Students suspended for wearing pro-choice stickers
Mar 21st, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonStudents at a Catholic high school in Thunder Bay were not suspended for wearing anti-choice stickers.… Read the rest
Forced marriage in Germany
Mar 21st, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia Benson“That’s just the way it is in our world: a family can restore its honor by killing the runaway daughter.”… Read the rest
RAWA on Malalai Joya
Mar 20th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIn 2012 Jaya was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world and in 2005 at the age of 27 she was elected to Afghanistan’s parliament.… Read the rest
Malalai Joya denied visa to US
Mar 20th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBecause she is “unemployed and living underground.” What?!?!… Read the rest
Johann Hari on the myth of the panicking disaster victim
Mar 20th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe evidence gathered over centuries is overwhelming. The vast majority of people, when a disaster hits, behave in the aftermath as altruists.… Read the rest
You people are so amusing, and a danger to the wellbeing of America
Mar 20th, 2011 12:01 pm | By Ophelia BensonWhat, again? Yes, again. Yes, for the 14 thousandth time, Michael Ruse is telling us how angry with him “the new atheists” are, how right he is in spite of their anger, how wrong and bad and dangerous and immoral they are, how brave he is, and how right and brave and amusing and important he Michael Ruse is.
Oh dear, I am in trouble again with the New Atheists… I am being called all sorts of nasty things…Even I sometimes wonder why I am in such bad odor, apart from the fact that whenever I am confronted with people for whom disagreement is considered not just wrong but morally offensive my first tendency is to laugh and tease.
No … Read the rest
Irish bishops promise more support to abuse victims
Mar 20th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonLast year the pope wrote a letter.… Read the rest
Secular activists resist ultra-Orthodox takeover
Mar 20th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe secular residents say they fear their communities will become overwhelmingly Haredi over the years.… Read the rest
Nick Cohen on Midsomer and class segregation
Mar 20th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAt the heart of Tory England lies a determination to use state controls they would normally condemn as “socialist” to protect property values.… Read the rest
Michael Ruse on “the new atheists” #6429
Mar 20th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThey’re mad at me, which is baffling when I’m so swell; I will continue to carp no matter what they say about me, I’m that brave; they are immoral.… Read the rest
A fun event for Lewisham Islamic Centre
Mar 19th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA speaker by video link from Saudi Arabia who says it’s “permissible” to rape female prisoners of war. Pass the popcorn.… Read the rest
Audacity of unbelief
Mar 19th, 2011 2:01 pm | By Ophelia BensonI wanted to say a bit more about that passage from Obama’s Audacity of Hope that Rieux quoted yesterday.
And yet for all her professed secularism, my mother was in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I’ve ever known. She had an unswerving instinct for kindness, charity, and love, and spent much of her life acting on that instinct, sometimes to her detriment. Without the help of religious texts or outside authorities, she worked mightily to instill in me the values that many Americans learn in Sunday school: honesty, empathy, discipline, delayed gratification, and hard work. She raged at poverty and injustice.
I wish he had managed to say that without presenting it as somehow at odds … Read the rest
As Irigaray might have said
Mar 19th, 2011 1:02 pm | By Ophelia BensonIn the mood for some spiritual discipline? Have some Giles Fraser. He’s very kinky.
It’s good to do without stuff. It’s a discipline. Food, sex, hot showers, reality tv, flowers, poetry, music – whatever you like, you should give it up, so as to exercise your giving it up muscle. For those of you who like to ask questions: you should give that up. It’s good for you and it’s a pretty compliment to god.
… Read the rest…one of the things that we learn from earthquakes and tsunamis is precisely that such mastery is an illusion. To use Lacanian language: it is an eruption of the Real against the neat meaningfulness with which we structure our lives. Are religious believers especially
Giles Fraser on giving up thinking for Lent
Mar 19th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDon’t understand why a loving god throws tsunamis at people? Give up asking questions as a Lenten discipline.… Read the rest
Scientology is “a difficult organization to leave”
Mar 19th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia Benson“Everybody watches everybody. All the bases have a perimeter of some form, and they are locked, wired and under surveillance.”… Read the rest
Can we all get along?
Mar 19th, 2011 11:11 am | By Ophelia BensonThe Vatican knows how it wants this “bring in the atheists” party to go. It wants it to go well for the Vatican.
“The aim is to help to ensure that the great questions about human existence, especially the spiritual questions, are borne in mind and discussed in our societies, using our common reason,” Cardinal Ravasi said.
See? Like that. It wants atheists to pretend to think that the Vatican uses reason when it discusses the great questions about human existence.
Ideally, Cardinal Ravasi said, the conversations begun by this project should resemble not a “duel” but a “duet,” with believers and non-believers offering complementary ideas and helping each other to refine their views.
See? The non-believers are supposed … Read the rest
Vatican explains rules for engagement with atheists
Mar 19th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe conversations should resemble not a “duel” but a “duet,” with believers and non-believers offering complementary ideas and helping each other to refine their views.… Read the rest
Michael Ruse kicks the “new” atheists some more
Mar 19th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAlso says something or other about the problem of evil, and Giberson and Collins, but gnu-kicking is the real game.… Read the rest
Killer argument against “new” atheism
Mar 19th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHow many Democrats have “new” atheists helped elect in the US? None that the reviewer knows of. Answer that, smarty pants!… Read the rest