Author: Ophelia Benson

Entrenches the opinions of parents.

If belief in God is a matter of ‘faith’ in contrast to reason, there’s nothing to distinguish it from mere wishful thinking.

Misdiagnoses, re-using unsterile needles, no pain medications…

There’s plenty of science hijacking in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science.

A commitment to women’s equality has eroded and strong opposition to this commitment has emerged.

It is not possible to insult or defame someone who has been dead for 1,374 years.

Not for fans of the saint

Jesus is reading The Philosophers’ Magazine.

Peer-review committee said he hadn’t provided ‘adequate justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of evolution, and not intelligent-design theory, was correct.’

The Seville Statement on Violence was written in the language of sociopolitical activism, not that of science.

She refused to perform illegal abortions, so three men assaulted her

The impact of censorship is in fact to undermine progressive movements within minority communities.

I also strongly disagree with the implications of your statement that faithfulness and loyalty to the church and church leaders never permits expressions of disagreement, or questioning of our church leaders – especially in an academic setting.

Green belts, trees, women, poverty, empowerment, corruption, resistance.

Foucault cited Borges, but some of his followers cite the encyclopedia as fact.

The sequences used in Sheldrake’s research are not properly randomized.

I want to know, and many thousands of Muslim girls and women have a right to know, why understanding and infinite tolerance is practised with particular cultural traditions that are clearly oppressive of women.

On atheism and evidence for God

Helena Echlin on the misery of being a PhD candidate in English and American literature at Yale. She has to stifle her urge to write ‘eh?’ in the margins, discovers that obfuscation is de rigeur, and that people who talk nonsense are now looked upon not as sloppy thinkers, but as sages.

‘How, given the recent and sorry history of ideologically motivated conceptions of knowledge — Lysenkoism in Stalin’s Soviet Union, for example, or Nazi critiques of `Jewish science’ — could it again have become acceptable to behave in this way?’