Thought for the Day is a slot on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme. At around 7.45am every Monday to Saturday someone involved in religion (usually a minister, a rabbi, a representative of a religious organisation, that sort of thing) has 2 minutes 45 seconds to muse upon matters topical from a religious perspective.
I genuinely look forward to listening to Thought for the Day. If I miss it because I’ve left the house already (or more preferably if I’m still asleep), I download the podcast and listen to it later. I’m not religious at all, but I’m fascinated by religion and I’ve studied it a little. It’s fair to say that I’m an atheist and secular in my opinions, and I’ve no problem criticising religion as scathingly as I please. But I’ve plenty of time for religious folk if they seem to be talking sense. I don’t hold their inherent lunacy against them.
I would be sorry to see Thought for the Day go (especially now I’ve set up this blog dedicated to it), but it has come under threat in the past. The British Humanist Association and the National Secular Society complained that it excluded non-religious views and consequently the BBC brought Richard Dawkins in to do his own one-off slot, providing an atheistic point of view on matters. Still, they stuck by their policy to include only religious commentators in the Thought for the Day slot. Amen to that.
If I didn’t find religion so interesting, I’d probably be against Thought for the Day. I’d certainly be of the view that the BBC should open the slot up to non-religious commentators. But that just wouldn’t be the same. Nor would it give me such a fruitful excuse to write a blog everyday. All I plan to do is listen to Thought for the Day and write down the thoughts it provokes, whatever they might be and whatever mood I’m in. If you’re likely to be offended, it’s probably just what you need.
Update: Having listened carefully to each Thought for the Day reading since August 2008, I am now very much of the opinion that it should be opened up to non-religious contributors. I have, like many others, contacted the BBC to say so.