It is lobbying hard against statute of limitation reform.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Believers without belief
Apr 27th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe idea is going viral: Michael McGhee, Theo Hobson, Andrew Brown all claim that belief is practice.… Read the rest
On dryness
Apr 27th, 2010 8:08 am | By Ophelia BensonKenan Malik points out that fundamentalism is an idea, not a biology.
… Read the restSecularism and fundamentalism are not ideas stitched into people’s DNA. They are not born so. Secularist ideas and religious beliefs are like any values: people absorb them, accept them, reject them. A generation ago there were strong secular movements within Muslim communities and fundamentalism was a marginal force. Today secularism is much weaker, and Islamism much stronger. This shift has been propelled not by demographic trends but by political developments. And political developments can also help reverse the shift.
Kaufmann doesn’t deny any of this. But, he insists, nothing can stop the inevitable demographic triumph of the fundamentalists. Why? Because ‘we inhabit a period of ideological exhaustion’.
Kenan Malik on “Eurabia”
Apr 27th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSecularism and fundamentalism are not ideas stitched into people’s DNA. They are like any values: people absorb them, accept them, reject them.… Read the rest
Open Democracy on Fred Halliday
Apr 26th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonFor 40 years his knowledge of global politics and forensic analytical skills were in the service of rational argument and universalist political values.… Read the rest
Fred Halliday 1946-2010
Apr 26th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHis twenty plus books and his wide ranging, powerful essays and journalism provided a constant source of inspiration.… Read the rest
A sufficiency of delight
Apr 26th, 2010 11:07 am | By Ophelia BensonGrayling’s reply to Gray is a much better read.
Anxious to appear original while in fact pushing a familiar counter-Enlightenment line, Gray has often entertained us with his assaults on logic and historical fact, each time repeating the two tenets of his faith, one acquired from Isaiah Berlin and the other from his Sunday school, namely, that we are condemned to live with the conflict between irreconcilable goods, and that we owe everything of significance in human achievement (not, he gloomily adds, that there has been much) to religion.
Concise, sly, cutting, and funny – also accurate. Gray is extraordinarily repetitive and predictable. I knew what his “review” would say before I read it. “Gray has often entertained us” reminds … Read the rest
Grayling replies to Gray
Apr 26th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAnxious to appear original while in fact pushing a familiar counter-Enlightenment line, Gray has often entertained us with his assaults on logic and historical fact.… Read the rest
The well thinkings
Apr 26th, 2010 10:26 am | By Ophelia BensonJohn Gray makes a familiar point.
SEEING THEMSELVES as fiercely independent thinkers, bien-pensants are remarkable chiefly for the fervor with which they propagate the prevailing beliefs of their time.
Prevailing where? Prevailing among whom?
Bertrand Russell, John Stuart Mill’s godson and a scion of one of England’s great political dynasties, exemplified this contradiction throughout most of his life. British philosopher A. C. Grayling can now be counted amongst his number.
Okay – he means “prevailing among people who think similar things” – which is a tautology. He’s pointing out that independent thinkers (fierce or otherwise) are not usually so very independent that they think things that no one else anywhere thinks. Right. Well we knew that, actually. If you’re … Read the rest
Eugene Volokh on Harry Taylor’s sentence
Apr 26th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAn appalling restriction on freedom of speech; not a content-neutral prohibition on leafleting in particular places: the conviction was based on the content and viewpoint of the speech.… Read the rest
John Gray Reviews A C Grayling
Apr 26th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe inevitable ‘Hampstead dinner party’ is cited.… Read the rest
Be Quieters v atheists
Apr 25th, 2010 12:36 pm | By Ophelia BensonIt reminds me of the old Bugs Bunny line – “Of course you know, this means war.”
This means war. The grotesque punishment meted out to Harry Taylor might as well be an official government announcement that atheists have no rights.
It is a common accusation that the “new” atheists are bullies who gang up on poor innocent bystanders like Mooney and De Dora and other Be Quieters.
Well – not so fast. Let’s pause and consider. Who exactly is bullying whom?
Which is the majoritarian view? Which is the conventional wisdom? Atheism? Hardly. No, the majoritarian conventional wisdom is, at the very least, that religion deserves an almost infinite amount of “respect” and that any atheist who falls short … Read the rest
Put out an APB for Cardinal Bernard Law
Apr 25th, 2010 11:09 am | By Ophelia BensonHitchens gently suggests that the pope should be questioned like anyone else.
… Read the restHis apologists have done their best, but their Holy Father seems consistently to have been lenient or negligent with the criminals while reserving his severity only for those who complained about them.
As this became horribly obvious, I telephoned a distinguished human-rights counsel in London, Geoffrey Robertson, and asked him if the law was powerless to intervene. Not at all, was his calm reply. If His Holiness tries to travel outside his own territory—as he proposes to travel to Britain in the fall—there is no more reason for him to feel safe than there was for the once magnificently uniformed General Pinochet, who had passed a Chilean law
Masons bring down innocent Catholic church
Apr 25th, 2010 10:50 am | By Ophelia BensonIt gets crazier and crazier every day. Now a Colombian Cardinal tells us what’s what.
A senior cardinal defended the Roman Catholic Church’s practice of frequently not reporting sexual abusive priests to the police, saying Thursday it would have been like testifying against a family member at trial…
“The law in nations with a well-developed judiciary does not force anyone to testify against a child, a father, against other people close to the suspect,” Castrillon told RCN radio. “Why would they ask that of the church? That’s the injustice. It’s not about defending a pedophile, it’s about defending the dignity and the human rights of a person, even the worst of criminals.”
The cardinal seems to be confused. The … Read the rest
Colombia: cardinal defends church secrecy
Apr 25th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonReporting rapist priests to the police would have been like testifying against a family member.… Read the rest
Legal victory raises profile of Gaylor and FFRF
Apr 25th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Society is becoming more secularized. It’s becoming acceptable to be atheist and agnostic. And there are more of us.’… Read the rest
Foreign office apologizes to Vatican
Apr 25th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonFacetious memo suggested pope should do something useful; FO cites disrespect, grovels.… Read the rest