More from Paul Cliteur’s The Secular Outlook. The first chapter is an extended analysis of atheism, agnosticism and theism. At the end of his discussion of Pascal’s Wager PC says Pascal did have one strong point, which is that we cannot suspend judgment on the transcendental realm – italics his. Quite right. If there is a god and it does want us to act in certain ways and it has given us reliable and unmistakable knowledge on the subject, that does make a difference. We may well think the god is evil and that we’re not going to act in the ways it wants us to, but it would be feckless not to think about it one way or … Read the rest

As a companion piece to the one on Gary Gutting’s suggestions about god’s simplicity, here is Dawkins on why the whole idea is a non-starter (TGD p 121):

Creationist “logic” is always the same. Some natural phenomenon is too statistically improbable, too complex, too beautiful, too awe-inspiring to have come into existence by chance. Design is the only alternative to chance that the authors can imagine. Therefore a designer must have done it. And science’s answer to this faulty logic is also always the same. Design is not the only alternative to chance. Natural selection is a better alternative. Indeed, design is not a real alternative at all because it raises an even bigger problem than it solves: who designed

Russell has done a thorough dance on the exiguous “arguments” of Suzanne Fields’s “atheists are poopyheads” in that pride of journalism, The Washington Times, but I thought I would still take just a moment to point out how incredibly lazy it is. There’s no evidence that she’s ever even read anything on the subject before writing about it; all she’s done is string together a selection of very stale atheist-hating chestnuts.

Atheism is fashionable. The Bible sells way more copies. Nobody puts atheist books in hotel rooms. Atheists think they’re nonconformists but atheism is way old. Satan. Smug, shallow and arrogant. Cheap. Hitchens and Hitchens. Zealous. Lenin. The 60s. Muslims. Leftists. The worship of power.

That’s it. Seriously. Sarah … Read the rest

All right, I’ve adjusted my attitude since yesterday and the day before. We had a nice chat on the phone, and it will be okay. The seminar will be mostly discussion and q and a, so I won’t have to give a big long talk while yawning and scratching, so I can handle it. And hey, it will be fun. A conversation with a lot of people interested in women’s rights and the role of religion in interfering with same, in Stockholm. Fun!

And the cover of the Swedish translation of Does God Hate Women? is by Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin, whose Homosexuality in religion exhibit was canceled by one museum in June.

Sweden’s Museum of World Cultures canceled

Gary Gutting is a philosopher of religion at Notre Dame, a Catholic university in the US; he writes for the New York Times philosophy blog The Stone. He has a long post saying what’s wrong with Dawkins’s arguments for the strong improbability of god. It’s worth reading because it’s more than just shouting or hand-waving or tone trolling or border disputing or last Thursdayism or science has nothing to say about the supernatural-ism. That’s not to say it’s convincing, but at least there’s something there.

He addresses Dawkins’s argument (not unique to him, of course) that a god that created the universe would have to be even more complex than the universe, and thus would require explanation even … Read the rest

Oh come on. The brush Toby Young paints with is so broad that he’s lost his grip.

No other prominent feminist has spoken out about Ashtiani’s case, unless you include Yoko Ono who has signed the petition calling for her to be freed. We’ve heard nothing from Germaine Greer, nothing from Gloria Steinem, nothing from Jane Fonda, nothing from Naomi Wolf, nothing from Clare Short, nothing from Harriet Harmen.

Well that’s interesting, and in some cases reprehensible if true, but it’s hardly conclusive. That’s not a complete list of prominent feminists, to put it mildly; arguably it’s not even a list of feminists. Jane Fonda? Yoko Ono? They’re celebrities rather than feminists.

 Almost no one on the left, with