The Future

(First published on my blog 22nd June 2007).

The "BCSE Revealed" blog is generally dedicated to research; if you're new, you can 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 article, 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:

1. 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.
   
   
2. 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.
   
   
3. 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?
   
   
4. 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.
   
   
5. 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.

Update December 2007 : What actually happened? A bit of a mix of the above predictions turned out to be correct. The BCSE re-arranged the deck-chairs by changing the design of its website; it attempted a merger with another similar group which didn't work out; and it continued to dwindle as members left, leaving it pretty much as nothing more than a seven-men-and-a-website talking shop.

David Anderson