Tuesday 26 August 2008

Weird Organisations with Local Membership

Generally trawling for interesting oddities, I came across a blog called "The British Centre for Science Education: Revealed"

http://bcse-revealed.blogspot.com/2006/10/who-are-members-part-3.html

It states that: The purpose of this blog is to examine the new group calling itself the "British Centre for Science Education".

We aim to shed light on the available facts concerning its membership, published statements and discussions. In doing so, we expect that you will come to the same conclusion as we have - that anybody taking it seriously needs to take another look. The evidence presented on this website tells a clear and damning story. I am confident that after reviewing the evidence on it, you will agree that the truth is clear. The BCSE are a fraudulent group of religiously-motivated con-men with whom no reputable scientist or educator would want to ever have anything to do with. In particular:

1. The BCSE is a "Centre for Science Education" which contains no actual science educators. Science teachers, lecturers, professors: none.

2. None of its leaders are employed either as scientists or educators at all. They are mainly IT workers and businessmen.

3. Almost all of the BCSE's core leadership have been exposed as dogmatic atheists. Those who aren't atheists share, for their own reasons, a commitment to oppose historic Christianity.

It was with some surprise then that I came across John Germain. This is not the former Constable of St Martin, but is, I am pretty certain, John Timothy Germain, whom I remember from days past as being something of a maverick - he allegedly once threatened to blow up a science teacher with a home-made bomb, and left the school (voluntarily!) shortly afterwards!

John Germain: John lives in Jersey, and is a militant atheist. In his own words: "I despise any person who even admits to worshipping- something". [BlackShadow post 1651]

There is a more detailed biography below:

John Germain: Germain was the first of the BCSE committee members to bale out. A militant atheist with no apparent qualifications in science education and certainly no grounds on which to present himself to law-makers and the media as a national expert, his own motivations were obvious enough. (The BCSE website described him as a businessman living in Jersey). In his own words: "I despise any person who even admits to worshiping- something"

According to the blog, and emails posted by himself, he left the group because

Germain had something of a fall-out with the BCSE's de facto leadership (particularly IT consultant Ian Lowe but also management consultant Roger Stanyard and IT worker Michael Brass). One of the issues that later irritated him was that he donated some of his own money to the BCSE so that they could obtain a post office box. 10 months later, and after several follow-up messages from Germain during the period to express his frustration, still no PO Box existed, leading Germain to call the BCSE leaders "liars and thieves".

Germain described the main cause of his leaving as being fellow committee member Ian Lowe, though he later described the BCSE leadership at large and particularly the two main players management consultant Roger Stanyard and IT worker Michael Brass as "self-serving tosspots" and "liars and thieves".

It is always curious to know what happened to people you once knew, and how oddball organisations attract members. G.K. Chesterton once noted that people who ceased to believe in God often became so credulous that they believed in anything - in this case, of the merits of the BCSE.

http://bcse-revealed.info/bcse/bcse.rev/Main/JohnGermain.html
http://profiles.yahoo.com/rovergbjy
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DebunkCreation/message/110859

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well done to Mr Germain and to you for making his work more widely known, you forgot to mention his community work, and his service on the RNLI.