All entries by this author

Vikram Chandra on the Cult of Authenticity *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

Don’t essentialize Indianness, but you’d better get the Real India right.… Read the rest



Science According to the X-Files *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

‘We are born of primordial slime, not at the hands of a benevolent and concerned supreme being who lovingly crafted us from clay.’… Read the rest



Holocaust Denial on Trial *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

Deniers distort history in order to promote antisemitism and white supremacy.… Read the rest



Raymond Tallis on Sokal & Bricmont. *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

‘The protection built into Theory…is composed of layer on layer of ignorance.’… Read the rest



Paul Boghossian on the Sokal Hoax. *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

‘To concede that no one ever believes something solely because it’s true is not to deny that anything is objectively true.’… Read the rest



Polly Toynbee on Religious Hatred Laws *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

Confusing religion and race is a clever trap the religious have laid for a worried government rightly anxious about race. … Read the rest



Monolithic Thought Unfair to Astrology *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

‘The Epistemological Situation of Astrology in Relation to the Ambivalent Fascination/Rejection of Postmodern Societies’… Read the rest



Separation of Mosque and State *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

‘Among intellectuals and in the academic world, any attempt to blame Islam for women’s oppression is stamped as Orientalism.’… Read the rest



Eagleton on Fish *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

‘A superficially historicist, materialist case – our beliefs and assumptions are embedded in our practical forms of life – leads not only to a kind of epistemological idealism, but to the deeply convenient doctrine that our way of life cannot be criticised as a whole.’… Read the rest



‘Frontline’ on Alternative Medicine *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

Alternative to what? Testing and evidence?… Read the rest



More Than 500 Arguments for the Existence of God *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

(1) Check out that tree. Isn’t it pretty?
(2) Therefore, God exists.… Read the rest



Paul Kurtz on Belief *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

Why do people believe or disbelieve?… Read the rest



Webster Reviews Fisher and Greenberg *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

‘the findings were nicely congruent with the hypothesis’ – yes, they always are, that’s the problem.… Read the rest



Kevin McDonald on Crews on Freud *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

‘psychoanalysis, unlike a scientific theory but very much like certain religious or political movements, has essentially been immune from attacks leveled at it either from inside or outside the movement.’… Read the rest



Frederick Crews on Freud *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

‘the claims of psychoanalytic theory are not interpretations but determinate propositions about how the mind regularly works’… Read the rest



A look at Kent Hovind’s dissertation. *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

In fact Patriot University seems to have no standards.… Read the rest



Dawkins on Maynard Smith *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

‘John does know more mathematics, more physics and more engineering than the average biologist. But he also knows more biology than the average biologist.’… Read the rest



Urvashi Butalia on ‘honour’ killing. *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

Women’s groups demand that murderers be treated according to laws of the land and not be allowed to find shelter behind the curtain of ‘culture’. … Read the rest



Melvin Konner takes on the opponents of sociobiology. *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

Biologists who had done no primary research in human sciences nevertheless issued anathemas on it.… Read the rest



A Designer Universe? *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

What a coincidence that we’re here and not on that nasty Pluto.… Read the rest