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.


Postmodernism and Fabrication of History *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

‘Historians are always making up figures,’ said Lyndall Ryan. Oh really?



Massimo Puglicci reads Stanley Fish on atheism *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

Another demonstration that atheism is simply not permissible.



Pigliucci on Fish on atheism *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

He has to reduce science to just another faith in order to salvage the “reasonableness” of religious belief.



Clever teenagers don’t have sex *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

Sexual behavior may compete with the time and resources required for other goals.



Would Steve Gould have signed the ‘Steves’ list? *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

‘There is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence.’



James Harkin on The Threat to Reason *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

Enlightenment 2.0 makes for a rather toothless, muddled kind of liberation.



18 good ideas *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

Tahir Aslam Gora suggests an outline for the new Islam.



Marieme Hélie-Lucas challenges the ‘coward Left’ *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

Women in Algeria were slaughtered in the thousands by fundamentalist armed forces throughout the nineties, because they refused to be forcibly covered.



‘Whoever changes religion – kill him’ *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

Sura 40 says that those who reject the scriptures will have iron collars and chains placed around their necks, be dragged into scalding water and burnt in the fire.



Saudi women’s rights activist Wajeha al-Huwaider banned *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

To mark international women’s day 2004, International Pen Writers in Prison Committee focused on al-Huwaider.



Rape in Congo *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

Countless women in DRC have been raped and mangled, then shunned.



Akbar Ganji on the View from Tehran *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

Political change in Iran is necessary, but it must not be achieved by foreign intervention.



Marieme Helie Lucas on the fundamentalist political agenda. *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

Fundamentalists want to impose a religious identity on all citizens, by virtue of their birth place rather than by choice, thus denying freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of consciousness.



Aids Denialists [pdf] *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

AIDS denial plays a corrosive role in the health policies of many countries, but nowhere has the damage been as extreme or as enduring as in South Africa.



AIDS Denial is Pseudoscience *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

The scientific evidence is overwhelming and has been published in peer-reviewed medical journals, the way science is supposed to be done.



April 2002 HRW report on Gujarat riots *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

We Have No Orders To Save You.



Michelle Goldberg on the Dover trial *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

Emboldened by their growing political power, religious conservatives are once again storming the barricades of science education.



God v Science *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

What is so good about having faith when you don’t have evidence? What is the real advantage to that? Why is this something that we want to encourage?



Natasha Walter on women in Afghanistan *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

“Every day women are sacrificed for their family or tribe,” Nilab Mobarez tells me angrily.



The Religious Policeman on the ‘Muslim Offense Level’ *

Apr 10th, 2010 | Filed by

Reasons not to talk about stampedes where “several” poor Third-World Muslims died.