We encounter the self-righteous, injured innocence of those easily offended, who want to silence anyone who criticizes anything they hold dear.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Hitchens reports from Tumor Town 
Oct 8th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Religious maniacs are trying to prevent the use of existing embryos for stem cell research that would help existing humans.… Read the rest
Watch the Secular Humanist Conference live
Oct 8th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Mooney was better than one might expect; PZ was great.… Read the rest
Oh if only we could learn to doubt
Oct 8th, 2010 10:55 am | By Ophelia BensonMore dopy mindless generalization about “New Atheism” at Comment is Free Belief, this batch courtesy of Ed Halliwell.
Almost two weeks on from the After New Atheism event at the RSA and the trail seems to have gone cold. It sounded so promising – the setup from a humanist writer professing his boredom with the stagnancy of debate…And yet it didn’t quite happen. As Mark Vernon reported, the evening itself was a bit of a damp squib, and normal service has been resumed on comment threads, with Caspar Melville – the aforementioned humanist – understandably crying foul at the pummelling he received for daring to call for more listening and less braying.
Yes, but as we know, Caspar Melville … Read the rest
Let’s “move beyond the theism of New Atheism”
Oct 8th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
And while we’re at it, let’s accuse “the New Atheists” of braying. That will set the tone nicely.… Read the rest
Homophobic vandalism at University of Cape Town
Oct 8th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
A pink closet, meant to promote gay rights at UCT, was torched on Monday night, just hours after it was set up… Read the rest
Jesus and Mo scold barmaid for strawmanning
Oct 8th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Just what you’d expect from someone who wants to stamp out beauty and replace people with robots.… Read the rest
Ahadi and Namazie meet European Parliament VP
Oct 8th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Mina Ahadi and Maryam Namazie met with Roberta Angelilli to discuss the urgent case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani and hand deliver a letter from her son.… Read the rest
The BHA Census campaign
Oct 7th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Data on religion produced by the 2001 census gave a wholly misleading picture of the religiosity of the UK, halving the number of non-religious people.… Read the rest
More on the Science-n-religion question
Oct 7th, 2010 11:29 am | By Ophelia BensonThomas Dixon commented on one of the recent posts on this issue, and I thought it only fair to make his comment more visible, since that post is now oldish, and I also hope he will comment further.
Dixon’s comment:
… Read the restI’ve been dismayed by some of the misinformation going around in the wake of the recent BBC Four programme I presented and a related online article I wrote for the BBC News magazine. Just for the record, I am a historian, not a theologian (although my first degree was indeed in Theology and Religious Studies), and membership of ISSR is open to anyone who has made a scholarly study of relations between science and religion, as I have. As
More on Smithsonian human evolution exhibit
Oct 7th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
And why David Koch funded it: because it gives the impression that human-caused climate change is no big deal, we’ll just “adapt.”… Read the rest
Kitcher and Dennett on new atheism
Oct 7th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The orientation model and the belief model, and whether the first makes the second worth keeping.… Read the rest
Russell Blackford on good and bad dissent
Oct 7th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
A nuanced explanation and advocacy of how to do nuanced explanation and advocacy.… Read the rest
USA Today’s “Faith and Reason” asks questions
Oct 6th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
“Do you think a baby conceived in test tube is still a child in the eyes of God?” Gee, I don’t know. Maybe they’re all zombies and we should kill them.… Read the rest
Hey, atheists all have something wrong with them
Oct 6th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Agnostic has a think, concludes that “most of the new wave of atheists who offer screeds against faith” are ideologues. Exciting!… Read the rest
The true nature of Steiner education
Oct 6th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The role of the Steiner kindergarten teacher is to facilitate the ‘incarnation’ of the spirits and souls of children into their physical bodies…… Read the rest
Bonjour, canard
Oct 6th, 2010 11:04 am | By Ophelia BensonIt’s kind of the friendly people at the “Battle of Ideas” (some of whom are also the people at the Institute of Ideas, some of whom are also the people at Spiked, some of whom are also the people who used to be Living Marxism and the Revolutionary Communist Party) to offer up a neat example of the backlash against gnu atheism just when the New Humanist posts online the article I wrote for the next issue, on that very subject. Caspar Melville invited me to write it in reply to his article on the new atheism at Comment is Free. Honorable!
As for David Bowden of the Battle of Ideas…well, he’s all too typical of that … Read the rest
Greg Mayer on The Hall of Human Origins
Oct 6th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
At the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Many excellent displays but also lost opportunities.… Read the rest
Philippa Foot 1920-2010
Oct 6th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
TPM republishes an interview with Foot from 2003.… Read the rest
My reply to Caspar Melville on “new atheism”
Oct 6th, 2010 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
In general it’s a good thing to be sceptical of one’s own commitments as well as other people’s. But…… Read the rest
