Louise Antony has an excellent essay, ‘For the Love of Reason’ [pdf], in Philosophers Without Gods (OUP 2007), a book edited by herself; it takes off from the difficulties she had with various religious truth claims when she was a child, and with the way adults reacted to her difficulties and persistent questions. First up is Limbo – the unfairness of it – ‘original sin’ in particular: ‘this sin that Adam committed got “passed down”…’

I found it repugnant, the idea that a crime committed by one of my ancestors could sully my personal soul. It was an idea quite at odds with the liberal, meritocratic principles to which my parents seemed otherwise to subscribe. (p. 41)

She … Read the rest

There’s been a lot of buzz about the New York Times article on a meeting of the SEC in 2004 that apparently did a lot to cause this little difficulty (you know, banks flopping, 700 billion public dollars tossed away in hopes of mollifying Wall Street, that little difficulty). It’s rather irritating to read.

[T]he five members of the Securities and Exchange Commission met in a basement hearing room to consider an urgent plea by the big investment banks. They wanted an exemption for their brokerage units from an old regulation that limited the amount of debt they could take on. The exemption would unshackle billions of dollars held in reserve as a cushion against losses on their investments.

And … Read the rest

So, Charlie Gere.

I find Jo Glanville’s defence of the publication of Aisha, the Jewel of Medina as an act of courage on the part of the publisher ridiculous. Would she be so ready to describe as an act of courage a decision to publish a book denying the Holocaust, or advocating paedophilia, or race hate, or antisemitism, or violence against women? Probably not.

No, probably not, but what does that tell us? More than the trivial conclusion that Gere draws, which is that ‘there are limits to her conception of freedom of speech.’ Yes of course there are, but the point is not that there are no such limits, the point is that the limits should be as … Read the rest