This morning I was listening to Radio 4’s Today programme as I tend to do most days (digital radio available on the new Virgin box? Great), and as usual I was enjoying my dose of highly relevant, considered, factual programming, as well as a cup of coffee and a scan of my Google Reader.

That was until Today came to a close and I was subjected to another rambling and incoherent episode of Thought for the Day, the BBC’s two-and-a-half-minute “religion and ethics” show, and I was reminded of something I read recently on the British Humanist Association site (the BHA).

Did you know that atheists, agnostics and humanists are banned from expressing their thoughts on this show?

In the forty years it has been running there has never been an occasion where a non-religious person has been allowed to speak in this prime-time slot. Richard Dawkins, the prominent and prolific atheist author, was once given an unofficial slot sometime later in the day (in 2002), in which he made the point:

“By resolutely retaining the ban, the BBC is discriminating against the non-religious, and thus giving the impression of promoting religion as the one source of ethics.”

I couldn’t agree more. I can’t see how, in a multi-cultural, multi-faith country that it is fair and representative for a prime-time slot on Britain’s second-biggest radio station to have a remit to air views on modern-day ethics by only those people who count themselves as members of organised religion. Philosophers, scientists, ethicists, authors and poets have all contributed in a non-religious way to our understanding of the human condition - should they not be given an opportunity to speak from a secular point of view? Especially given that there are 17 million humanists in the UK (36% of the population).

In June, 2003 a number of highly-regarded atheists wrote a letter to the BBC Governors and puts forward a very simple case in response to this:

To the BBC’s Governors

In a letter from the BBC’s Head of Religion & Ethics to the National Secular Society, the BBC has again refused to lift its ban on non-religious contributors to Radio 4’s Thought for the Day .

Calls for non-religious voices to be heard on this prime-time slot have been made repeatedly for well over thirty years, and it was even suggested that the change of title from Lift up your Hearts in 1970 presaged the removal of this discrimination, as Pause for Thought did with the World Service.

The proportion of the population that does not consider itself to be religious has grown rapidly in recent decades to the 30-40% it is today. By resolutely maintaining the ban, the BBC is discriminating against the non-religious. The BBC is also laying itself open to the charge that it considers non-religious reflections on current moral issues unworthy of such a prestigious programme, and thus giving the impression of promoting religion as the one source of ethics.

We call on BBC Governors to end this discrimination and include non-religious contributors on Thought for the Day .

The letter was brushed aside and the ban remains in place.

Perhaps the show should be renamed “Our Thought for the Day - Not Yours”?

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