From Why Atheism? by George Smith (Prometheus 2000) p. 17:

If most Christians (and other religious believers) dismiss atheism outright, this is not because they have examined the arguments for atheism and found them wanting, but because they do not take atheism seriously enough to examine its arguments in detail. Atheism, in their view, lacks credibility, so they have no motive to examine it further. To portray atheism as utterly lacking in credibility has long played a crucial role in religious propaganda. Atheism must be rendered unthinkable, because doubt, if left unchecked, can easily propel the believer down the path of deconversion (the process by which a religious believer becomes an atheist)…To say that atheism is credible is to

What is the morality behind forcing a girl or woman to carry to term an anencephalic foetus that will die within days of birth?

Doctors have told the girl that her four-month foetus will not live more than a few days beyond birth. She is in the care of Ireland’s health service which has issued an order stopping her from going to Britain…Miss D was informed last month that her foetus has anencephaly, a condition which means that a large part of the brain and skull is missing. Babies with anencephaly live a maximum of just three days after birth.

What is the principle at work here? I don’t understand it. I don’t even begin to understand it. Ireland’s health … Read the rest

There’s an irony in all this – or maybe it’s two or three ironies. Steven Poole said yesterday in a comment on his post at Unspeak:

In exciting news, the cudgels of anti-anti-anti-intellectualism or whatever have been taken up by Ophelia Benson, scourge of what she is pleased to call “fashionable nonsense”, who takes me, mystifyingly, to be saying It is forbidden to criticize Zizek. Oh well. I suppose she was not sufficiently delighted with my review of her recent book.

Mystifyingly? But what else can ‘the opinion journalist Johann Hari does not suffer from such uncertainty, and has taken it upon himself to denounce Slavoj Zizek in an article for the New Statesman’ mean? If it doesn’t … Read the rest

This is really tragic. Those poor sad deprived confined young people.

At Harvard these days, said Professor Gomes, the university preacher, “There is probably more active religious life now than there has been in 100 years.” Across the country, on secular campuses…chaplains, professors and administrators say students are drawn to religion and spirituality with more fervor than at any time they can remember…A survey on the spiritual lives of college students, the first of its kind, showed in 2004 that more than two-thirds of 112,000 freshmen surveyed said they prayed, and that almost 80 percent believed in God. Nearly half of the freshmen said they were seeking opportunities to grow spiritually…

That’s terrible. Almost 80 percent! Almost 80 percent … Read the rest