Texas higher ed panel recommends letting Institute for Creation Research offer degrees in science education.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Aziz Huq Says Bhutto Was No Mandela, But
Dec 30th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWithout democracy, there is scant chance the religious leaders who have backed the Taliban can be won over. … Read the rest
Moni Mohsin on Pakistan Without Benazir
Dec 30th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAlone among the leadership of Pakistan, she understood the grave threat from religious extremists. … Read the rest
Political Violence is the Bane of South Asia
Dec 30th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMilitants and fanatics of all dogmas and grievances have assassinated leaders since independence.… Read the rest
Block that play
Dec 30th, 2007 11:01 am | By Ophelia BensonSpeaking of the combination of bullshit and bullying – consider the way the word ‘faith’ is everywhere used as a tool of that combination. It’s a bully-word precisely because it’s about bullshit; it gets to bully people on the grounds that it is about unwarranted belief. What an odd arrangement.
Look at Deborah Solomon talking to Ian McEwan for instance.
… Read the restIt seems to me that the impulse to atone is a religious one, and yet you are a self-declared atheist. Yes, I am an atheist, and probably Briony is, too. Atheists have as much conscience, possibly more, than people with deep religious conviction, and they still have the same problem of how they reconcile themselves to a bad deed in
Secular democracy is a Sin
Dec 30th, 2007 10:15 am | By Ophelia BensonSome ideas are dangerous any way you look at them. This is one.
Over the past decade, thousands of people, from top politicians to ordinary voters, have been murdered by Islamists in Muslim countries that have held reasonably free elections (Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia). Islamist opposition to democracy is based on the claim that allowing men to legislate would be a form of sherk, that is to say associating Man with God, who is the “sole and ultimate legislator”. Man-made law cannot rival God-made Shariah.
Humans can’t and mustn’t (especially mustn’t, because in fact of course they can, so they have to be stopped) correct or review or displace or act for or … Read the rest
George Felis on Consensus and Skepticism
Dec 29th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonOnce a conclusion is determined in advance by faith, subsequent ‘argument’ is mere rationalization.… Read the rest
The Islamist War on Muslim Women
Dec 29th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIt took a worldwide outcry to spare ‘Qatif girl’ and others. We have to keep squawking.… Read the rest
The Most Potent Voice for Liberalism and Change
Dec 29th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBhutto’s assassination a defining act of the politics of murder – a phenomenon that we see from Lebanon to Iraq to Pakistan.… Read the rest
Grand Opening of London Center for Inquiry
Dec 29th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPaul Kurtz, Joseph Hoffmann, Julian Baggini, Stephen Law, Nigel Warburton, Polly Toynbee, Ibn Warraq, etc.… Read the rest
McGinn Did Not Like Honderich’s Book
Dec 29th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBut was his tone wrong? Philosophers and others discuss.… Read the rest
Where Did the Laws of Nature Come From?
Dec 29th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonCosmology meets philosophy.… Read the rest
Anthony Gottlieb Reviews Antony Flew
Dec 29th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonOr rather a book purporting to be by Flew.… Read the rest
Bad, bad, very bad
Dec 28th, 2007 12:20 pm | By Ophelia BensonSo…I was driving around in San Francisco yesterday afternoon, I had dropped Jeremy and Cheryl at the SF airport and then gone on into the city to have fun looking around for a couple of hours until it was time for me to go back to the airport. I turned the radio on and found some okay music and drove up 19th and through the park and through the Avenues a little and over to Arguello, and then the music changed so I looked for another station and hit a news one – and then I found myself repeatedly shouting a bad word as loudly as I could possibly shout it, and kind of thrashing back and forth in rage. … Read the rest
Pakistanis React
Dec 28th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘She was a liberal force, a hope for a Pakistan overrun by militancy. Now there is a great vacuum.’… Read the rest
Reactions to Bhutto Assassination
Dec 28th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPeople are upset.… Read the rest
Malaysia: Only Muslims Can Say ‘Allah’
Dec 28th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonChristians not allowed to use the word.… Read the rest
‘Repressed Memory’ as Cultural Phenomenon
Dec 28th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonRomanticism created fertile soil for the idea that the mind could expunge a trauma from consciousness.… Read the rest
McGinn Reviews Honderich; Sparks Fly
Dec 28th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘This book runs the full gamut from the mediocre to the ludicrous to the merely bad.’… Read the rest
Rights Here, Rights Now
Dec 28th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIt’s no good waiting until after the revolution.… Read the rest