Swinburne Recycled

Nov 2nd, 2006 12:15 am | By

We’ve been having this lively discussion of Swinburne on suffering, so I thought I’d temporarily re-post this old comment from last June.

Richard Swinburne is interesting. I’ve said so before. So has Mark Fournier at Tachyphrenia. And now it’s time to say it some more. Because the things Swinburne says here are truly revolting, and yet they are, of course, what you get if you try to reconcile the omnipotent omnibenevolent God with the existence and abundance of suffering in the world – just what Darwin couldn’t manage to reconcile himself to. There’s an irony of sorts in the fact that it’s Swinburne’s view that is considered by many – by surprisingly many – to be the ‘devout’ … Read the rest



John Gray on Michael Burleigh on Secularism *

Nov 1st, 2006 | Filed by

Much of the book is a laboured defence of the Vatican against charges of complicity with Nazism.… Read the rest



Michael Collins on Sen’s Identity and Violence *

Nov 1st, 2006 | Filed by

Fluid and evolving nature of identities, and differences within cultural groupings, are obscured. … Read the rest



Turkish Archaeologist Acquitted *

Nov 1st, 2006 | Filed by

Charges were brought against her by a Turkish lawyer who took offence at her 2005 book.… Read the rest



Danny Postel and Nader Hashemi on Max Boot *

Nov 1st, 2006 | Filed by

Iranian dissidents want the support of human rights groups, intellectuals, NGOs, not of foreign powers.… Read the rest



US, Vatican Impede Sexual Health Goals *

Nov 1st, 2006 | Filed by

Religious zealots prefer STDs and unwanted pregnancies to birth control.… Read the rest



Letters for November, 2006

Nov 1st, 2006 | By

Letters for November, 2006.… Read the rest



Odious beliefs

Nov 1st, 2006 12:53 am | By

Oh yes – this sounds familiar.

Richard Dawkins once took part in a debate with the distinguished theologian and philosopher Richard Swinburne. The Holocaust, Swinburne suggested, had a positive element because it gave Jews an opportunity to be noble and courageous. Swinburne’s ‘grotesque piece of reasoning’, Dawkins writes in his new book, is ‘damningly typical of the theological mind’, and an attitude that reveals not just the redundancy of religion but also its immorality.

We’ve had a look at Swinburne’s grotesque reasoning before, more than once. Stuff like that gives philosophy of religion a bad name, I should think. David Attenborough is a useful counter to that kind of thing.

People sometimes say to me, “Why don’t you admit

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Cosmic variance

Nov 1st, 2006 12:52 am | By

What I keep saying! But Sean Carrol says it a lot better in a review of Eagleton’s review of Dawkins.

Okay, very good. God, in this conception, is not some thing out there in the world (or even outside the world), available to be poked and prodded and have his beard tugged upon…The previous excerpt, which defined God as “the condition of possibility,” seemed to be warning against the dangers of anthropomorphizing the deity, ascribing to it features that we would normally associate with conscious individual beings such as ourselves…But – inevitably – Eagleton does go ahead and burden this innocent-seeming concept with all sorts of anthropomorphic baggage. God created the universe “out of love,” is capable of “regret,” and

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Let’s start with vocabulary

Nov 1st, 2006 12:52 am | By

A very interesting discussion last week at the Valve. Similar to many discussions we have, but also different, on account of different people conducting it. It’s about Dawkins and what the Valve poster, Bill Benzon, finds ‘bothersome’ about him. He puts it this way:

As far as I can tell, my target is a certain kind of discourse, a kind which Dawkins exemplifies particularly well, but others participate in it as well. And what bothers me about this discourse is not that it is against religious belief, but that it is against the religious as well.

That’s not as clear as it might be, but I think what he’s saying is, people who are sharply critical of religious … Read the rest