‘It’s considered acceptable in our culture to approach perfect strangers, as often as not in extremis, and evangelise. I don’t see why that’s considered a normal thing.’… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Amnesty International on arrests in Tahrir Square 
Mar 26th, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
AI calls on the Egyptian authorities to investigate allegations of torture, including forced ‘virginity tests’, inflicted by the army on women protesters.… Read the rest
The yukkists
Mar 25th, 2011 3:42 pm | By Ophelia BensonMan, it’s been a busy week for the gnu-hating crowd. There was Michael Ruse, then Jacques Berlinerblau, and now (it grieves me to say) Joseph Hoffmann. All three doing an extended yell of rage at “the new atheists” while seldom actually giving any specifics or quoting anyone or linking to anything, so that a reader could figure out exactly what they’re talking about. They do mention Dawkins and Harris, and Hoffmann quotes from a press release by the Center for Inquiry, but mostly there’s just a great deal of generalization.
Here’s Ruse:
… Read the restI think the New Atheists are a disaster, a danger to the wellbeing of America comparable to the Tea Party. It is not so much
EZ theist ethics
Mar 25th, 2011 12:00 pm | By Ophelia BensonRabbi Adam Jacobs tells the Huffington Post and its readers that atheists can’t say it’s wrong to stone women to death because they are atheists.
In fact, the most sensible and logically consistent outgrowth of the atheist worldview should be permission to get for one’s self whatever one’s heart desires at any moment (assuming that you can get away with it). Why not have that affair? Why not take a few bucks from the Alzheimer victim’s purse — as it can not possibly have any meaning either way. Did not Richard Dawkins teach us that selfishness was built into our very genes?
I wonder if Jacques Berlinerblau will do a thoughtful erudite eloquent piece saying why that is ignorant and … Read the rest
Atheists get their morality from theists so ha
Mar 25th, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
“The atheistic understanding of morality comes directly or indirectly from what is commonly referred to as the Judeo-Christian ethic.”… Read the rest
OIC states drop “defamation of religion” campaign
Mar 25th, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
New resolution “condemns any advocacy of religious hatred that amounts to incitement to hostility or violence.” Non-believers not mentioned.… Read the rest
Pakistan: children play “suicide bombing”
Mar 25th, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Teenagers are the best suicide bombers, because they’re easy to train and to brainwash.… Read the rest
It gets better
Mar 24th, 2011 4:56 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe It Gets Better project is a good thing.
The interview with Dan and Terry on Fresh Air was also good. Terry had an especially horrible time the first two years of high school. He said he couldn’t even walk down the hall in such a way that he didn’t attract bullying. Everything he did – the way he moved, the way he talked, everything – got him bullied. His mother went to the school and asked them to do something about the bullying.
… Read the restTheir response was, ‘There’s nothing that they could do. If he looks that way, if he talks that way, if he walks that way, there’s absolutely nothing they could do to protect me and it was
Whited sepulchre
Mar 24th, 2011 11:04 am | By Ophelia BensonBut hey, then again, why worry about religious privilege and entitlement when the Vatican is busy telling the UN Human Rights Council that people who dispute its vicious homophbia are “attacking” it and interfering with its human rights? Why bother? Why not just give up, since we’re obviously outnumbered?
People who criticise gay sexual relations for religious or moral reasons are increasingly being attacked and vilified for their views, a Vatican diplomat told the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday.
Or to put it another way, gay people are increasingly being attacked and vilified by reactionary religious fanatics who think they should have the power to tell everyone everywhere what to do down to the smallest detail.
… Read the rest“People are
Poor little mites, only 30 places for them
Mar 24th, 2011 10:43 am | By Ophelia BensonBig excitement: another religious state school is opening in Leicester, a Hindu one modeled on another in Harrow (London). Hooray hooray, even though there are people who think Not hooray hooray.
It, like other faith school proposals for “free” schools, has its opponents, those that think the plethora of religious schools being opened under the Gove initiative will destroy community cohesion and increase segregation on racial and religious grounds among pupils.
And that that’s not something the state should be fostering and funding. What’s the other view, exactly? I can never quite figure it out. That it will do those things but those are good things to do? Or that it won’t do those things? Either one seems…feeble.
… Read the restThe
Dan Savage and Terry Miller on “it gets better”
Mar 24th, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Miller’s school told his mother: “If he looks that way, if he talks that way, if he walks that way, there’s absolutely nothing they could do to protect him.”… Read the rest
UN: Vatican defends “right” to bash gay rights
Mar 24th, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Religious homophobes “are increasingly being attacked and vilified for their views,” a Vatican diplomat told the United Nations Human Rights Council.… Read the rest
Larger groups have more utility
Mar 24th, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Smaller ones have less.… Read the rest
Does religion belong in the classroom?
Mar 24th, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
“There are a million Hindus in the UK but only 30 Hindu primary school places a year for them.” Beg the question much?… Read the rest
Roberto De Mattei explains the catastrophe in Japan
Mar 23rd, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
“…catastrophes are the just punishments of God” inasmuch as “to the guilt of the Original Sin are added our personal and collective sins.”… Read the rest
Texas bill would outlaw “discrimination” against creationists
Mar 23rd, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Universities would be forbidden to fire anyone “based on the faculty member’s or student’s conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design.”… Read the rest
Orac on anthroposophic medicine at the U of Michigan
Mar 23rd, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAnthroposophic medicine is based on many ideas with no basis whatsoever in science that can best be described as pure magical thinking.… Read the rest
The people look like ants
Mar 23rd, 2011 12:27 pm | By Ophelia BensonSo how about that Jacques Berlinerblau eh?
He totally agrees with Michael Ruse that “new” atheists are equatable to the Tea Party, and wishes he’d said it first.
For those not familiar with their world-view, let me help you understand their central and timeless insight: Unless you as an atheist are willing to disparage all religious people, describe them all as imbeciles and creeps, mock every text and thinker they have ever produced, then you must be some sort of deluded, self-hating, sellout, subverting the rise of the Mighty Atheist Political Juggernaut (about which more anon).
Goodness; how very vulgar. Miss Manners does not, on second thought, believe she has very much to say about sheer vulgarity. Miss Manners is … Read the rest
Asylum seeker deported from Norway is in Evin
Mar 23rd, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Iranian authorities have signaled that Iranians who seek asylum should be charged for “dissemination of false propaganda against the Islamic Republic.”… Read the rest
Brandish that crucifix
Mar 23rd, 2011 11:37 am | By Ophelia BensonAndrew Brown seems to have taken a Michael Ruse pill (may cause drowsiness, perversity of reasoning, tendonitis, irregular heartbeat).
The decision of the European court of Human Rights that Italian schools may continue to display a crucifix in the classroom is obviously a victory for common sense, of which only fanatics would disapprove.
Oh obviously; oh only fanatics, certainly. (What was that about gnu atheist rhetoric and lack of humility again?)
The idea that human rights legislation should be used to prevent children from being exposed to a crucifix is a profoundly totalitarian and superstitious perversion of one of our civilisation’s best inventions.
Well yes, it would be, but that isn’t the idea in question. Oddly enough, nobody was attempting … Read the rest
