Skeptically Speaking is a show for people who are curious about the world, whether they consider themselves skeptics or not.… Read the rest
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Religions evolved to take the credit for good stuff
Jan 24th, 2011 6:28 pm | By Ophelia BensonPaul W has another good comment on Ben’s post (from 2009 is it?). It’s about social science that purports to show that religion>happiness, and where the holes are.
… Read the restOne of the most robust findings in all of psychology is that people tend think their own children are above average. Should we then conclude that the large majority of children are above average?
Another of the most robust findings in the social sciences is that people tend to think that their own cultures are superior, and that the central, distinctive tenets of their own religions are true, and that the comparable distinctive tenets of others’ are false.
The robustness of a finding may not reflect ground truth, but pervasive systematic biases.
Iran hangs two for taking pictures
Jan 24th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIranian prosecutors said Kazemi and Hajaghaei had taken photos and footage of the protests and distributed them on the internet.… Read the rest
Iran hangs 2 activists for election protests
Jan 24th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIran has sentenced around a dozen activists to death for their role in the post-poll unrest.… Read the rest
Montaigne and empathy and mirror neurons
Jan 24th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonFor Montaigne, as for contemporary neuroscientists, humans have an inbuilt imitative, sympathetic capacity.… Read the rest
A ‘Witch-Girl’ Rescued in Akwa Ibom State
Jan 24th, 2011 | By Leo Igwe
On January 11, 2011, I led a team of police officers who rescued an 8 year old girl, Esther Obot Moses, in a remote village, Nsit Ubium, in Akwa Ibom State in Southern Nigeria.
Esther, according to locals, was accused of witchcraft and abandoned by her family. She was sleeping in the local market till a 40 year old man, Okokon, ‘kidnapped’ her.
Police arrested Okokon who is believed to have some mental problems. He has been living with Esther in his shanty building since last year, and he raped her several times.
Both Okokon and Esther made statements at the police station at Nsit Ubium. Esther was later taken to Uyo and handed over to the Ministry of Women … Read the rest
The social protections
Jan 24th, 2011 12:11 pm | By Ophelia BensonGeorges Rey says many pointed and relevant things about belief in “God”: meaning “a supernatural, psychological being, i.e., a being not subject to ordinary physical limitations, but capable of some or other mental state, such as knowing, caring, loving, disapproving” who “knows about our lives, cares about the good, either created the physical world or can intervene in it, and, at least in Christianity, is in charge of a person’s whereabouts in an ‘afterlife’.”
… Read the restNow, it doesn’t seem to me even a remotely serious possibility that such a God exists: his non-existence is, in the words of the American jury system, “beyond a reasonable doubt.” I am, of course, well aware that plenty of arguments and appeals to
A doctor who believes in choice in dying
Jan 24th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonShe rejects the argument that assisted dying undermines trust in the medical profession. “It is the other way round – not being able to assist undermines trust.”… Read the rest
Astrologers demand fair and balanced coverage
Jan 24th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe pursuit of meaningful predictions in astrology isn’t so much flogging a dead horse as punching a piece of rock and wondering why it won’t say anything.… Read the rest
“New” atheists overlook the comforts of animism
Jan 24th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonReligion’s chief virtue is as a “coping mechanism” for our troubles.… Read the rest
Jesus and Mo channel BioLogos
Jan 24th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNew atheists are so patronizing. Their tiny minds just can’t grasp our profundities.… Read the rest
Jesus and Mo on Warsi
Jan 24th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMo should go into politics.… Read the rest
Power without scrutiny
Jan 23rd, 2011 5:12 pm | By Ophelia BensonAndrew Anthony is good on the subject of Warsi’s little talk on “Islamophobia.”
She has complained that the last government was “too suspicious” of faith and treated it as “a rather quaint relic of our pre-industrial history”. Given that Tony Blair was overtly religious, his government expanded and promoted faith schools and consistently tried to pass censorious blasphemy laws, it gives pause to wonder how much more religious Warsi would like her own government to be.
Really. She thinks Labour wasn’t religious enough?
In citing liberal critics of religion such as Polly Toynbee as representing an “abhorrent” attitude, she certainly made it clear how much less secular she would like society to be.
A lot less.
… Read the restLast year, Number
“Human rights” used against human rights
Jan 23rd, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIt’s remarkable that Human Rights Commissions could so easily be hijacked in support of suppressing criticism of extreme ideologies.… Read the rest
Religion clashes with human rights
Jan 23rd, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonReligitigants seem to want a trump card that puts them above the subtle considerations of fairness.… Read the rest
Andrew Anthony on Warsi and “Islamophobia”
Jan 23rd, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonShe wants to give greater voice to religion in the political arena, yet she also wishes there to be less criticism of religion, in other words, power without scrutiny.… Read the rest
That’s cold
Jan 22nd, 2011 5:00 pm | By Ophelia BensonSomething Eric said in his latest post struck me. The subject is again Wilkinson at BioLogos, this time on his raised eyebrow at Eric’s moral arguments. Eric wonders why the eyebrow is raised.
But why, I wonder, does Wilkinson think that my moral arguments are quaintly old-fashioned? Is this just an example of theological scatter-shot, or did he have something specific in mind? My belief is that religion has completely disastrous moral consequences…
My own central moral concern, at least as this is exemplified in the name of this blog, is the religious insistence that people suffer intolerably as they die, and that they should be denied help in bringing their dying more quickly to an end.
I stopped … Read the rest
Giles Fraser warns against slippage
Jan 22nd, 2011 2:06 pm | By Ophelia BensonGiles Fraser is all in a lather about “Islamophobia.” He quite understands that it’s permissible to criticize Islam as such, sort of, though he’d much rather you didn’t, but still he does realize he has to say you can if you really want to, but
but but but
it’s really not. Actually. Since you ask.
… Read the restConversations generally begin with the sort of anxieties that many of us might reasonably share: it cannot be right for women to be denied access to education in some Islamic regimes; the use of the death penalty for apostasy is totally unacceptable; what about the treatment of homosexuals? The conversation then moves on to sharia law or jihad or the burqa, not all of it
Charles Moore on Warsi on “Islamophobia”
Jan 22nd, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThis is an argument between those who think that only violence need concern us, and those who believe it is from bad ideas that bad actions spring.… Read the rest
Pope says Berlusconi should be moral
Jan 22nd, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWho is less moral, Berlusconi or Ratzinger?… Read the rest