Year: 2010

  • Oxytocin promotes parochial altruism

    Researchers at U of Amsterdam find that oxytocin appears to lead to “defensive” aggression against threatening outgroups.

  • OIC states push for UN action on ‘Islamophobia’

    The new mandate is likely to see increased UN pressure to prevent criticism of Islam.

  • What will any parent do?

    No comment.

    Asha’s family was opposed to a marriage because Yogesh belonged to a different, lower caste. Police have described the murders as a case of “honour killing”…The bodies were brought out in the morning once the police arrived. And details began to emerge of the torture and beatings to which the young couple were subjected. “Their mouths were stuffed with rags, there were signs of beating and small burns on legs suggesting that they were possibly electrocuted,” a senior police officer who was the first to reach the crime scene told the BBC.

    Asha’s uncle and father were arrested but the two men have shown no remorse.

    “I’m not sorry,” a defiant Omprakash Saini told reporters after his arrest. “I would punish them again if given a chance.”

    The reporter, Geeta Pandey, went to talk to Yogesh’s family.

    The neighbours vouch for Yogesh’s character.

    “He was a very good boy,” one of them, Meera Devi, says. “We are very angry. We want justice. If they wanted to kill their daughter, that’s okay. But they shouldn’t have killed our boy.”

    At Asha’s home, her relatives are equally angry.

    Cousin Lokesh Kumar Saini says: “We had talked to Yogesh and his family in the past and told them to stay away. We had also found a good match for Asha and she was engaged.

    “What will any parent do if they see their daughter in a compromising position with a man? What would you do if you were in the same situation?” he asks me angrily. “That’s why my uncles killed them.”

    What will any parents do if they see their daughter having sex with a man? Torture her to death, of course! That’s so totally obvious!

  • Teenage couple tortured to death in Delhi

    By the girl’s father and uncle, because the boy was of a “lower” caste.

  • A move to frame non-compatibilists as extreme

    Whether a certain view is “true” or “false” seems to take a back seat to whether it is “moderate” or “extreme.”

  • The advancement of science and spirit

    The head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science says it’s a myth that science and religion are inherently incompatible. Yes really.

    I was not surprised by the findings of a recent Rice University survey that half of the top 1,700 U.S. scientists described themselves as religious. The scientific community, like any other group, includes people with many world views, from evangelicals to atheists.

    Right, because scientists are just a “community,” a “group,” like any other; you get your women and your men, your old and your young, your rich and your poor, and your evangelicals and your atheists. Nothing to do with anything inherent in the work you do or the ways of thinking that that work depends on; no no, it’s just a matter of the endless variety of life. Some scientsts are short, and some are tall; some are atheist, and some are theist. See? It’s like that. Random. A mixture. Just how things sort themselves out.

    Let’s hope that Ecklund’s unusually comprehensive assessment will help overturn the myth that scientists reject spirituality, or that science and religion are inherently incompatible.

    Nominate that man for a Templeton prize!

    Update: I failed to mention, because I didn’t know, because I failed to read the last paragraph [note: always look for the funding on these things! always!], that this shindig was funded partly by the Templeton Foundation.

  • It’s a myth that science and religion are incompatible

    Says the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

  • Somalia: football fans executed for watching world cup

    “Football is an inheritance from the primitive infidels,” said al Shabaab.

  • UK: Catholic church launches PR campaign

    “It is not easy to convey the richness of the tradition of Catholic thought.” Indeed it is not.

  • The Bloody Sunday inquiry

    The whole thing.

  • Bloody Sunday: the legal arguments

    Much will depend on which evidence has survived, and what has perished.

  • Bloody Sunday report published

    “The conclusions of this report are absolutely clear. There is no doubt. There is nothing equivocal, there are no ambiguities.”

  • Murphy O’Connor reflects on child rape problem

    “Maybe we have lost part of our moral and spiritual authority”. Ya think?

  • Jesus and Mo read their Mary Midgley

    The barmaid replies, but they hear not.

  • Father, brother plead guilty in Aqsa Parvez murder

    They killed her because she didn’t wear the hijab. She was 16.

  • You might learn something

    Gosh, that was a lively discussion. It was sometimes rather…cryptic, though. When Dan L asked Michael, “where’s the dividing line? Where does philosophy stop and science start?” Michael said it was a tough question, and rather than answer it himself, pasted in a long excerpt from a post by Massimo Pigliucci at Rationally Speaking last November. It wasn’t the most helpful excerpt from that post that he could have chosen – there’s a more relevant one later on, for instance:

    So when some commentators for instance defend the Dawkins- and Coyne-style (scientistic) take on atheism, i.e., that science can mount an attack on all religious beliefs, they are granting too much to science and too little to philosophy. Yes, science can empirically test specific religious claims (intercessory prayer, age of the earth, etc.), but the best objections against the concept of, say, an omnibenevolent and onmnipowerful god, are philosophical in nature (e.g., the argument from evil). Why, then, not admit that by far the most effective way to reject religious nonsense is by combining science and philosophy, rather than trying to arrogate to either more epistemological power than each separate discipline actually possesses?

    Do Dawkins and Coyne say anything so crude and stupid as “science can mount an attack on all religious beliefs”? No. They both know perfectly well, and say, that there are religious beliefs that are nebulous and internal enough to be immune from criticism, and they also don’t talk about “mounting attacks” as if they were Vikings. And is there some place where either of them refuses to admit that the most effective way to reject religious nonsense is by combining science and philosophy? Not that I know of, and I thought both of them did just that.

    Massimo is very angry with Dawkins and Coyne, for some reason, and he says hostile and exaggerated things about them as a result. He said rude things to Coyne on the earlier thread. I wish he would stop doing that, and be reasonable, instead.

    Update: I did a post on that post of Massimo’s at the time – last November. Another round of useful comments.

  • Mark Oppenheimer on working for Templeton

    Templeton money has done a lot of good, but there is a bias.

  • Message from CFI Board of Directors

    One account of what’s been happening, and why.

  • Karl Giberson says ‘sorry’

    Notes general lack of charity in vilification of New Atheists. A handsome apology!

  • The noble and ancient tradition of moron-baiting

    Ben Goldacre on Martin Gardner and some predecessors.