As knowledge replaced animism, deities became invisible, receding to mountain tops and then to the sky. … Read the rest
All entries by this author
Science Weekly
Mar 27th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPsychopharmacologist David Nutt; Grayling on God, creationism and the attraction of pseudoscience.… Read the rest
Islamist Organizations and ‘Honour’ Killings
Mar 27th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘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 Ophelia Benson‘Saying, “I can train you to put spells” is a problem.’… Read the rest
Confidence
Mar 27th, 2007 10:08 am | By Ophelia BensonI hesitate to link to the Daily Mail, but this is interesting.
… Read the restIslamic 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
Bal Patil Asks, Whither Globalisation?
Mar 26th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia Benson18,000 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 Ophelia BensonAmiable 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 Ophelia BensonWhen 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 Ophelia Benson‘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 Ophelia BensonCan 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 Ophelia Benson‘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 Ophelia BensonA 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 Ophelia BensonThis 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 Ophelia BensonInternal 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 Ophelia BensonNation-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 Ophelia BensonIn 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 Ophelia BensonThere 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 Ophelia BensonNiqab ruling; Charlie Hebdo; gay rights; a good week for secularism.… Read the rest
Secular Muslims Get All the Attention
Mar 25th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBut 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 Ophelia BensonJoan 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