All entries by this author

Grayling on Why Atheists Resist *

Mar 27th, 2007 | Filed by

As knowledge replaced animism, deities became invisible, receding to mountain tops and then to the sky. … Read the rest



Science Weekly *

Mar 27th, 2007 | Filed by

Psychopharmacologist David Nutt; Grayling on God, creationism and the attraction of pseudoscience.… Read the rest



Islamist Organizations and ‘Honour’ Killings *

Mar 27th, 2007 | Filed by

‘It is allowing the man to say “my religion says you must behave this way”.’… Read the rest



Wiccan Says She Was Sacked for ‘Faith’ *

Mar 27th, 2007 | Filed by

‘Saying, “I can train you to put spells” is a problem.’… Read the rest



Confidence

Mar 27th, 2007 10:08 am | By

I hesitate to link to the Daily Mail, but this is interesting.

Islamic extremists are fuelling the spread of “honour” based violence against women in Britain, the country’s most senior Muslim prosecutor has warned…”When you talk to women who are victims of this type of behaviour you often find that they will say that their husbands or fathers have been radicalised in the way that they think about women,” he said. “They will use Islam as a justification for telling women how to behave and for punishing them. There is no religious justification for forcing your children to marry or harming them because they behave in a particular way, but there are people out there who are using their

Read the rest


Bal Patil Asks, Whither Globalisation? *

Mar 26th, 2007 | Filed by

18,000 children die every day of hunger and malnutrition; 85 million go to bed hungry every night.… Read the rest



Colin McGinn: Michael Frayn’s The Human Touch *

Mar 26th, 2007 | Filed by

Amiable ramble is quite unconvincing in its main thesis and seems to rest on some obvious errors.… Read the rest



Mina Ahadi Says ‘Stop Calling us Muslims’ *

Mar 26th, 2007 | Filed by

When they put us all in one sack, they make the leaders of Islamic organisations our leaders.… Read the rest



GP/Health Journalist: Homeopathy Not so Bad *

Mar 26th, 2007 | Filed by

‘Even the fiercest critics of homeopathy will agree that it does no harm.’ Oh really?… Read the rest



Tragic Woman Still Sexless in 2007! *

Mar 26th, 2007 | Filed by

Can no one help her? Will it take another four years?… Read the rest



Despondent Woman Too Busy for Sex in 2003 *

Mar 26th, 2007 | Filed by

‘By the time people have been to the shopping mall and watched all the television they want, there is not much time for sex.’… Read the rest



How to talk about everyone

Mar 26th, 2007 11:54 am | By

A note on How many senses. A correspondent reminds me that I said what I said too broadly. ‘But experiments are supposed to be repeatable by any appropriately trained person not actually disabled.’ True – that is too broad. Mind you, I clarified somewhat in the next sentence – ‘You could claim that the people who can’t do it are disabled – lack a sense’ – but I should have clarified in the first sentence. I didn’t mean disabled in general, I meant lacking a specific sense needed to repeat a specific experiment.

I added the qualification merely in the effort to be precise – as one does when arguing, you know. I was making a fairly sweeping generalization … Read the rest



So many malls, so little time

Mar 26th, 2007 11:37 am | By

This is so heartbreaking . It’s just so, so sad. I’m bedewing my keyboard with splashy tears. What happened? What’s her story? What went wrong? When did it begin? Why oh why can no one help her? Has she tried homeopathy? Has she tried going back to school to get a BSc in homeopathy and treating others in her tragic plight as well as herself? Has she tried forgetting all about it and doing something else? A hiking trip along the Cornish coast, working for Human Rights Watch, cooking?

I suppose what’s so terribly sad and heart-rending and especially poignant about it is that she looks so sexy in herself, if you know what I mean. She looks like the … Read the rest



How many senses

Mar 25th, 2007 12:48 pm | By

Internal experience revisited. Disregard if bored with subject.

It seems perfectly rational to believe you had an internal experience, and somewhat rational to say you can’t doubt you had it. What’s not rational is to interpret it as external – and be unable to doubt that.

It’s not the same as doubting you went running this morning – because that is external. It’s a bit of behavior. It’s true that your memory of it is internal – but it is at least in principle checkable, as Chris Whiley noted. Your inner meeting with God isn’t, which makes it vastly less checkable. Stannard’s physics analogy* is bad because he doesn’t just ‘trust’ the other physicists – he also knows that their … Read the rest



Jürgen Habermas Interview *

Mar 25th, 2007 | Filed by

Nation-states must see themselves as members of a larger community, who feel bound to adhere to common norms. … Read the rest



Atheists Can Only Trust Their Reason *

Mar 25th, 2007 | Filed by

In these newly religious times, it no longer seems superfluous to rearm the atheists with arguments. … Read the rest



MCC Thanks Muslim Organizations for Support *

Mar 25th, 2007 | Filed by

There should be no room for violence, intimidation and threats in the Muslim discourse.… Read the rest



Sorry, God, You’re Off the Guest List *

Mar 25th, 2007 | Filed by

Niqab ruling; Charlie Hebdo; gay rights; a good week for secularism.… Read the rest



Secular Muslims Get All the Attention *

Mar 25th, 2007 | Filed by

But theocrats are the majority, therefore secularists should not get all this media coverage.… Read the rest



Between two oughts

Mar 25th, 2007 10:55 am | By

Joan Smith in amusing vein.

[O]ne of the jobs I most fancy is poster-girl for a strictly rational approach to human affairs.

Hey I want that job! Me, me, me. I dibs it. It’s mine.

[R]ecent events show that it isn’t just sceptics who are worried by the inroads which other people’s imaginary friends have been making in secular states…[I]n a blow to the Islamophobia industry which has tried to silence critics of Islam through strident accusations of racism, the Education Secretary Alan Johnson issued guidelines which will allow schools to ban paranoid forms of religious dress.

The Islamophobia industry hasn’t just tried to silence critics of Islam via accusations of racism, to a considerable extent it’s succeeded. Lots … Read the rest