Opponents say Washington State Initiative 1000 is ‘against God’s will.’ So suffering is God’s will.… Read the rest
Herding Atheists is Like Herding Cats
Oct 18th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonOne problem with turning out the atheist vote is finding it.… Read the rest
The Guardian’s Crush on the Koran
Oct 18th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonZia Sardar has spent years trying to square the circle of his Islamic beliefs with his right-on radicalism.… Read the rest
Radio Netherlands on Women in Iran
Oct 18th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonJonathan Groubert talks to Farnaz Seifi and Fataneh Farahani about hijab and protest. … Read the rest
A Planetarium is not ‘Foolishness’
Oct 18th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPlanetaria educate and inspire people; they are worth spending money on.… Read the rest
At the Ex-Muslims Conference
Oct 17th, 2008 1:46 pm | By Ophelia BensonAnthony Grayling spoke at the Ex-Muslims conference and tells us how it went.
… Read the restThe conference was opened by the head of the Iranian Secular Society, Fariborz Pooya, and addressed by the extraordinary and courageous Maryam Namazie, spokesperson of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, who subjected Islamism – political Islam – to scrutiny, arguing that it serves as an agency of Islamic states with serious implications for the lives, rights and freedoms of individuals, many of whom have left their countries of origin precisely to escape the repressive political and social climates there…A source of frustration for many is that they are lumped into “the Muslim community” whose self-elected spokespeople are more representative of the Islamic states that many
Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain Conference
Oct 17th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNearly 300 people met to discuss apostasy, the freedom to criticise religion, Sharia and civil society.… Read the rest
Anne Applebaum on Human Smoke
Oct 17th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBaker has used his license as a ‘novelist’ to excuse himself from all the tedious work of genuine knowledge.… Read the rest
Eric Foner on the Role of Reconstruction
Oct 17th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonToday Reconstruction is viewed as a noble if flawed experiment, a forerunner of the modern struggle for racial justice.… Read the rest
Plumbers Disavow Joe
Oct 17th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonUnion plumbers are not impressed by Joe the plumber.… Read the rest
Interview With Paul Offitt
Oct 17th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA doctor defends scientific research against the potentially fatal misperceptions of the anti-vaccine movement. … Read the rest
Unleashing the Barbarians
Oct 17th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe Republican Party’s strategy of stoking fear thrives as a postmodern pastiche of conservative hate speech.… Read the rest
Tom Frank on Norman Mailer on ’68 Convention
Oct 17th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe Hemingwayesque tough-guy egotism is the price for the incomparable description and insight.… Read the rest
Lawrence M. Krauss on Point of Inquiry
Oct 16th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHe talks about the misuse of quantum physics in the New Age movement, and more.… Read the rest
Jesus and Mo Get the Hots for Sarah Palin
Oct 16th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonTheir sexual innuendo skills are a bit lacking though.… Read the rest
Ohanian’s Mistakes
Oct 16th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHe seems unable to relate any incident in Einstein’s life without giving it a negative (or even poisonous) spin.… Read the rest
Grayling on Ex-Muslims Conference
Oct 16th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWith Maryam Namazie, Ibn Warraq, Joan Smith, Richard Dawkins, Mina Ahadi, and more.… Read the rest
Review of C S Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion
Oct 16th, 2008 | By Ophelia BensonJames Parker comments bluntly in the November Atlantic that ‘The average Christian—as if we needed reminding—makes a piss-poor apologist for his own faith. One might expect a doctrine as insolently extraordinary in its claims as Christianity to have produced some tip-top debaters, but oh dear…’ This teasing remark seems apt for the best-known Anglophone Christian apologist, C S Lewis, at least to anyone who has been unimpressed by the ‘lunatic, liar or Lord’ trilemma. In this engrossing book John Beversluis takes the trouble to analyze Lewis’s arguments in detail.
Beversluis gives an account of Lewis’s Christian apologetics over a wide range of books, especially Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, Surprised by Joy, and A Grief Observed. … Read the rest
Motives are one thing, facts are another
Oct 16th, 2008 10:32 am | By Ophelia BensonThis FAIR thing is really terrible. Look at the ‘Dirty Dozen’ for instance. They’re an obnoxious crew, most of them, but FAIR just gives a quote from each without saying what is wrong with it, and it is simply not always self-evident that anything is wrong with it. (The motives of the people saying it may be deeply suspect, but that doesn’t mean that what they say is false, and I don’t think it always is false. It’s not clear what FAIR thinks.) For example David Horowitz (whom I do not admire at all, and who I think often argues unfairly to say the least) says there are 150 Muslim students’ associations which are arms of the Muslim Brotherhood. And…? … Read the rest
Sheep may safely graze
Oct 15th, 2008 12:45 pm | By Ophelia BensonFairness and Accuracy in Reporting tackles what it (inaccurately and tendentiously) calls ‘Islamophobia’.
The term “Islamophobia” refers to hostility toward Islam and Muslims that tends to dehumanize an entire faith, portraying it as fundamentally alien and attributing to it an inherent, essential set of negative traits such as irrationality, intolerance and violence.
Why should a ‘faith’ be humanized to begin with? ‘Faiths’ are not human, so why is it wrong to dehumanize them? It isn’t wrong; that’s just a rather stupid and unthinking bit of rhetoric. The rest of the sentence (and the rest of the report) simply assumes that it is wrong to portray a religion as having ‘negative’ (meaning bad) traits without first determining whether or not … Read the rest