Ted Hughes; the plot to murder Orhan Pamuk; Midnight’s Children; The Jewel of Medina…… Read the rest
Review of Grayling’s The Choice of Hercules
Dec 31st, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonEssays on what constitutes the good life, and whether both pleasure and duty have something to teach us. … Read the rest
Gordon Brown Opposes Assisted Dying
Dec 31st, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonTold Murphy O’Connor it was not for him to create laws to ‘put pressure on people to end their lives.’… Read the rest
Wendy Kaminer on Politics and Pulpits
Dec 31st, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIn 2004 Rick Warren urged his followers to support candidates who espoused biblically correct views.… Read the rest
Dacey and Koproske on Islam and Human Rights
Dec 31st, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThere is now an alternative human rights system, layered with exceptions, omissions, and caveats. … Read the rest
Andrew Brown throws a pie in his own face
Dec 30th, 2008 9:59 pm | By Ophelia BensonAha – Andrew Brown did a follow-up piece, inspired, it seems from what he says, by the comments of Dawkins and Dennett on his piece and another comment of Dawkins on the same piece on his site. Well yes I can see why that would make him itchy. Here’s Dennett’s comment:
… Read the restAndrew Brown trots out an old atheist, Anthony Kenny, who (he surmises) would reject all six of the tenets he attributes to the New Atheists. What would that show, even if it were true? His six points are all caricatures in any case. The uniting feature of the New Atheists is that we have all decided that the traditional atheist policy of diplomatic reticence should be discarded. Brown
Andrew Brown joins the brawl
Dec 30th, 2008 6:20 pm | By Ophelia BensonAndrew Brown joins in the war on the ‘new’ atheists.
The ideas I claim are distinctive of the new atheists have been collected from Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Jerry Coyne, the American physicist Robert L. Park, and a couple of blogging biologists, P Z Myers and Larry Moran. They have two things in common. They are none of them philosophers and, though most are scientists, none study psychology, history, the sociology of religion, or any other discipline which might cast light on the objects of their execration.
How on earth does he know that? How could he know that? I suppose he could have asked all of them, and they could all have answered him, and all … Read the rest
Zimbabwe: Activists Appear in Court
Dec 30th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonJestina Mukoko and 31 others, some with bloodied and swollen faces, appeared in court on Monday. … Read the rest
Afghanistan: Suicide Bomb Kills 14 Schoolchildren
Dec 30th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Children walking past, and then they detonate the vehicle bomb. The driver was able to see the children.’… Read the rest
HRW to Saudi Arabia: Ditch Capital Punishment
Dec 30th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSaudi has no penal code, no formal definitions of what constitutes a crime, and no tradition of following established legal precedent. … Read the rest
New Stats Show US Still World’s Top Jailer
Dec 30th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWith 756 of every 100,000 residents behind bars, the US has the world’s highest rate of incarceration. … Read the rest
Madeleine Bunting Ponders Darwin
Dec 30th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDisplays her usual difficulties with accuracy and comprehension.… Read the rest
Hedges says
Dec 29th, 2008 6:05 pm | By Ophelia BensonAnother entry in the ‘religion makes people nicer’ contest – Barney Zwarts, religion editor of The Age, offering a subtle, thoughtful, elegant rumination on the ‘new’ atheists.
… Read the restThis brilliant book highlights what is obvious to most reasonable observers: that these fundamentalist atheists, with their vapid, complacent self-righteousness and their facile and unjustifiable certainties, are the precise mirror image of the fundamentalist Christians, Muslims etc they so despise…Like Christian radicals, the new atheists have built squalid little belief systems that serve themselves and their own power, that seek to scare people about what they do not understand, and to use this fear to justify cruelty and war. “They ask us to kneel before little idols that look and act
Judge Delays Ruling on Zimbabwe Activists
Dec 29th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMorgan Tsvangirai has threatened to suspend negotiations with ZANU-PF over the case.… Read the rest
Many Teenagers Don’t Keep Virginity Pledges
Dec 29th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe notion that it has to be either a virginity pledge or encouraging teens to have sex is a false dichotomy.… Read the rest
Review of Chris Hedges on Atheism
Dec 29th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonTakes Hedges’s wild claims at face value, and endorses them.… Read the rest
Could it be Pretty Obvious There’s No God?
Dec 29th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIf we look at the world around us, do we find that there’s no god? Stephen Law asks.… Read the rest
Andrew Brown Kicks ‘the New Atheism’
Dec 29th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSome atheists actively believe there is no god. It’s an outrage.… Read the rest
Grayling on Ideas That Could Save Humanity
Dec 28th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonGood ideas should be stashed somewhere so that we don’t have to keep reinventing them.… Read the rest
Philosophers Weigh In on God
Dec 28th, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia BensonContemporary Christian philosophers often content themselves with pulling up the drawbridge.… Read the rest