It was actually a coded recipe for eggplant Parmigiana.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Alabama: new governor separates sheep from goats
Jan 19th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia Benson“Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister.”… Read the rest
Russell Blackford reviews The Moral Landscape
Jan 18th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonUnfortunately, Harris sees it as necessary to defend a naïve metaethical position.… Read the rest
The debut of Sans [Swedish]
Jan 18th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA magazine that highlights philosophy, reason, and critical thinking, from Fri Tanke. Includes an interview with me.… Read the rest
The smoking gun
Jan 18th, 2011 12:04 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe jig is up, Ratzo. You’re busted. The lawyers are compiling their briefs as we speak. You haven’t got so much as a toenail to stand on. The pretty gold baubles and the sumptuous embroideries are going to be turned into cash to pay the damages. You’re not going to have the fund to go swanning around the globe telling us all what to do.
… Read the restA newly revealed 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland’s Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police…
The letter undermines persistent Vatican claims, particularly when seeking to defend itself in U.S. lawsuits, that the church in Rome never instructed local bishops to withhold evidence or suspicion of crimes from police.
Bishop: “a mandate to conceal the crimes of a priest
Jan 18th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA 1997 Vatican directive rejected a recommendation by the Irish church that priests who abused children should be reported to the civil authorities.… Read the rest
Vatican told Irish bishops not to report abuse
Jan 18th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia Benson1997 letter found. Smoking gun. “The letter undermines persistent Vatican claims” – to put it mildly.… Read the rest
Joseph Hoffmann on Jesus legends on tv
Jan 18th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe obliging scholars know better, but they perform on cue.… Read the rest
Review of Habermas, An Intellectual Biography
Jan 18th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMuch of what Habermas has written as a philosopher first took shape in the rough-and-tumble context of post-war West German ideological and legal debate.… Read the rest
Standing outside
Jan 17th, 2011 5:13 pm | By Ophelia BensonAbout that struggle that James Croft was having (and perhaps still is).
I feel a similar ambivalence regarding the religious elements of Obama’s beautiful speech…Yet I recognize, too, that I cannot join the ranks of Americans bending knee to pray while remaining true to my beliefs, to myself. I must express my shock and sadness in another way. I’m standing outside the church, my face pressed against the stained-glass windows, longing for solidarity with those inside, but unable to cross the threshold.
This is one major reason Obama should not have used religious elements in his beautiful speech. It is because doing so excludes a large part of the population, which it shouldn’t do. It’s not the business of a … Read the rest
Johann Hari interviews Kenneth Tong
Jan 17th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHe says that being a sociopath is a good thing – it “can make you highly successful in business, and I am going to make a fortune with my Size Zero pill.”… Read the rest
Steven Novella on CBC Marketplace on homeopathy
Jan 17th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMarketplace took the consumer protection angle, so there was no need for nonsensical “balance.” The pills have no active ingredient. Period.… Read the rest
Why BioLogos—and accommodationism—can’t win
Jan 17th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBecause fundamentalists simply aren’t going to swallow a metaphorical approach to scripture; they’ll tell you so themselves.… Read the rest
John Paul 2 is on fast track to sainthood
Jan 16th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA second miracle will have to be verified following the beatification, but there is little worry that verification will be witheld.… Read the rest
The bridge ends in midair
Jan 16th, 2011 4:34 pm | By Ophelia BensonMeanwhile, James Croft is struggling.
Obama was exercising his capacity for leadership at a time of extraordinary uncertainty, when the USA is wracked with debate about the reasons for those terrible events, and he drew heavily upon the reservoir of his Christian faith to do so. Repeatedly quoting scripture, enjoining Americans to kneel and pray, and movingly speaking of the heaven to which he believes Christina Taylor Green has gone, jumping in puddles. This is truly faith and leadership in a fragmented world.
Well, I would rather he didn’t enjoin us to kneel and pray. I don’t think there’s anyone to pray to, and if I did, I don’t think I would want to pray to it. What would … Read the rest
Damn you atheists, why won’t you tolerate believers?
Jan 16th, 2011 11:44 am | By Ophelia BensonI’ve had a look at Chris Stedman’s blog, NonProphet Status. It becomes clearer why he’s so hostile to atheists: he’s not an atheist himself, and he’s the religious kind of humanist as opposed to the non-religious kind. He seems to be tragically homesick for religion, and comforting himself by engaging in a simulacrum. That’s fine; it’s just unfortunate that his chief goal and hobby seems to be throwing atheists under any bus he can find as a way of sucking up to believers.
There’s a guest post there from a few days ago, by another pious Humanist type, which is another extended exercise in saying Why Atheists Suck and Why Believers Are Better Than Everyone Else. Like all … Read the rest
All your misogynists are belonging to us
Jan 16th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHaha Anglicans we win. Love, the pope.… Read the rest
CBC Marketplace looks at homeopathy
Jan 16th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSee the woman who had her child vaccinated for polio with a homeopathic vaccine! See her babble smugly about personal choice!… Read the rest
The pope’s unholy alliance with the dictator
Jan 16th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe Vatican that still claims to be a force for good is staying silent because it is seeking a concordat with Lukashenko.… Read the rest
An easy target
Jan 15th, 2011 5:36 pm | By Ophelia BensonThere’s another thing about Stedman’s campaign “to find common ground between the religious and the secular.” It’s that all his finding and common grounding and affirmativing and positiving is directed toward the religious while he is in effect quite unfriendly toward the nonreligious. He goes about his work of saying what should be done, by throwing a little dirt at atheists.
We cannot promote Humanist values when we expend our energy lobbing simplistic critiques at the religious…we must get over this sense that provocation should be our number one goal, and that positive engagement with others is unimportant…the future of Humanism isn’t blasphemous billboards, bombastic rhetoric or even blogs…
Little jabs, one after the other, all over-general and subtly unpleasant, … Read the rest