In the spirit of objectivity, I follow on from yesterday’s Jesus Camp entry with a different but equally questionable children’s summer retreat: Camp Quest, which I found (as usual) on one of my many daily visits to BBC News. It is, according to the US equivalent’s website, supposed to

[…] provide children of freethinking parents a residential summer camp dedicated to improving the human condition through rational inquiry, critical and creative thinking, scientific method, self-respect, ethics, competency, democracy, free speech, and the separation of religion and government […].

The camp has naturally drawn controversy, instantly labelled an ‘Atheist Camp’ or a ‘Dawkins Camp’ (While I’m sure Richard Dawkins is pleased to see the camp setting up in the UK, he does not, in fact, have any personal involvement with it). In response to the media frenzy, the organizers offer this page of refutation.

While arguably less sinister than the Kids on Fire School of Ministry, is it any less fundamentalist?

EDIT: Viddler seems to have taken down its mirror of Jesus Camp. I guess you’ll have to find it elsewhere!

‘MR. PRESIDENT! ONE NATION UNDER GOD!’ cry the children in front of the cardboard cut-out of George W. Bush. Disturbed yet?

Directed by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing and released in 2006, Jesus Camp is a documentary film about a Charismatic Pentecostal summer camp, which aims to teach children how to ‘take back America for Christ’. A classic example of thought reform at its most deadly, it is a worrying snapshot of the hardline conservative bible-thumpers of 21st century America.

As it dips in and out of the lives of a handful of evangelical christian families, we see that both inside and outside the home, what can only be described as brainwashing is taking place. We meet a sickeningly content boy watching ‘Creation Adventures’, a cartoon which happily tells him that God made the earth 6000 years ago. We meet a jubliant young girl who loves to dance, and would be having a ball if not for her sin of dancing ‘for the flesh’ (everything has to be done for the Lord).

While this certainly infuriated me, I soon found out that it barely tips the iceberg. Keen to save their souls, pastor Becky Fischer scorns children as young as seven and eight who are on their knees, hysterically upset about their supposed ’sins’. She yells that they are ‘phonies’ and ‘hypocrites’, before stepping in with ‘the water of your [God's] word’ to ‘cleanse’ them (it’s really just a bottle of the finest Nestlé spring water. I wonder who settled that sponsorship deal?).

Later on, a ‘pro-life’ activist comes to speak to the campers. Armed with a roll of red duct tape, a box of anatomically-incorrect plastic foetuses (you can buy your very own set here if you’re interested), and the most condescending tone of voice in existence, he explains that ‘God formed you in your mother’s womb. You’re not just a piece of protoplasm’. He then delivers his punch-line: ‘whatever that is!’ His joke certainly is funny, if only because it illustrates perfectly that he clearly has no business discussing matters of biology. ‘You’re not just a piece of tissue in your mother’s womb. You were created intently by God. Isn’t that incredible!’. Yes, it certainly is incredible. Incredible that a grown man has convinced himself that this unsubstantiated religious rhetoric is fact.
The most disturbing part of this episode is the pastor’s bizarre ’symbolic gesture’ of taping the children’s mouths shut with his big strips of red tape. It sums up the aim of the camp: to silence the individual voices of the most impressionable people in society, whilst (quite effectively) convincing them that they’re better for it.

I challenge you to watch this without wanting to cry out in anger. Perhaps the only good to come of this profoundly sad tale is that after the film’s release, the camp’s organizers were so innundated with complaints that they had to shut it down.

The lyrebird is a bird species native to Australia. They look perfectly unremarkable under normal circumstances, but when the time comes around to attract a mate, it’s a different story.

To attract a mate, the male extends its massive feather plume

The plume is just one side of the story however, as what is most remarkable is its song. Or rather, its lack of one. Instead of trying to impress females with its own distinctive call, it just mimics the other birds around it. And it does it astonishingly well. In fact, it even picks up sounds that aren’t bird-calls at all, including those of camera shutters, car-alarms and chainsaws. The following is a clip from one of David Attenborough’s BBC programmes: