link me from your blog, pass it on to e-mail lists, mention it on your website, print it out - whatever you can. My goal is to raise £10,000; we have 3 months - let's go for it!

http://david.dw-perspective.org.uk/marathon

Please educate us! Go here!

David Anderson

A recommendation, and a few odds and ends

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 21:21:00 +0000

Here are some words of encouragement for me from "Intelligent Design and Evolution Behind the Scenes" - a new blog which describes itself like so: "This blog is about Intelligent Design, and deals with the ID-Evolution Controversy seeking to expose and correct misrepresentations that exist in the increasingly politicized discipline of science."

BCSE REVEALED

The BCSE is a very interesting lobby group. Unlike the NCSE, the BCSE is rather forward about its intentions, copying off of the American NCSE, or national center of science education (aka national center for selling evolution). The NCSE and BCSE do not really live up to their names. From the title, one would expect something more substantial than simply a group which argues against creationists. Some have even gone as far as to accuse them of false advertising as this self-proclaimed "National Center" for "Science Education" has nothing at all to do with science except writing apologetics articles for the theory of Evolution and seeks political action against people who question the theory... nothing more.

The BCSE is pretty much the same, although they have been much less successful. A renagade weblog called the BCSE REVEALED has done irrevocable damage to this lobby group, and torn through the BCSE like a shredder shreds paper. My favorite part of his site, where the BCSE members are caught in blatent dishonesty.

Most of the real contributors have now left the BCSE, and Dave has pointed out a sharp decline in posting among other things that point to its end. I was going to go over there and stirr up some mischief myself, but then I realized I would probably do best to simply ignore them. There are enough battles to fight, so that's all for them.

http://ownzor-pwnzor.blogspot.com/2007/05/bcse-revealed.html

I agree with my anonymous encourager's conclusion. From my observations, I'd say that going into the BCSE forum for a debate is probably slightly less productive than throwing opening your local's door at closing time and shouting "Who wants some?"... with the difference that the BCSE's output is apparently all vomited forth whilst perfectly sober.

Moving Swiftly On...

Secondly, here's a website with some good resources: http://atheistdelusion.net/. If you're looking for a treasury of articles, books and audio refuting the distortions perpetrated against science by Professor Richard Dawkins in the cause of his atheist religion, and his many schoolboy errors in philosophy and religion, then this is a solid resource.

Finally, I've recently joined the gang blog at http://intelligent-sequences.blogspot.com/. The guys over there have forgotten more biology than I ever learned, but I hope I'm adding something to the mix; I've begun with some analysis of the arguments commonly used on the Internet in the "Intelligent Design" debate:

Until Next Time!

This Sunday, all being well, I'll be carrying on preaching the series in the book of Acts, the recordings of which you can find here. Or from an atheist point of view, I'll be carrying on doing whatever the chemical reactions inside my brain require me to do, as all our molecules continue to bounce aimlessly and meaninglessly together down the corridor of time. Have a good new week!

David Anderson

Documenting the depths of BCSE cynicism (continued)

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 05:36:00 +0000

Previous parts in this investigation: one, two, three, four, five.

In the last post from Ian Lowe (containing the words "he resigned" in regard of Stanyard) which we covered in the last installment, Tim Hague then posted on a different subject, regarding plans for re-organising the BCSE. Hague began as follows. This was still on the 13th of June:

Tim Hague: As I'm not going to be there tomorrow I had a 'brain dump' of various things that could be discussed.

Roles and Responsibilities I like the idea of one (or two) people having 'overall responsibility' for a particular facet or area of BCSE. Some suggestions for areas we could be concentrating on:

Hague then proceeded to list ten areas: overall management, public relations, tech support, forum admin, research, liaison, events, publications, online publications, "SJS campaign".

A very revealing comment is then made by Hague:

Because we have more areas than people, some people will need to wear two hats (I suggest we limit it to a maximum of two each).

In other words, "BCSE Revealed" has been spot-on in its argument that the figures show the BCSE as having failed to recruit beyond the boundaries of its committee. Hague lists ten areas, and then says that there are "more areas than people". I can count more than ten people (but not too many more), so I think Hague means those who would be ready to put in serious hours of work for the BCSE's cause. Remember that when I posted that the BCSE was in serious decline, BCSE chairman Michael Brass posted a statement to the BCSE's public discussion group to say the following (emphasis mine):

Contrary to Anderson's latest crapola, Roger is a member of the BCSE committee. The only thing in freefall is Anderson's overactive tendency to leap in head first.

http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=10440#10440

Brass knew he was telling untruths in his various claims that Stanyard hadn't left the BCSE - we've documented that many times over. Now, from Hague's comments, we've also shown that the BCSE's public and private statements about the health of its membership are in conflict. According to Hague, ten areas of activity will outnumber the supply of people to work in them. If that's a healthy organisation....

Back to the point

The next comment in the discussion was a reply to Ian Lowe. It was from Paula Thomas, BCSE committee member:

Paula Thomas: I wouldn't really be concerned here Ian. How much audience does Anderson actually have other than committed creationists and a few people like you and me? As I've said before he's a distraction.

I think we can use Roger's removal of himself from the frontpage positively after all isn't he writing a book? Maybe he needs time to concentrate on that...

Paua [sic]

I think that Paula would be surprised by my visitor statistics, but my guess would be that she's probably right in that I also think they generally include people at the opposite polarities in the Darwinism discussion. I'd also tend to agree with Paula that there's no real reason for Lowe to have been so concerned about whether I knew that Stanyard had walked out or not. My concern has always been to document the BCSE's gross dishonesty and lack of credentials, rather than their falling out with each other. What Lowe has done, though, by deciding to try to cover up Stanyard's walk-out and use it as a base to slander me and offer no apology or retraction when caught, has been to turn it into exactly the kind of material that I am interested in documenting.

I wouldn't agree with Paula, though, that "BCSE Revealed" is just a distraction. The fact is, we live in a moral universe. Human beings are hard-wired with consciences, and cannot simply cynically disregard truth without it taking its toll and gaining a bad reputation amongst those who know them - a fact which Christians such as myself have always pointed to as a God-given evidence of an ultimate day of judgment: we have a witness inside ourselves already. The facts that "BCSE Revealed" have been showing have been immensely damaging to the BCSE, and will continue to be so. When you switch off your conscience and decide to simply ignore inconvenient truths, you go down the road of moral nihilism and disaster.

Notice, then, what Thomas suggests: more deception. She suggests that the BCSE, in order to cover up their fall-out with Stanyard, make the false claim that he had had left to be able to spend more time on a book that he is apparently writing: "I think we can use Roger's removal of himself from the frontpage positively after all isn't he writing a book? Maybe he needs time to concentrate on that...".

There is one significant further data-point in the discussion: Michael Brass added a comment. His comment wasn't related to the issue of the deception campaign, but was agreeing with something else said later on by Paula Thomas. The significance, though, is that it shows that Brass read and knew the contents of this discussion: further evidence, added to what we already have, to show Brass's dishonesty. Brass knew that Stanyard had resigned and that my story that he had done so was accurate.

Summing it up

We now know that the individuals listed below:

Knew that Stanyard had resigned and deleted mentions of himself from the BCSE's website, and then
Took part in discussions planning the BCSE's slander campaign to discredit me, when it believed that I wouldn't have the evidence to prove that Stanyard's departure had taken place. This included allegations about being a proven liar, that I abuse my wife, that I'm impossible to work with, lazy, with no sense of morality, unable to apologise for wrong-doing, a control freak, a fragile ego, etc. etc.

Some of these individuals took part in the public smear campaign; others merely were involved in discussion of it, and chose to keep silent when it went ahead despite knowing that it was a pack of lies:

Michael Brass, BCSE chairman
Roger Stanyard, BCSE founder, spokesman, researcher
Ian Lowe, BCSE committee member
Brian Jordan, BCSE committee member
Chris Hyland, PhD candidate at Leeds University and BCSE member (and one of the leadership of "Science, Just Science", the group in the process of merging into the BCSE)
Tim Hague, BCSE member (and one of the leadership of "Science, Just Science").
Paula Thomas, BCSE committee member
James Rocks, BCSE member (and leader of "Science, Just Science").

I believe that that number, eight, accounts for a majority of those actively involved in the BCSE. It includes five of the seven BCSE committee.

What we've documented here is simply this: the BCSE is rotten to the core. It carries out planned campaigns of lies and slander of the nastiest kind, simply hoping that those who listen to it won't know enough to know what it's doing. This rottenness pervades the whole organisation. The chances of reform or apology are slim, because it's not just the odd renegade doing it: it's from top to bottom.

There is one more interesting comment in the thread I've been documenting above; it's from James Rocks. He says that it might be a good idea to delete some of the content of the "Science, Just Science" forums, and gives the following as one of his reasons:

James Rocks: Of course some material here should be deleted and never referred to again (such as the behind the scenes stuff we did on line and discussions arising from it) ... no one mentioned it last night as far as I know (well done) but if Roger and Brian knew about it they might just be a wee bit annoyed.

David Anderson

SJS/the BCSE have moved to delete some of the above material from the web - a copy is available from me for you to verify the accuracy of the quotations - just e-mail.

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Documenting the depths of BCSE cynicism

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 18:52:00 +0000

In the last two posts, I have been providing some evidence of the depths to which the BCSE's leadership have been willing to go in the last month to forward their propaganda ends.

Go here to read the unfolding story: one, two, three, four. In short: lying and slander, on a big and deeply cynical scale, with the involvement of a very significant number of the BCSE's core leaders.

Today I carry on with providing that documentation. In previous installments I have showed extracts of various BCSE members, including Ian Lowe, Chris Hyland and Tim Hague, discussing how to manage the fall-out from Stanyard's resignation. Here, I continue on that theme. We pick up just after the point we left off in the post "Red-handed: They lied and lied and lied". This is just after Ian Lowe had written a paragraph which contained clear statements that Stanyard had walked out, removed himself from a BCSE mailing list and various web pages - all contrary to Lowe's public claims that no such walk-out had happened and that I was a dreadful liar for saying any such thing. Here's what comes next. This is on the 13th of June.

Tim Hague: I think someone - probably not you Ian! - should send Roger an email and ask him what he's up to. I'm thinking that his wiki priveliges [sic] should be revoked as well.

I think it's worth putting him back there as well, at least until we've got past Thursday and are ready to annouce [sic] this merger...

Hague is referring in the last sentence to the combination of the BCSE with a second similar group, "Science Just Science", which as yet we've said little about. Notice that Hague suggests contacting Stanyard to see what's going on, and suggests revoking his (BCSE) website editing privileges in the mean-time - presumably in case Stanyard makes any more changes that will reveal what's been going on. (Remember that it is the website changes that I first highlighted as evidence of Stanyard's departure - and which Michael Brass, BCSE chairman, was particularly hasty to e-mail me about to tell me that I was making it all up, in one e-mail telling me the following: "Unfortunately for you, looking at the history of modifications of any page on the wiki will not give you a true reflection of anything.")

Notice that Hague suggested putting Stanyard's name back on the web-page in the meantime - presumably so that the outside world would not be able to detect what was going on.

Hague then put forward a different option:

Tim Hague: Another option is to remove everyone and leave a message that 'big changes are on the way'!

This suggestion of Hague's is close to what happened; they removed the names of the whole committee. This has left the BCSE in the strange position of having a website proclaiming themselves as authorities on science education but not even supplying a single name of those alleged authorities so that anyone can verify (or not!). It's put them back to where they were before "BCSE Revealed" exposed their identities and lack of credentials and forced them to put statements on the website about themselves: being virtually anonymous. (one, two - and then see some of the rampant exaggeration of credentials we exposed in one of those descriptions: one, two, three, four).

Chris Hyland then chipped in with a comment, responding to Hague's first suggestion:

Chris Hyland: Please nothing like that until after tomorrow. We really need to start with a clean slate as it were.

What was to happen "tomorrow" was apparently a meeting of some of the BCSE / SJS members to discuss the way forward.

The next post is much more significant; from Ian Lowe, as follows:

Ian Lowe: Actually, I misread the logs.. damn time zones :| It was actually edited on Monday night, 10 O'clock, so pretty much when he resigned. Which pretty much guarantees that nappy boy has seen it. Probably a good idea to change the page to remove all of us though. I'll do that just now.

For some reason, the BCSE's website is run a few hours out from BST. Lowe says that Stanyard edited the website on Monday evening, which would be Monday the 11th of June. Notice what Lowe says in that connection: "pretty much when he [i.e. Stanyard] resigned".

"Nappy boy" is apparently me; when the BCSE was trying to "dig dirt" on me, it discovered that my wife has a small business selling washable nappies; my guess is that "nappy boy" refers to that. That the BCSE is the kind of organisation which takes part in this kind of operation against those who dare to question its credentials speaks volumes...

Lowe then goes on to agree with Hague's latter suggestion: that the whole committee be deleted from the page, to hide the fact that only Stanyard's name was missing. If the BCSE later tries to claim that this step was taken as a precursor to a re-organisation, or relaunch, etc., you'll know better. It was taken to hide the fact of Stanyard's resignation.

At this point, let me remind you of Lowe's words after I first began publishing, without the proofs yet (as I was waiting to see the BCSE's response), that Stanyard had resigned:

"Watch him now - he has stated that Roger has left, simply on the basis of a change to the website, when it is simply not true. Roger had a problem with his ISP for a week or so, and we changed the email address to make sure that people could still contact us. Roger remains part of the BCSE committee. Anderson will blow and huff and puff, but he won't apologise and correct his mistake. That's the measure of the man."

http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=10461#10461

For the record, Lowe hasn't been in touch to apologise in any way; comment from me is needless, as Lowe had already in the above paragraph given us the verdict he wishes us to pass against him.

A Closer Look

Let's examine those words again:

Lowe's words: "Watch him now - he has stated that Roger has left, simply on the basis of a change to the website, when it is simply not true."

The facts "BCSE Revealed" has now exhibited, from Lowe's own words:

Stanyard had in fact resigned.
Stanyard himself changed the website because of his resignation.
Lowe himself then made further alterations to the website to try to cover this up.

Lowe's words: "Roger had a problem with his ISP for a week or so, and we changed the email address to make sure that people could still contact us."

The truth: Stanyard had walked away, and removed his own e-mail address (not Lowe) and telephone number. The "ISP problem" story was brought forward to cover up the truth.

Lowe's words: "Roger remains part of the BCSE committee. Anderson will blow and huff and puff, but he won't apologise and correct his mistake. That's the measure of the man."

The truth, from Lowe's own words: Stanyard had resigned. I was neither blowing nor huffing and don't need to apologise or correct any mistake, because I made none. My measure is that I've stood up to the BCSE's bluffing liars and bullies; none of them have apologised or made any public comment on the scandalous slander campaign they've conducted against me.

In the above report, we have also exhibited more data showing Hyland and Hague's deep involvement in the campaign of slander and deception. They knew exactly what was going on, and took part in the planning of it. This will be worth noting for if and when the BCSE do announce a new committee: "BCSE Revealed" will be watching closely to see just how many on it have been proven to be part of this particularly depraved episode in their history. If the BCSE wants its spokesmen and representatives to be taken seriously, these are another two individuals who have a big job in front of them to explain just why anyone should do so. Another two individuals for whom "BCSE Revealed" is racking up a documented record of public deception.

The material above was available at this link: http://www.justscience.org.uk/wiki/..._parentId=2129 - the BCSE moved swiftly to delete it. As ever, I have a copy available for anyone who wishes to verify the accuracy of the material - just e-mail.

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

... and then they lied some more.

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 08:47:00 +0000

My plan in the next few posts is to start demonstrating just how badly the BCSE has lied in its recent campaign against "BCSE Revealed". If you're just picking this story up, the earlier parts are here: one, two, three.

Basically, the story is this: "BCSE Revealed" began running a story that Roger Stanyard had fallen out with the rest of the BCSE committee, and walked out. The BCSE then made attempts at reconciliation - which, after a fortnight or so, were successful. As I posted this story, the BCSE committee, in particular Ian Lowe, Michael Brass, Stanyard him and Brian Jordan, decided that they didn't think I'd have the evidence to prove it: so they used the opportunity to rubbish me and the accuracy of "BCSE Revealed" in some particularly insulting ways. However, it turned out that I did have the evidence. As I've begun showing this evidence, the above named BCSE leaders have been exposed as telling the most astonishingly bare-faced lies.

Before I showed the evidence, the BCSE leaders were running away with a theme of "this set of lies from Anderson is so appalling - let us pyschoanalyze just how he could do this". Lowe started offering the BCSE forum readers his diagnosis - apparently I'm lazy, abuse my wife, and have a pathological inability to work with others - and then he condemned me in advance for not apologising.

So, Lowe appears to know that heinous misdeeds ought to, when exposed, be followed by an apology. The lack of any such apology (whether from Lowe or any others of the BCSE leaders who jumped in with the premature insults) simply gives us more data to go on when we're trying to evaluate if the BCSE are bona fide science educators, or liars and hypocrites. As yet Lowe has been strangely silent in offering us a pyschoanalysis of just why he has such problems in handling truth...

Here's More Of The Evidence

In fact, the fact that Stanyard had walked out on the BCSE was not only known by the BCSE committee. The below quotations are part of a discussion by Chris Hyland and Tim Hague, two BCSE members. They're discussing it over on the website of "Science, Just Science", which is presently in the process of merging into the BCSE. (As the two groups are very similar and have a considerable overlap in membership, I've considered this something of a non-event, so am not saying much about it at the present). I don't believe Mr. Hague's name has come up on "BCSE Revealed" before; you may remember Hyland from his involvement in the events when the BCSE began telling MPs that "Truth in Science" were distributing material "full of scientific errors" before the BCSE knew the contents of the material... (see here).

On the 19th of June, Hyland asked the following question:

Chris Hyland: "Roger no longer appears to be a user on this site, can we find out when he deleted himself. I've had a quick look through the admin pages with no luck. Any idea Tim?"

Notice that Hyland appears to know that Roger had been responsible for removing himself from the SJS forum - back in mid June. This contradicts the story spun by the BCSE that Lowe temporarily removed Roger because Roger was having problems with his ISP.

What was Hague's reply?

Tim Hague (2oth June): I deleted him at his request last week.

Note that - the reason why Stanyard wasn't posting on the SJS forum wasn't because he had Internet problems - it was actually because he asked the forum administrator to delete his account. He was leaving permanently. What happened?

Chris Hyland: When last week?

Tim Hague: Ian appears to have removed Roger's 'I quit' messages from the forum. It was just after Roger announced that he was going to quit, I've no idea exactly which day or time that was.

Notice that: Stanyard quit, and told everyone so. Hague doesn't know exactly when it was, because Ian (Lowe) removed the dated "I quit" messages which Stanyard had posted. This is presumably from the BCSE forum rather than the SJS one, as that is the form that Lowe is the administrator of (Hague is the administrator of the SJS one). So here we have the following facts:

Roger quit, and posted "I quit" messages to announce it. Stanyard's endorsement of Lowe's "Roger hasn't been around for a while because he had ISP problems" upon his reconciliation and return was a massive lie.

http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=10517#10517

http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=10480#10480
Lowe actually removed Stanyard's "I quit" messages. From the beginning, Lowe went into panic mode and tried to cover up what had happened. (I don't know why... the fall-out is evidence of childishness, but hardly more than that; "BCSE Revealed" cares about the BCSE's deceptions; its childishness is small beer). His campaign of lies and insults against "BCSE Revealed" is the continuation of a policy he decided on immediately. Remember again Lowe's words when he thought he would be able to get away with this:

"Watch him now - he has stated that Roger has left, simply on the basis of a change to the website, when it is simply not true. Roger had a problem with his ISP for a week or so, and we changed the email address to make sure that people could still contact us. Roger remains part of the BCSE committee. Anderson will blow and huff and puff, but he won't apologise and correct his mistake. That's the measure of the man."
http://community.bcseweb.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=10461#10461

How many lies and slanders is that? Not just one or two. Well, rather than making our own comment, we'll leave Lowe facing his own verdict; does he agree with himself? Apparently, someone who behaves like this and then fails to apologise is a very small person indeed. Apparently, we should "watch him now" to see what his measure is.
Stanyard's quitting was well-known. It was announced publicly by Stanyard, seen by members of the forum, and known by those outside of the committee. None of those individuals, though, stepped in when the BCSE began its campaign of lies and slanders against "BCSE Revealed"; some of them kept silent, some joined in. Hyland and Hague were complicit. If they have evidence otherwise of e-mails and forum posts in which they tried to persuade Lowe/Brass/Jordan/Stanyard not to go down the path they did, then I'd be more than willing to reproduce them in order to clear their reputations.

This is a disaster for the BCSE: its public representatives have been caught telling the most cynical and bare-faced of untruths and running a nasty slander campaign based on statements it knew were baseless. Who, knowing this, is going to believe any of their future pronouncements? The only people who are going to accord credibility to the BCSE in future are those who have made their minds up, evidence or not. The BCSE has the choice either to get rid of its committee and start over - which will be very hard to do because it is now such a small organisation that its committee are almost a majority of active members - or to cynically bet that it will be able to carry on with nobody noticing, hoping people aren't going to find out what kind of individuals those behind it are.

The BCSE's website alleges that one of the major issues in the Darwinism debate is that those who opposed Darwinism are systematic and cynical liars. Well, on this one I can't make the common criticism I've been making over the months... this time, the BCSE really do appear to be talking within their field of expertise.

You can find the web page with the posts extracted above at: http://www.justscience.org.uk/...omments_parentId=2159
You'll have to rush, though: the BCSE's response to these revelations so far has been to remove such evidence within minutes... whilst leaving all the lies and slanders against me up for you to read. Go figure what that tells you about how they operate! As ever, I have copies to supply to researchers - just e-mail me.

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Red-handed: They lied and lied and lied

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 19:06:00 +0000

Earlier this week, I revealed that Roger Stanyard had had a fall-out with the BCSE, and walked out. What I didn't know at the time, was that the efforts made by the BCSE to effect a reconciliation were on the brink of success - and that Stanyard was almost back. (The walk-out was about a fortnight before).

Now, that's unremarkable enough in itself. The BCSE could have simply said "Yes - so what?" or chosen to ignore the story entirely.

What they did instead, though, has turned this story into a major event. The BCSE leaders Michael Brass and Ian Lowe decided that they were in a strong position to absolutely rubbish my story, and me - and they went ahead and did right that. Brass began personally e-mailing me, and Brass and Lowe together put together some extremely strong words on the BCSE forum. In short, they called me an utter liar who had made up a story with absolutely no basis in reality - and they kindly offered their readers some pyschoanalysis of me to boot to explain how I could do such a thing. According to Lowe, the only reason that Stanyard hasn't been on the BCSE forum lately and why his contact details were removed, was simply because he had Internet connection problems for a bit. A little later, Stanyard himself turned up, to confirm this alleged fact. According to Lowe, I owe them an apology.

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=10480#10480

The problem for the BCSE though, is that I actually had far more evidence for Stanyard's walk-out than I showed in my original post. What this does is to turn this story from something of a non-event (Stanyard falling out, then making up) into something else entirely: prima facie evidence of an utterly cynical willingness to lie and slander openly and repeatedly - evidence of the sheer nastiness and deceitfulness of the BCSE's mode of operation.

I invite my readers to tour the thread on the BCSE forum on which this all plays out. Here are some things to look at (http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1116):

Does this look like the response of an organisation which pretends that "BCSE Revealed" hasn't touched it? Or does it look like the response of individuals who are severely rattled?
If the BCSE have nothing to worry about from "BCSE Revealed", why are they so angry? If on the other hand, I've shredded their credibility and they know it, then this response from them makes a lot of sense...
Notice Brass and Lowe in particular rubbishing my claims particularly severely, and committee member Brian Jordan also describing them as "imaginary" - and Stanyard confirming that they had no truth in them ("It is wildly out, as, indeed, is nearly all what he says").
Notice the various accusations against me - proven liar (Brass), wife-abuser (Lowe), impossible to work with (Lowe), dishonest, nasty (Stanyard), computer hacker (Brass), amoral (Jordan), "fragile ego ... control freak" (Lowe), litigous (Stanyard), lazy (Lowe), "spectacularly wrong" (Stanyard) etc. etc. Then compare those accusations with the verifiable evidence that the various people making them offer to back them up...

One thing's clear: the BCSE haven't changed their basic approach to "BCSE Revealed": throw ten tonnes of mud, in the hope that some of it will stick. If they repeat the same things over and over again, then hopefully you'll end up believing some of it, however little evidence they trouble themselves to offer for it. Michael Brass calls me a "proven liar"; but forgets (again!) to tell us where to find the proof for this... the BCSE has tried really really hard over the last months to smear me in some of the nastiest ways possible... but until it actually troubles itself to accompany its allegations with some attempt at proof, there's simply nothing to respond to.
Notice that Ian Lowe goes so far as to condemn me in advance for not apologising for my alleged crime. He's right that I won't be apologising... because I'm about to reveal the enormity of the deceit that he's tried to perpetrate.

So... have you got the picture here? At least four BCSE committee members have strongly affirmed that my story that they fell out with Roger Stanyard and that he, for a time, walked out, is absolute rubbish, and evidence of my wickedness. If I can prove the contrary - then the BCSE are about to look very bad.

And, I can... and they are.

So, here it is. Here is what really happened, which Ian Lowe strongly affirms is nothing more than Stanyard losing his Internet connection (and Stanyard confirms), and which Michael Brass calls "crapola":

Lowe said, in the forum post referred to above, "And what I will say is that it's blindlingly apparent that he doesn't have all of the information at his disposal... and he's not going to either". Really? Let's see...

Here's Ian Lowe talking to BCSE member Chris Hylands, writing in a website discussion on the 13th of June - a website discussion that he didn't realise was being indexed by Google. Compare the above with what Lowe said below, when he thought I wouldn't be listening, and really hoped I wasn't. The level of concern over "BCSE Revealed" is encouraging to me too: it shows that my revelations have really hurt them. This is worth reading twice to let it sink in. (Emphasis mine).

Chris Hyland: I wonder if Anderson is going to notice that the BCSE main page has been changed and no longer includes Roger as a comitee member.

Ian Lowe: Damn.

I wish he had not done that.

I got an email earlier in the day about Roger removing himself from an old committee mailing list that we have - it looks like about 5 minutes later, Roger edited the Homepage and Contacts page to remove all mention of himself.

I removed Roger's admin rights on the BCSE forum, but didn't change his access to the website - largely out of respect for Louis's desire for reconciliation.

This does however bring up the possibility fo scrutiny, which means that rather than BCSE announcing the merger and being fully positive about it, Roger's departure can easily be seen to pre-date the merger.

DAMN.

This is the same situation as we had with leeds - thinkfully, not legal this time, where Roger went off and edited every mention of "Leeds Uni" to say "Name witheld for legal reasons".

If we are *very* lucky, Anderson will not notice (not much chance, as the little weasel indexes our site every other day) and we can keep control of this.

a general question - if Roger is coming along with a thought of reconciliation, why is he removing all mention of himself today?

I'm concerned by this, and would really welcome some other (probably more rational and level headed) input!!

Ian.

http://www.justscience.org.uk/...rentId=2129. [Get it whilst you can - I'm sure they'll delete it from the web asap. As ever, I have copies available for verification for your research purposes. Update a few hours later: Yup, it's gone].

Did you get that? Lowe, Brass, etc., in public strongly affirmed that nothing happened with Stanyard, and that I made it all up as a wicked liar. This page from Google, though, records that two weeks ago Lowe was talking with his fellow BCSE members about Stanyard's departure, possibilities of reconciliation, and talked about how to "keep control of this". In public, Lowe and Brass pretend that my story was total nonsense and that they don't care what I write; in private, they are petrified about what I might know about what they're really up to.

They lied, and lied, and lied

According to Michael Brass, you shouldn't listen to a proven liar. Michael Brass is a proven liar.

According to Ian Lowe, I owe the BCSE an apology for making up a story about Roger Stanyard, which is evidence of my psychological flaws. Lowe is someone who nobody involved with the BCSE who in any way cares about truth will ever work with again.

According to Stanyard, he was away for those two weeks because he had a problem with his ISP. Stanyard lied through his teeth and has destroyed his own credibility.

According to Brian Jordan, my story was "imaginary" and evidence that I have no moral standards. Jordan, being on the committee, must have known that this was a deliberate deception and attempt to smear me; but he joined in anyway.

The BCSE could have just ignored my story, or said "yes - we fell out; so what?". Instead, they allowed Brass and Lowe to persuade them that I wouldn't be able to prove my allegation, and that it was a good chance to rubbish me. Brass and Lowe persuaded their fellow committee members that for the price of a few whopping lies, they could make some capital. Those fellow members bought into the strategy. That strategy is in tatters now, and so are the reputations of Michael Brass, Ian Lowe, Roger Stanyard, Brian Jordan and various other members of the BCSE.

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

Roger Stanyard: Update

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 07:46:00 +0000

(If you've read this story before, there are three updates down the bottom).

It seems that Roger Stanyard and the BCSE have made up; at least according to this thread on the BCSE forum:

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1116

The thread claims that Stanyard never left, and that I made up the entire story; then proceeds into a discussion of my honesty... and then tries to recycle some of the allegations that the BCSE made in the past against me. As in the past, they (again!) forget to produce the evidence... as in the past, whilst saying that this blog is full of untruths, they (again!) forget to say where, or what the contrary truths are... see here for more of that.

In fact, though, I have much more evidence than I revealed in the first post: evidence which reveals Brian Jordan, Michael Brass and Ian Lowe - the BCSE committee members in that thread who seek to claim that there Stanyard hadn't left - as brazen liars. Brass, Lowe and Jordan are obviously making a cynical bet on me not having such evidence, and hoping that they'll be able to bluff their way out of what happened. They hope that those on the BCSE forum who aren't in the inner circle will be convinced, and they hope that by blowing enough smoke and changing the subject to a discussion of the wickedness of the "BCSE Revealed" blogger, they'll be able to get away with it.

The others contributing to the thread above do in fact take Jordan, Brass and Lowe's words for it - which they will regret doing once the evidence is brought out into the open. I'm going to wait and see the BCSE's response to the above before I do that, but for now, here are a couple of discrepancies to note in Lowe's story. Lowe claims that Stanyard's e-mail address was removed from the BCSE's contact page because "Roger had a problem with his ISP for a week or so, and we changed the email address to make sure that people could still contact us. " What Lowe doesn't explain, though, is how this could account for the facts that:

For a time, Stanyard's name was also removed from the list of committee members on the BCSE front page. (Some time later, the BCSE then removed the whole list of committee members - presumably because they didn't want anyone to notice that just one member had left). Why was Stanyard's - and only Stanyard's - name removed from the list of committee members? Why don't the BCSE put back the full list of committee members, so we can see just who is on it?
If the problem was with Stanyard's e-mail address, then why was Stanyard's mobile phone number also removed? How would problems with Stanyard's ISP affect his mobile phone, exactly? You might have thought that the difficulty contacting Stanyard by e-mail would make it more necessary to have the mobile phone number up to contact him with, not less...

So, I'm now calling the BCSE's bluff on the following scores:

Are they going to stick with their story that I have made the whole thing up, or will they admit that Stanyard left and that they're now making up with him? (How far that making-up has gone, I don't know - presuming that this isn't itself a fabrication).
Are they going to wait for me to produce the further evidence I have, hoping that they can explain it away - or are they going to face the possibility that my further evidence is damning and will reveal Brass, Lowe and Jordan as telling whopping lies?
How can they explain the above discrepancies?
Are they ever going to explain what the other supposed errors on this blog are, or going to continue to trade in completely general descriptions? Comments are still open for corrections...

Let's wait and see...

I've taken a full record of the thread above; particularly Lowe's bold words. Lowe has been exposed on numerous occasions in the past as willing to tell outright lies "for the cause" in the hope that nobody will know better - see here for one example. He's going to have some more explaining to do shortly...

Update 11:32 a.m. I presently have Michael Brass in my inbox. He e-mailed me after the first story, to tell me that my story had no basis in fact. In response, I told him that Stanyard had in fact left, and now apparently returned, and asked him to confirm or deny it. Brass now appears to be back-tracking; he refuses to answer this question, but is now apparently arguing that the story constituted a "lie" and a breach of the "Ten Commandments" (Brass's words), not because I was wrong about Stanyard having left, but because I failed to mention that Stanyard had returned. I have asked Brass to explain how the apparent fact that Stanyard has left and returned makes the statement Stanyard has left into a lie.

Brass's spin machine is going into overload, because he has now both publicly accused me of lying, but also can no longer deny that Stanyard left since I know otherwise. This leaves him in a bit of a spot, so he's now trying to change the basis of accusing me for lying to the claim that Stanyard's leaving and returning means that we can't say he left. Michael Brass has major problems telling the straightforward truth. I challenge him to allow me to publish our correspondence on this topic in full so that my readers can judge for themselves which one of us has a forked tongue. What have you got to hide, Michael?

Update 12:26. Brass refuses me permission to publish the e-mails he sent me trying to spin his way out of this situation. Note that, readers - Brass doesn't want you to be able to judge for yourselves whether he is a liar or not; he wants to keep the evidence secret. I, however, want to publish it. What does that tell you? I will be examining my options....

Update 12:39. Brass is digging himself further into a hole. When he refused me permission to publish his e-mails which document his lying, I told him that he should not e-mail me in future (as it was him who e-mailed to initiate contact), unless he was willing to have those e-mails published. Here are my precise words (the words "have you" should have appeared before "send"):

For future reference, I put you on notice that I will consider all e-mails you send me about the BCSE or my blog as with full permission to publish. I'm not prepared to [sic] send me spin of this kind in future and then have you refuse to let the public see it so that they can see what you've tried to do. Please don't e-mail me unless you find these terms acceptable (unless I specifically say otherwise).

Brass's response was to go to the BCSE forum, and add this:

For everyone's amusement: Anderson is now stating that he has the right to publish in full any e-mails sent to him, regardless of whether the originator (and copyright holder) agrees.

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=10479#10479

Can anybody spot any similarities between my statement and Brass's version of it? No, neither can I.

I'm happy to assure anyone who wishes to contact me that I will not publish their e-mails without permission, and that my statement meant what it said - that it applies only to future unsolicited e-mails from Brass. Again, I invite my readers to note the incredible difficulty that Brass, BCSE chairman, has in handling himself with integrity. If the truth is on his side, why does he have to do this kind of thing? I wonder!

It's worth noting that the BCSE are promoting, on their website, a site in which one of their own members publishes private e-mails which I declined to give him permission to publish... do you think that bothers Michael Brass? Is Michael Brass a hypocrite? The answer's not hard to work out.

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

The BCSE: Decline And Fall: It's Well Underway Now

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 21:24:00 +0000

Here's some news: Roger Stanyard, until now the de facto BCSE leader, has left. (Read stories involving Mr. Stanyard here). He has removed his name from the front page of the site, deleted his e-mail address "roger@bcseweb.org.uk" from the "contacts" page, and deleted his mobile phone number as the BCSE's main contact number.

Before (e-mail address "roger@bcseweb.org.uk"):
After (the e-mail address is now "committee@bcseweb.org.uk", and Stanyard's invitation to call his mobile phone gone):

http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/index.php/Main/Contacts

As yet, the BCSE have not made any official comment on this departure. I suppose that they are hoping that nobody will notice, and that it won't need commenting on. They have tried this strategy before, and I invite my readers to review the articles on Leeds University to see what the BCSE are still hoping not too many people know about. The BCSE are still doing their best to avoid explaining the legal action that the University threatened them with for the appalling dross that the BCSE presented as "research" on their website: see here. As yet, the BCSE have refused to provide any explanation.

As predicted, the BCSE is falling apart. What other predictions will come true? Let's wait and see. But the fact is, that Stanyard has done the great majority of work in the BCSE until now. The BCSE is now going to have to relaunch itself, because more than half of it has just left! The BCSE is in disarray...

(See also an addition to my post "The Future").

See the continuation of this matter here: It seems that Stanyard has returned (or is in the process of returning). A further twist, though, is that the BCSE have tried to spin this incident by throwing the spotlight onto me, alleging that I have made the whole story up. I, though, will show the BCSE are deliberately lying in the hope that I won't have the evidence to prove it:
http://bcse-revealed.blogspot.com/2007/06/roger-stanyard-update.html

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.

The Future?

noreply@blogger.com (David Anderson) — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 21:36:00 +0000

This blog is generally dedicated to research; if you're new, you can scroll down and check out the past posts for various damning documentations of the true identity, nature and aims of the "British Centre for Science Education".

In this post, though, I want to ask what the BCSE might do in future.

The Journey So Far

To come up with any kind of ball-park answer to that question, we need to ask where the BCSE have been so far.

The BCSE launched in October 2006, lobbying MPs, newspapers and others, presenting itself as a body of competent experts. However, "BCSE Revealed" soon started showing the reality: the BCSE was nothing more than a few individuals with a website; none of them with any experience in science education, and none of them actually practising scientists. Rather, the vast majority of them were campaigning atheists, humanists and secularists - generally of the Richard Dawkins "all religion is stupidity" variety.

I won't bore you by going where we've already been; if you don't know about the BCSE's catalogue of attempts to deceive the public, tell outright lies in trying to cover its tracks and intimidate those who would expose it into silence, then you can always check the archives. The basic facts, though are these: since launching, the BCSE has not grown, but has shrunk; it has not attracted the wider (i.e. beyond anti-Christian activists) support base it desired, but hardened. It has not established itself as any kind of credible player, but now pulls in fewer visitors to its website and forum than shortly after it first launched.

So where from here? Having seen the BCSE leadership's handiwork over the last months, I don't think they're capable of morphing into a serious body without becoming something totally unrecognisable. The sheer anti-religious bigotry of individuals like BCSE leaders Roger Stanyard, Brian Jordan and Ian Lowe means simply that it is impossible for them to appear in public again in any organisation that hopes to be taken seriously. For the BCSE to recover from their efforts, they'd have to leave; but without them, the BCSE wouldn't be able to go on existing. What might the BCSE try instead, then? As far as I can see, the following are the options. I think that the BCSE are pretty reality blind, and instead of realising that it's all over, they might try one or more of these band-aids:

New launch: Some combination of a new logo, new name or re-designed website. If we change our brand, maybe people will think we're not bigots any more! Let's re-arrange the deck-chairs and pretend everything's OK.
Recruit one or more "big names" to lend them some credibility. The thinking would be like this: "If we can get some real science educators to speak on our behalf, this will get us the platform and credibility we desire and haven't achieved". The trouble here though is that the only scientists likely to join the BCSE are those are like the BCSE at heart anyway - they hate religion and want to bash it, however obvious it then becomes that they're not using but abusing science to do so. Richard Dawkins, Steve Jones, Matt Ridley - these kind of people. Any real scientist who has some integrity in distinguishing science from materialism is going to look at the BCSE's website, and in about 2 minutes spot that this isn't a real scientific body - and run a mile.
Try to boost the size of the organisation - a recruitment drive. The BCSE has become pretty run down; a rather hackneyed core. But where would the BCSE recruit from? Again, it's not going to take long for people to see what's really going on; at which point only the atheists will remain. Maybe the BCSE might try to merge with other similar groups. This, though, won't be progress... the only kind of group which would consider merging with the BCSE in the first place would be one run and dominated by atheists who aren't professional scientists or educators. Why would any professional risk their career and credibility unless they had a major axe to grind?
Alternatively, the BCSE could simply carry on in completely reality blindness - pretend all's OK, do what they're doing now, and just hope that nobody who receives any of their lobbying efforts ever types their name into Google to discover "BCSE Revealed" and similar pages.
Update 25th June. I forgot to add in one of the options. The other is that the "BCSE" will re-launch with a wider platform. It may take the mask off, and explicitly begin campaigning against the influence of non-secular world-views in public life. Or it may widen only a little, to campaign only against evangelical Christianity in particular. The campaign to silence criticisms of Darwinism in publicly-funded schools may become just one amongst many. If this option happens, it will certainly give "BCSE Revealed" a big shot in the arm - that the BCSE actually has a far wider, anti-Christian, agenda than it has been admitting to, has been our claim all along.

David Anderson

Non-anonymous factual corrections welcomed by e-mail. Comments are moderated - please read my comments policy.