Camp Quest UK Gets More Positive Publicity July 28, 2009

Camp Quest UK Gets More Positive Publicity

By Guest Contributor
July 28, 2009

You can never have too much publicity. A couple more articles on Camp Quest UK are popping up, and they’re finally getting more of the details right (as opposed to last time…).

It’s not run by Richard Dawkins.

It’s not a camp for “atheist children” (Rather, it’s a camp for children of atheist parents).

It’s not an indoctrination factory for atheism.

The publicity is positive and it’ll hopefully mean more donations and registrants next year.

You can read the articles for yourself: one from the Daily Mail, and another from BBC News.

(Thanks to Gribble for the links!)

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  • I find myself getting annoyed at these stories. Why on earth should Sam Klein have to defend the establishment of a summer camp that caters for the non-religious? It’s a summer camp where rational thought and critical thinking skills are fostered. Why should they be accused of attempting to indoctrinate children into a lack of belief in gods and fairies? As if magical thinking were somehow the default position, it’s ludicrous.

  • gribblethemunchkin

    While i think the BBC article was quite balanced the Daily Mail (shock horror) really had a quite negative feel to it. Hardly surprising, for those yanks that don’t know, the daily mail is a right wing rag that makes its business screaming about immigrants, atheists and all manner of devilry coming to get the white middle class.

    I love the T-shirt Sam Klein is wearing in the Daily Mail article.

  • Daktar

    If I’m not mistaken the Daily Mail article is taking a bunch of sly little digs at atheism. Obviously, what with approximately a third of our population being atheist/agnostic, they don’t want to outright insult it, but this is the newspaper that hires Christopher Hitchens’ younger, stupider brother, who is a church of England fundamentalist (now there’s an oxymoron for you), as well as Richard ‘global warming is fake you guys’ Littlejohn.

  • Camp faithless: Is Britain’s first atheist summer camp harmless fun or should we be worried?

    Yeah… practically gleams with positivity.

    For Ms Stein has an axe – a very big one – to grind. She is an atheist who believes that traditional faith-based summer camps are bad for young minds. So she has set up her own version, where children are encouraged to reject traditional religious teachings.

    Trust me, to a religious person, this is not painting Camp Quest in a good light. They’re trying to make her sound like an “angry atheist” who wants to make your kids give up religion.

    Welcome to Britain’s first atheist summer camp for children aged between eight and 17.

    But others fear that it is little more than an attempt to indocrinate children with atheist views, closing their minds to all forms of organised religion.

    Yet the whole event is part of a growing trend that has seen prominent atheists become increasingly vocal – some would say, zealous – in their determination to spread their belief that there is no God. … Ahe question remains: why do atheists feel the need to resort to such high-profile tactics at all? After all, with campaigns, fundraising endeavours, a ‘High Priest’ in the form of Richard Dawkins and now holiday camps for children, aren’t they simply turning into a parody of the organised religions they so sneer at?

    … Hemant, are you sure you read this article? That’s pretty much what you said they don’t say… I mean, they even quote someone who is implying that Dawkins is behind the camp:

    “But in his imitation of the type of youth events that religious groups have been running for years, Dawkins makes atheism look even more like the thing he is rallying against.”

    The Daily Mail article is anything but positive publicity. It’s a thinly-veiled attack on nonbelief, and it plays up the same tired arguments we hear about how atheism is practically becoming a religion and that atheists are fundamentalists/radicals/zealots/militant.

  • I don’t know. If the Daily Mail are against it then it must be good. That’s a general rule really. This is the “newspaper” that was fully behind the Nazi party right up to the day that war was declared. Daily Mail says Nazis = Good therefore the reverse is true.

  • Although I was deeply unimpressed with the spin the Daily Mail attempted to put on their Camp Quest article, I was very encouraged by the comments left by readers of the on-line article. Being a sad beardy skeptic, I have analysed the comments on my blog:

    http://crispian-jago.blogspot.com/2009/07/overwhelming-support-for-camp-quest-uk.html