Roger Stanyard wrote:Natman wrote:Yeah, good luck to them.
The UK is possibly one of the more secular of the European countries thanks to an apathetic state religion and an extremely liberal public broadcaster.
ID will fail in the UK because the British just can't be arsed getting out of bed to go to church anymore and Dara O'Briain and Brian Cox are a million times cooler than Aled Jones and Rowan Williams.
I don't think you can pin apathy towards religion on the BBC (which, incidentally is not the only public service broadcaster in the UK). Lord Reith was a strict Calvinist and his ghost still runs through the corridors and studios of the BBC. Moreover, the BBC has always given over a significant proportion of its air time to religion. Still does.
The BBC isn't so much liberal as a product of the middle-class background of those that run it (from top to bottom). It really does me something to the people that work there that "nation shall speak unto nation" and its remit to entertain, inform and educate. One thing the BBC has never been is significantly left wing. Right up until the late 80s (and possibly beyond) staff were systematically vetted to keep out the hardline ideological Trotskyites and Marxists. Yer, there are a lot of Labour voters in the BBC but Labour isn't a very liberal political party and, in any event, Labour is a major and popular political party. In comparison with the national press, the BBC is a paragon of political impartiality. It's required to be, by law.
Three issues here (although I do accept a lot of your post);
First is that I never equated a liberal public broadcaster with the apathy of the CofE. The CofE manages apathy all by itself, it's suffered from it since long before TV came along, it's one of its better qualities and as state religions go, I wish more were like it.
I also never equated public broadcaster with the BBC. C4 is a public broadcaster too, and it's very liberal in both its remit and its outlook. The BBC is, at heart, very conservative, but a lot of its programming, presenters and themes are liberal.
Lastly, you're falling into what I thought was a purely American phenomena - that liberal is the same as left-wing. Liberal in the sense I was refering to was the proper meaning of the term; widely open to new ideas, willing to depart from established opinions, conventions etc. Or; open to political or social changes and reforms. Yes, you could broadly class it as left-wing, if you're also prepared to equate right-wing with pure conservatism.
You can be impartial about politics
and be liberal, don't get too caught up with American political terms to forget that.