May the god of the atheists shine its everlasting light on Polly Toynbee. Wait. May the – oh never mind, you know what I mean.

At least she hasn’t swapped her brain for a fleece.

It would be entirely reasonable for secular Labour MPs to plead conscience on this, just as the religious are excused the whip on matters that trespass on their faith. This touches on freedom of thought and ideas, with far-reaching consequences for the values of the Enlightenment that are under growing threat from a collective softening of the brain on faith and superstitions of all kinds.

Yep. And you need to watch out for that collective softening of the brain stuff. It can creep up on … Read the rest

I’ve been reading a little Orwell lately – prompted partly by my offhand comment in an email to Norm that Orwell was good but Hitchens is better – which itself was prompted by Philip Dodd’s introduction of Hitchens on ‘Night Waves’ in which he quoted someone (someone unnamed, I think) as writing in a review that Hitchens is as good as Orwell, or almost as good as Orwell, or some such. That annoyed me. It is my considered opinion – despite the offhandedness of the comment alluded to above – that Orwell is over-rated as a writer. Really quite seriously over-rated. That his language is very often decidedly tired and uninspired, even banal, and that there is a lot of … Read the rest

Katha Pollitt rocks.

So it’s 2005 and this is the academic question that has driven the Daily News and the right-wing New York Sun into apoplectic fits, and caused heartburn all over CUNY: Should Tim Shortell, an atheist, be allowed to assume the chair of the sociology department of Brooklyn College? You know, an atheist–someone who doesn’t believe in God. An anticleric. A disrespecter of religion. A mocker of Christianity.

This is what I’m saying. This is why atheists sometimes use noneuphemistic language. It’s because atheism is viewed and treated and spoken of as a crime and an outrage and something that ought not to be allowed. And that’s why the habit of just bashfully not mentioning the fact … Read the rest

My colleague didn’t get lost yesterday, and I did manage to figure out which square Starbucks in a square outside the entrance to Westlake Mall he meant (it was kind of unmistakable, in fact, a freestanding little glass mansion of Starbucks all on its own), so we did meet up as opposed to standing around stupidly in the wrong place. They wanted to go someplace pretty and not too far away as they had to get bus back to the airport quite soon, so we went to a park on the water about a mile north of downtown. Then we argued about whether this park beat Nonsuch or not – I said no!!, they said yes!! – but then we … Read the rest