Robert Winston says the Templeton Prize is just fine, no problem, what’s the big deal, relax, take a chill pill, don’t get your knickers in a twist, why do you have such an attitude. Sam Harris says religious language is unscientific in its claims for what is true. Winston says there’s no such thing as “the truth.” Harris says we can still recognise falsehood. Winston says

I suppose I really wonder why you’re so angry.

Whut?

Yes really; he says that. Maybe not that abruptly and inconsequentially – that may be editing – but those are the words. Harris attempts to laugh off this sudden rudeness, but Winston isn’t having it. “You write angrily, too,” he says. Furthermore,

books

Andrew Gilligan tells us that the Muslim Council of Britain says…well actually I’m not sure what he tells us it says, and I can’t find the statement itself so that I can say what it says as opposed to what Gilligan says. Frankly he could have done a better job with this – he should have included a link and he should have put the crucial bit inside quotation marks so that we would know who said what. As it is it isn’t clear. The words “women,” “niqab,” and “veil” are not inside quotation marks, so I’m left wondering exactly what the MCB said.

Here’s Gilligan’s unhelpful summary:

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) said that not covering the face

Kenan Malik is not bowled over by Sam Harris on morality.

Harris is nothing if not self-confident. There is a voluminous philosophical literature that stretches back almost to the origins of the discipline on the relationship between facts and values. Harris chooses to ignore most of it…It is one thing to want to “start a conversation that a wider audience can engage with and can find helpful”, something that many of us, including many of those boring moral philosophers, seek to do. It is quite another to imagine that you can engage in any kind of conversation, with any kind of audience, by wilfully ignoring the relevant scholarship because it is “boring”.

I share that view. (I agree with Polly-O!) … Read the rest

Matthew Adams interviewed Anthony Grayling for the New Humanist. He met the same fella I met.

The couple of hours I spend with him reveal a warm and generous character, capable of being both expansive and associative, while retaining a sense of measure, order and precision.

With an additional element I didn’t meet.

 That order, however, is not much in evidence in his office. It is a catastrophe of books and papers, though in common with people who inhabit catastrophes of books and papers, he is keen to point out that he knows where everything is.

Ah yes that catastrophe of books and papers; I inhabit that too, but I don’t point out that I know where everything is, … Read the rest

Hey look what I found. I was looking for something else – an interview I did a couple of weeks ago with Johan Signert of Humanisterna (the Swedish Humanists) – but I found this instead: a piece on Radio Sweden about Hatar Gud Kvinnor? I forgot to look for it last summer. I talk a bit – with too much umming, but hey, I’d just flown from Seattle via Amsterdam and then done a talk, so whaddya expect. Christer Sturmark also talks – which is pleasant; I liked Christer a lot, it’s nice to hear him. I wasn’t around when the radio guy talked to him – I was probably signing books then.… Read the rest

Most of the “anti-abortion community” hates contraception as well as abortion.

“Fertility and babies are not diseases,” said Jeanne Monahan of the Family Research Council’s Center for Human Dignity, which has been fighting against requiring insurance plans to cover contraceptives under the new health care law.

Oh isn’t that just precious – working for “Human Dignity” by trying to prevent women from avoiding pregnancy. Working for “Human Dignity” by forcing women to get pregnant and have children whether they want to or not. Yes, that’s my idea of dignity all right.

…many social conservatives are simply opposed to giving women the ability to have sex without the possibility of procreation.“Contraception helps reduce one’s sexual partner to just a sexual