On freedom of speech
Posted at 19:58:34
on Wed, February 27th 2008 by graham
in:
academia
atheism
creationism
evolution
freedom of speech
new humanist
religion
ucl
universities
I am, as you'll be aware, many things. Slayer of Dragons, baker of muffins, programmer, occasional scribbler, amateur photographer, cynic, lover of the weird and wonderful. I'm also, I'd like to think, a reasonably good scientist (Physics was my mistress before Computer Science; we still keep in close contact and send each other nostalgic letters from time to time), a logical thinker, an atheist and, possibly most importantly of all, an advocate of freedom of speech.
So it makes me immensely glad to see that the readers of New Humanist are also, by and large, free speech advocates. This observation is the result of a poll on the New Humanist blog about whether creationists should be allowed to speak on the subject of creationism at universities (the subtext being that universities in question are obviously going to be locations of high scientific integrity; it's a basic assumption here that religious colleges need not be considered) or whether said universities should ban people who advocate what some would bluntly call arrant nonsense.
At the time of writing the poll stands with 90 out of 106 voters think that creationists should be allowed to speak in university buildings whilst the other 16 think that they shouldn't. That's 85% for and 15% against, to save you some maths.
Personally I think that's a bloody marvellous, albeit not necessarily terribly useful, statistic. 85% of those polled think that regardless of the scientific viability of whatever stance you're putting forward, you should still be allowed to have your say. One assumes that there's a certain contingent that would end the previous sentence with "at least people get the chance to throw fruit at you that way" or something similar, but ignoring that fact for the sake of making a point, isn't that something that can be used in an argument against the religious naysayers who claim that all atheists and evolutionists are intolerant, bigoted fools?
Of course, the fact that we think that people should be allow to tout even the most nonsensical set of views in university buildings doesn't mean to say that said views should be allowed to be taught as fact in those buildings. That's a different argument. But that's the beauty of universities over schools: The students are there by choice, able to take in lectures by choice. Even the crazy ones.
