Condoms may not be used to avoid an unwanted pregnancy. No no no no no no. Women must get pregnant whether they want to or not.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Ratzinger blames everyone else again
Dec 22nd, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSays society considers child porn “normal.” Survivors of priestly child-rape react with fury.… Read the rest
Daryl Bem replies to a skeptical critic
Dec 22nd, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonJames Alcock critiqued Bem’s article “Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect.”… Read the rest
Nick Cohen on the hounding of M F Husain
Dec 22nd, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIndia’s censorship laws have allowed extremist Hindus to compete with extremist Muslims in tit-for-tat censorship campaigns.… Read the rest
Berman on Qutb on the Caliphate
Dec 21st, 2010 5:07 pm | By Ophelia BensonFrom Paul Berman’s The Flight of the Intellectuals, p. 146:
Qutb, in launching his anarchistic odes to freedom, means to say that, under his proposed resurrected Islamic Caliphate, human beings will no longer be tyrannously ruled by other human beings, but only by God, as interpreted by God’s representatives.
As interpreted by God’s representatives, who of course are other human beings, but free of the restraints and accountability that secular politicians are subject to.… Read the rest
The one thing needful
Dec 21st, 2010 12:28 pm | By Ophelia BensonI was amused to see that former bishop Richard Holloway has the same objection to Karen Armstrong’s book on compassion that I do.
The bishop:
… Read the restThe second plank in her platform is that compassion is, as it were, the distilled essence of the world’s great religions…
But is she correct in suggesting that, au fond, the essence of the main religions boils down to compassion? It is probably correct where Buddhism is concerned and it is from Buddhism that her best insights and examples come. I think she is on shakier ground when she applies it to Christianity and Islam. Christianity and Islam are redemption religions, not wisdom religions. They exist to secure life in the world to
Ours is not to reason why
Dec 21st, 2010 11:40 am | By Ophelia BensonTo expand on the point about the difference between checking the world and not checking the world – to repeat –
Science has to check itself against the way the world is, and religion doesn’t. Science is about what is there whether humans can figure it out or not, and religion isn’t. (It claims to be, but it isn’t.)
What you get with an institution that doesn’t require itself to check against the world, is authority. You get the fiat, the Bull, the decree, the encyclical, the Index, the excommunication, the anathema, the charge of blasphemy or apostasy. You get the arbitrary.
Science has to show its work, and religion doesn’t.
This difference certainly doesn’t cash out as the first … Read the rest
Fistula
Dec 21st, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonOne frequent outcome of very early marriage for girls.… Read the rest
Jesus suits up for the war on Christmas
Dec 21st, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia Benson“We must arm ourselves against the secularists, the nihilists, the humanists, and the liberals.”… Read the rest
My review of Karen Armstrong’s new book
Dec 21st, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIn the New Humanist.… Read the rest
Table 1
Dec 20th, 2010 5:34 pm | By Ophelia BensonReturning to this question of the political nature of the conflict (or non-conflict) between religion and science, in Thomas Dixon’s reply to Eric –
I stand by my emphasis on the political aspects of all of this. Claims about the nature of reality and who has the authority to discover and describe it, and by what methods, are questions about power, and thus political. I don’t say that the Scopes or Galileo cases were nothing but politics, but I do say they were political.
They were, but speaking broadly (as we are, because the subject is religion and science as such, not just particular incidents touching on religion and science), science is not inherently political in the way that religion … Read the rest
Richard Holloway reviews Karen Armstrong
Dec 20th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia Benson“Is she correct in suggesting that, au fond, the essence of the main religions boils down to compassion?” No.… Read the rest
Five years ago today
Dec 20th, 2010 10:57 am | By Ophelia BensonIt’s the fifth anniversary of the Kitzmiller decision, so perhaps you would like to celebrate the day by re-reading the contemporaneous comments of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Paul Kurtz, Steve Jones, Matt Ridley, Barbara Forrest (an expert witness at the trial itself, of course), and Susan Haack.
Barbara Forrest offers a Kitzmas present
Dec 20th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIt’s the anniversary of the Dover decision, so here is this year’s testimony from 15 citizens of Louisiana who spoke up for science, and won.… Read the rest
Bangladesh: woman dies after caning
Dec 20th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonShe was taken to a hospital with severe injuries a week after the beating, and died a month later.… Read the rest
This novel paradigm
Dec 20th, 2010 10:29 am | By Ophelia BensonJohn C McLachlan, professor of medical education at Durham, points out that it’s a common ploy to make nasty things more attractive by dressing them up with new names, like for instance changing the name of “complementary and alternative medicine” to “integrative medicine.” (That seems like a tricky one – you gain the flattering implications of “integrative” but you lose the at least as flattering implications of “alternative.” Decisions decisions.)
When there is tricksy wordplay going on, it may be time for another Sokal hoax. McLachlan sent a proposal to an International Conference on Integrative Medicine to be held in Jerusalem last October. It included this exciting observation:
… Read the restRecently, as a result of my developmental studies on human embryos, I
Ireland: two bishops have questions to answer
Dec 20th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWas it really an accident that documents concerning allegations of abuse against 10 priests were not passed to the Ferns inquiry?… Read the rest
Abortion worse than al-Qaeda, says dim Royal
Dec 20th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNicholas Windsor calls abortion “the single most grievous moral deficit in contemporary life.”… Read the rest
Theism is mandatory in Indonesia
Dec 20th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIts constitution says that “the state shall be based upon belief in the one, supreme God.”… Read the rest