What Do They Think? - Sid Cordle (CPA)

Politics is one of those areas I find it very difficult to be interested by. The attentional capabilities of my brain seem to have an automatic killswitch that is instantly triggered the moment I see a man in a suit standing in front of a green bench. However, at the European elections last year, I decided to try my hardest to become interested and educate myself about the decision ahead of me.

Now that the general election has been announced, I feel duty bound to bypass my indifference and educate myself again.

So, inspired by the laudable Skeptical Voter wiki, I decided to email my local candidates in the Erith and Thamesmead constituency and ask them a few questions that I thought would act as a useful barometer for me to understand what they think about the sort of issues that interest me.

The first response I have received back has been from Sid Cordle, candidate for the Christian Peoples Alliance. From my preliminary searches, Cordle was one of the candidates for whom the most information was available - little of it encouraging. This entertaining email exchange adequately demonstrates his views on homosexuality, for example.

Below are my questions and his responses:

1) Are you in favour of the idea of reforming the English libel laws as is currently being campaigned for by the Libel Reform Campaign (www.libelreform.org)?

Yes absolutely. The web site says Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right, and should only be limited in special circumstances. That is my view precisely.

2) What is your opinion on the funding of complementary and alternative medicines, such as homeopathy, by the NHS?

If there is scientific evidence thart they are beneficial, yes. Otherwise no. I am not convinced that all alternative medecines are a good thing.

3) Do you think it was appropriate for the government to sack Prof David Nutt from his scientific advisory role last year following his provision of scientific advice that ran in opposition to the government's drug policy?

No. This was absolutely wrong

4) Do you believe that religious belief should have any legal protection from ridicule or criticism?

In general No. I prefer free speech to legal protection, but Elton John is very wrong to say recently that Jesus Christ was a homosexual for no good reason. These sort of statements only encourage those who want legal protection.

5) Do you believe it is appropriate to allow any schools to omit the teaching of certain areas of the scientific curriculum for idealogical reasons, or for the teaching of such topics to be impacted for such reasons (such as Christian schools being able to teach creationism/creation science/intelligent design alongside or instead of evolution)?

Education is about understanding every point of view whether you agree with it or not. Of course schools need to teach both creation and evolution and help children to understand both points of view. If we take a view that this or that should not be taught we are moving from education to propaganda. Personally I am quite certain that the world was created by God. The idea that it happened through a random explosion has no bearing in scientific reality. I would expect this to be taught and also the theroy of the big bang with all its limitations to be taught.

So, apart from the obvious and fairly predictable enthusiasm for creationism, I found the rest of the responses unexpectedly reasonable. He is in favour of libel reform and evidence based health policy and sides with the scientists on the Nutt sack incident. This just shows that the prejudicial assumption I (and others, I am sure) often make that any proponent of one world view I find crazy is likely to subscribe to all the rest of them doesn't always hold up.

I will write up the rest of the candidates' responses if and when I receive them.

Terrorist ideologies suppressing free speech? Yes please

I work at a popular commercial TV company in the UK and as such, I see the company's duty logs. These are the records of all the communications received from the public: comments, complaints, questions... ok, it's mostly complaints. We get all sorts of bizarre complaints about even the most inconsequential detail, inoffensive remark or minor continuity error. However we also receive many communications from people genuinely offended by something aired.

There are certain archetypes that seem to run through these. For example, I've quickly learned that any message beginning "I read today in the Daily Mail that..." can safely be ignored. One such archetype is that of the Indignant Christian. If somebody on one of our shows takes the Lord's name in vain, portrays Jesus in any sort of comic light or, heaven forbid, seriously criticises the Christian faith, we are instantly flooded with the written equivalent of loud tuts and wagged fingers. We are briskly reminded that the church is a large part of Britain's history, that the Queen is the Defender of the Faith, that the viewer has the right not to have their beliefs belittled or their sensibilities offended.

While I personally believe that the ideal of free speech doesn't at all guarantee you the right not to be offended or have your beliefs belittled, and that one should only hold an opinion or belief if one is prepared to either defend it or live with its criticism, I can still understand why we receive these messages. However, there is a specific argument that is sometimes used in these complaints that I find deeply insidious. This argument generally goes something like the following: You shouldn't insult our lord Jesus because it offends us Christians. You wouldn't say that about Muhammad would you?

Now, let's look at the implications of that argument. The suggestion is that we wouldn't criticise Muhammad because the consequences could be too serious: hate campaigns, bombings and fatwas have resulted from such criticism. The modern reluctance to question Islam comes as a result of these terrorist activities which have been carried out by factions of fundamentalists whose aim is exactly that: to silence dissent and enquiry by making the consequences of criticism too great. This ideology of terrorism goes directly against the ideals of free speech that are central to the way of life which we in democratic countries fight to protect.

When someone asserts that we shouldn't criticise Christianity because we wouldn't do the same to Islam, they are implicitly giving their support to that terrorist ideal and forgetting that Islam's present imperviousness to evaluation has been bought with the blood of many innocent victims.

When people decry our society's permissive attitude to making fun of Christianity as against its reluctance to do the same of Islam, they have it the wrong way round. It is good that we are able to say what we like about Christianity because it is on that basis that free speech exists. As soon as a religion succeeds in marking itself out of bounds from jokes, satire or criticism, that religion may win a superficial battle, but it is our very ideal of freedom which bears the consequences of that meretricious victory.