Nigerian Islamic judges have ordered that a teenager from Niger have his hand cut off.… Read the rest
Richard Dawkins on Gerin Oil Junkies
Sep 24th, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIf administered chronically in childhood, Gerin oil can permanently modify the brain.… Read the rest
If Religion is All That’s Left
Sep 24th, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIt’s not surprising that people turn to it.… Read the rest
Mathematicians See ‘Proof’
Sep 24th, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNot much actual math, but the mathematicians are recognizable.… Read the rest
Seyla Benhabib on Religion and Politics
Sep 24th, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhy the US and Europe differ.… Read the rest
Is Journalism About Truth or Diverse Opinion?
Sep 24th, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonLines between what constitutes opinion and what constitutes truth are almost extravagantly blurred.… Read the rest
Strange and Disquieting Double Standards
Sep 24th, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPoisonous paranoia is sort of expected from some people but not others.… Read the rest
The Leader
Sep 23rd, 2005 8:55 pm | By Ophelia BensonBush said an odd thing on Wednesday.
Mr. Bush said he had been “thinking a lot” about the comparisons between the response to the attacks in New York and Washington, and the storm devastation. “We look at the destruction caused by Katrina, and our hearts break,” he said. Turning the subject to terrorists, he said: “They’re the kind of people who look at Katrina and wish they had caused it. We’re in a war against these people.”
‘We look at the destruction caused by Katrina, and our hearts break.’ They do? We do, and they do? Who’s we? You mean you? Did your heart break? Really? Are you sure? Because that doesn’t seem to be how people remember it. … Read the rest
Over the Top
Sep 23rd, 2005 8:01 pm | By Ophelia BensonThis whole thing is…intolerable. Just intolerable.
A bus carrying elderly evacuees out of the path of Hurricane Rita has caught fire on a gridlocked motorway, killing up to 24 people…Television pictures showed the entire bus alight, with explosions sending plumes of thick black smoke billowing into the sky. Officer Peritz said the blasts were apparently caused by oxygen containers for the elderly on board the vehicle…The passengers were being evacuated from a nursing home in Bellaire, south-west Houston, when the accident happened…Officer Peritz said the driver, who survived the fire, repeatedly went back onto the bus to try to rescue passengers.
I can’t read that without wanting to blub. Hell and damnation – what next. You’re old and ill … Read the rest
Vatican to Ban Gay Priests
Sep 23rd, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonVow of celibacy no longer good enough.… Read the rest
Prisoners Left Locked in Cells During Katrina
Sep 23rd, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHuman Rights Watch: water rising, no food, water or electricity.… Read the rest
Harvard’s ‘Secret Court Files’
Sep 23rd, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA 1920 purge of gay students.… Read the rest
Scott McLemee on Class, Blind Spots, Reading
Sep 23rd, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSocial mobility is not always pleasant.… Read the rest
‘Starving the Beast’ Not Always Best Plan
Sep 23rd, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWith Katrina, conservatives got what they were looking for: paralyzed government.… Read the rest
Evangelical Graduate School
Sep 23rd, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe concept of worldview has come to occupy a central place in Christian higher education.… Read the rest
Nightmare Piled on Nightmare Piled on Nightmare
Sep 23rd, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonOxygen tanks ignite bus fire that kills 24 elderly patients fleeing hurricane.… Read the rest
Theism, Dogmatism, Puritanism
Sep 22nd, 2005 6:46 pm | By Ophelia BensonA long review-article on books on atheism by Ronald Aronson. It starts with Alister McGrath’s Twilight of Atheism.
… Read the restJust like the postmodernist claim that modernity is over, the retrospective stance implied by terms like twilight is the book’s main idea and does double duty as a weapon in the battle against atheism. The “rise and fall” metaphors are tools of a brilliantly clever religious writer against the movement he seeks to undermine…But for the most part he argues broadly that the rational argument between religion and atheism can never be resolved, comments on the rise of interest in spirituality and the growth of Pentecostalism, and brings out as uncontested fact the postmodern verdict on modernity, grafting it onto his
Listen
Sep 22nd, 2005 5:00 pm | By Ophelia BensonLists are always strange. Lists of 100 best novels in English that include some of the worst novels ever written – that kind of thing. They’re always strange. That list of UK public intellectuals that was then augmented by a female version, both of them including some very odd ‘intellectuals’ – movie stars, advertisers, publicists. Strange. So of course this list is strange. But all the same, I have to bleat at a couple of inclusions. Why so many clerics? The pope, al-Qaradawi, al-Sistani? Those are intellectuals? And then there’s Paglia, and Thomas Friedman. But these lists are always strange, so whatever.
So whodja vote for? I’ll tell you mine. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, Sen. I’d already chosen … Read the rest
Profile of Mary Midgley
Sep 22nd, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonStill says Dawkins is responsible for misunderstanding of his work by careless readers.… Read the rest
Killing Over Tiny Doctrinal Differences
Sep 22nd, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Reason doesn’t get a look-in on the streets of Belfast or Baghdad today.’… Read the rest