Talking to Bill Moyers around…1988?
Flashback
Fashionable nonsense has been with us since the time that prehistoric man first transcribed Of Grammatology on to the walls of the Lascaux caves. Here we cast an eye back at some historical highlights.
Rosenhouse on Dixon on Religion and Science
Dec 17th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Conflicts over who is authorized to produce and disseminate knowledge are conflicts between science and religion.
Martin Gardner on Oprah and woo
Dec 17th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
She promotes, as frequent guests, people who preach views that are medically worthless and in a few cases can even lead to death.
Abandoning FGM in the Afar Region of Ethiopia
Dec 12th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The strategy is to gain the support of a core group, which decides to abandon the practice then helps mobilize enough people to facilitate a tipping point.
Jerry Coyne on Michael Behe in Boston Review
Dec 12th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Behe likens himself to Newton, Einstein, and Pasteur, but claims that a defensive band of evolutionists blocks his ascendancy to the pantheon. Such declarations of unrecognized genius are a diagnostic feature of crank science.
Roy Sablosky on the myth of Christian charity
Dec 11th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The statistical studies that supposedly demonstrate that religion has a positive influence in charitable giving do not hold up when examined carefully.
Council of Europe resolution on the dangers of creationism in education
Nov 29th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The aim is to warn against certain tendencies to pass off a belief as science.
Waleed Al-Husseini on why he left Islam
Nov 28th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Renouncing Islam is a choice offered to everyone and anyone has the right to do so.
Why CCR sued to represent Awlaki
Nov 20th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
CCR Legal Director explains, but his characterization of Awlaki is incomplete.
Richard Owen reviews Origin in Edinburgh Review
Nov 17th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Set the cat among the pigeons.
Why smart people do stupid things
Oct 26th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
People buy high and sell low. They believe their horoscope. They supersize their fries and order diet Coke. They text while driving.
The cut-and-paste theology of Alister McGrath
Oct 20th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Dan Bye finds that McGrath frequently recycles his own writing.
Ajita Kamal argues for gender equality in freethought
Sep 29th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Any organization that challenges superstition and religion in India must make an effort to break established patterns of gender inequality.
Ajita Kamal on the uses of outspoken atheism
Sep 29th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Ideas die in a culture when it becomes embarrassing to hold on to them.
Tom Clark reviews Gary Drescher on demystifying paradoxes
Sep 4th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Problems that arise when common sense conflicts with the science-based view that we inhabit a purely physical, mechanistic, deterministic universe.
Peter Medawar reviews Teilhard de Chardin
Aug 27th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
“In expounding this thesis, Teilhard becomes more and more confused and excited and finally almost hysterical.” Mind 1961.
Reserve’s last rhino butchered for her horn
Aug 16th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Rhino horn has been used for centuries in “Traditional Chinese Medicine,” though it has no magic properties and is like a fingernail.
Garry Wills on Plato and the Sophists
Aug 9th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The Sophists were unique in their time for questioning the superiority of Greeks to barbarians, men to women, free-born to slaves.
The church of the savvy
Aug 8th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Since it differs from liberal and conservative ideology and from political thought itself, savviness often eludes recognition as a set of beliefs.
