The phony charges against him were revived by a notorious Islamist judge; his trial is next month.… Read the rest
Elephant Recognises Herself in Mirror
Oct 31st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonShowing self-awareness seen before only in humans, great apes and bottlenose dolphins.… Read the rest
Nick Cohen Reviews Debating Humanism
Oct 31st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe politically literate will notice that this collection of essays comes from the RCP.… Read the rest
Faith, Hope, and Selective Schools
Oct 31st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAmendment will give greater freedom to discriminate on grounds of religion in hiring staff and teachers.… Read the rest
Atheists’ ‘Nauseous Undertone of Racial Superiority’
Oct 31st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhite people are atheists, non-white people are theists, therefore atheists are as bad as Cecil Rhodes.… Read the rest
Garry Wills on Faith-Based Everything
Oct 30th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonFaith-based war, law enforcement, education, medicine, and science. … Read the rest
Jihad in 1857
Oct 30th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonEducated Delhi Muslims rejected the west and the gentle Sufi traditions of late Mughal emperors.… Read the rest
Romano on Young-Bruehl on Why Arendt Matters
Oct 30th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHint: ‘the banality of evil’ is not all.… Read the rest
Review of The God Delusion
Oct 30th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPerceptive recognition of excess respect for religious beliefs, regardless of content.… Read the rest
Christopher Shea on Reading Nafisi at Columbia
Oct 30th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSome observers question the intellectual merit of the brand of literary criticism Dabashi practices.… Read the rest
Freud’s Perjuries as ‘Spots on the Sun’
Oct 30th, 2006 | By Frank CioffiThe following is a condensed extract from an essay titled “Are Freud’s Critics Scurrilous?”, translated and published in Le livre noir de la psychoanalyse (Editions des Arènes).
Sigmund Freud may have been a great man but he was not an honourable one. Freud’s claims to greatness rest on his imaginative and expressive powers; his dishonour arises from his leadership of a movement in whose interests he perjured himself repeatedly.
The most striking fact about responses to documentation of Freud’s perjuries is how often they take the form not of denial but of extenuation.
‘ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A GIRL CALLED ANNA O.’
Here is one example of how this is done. Freud repeatedly put forward as a demonstration … Read the rest
Reclaiming your head
Oct 29th, 2006 10:59 pm | By Ophelia BensonHere’s a great listen for you – Julia Sweeney on Fresh Air. She’s got a one-woman show called ‘Letting Go of God’ at an off-off-Broadway theater, and she gives a pretty good run-through of the journey from theism to atheism in this interview. In fact it’s pretty hilarious what a lot she manages to get into thirty minutes or so – religion as consolation in despair, Bible study, Abraham and Isaac, perverse excuses for Abraham and Isaac, a wink-wink priest who explains that we sophisticated believers know better but myths are for the people, the anger and sense of treachery at being told that, withdrawal from the church, turn to New Age, in particular Deepak Chopra, being stimulated by … Read the rest
Bishop Cross at ‘Appeasement’ of Homosexuality
Oct 29th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonFellow bishops not pleased with ‘rogue bishop.’… Read the rest
The Nose Stud Case
Oct 29th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSchoolgirls and religious clothing an issue in Durban, too.… Read the rest
Woman Burned in Bus Torching in Marseille
Oct 29th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHigh unemployment, discrimination, youth alienation from mainstream society cited.… Read the rest
Tired of Endless Religious Babble?
Oct 29th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Let’s stop describing these tax-funded establishments as faith schools. They are superstition schools.’… Read the rest
Atheists Top Book Charts by Teasing Deity
Oct 29th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPublishers eager to replicate success of Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian.… Read the rest
Misogyny rules ok
Oct 28th, 2006 6:13 pm | By Ophelia BensonAll this kind of thing is useful in a way. A way one wishes we didn’t need things to be useful, but useful all the same. Useful in the sense of being an extreme and conspicuous form of a pervasive bad thing that one wishes were not there at all, so not useful in any ultimate sense, not inherently desirable; quite the contrary; but useful in educational terms; useful in making clear what we’re up against. Useful, to spell it out, in making it clear how deep misogyny really does go. It goes so deep that a lot of people think women have exactly two choices: lifelong confinement to a room, or deserved rape followed by stoning to death. It … Read the rest
The line was busy
Oct 28th, 2006 5:47 pm | By Ophelia BensonThis is quite funny. It’s from an article on Alan Johnson’s U-turn on quotas for ‘faith’ schools.
The Guardian yesterday attempted unsuccessfully to contact Tahir Allam, an education spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain. Earlier he told Radio 4″s Today programme: “This assumption that faith schools are divisive is a false one because there is no evidence to support this.”
Actually I think that’s downright hilarious. The Guardian is so eager to check in with the MCB, and to be seen to check in with the MCB, that it even lets us know about its failed attempts. What – did it think we would be annoyed and ‘offended’ if it wrote a story on government policy on ‘faith’ … Read the rest
Nicaragua Declares Women Expendable
Oct 28th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNicaragua votes in new abortion ban, even in cases where the mother’s life is at risk.… Read the rest