Organised Secularists are as tedious as Evangelical Christians

The previous day I had the distinction of being the first person to vote in a Lib Dem Voice poll. It asked:"Do you think Radio 4’s Thought for the Day should be opened up tosecularists and humanists?"

• Yes, open it up
• No, keep it for religion
• Just scrap Thought for the Day

I voted to scrap it, confident that I would be in the majority.Not a bit of it. Yesterday Liberal Democrat Voice in print the results of the poll. The results were:

• Yes 384
• No 122
• Scrap it 134.

I have never been entirely sure what a humanist is, but for a secularists to demand to be accommodated in a religious slot is downright bizarre.My own religious position is settled. While I love Church of England architecture and music, that does not mean that its policy true. And to take on an intellectualised form of Christianity consequently that I could enjoy them - proverb that when we talk about life after death we are really proverb something profound about this life - would be dishonest.Besides, though I find Evensong in a cathedral moving, on the rate occasions I have been grateful to go to previous services I have establish the lecture worthless and the melody a dirge. And I seriously hate the Evangelical, Christian Union style of belief. I have seen it do great harm in my own family.The trouble is that organised secularists resemble no one consequently much as these happy-clappy Christians. They are just as boring and in much the same way. Hence the new atheist summer camp for children, for example.There was a time when I was paying attention to the secularist movement, but I establish them stopped up minded. They took it for decided that if you agreed that there was no God or deity then you would share a their views on a raft of subjects like abortion and euthanasia. For me, that simply did not follow.And have these people ever heard Thought for the Day? It is dull beyond endurance. Its short length and the demand for blandness slay any interesting ideas stone dead, and I don't see that atheist would manage with it any better. The most excellent you could hope for would be to mirror the rebarbative confidence of Anne Atkins.I can only recall only one good Thought for the Day. I think it came from Rosemary Harthill, who was then the BBC's religious correspondent and she talked about faith at school. At secondary train you were obtainable a wet, New Testament sort of God and kept your eyes open during prayers to show you did not believe. At primary school, by contrast, God was a fierce, Old Testament figure. He was a God of revenge who might conceivably take your side against the headmistress.What is most offensive about Thought for the Day is the attempt to insinuate faith into the very experienced Today programme like an aspirin in a teaspoon of jam. It would be better by far to give Christians and previous believers - and non-believers - their own programmes.I still regret that Radio 4 no longer broadcasts the service of Compline late on Sunday evenings: Brethren, be sober, be vigilant; because your opponent the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist, steadfast in the faith.That is the stuff to give the troops. Not nonsense like Thought for the Day, secularist or not.
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