Did Faulks cave in to threats, or is he merely offering a pre-emptive apology in advance of them?… Read the rest
Excerpt From Dawkins’s ‘Greatest Show on Earth’
Aug 25th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWith bizarro Times headline worthy of Glen Beck.… Read the rest
Sebastian Faulks Says the Koran is Terrific
Aug 25th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonReally – he loves it – he read Karen Armstrong for his research – he wouldn’t dream of offending.… Read the rest
Sebastian Faulks Not Totally Smitten With Koran
Aug 25th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHas ‘courted controversy’ by saying so.… Read the rest
A few last pops from the shut up wars
Aug 24th, 2009 6:23 pm | By Ophelia BensonI find this quite funny – The Smiling Ones, apparently pleased by the reception of that LA Times article, have offered it up all over again, this time at Comment is Free. What’s funny about it is that the comments are scathing. This line is not working for them.
Just one sample out of many:
… Read the restI’m amazed by the sheer hostility shown by the Guardian to the “New Atheists”. I don’t agree with everything Dawkins says but I would rate him well above pseudo- intellectuals such as Karen Armstrong and her laughable thesis that religion is about practice rather than belief (contradicted by the Nicene Creed). However the Guardian prefers the “spiritual” Armstrong over the rational Dawkins. Now
Jerry Coyne on Robert Wright’s Pirouetting
Aug 24th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIf only scientists would ‘accept’ just a few tiny beliefs, everybody could get along.… Read the rest
The Daughter Deficit
Aug 24th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIn China and India girls are more likely to be missing in richer areas than in poorer ones, in cities than in rural areas. … Read the rest
No Grand Bargain Between Evolution and Theism
Aug 24th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIt doesn’t follow that because organisms in nature have purposes, nature as a whole has a purpose.… Read the rest
They Want Us to Be Stupid Things
Aug 24th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe Mirwais Mena School closed after the acid attacks, but only for a week. Nearly all the girls returned.… Read the rest
Kristof and WuDunn on Unsubordinating Women
Aug 24th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution.… Read the rest
NY Times Magazine on Global Women’s Rights
Aug 24th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhy women’s rights are the cause of our time.… Read the rest
Alun Salt on the Politics of Accommodation
Aug 24th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonVan Houtan and Pimm do not argue that all the public should be treated as if they’re in the remedial class.… Read the rest
Strike up the band
Aug 23rd, 2009 5:03 pm | By Ophelia BensonKaren Armstrong says God is like a melody.
Every day, music confronts us with a mode of knowledge that defies logical analysis and empirical proof…Hence all art constantly aspires to the condition of music; so too, at its best, does theology.
If you say so (and of course ‘at its best’ covers a multitude of sins – at my best I am a paragon of wit and virtue, but my best is oddly elusive). But that is (I can’t help assuming) because the ‘the’ in ‘theology’ is so flexible, so adaptable, so shape-shifting, so all things to all people, that it makes just as much sense to say that theology at its best aspires to the condition of poetry, … Read the rest
Robert Wright Lectures ‘Strident’ Atheists
Aug 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘When you define the system this broadly, it takes on a more spiritually suggestive cast.’… Read the rest
Joan Smith on Women Defying the Taliban
Aug 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonKhaled Hosseini: ‘The struggle of women against traditional forces dates back before the Taliban.’… Read the rest
Novelist Says Atheists Are Intellectually Lazy
Aug 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSelf-righteous – as bad as fundamentalists – fashionable absolutism – Stalin – elite – smug.… Read the rest
Dawkins Wants to ‘Convert’ ‘Islamic World’
Aug 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonOr rather, he wants to popularize evolution in places where Islam is the dominant religion.… Read the rest
Times Interviews Richard Dawkins
Aug 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘There’s a widespread perception that I am polemical and strident and shrill…I don’t think I’m strident and shrill.’… Read the rest
A novelty item
Aug 23rd, 2009 11:47 am | By Ophelia BensonWe’re in luck – we have a whole new barrage of clichés to set us straight.
David Adams Richards is angry. The acclaimed novelist and essayist is raging at atheists, the self-righteous ones. The writer with the tough New Brunswick background believes anti-religious people are as bad as fundamentalists in their fashionable absolutism.
Does he! How exciting! How novel, how original, how refreshing, how ground-breaking.
Not that I can talk – I don’t break new ground. I think there’s a place for saying things that have been said before, because the mere fact that something has been said before doesn’t mean that everyone knows that, so there is always room for popularizers to help circulate that which has been said … Read the rest
The Science of Origins
Aug 22nd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHow did the universe begin? Is our universe unique? How did life arise? How does consciousness arise? … Read the rest