The idea must be to pretend we all agree on the basics.… Read the rest
John Gray Lies Down With Dogs, Gets Up With
Jun 13th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia Bensonfleas. New atheism, intolerant, utopianism, scientism, bodies, Nazism, positivism, liberals, dogma, faith.… Read the rest
Caspar Melville on the Orthodoxy of Offence
Jun 13th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonRestitution via alternative epistemologies and patrolling the borders of acceptable speech.… Read the rest
Prince Abusing His Power Again
Jun 13th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonUsed his connections to block a building project that’s not to his taste.… Read the rest
Homeopathy is Cheap but Useless
Jun 13th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBritish scientists ask WHO to condemn homeopathy for serious diseases such as HIV, TB and malaria.… Read the rest
Tom Stern Visits the Creation Museum
Jun 13th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSome ‘science is like religion’ stuff but interesting all the same.… Read the rest
A pervasive climate of fear
Jun 13th, 2009 11:14 am | By Ophelia BensonI’ve been reading the Goldenbridge chapter of the Ryan report again. (Reading the whole report will be the work of months, if not years.) One thing (among others) struck me anew…
Sr Alida recalls her early years in religious life as being dominated by fear. On reflection she cannot understand how she accepted so many demands and pressures without protest. (7.219)
Exactly. This is how authoritarian religions work, after all, and Catholicism is nothing if not authoritarian – still, now, let alone in Ireland in the 1940s. Sister ‘Alida’ was trained by fear and she passed it on to the children she was in charge of.
… Read the restThe religious sisters who subsequently held management responsibility lived in a tightly controlled and
You may think our rules are crap, but that’s tough
Jun 12th, 2009 5:39 pm | By Ophelia BensonHow obliging of Simon Sarmiento, right on the heels of Bunting’s incomprehension at my claim that laws handed down by an unaccountable god can be oppressive and difficult to change.
Anglican and RC church representatives, giving evidence to a parliamentary committee on Tuesday, were very concerned that a new definition of “the purposes of an organised religion” would curtail their own existing right to discriminate against lay people for reasons other than religious belief.
Oh were they. And yet I thought ‘that in any religious tradition there is interpretation’ and ‘the way Christian teaching has changed over two thousand years is enormous and it continues to change’ so surely there can’t be a problem with Christian teaching not … Read the rest
NHS Spent £12 Million in 3 Years on Homeopathy
Jun 12th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDr Peter Fisher of the Royal London Homeopathic hospital said there is an issue of democracy.… Read the rest
Night Waves on Whether God Hates Women
Jun 12th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMadeleine Bunting calls DGHW strident and shrill, Humera Khan defends patriarchy. (c. 23 minutes in)… Read the rest
Jason Rosenhouse on Methodological Naturalism
Jun 12th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe problem comes when you try to make MN into a rule that now and forever defines what science is. … Read the rest
Coyne on Mooney and Testing the Supernatural
Jun 12th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonClearly some claims about the supernatural can be tested (and rejected) by science. … Read the rest
Theistic Evolutionist Beats Hasty Retreat
Jun 12th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonKen Miller’s first and only defense seems to be a denial of most of the implications of an interventionist deity.… Read the rest
Strident and shrill
Jun 12th, 2009 11:32 am | By Ophelia BensonA note or two on Night Waves.
I think the most striking thing about both Bunting and Khan is the callous frivolity of their claims. This is probably inevitable when religious apologists are invited to defend religions from charges of injustice and cruelty – but then that’s what’s wrong with religious apologetics, isn’t it.
Bunting for instance started by saying, in a tone of well-feigned bewilderment, that she just really didn’t quite understand what I was talking about, because it seemed to her that in any religious tradition there is interpretation, and ‘the way the way Christian teaching has changed over two thousand years is enormous and it continues to change.’ But she must know perfectly well – how … Read the rest
Bishops Met to Discuss Fallout from Ryan Report
Jun 11th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSaid it would be wrong to remove religious orders from the managing of schools.… Read the rest
Irish Abuse Victims March
Jun 11th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘It was as if you were inside prison and you don’t talk about it. You didn’t dare speak out against a religious order.’… Read the rest
Cardinal Declined to Meet With Angry Survivors
Jun 11th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWe would have loved to, but we had to attend a meeting.… Read the rest
The law of the Brothers
Jun 10th, 2009 12:10 pm | By Ophelia BensonHitchens too sees flaws in Obama’s Cairo speech.
Take the single case in which our president touched upon the best-known fact about the Islamic “world”: its tendency to make women second-class citizens. He mentioned this only to say that “Western countries” were discriminating against Muslim women! And how is this discrimination imposed? By limiting the wearing of the head scarf or hijab…The clear implication was an attack on the French law that prohibits the display of religious garb or symbols in state schools.
He then quotes ‘from an excellent commentary by an Algerian-American visiting professor at the University of Michigan Law School, Karima Bennoune, who says’
… Read the restI have just published research conducted among the many people of Muslim, Arab
Alternative ‘Medicine’ Goes Mainstream
Jun 10th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAn underground medical system with millions of people using it on blind faith.… Read the rest
Dublin: Solidarity March for Abuse Victims
Jun 10th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe scandal of the abuse was described as Ireland’s mini holocaust by several campaigners today.… Read the rest