Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Buy Lady R some ribbons

    Sometimes – in fact often – the sheer vulgarity is surprising.

    Brilliant scientists at some of our great seats of learning, men whose lives are devoted to the rational pursuit of knowledge, turn out to be capable of as much intolerance and stupidity as the rest of us.What have they done this time? They’ve hurled abuse and reproach on Lord Rees of Ludlow…a meteor shower of abuse descends upon his head.

    I’m more puzzled by this kind of abusive behaviour than I am surprised. Deep down, we all know that great men of science can be as petty and spiteful…as politicians, footballers or captains of industry.

    He seems to think all scientists are men, which is clueless and inattentive as well as vulgar, and the rest of it is just…well, abuse. It’s the usual: some atheists dissent from theophilic orthodoxy, and that is translated into a long list of boo-words like intolerant, stupid, petty, and spiteful.

    What upsets part of the scientific community – needless to say, Oxford’s most militant atheist, Richard Dawkins, is part of the chorus – is their belief that Templeton, an enthusiastic Presbyterian, tries to blur the boundary between science and religion, making a virtue of belief without evidence.

    That’s right. And? Why is it intolerant and stupid and abusive and militant to think that’s a problem? Michael White doesn’t say, he just says we all do it don’t we, like people who think Chelsea will win. That’s not a very cogent or reasoned explanation.

    He says Harry Kroto wants Rees to give the money to the BHA.

    I hope he doesn’t. What a waste! Take Lady R on a nice cruise, at the very least take her on a shopping spree in that nice new Cambridge mall before you do that, Marty.

    That’s attractive, isn’t it? Lady R is a woman, therefore she is so hopelessly trivial and stupid that all she can want is a cruise or a shopping spree at a nice new mall. I think Michael White is what the astronomer Phil Plait would call (in the technical jargon) a dick.

    In any case, many of our greatest scientists – Darwin, Michael Faraday, Isaac Newton – were men of faith.

    Ah yes, Darwin the man of faith. Good one.

  • More Guardian “why are atheists so cross?”

    Intolerance, stupidity, abuse, abusive, petty, spiteful, militant atheist, professional atheists, take Lady R on a shopping spree, blowhards, arrogant, men of faith.

  • Kylie Sturgess talks to Tim Minchin

    “Christianity is still around because people have had self interest and have promoted it, the same way you promote Coca-Cola.”

  • Templeton is not either an enemy of science

    “Unlike Jerry Coyne, I don’t see a bogeymen round every religious corner.” So there nyah.

  • Templeton: the Guardian fights back

    Tunnel vision, proselytising atheists, metaphors, Newton’s religion, Einstein’s God of sorts, book-promoting blathering of Stephen Hawking, nuance.

  • Duty is peremptory and absolute

    Well one good thing is, the Templeton prize is being treated as controversial. The Guardian, the Independent, Radio 4, Science – they all treat it as controversial. That makes a change!

    The critics have gotten through at last. That makes a change, and a very good one.

    Jerry Coyne is a little tired of being the go-to dissenter. Hmph – too bad. It’s his duty. He’s good at it, so that makes him the go-to guy, so it’s too late to be tired of that now.

  • Controversial Templeton prize is controversial

    The controversial Templeton Foundation has awarded its controversial prize to an agnostic; that’s controversial.

  • Salil Tripathi on banning books

    Narendra Modi decided to defend Gujarat’s pride and banned Lelyveld’s biography of Gandhi. He hadn’t read it, but that’s the nature of fundamentalists.

  • A good listen

    Do listen to Lewis Wolpert and Peter Atkins and the matey Today presenter whose voice I don’t recognize, talking about the Templeton Prize. It’s just Wolpert and the presenter at first and it’s all quite cozy, with Wolpert agreeing that religion is fine as long as it doesn’t interfere, and saying that he doesn’t know enough about the Templeton Foundation to know if it’s a problem or not. But then at the end Peter Atkins joins in and it becomes a matter of Atkins and Wolpert agreeing while the presenter gets all squeaky in the voice.

    “The Templeton Foundation is an insidious foundation which is trying to insert itself into all kinds of rational bodies,” says Atkins.

    “But,” the presenter says squeakily, “what’s insidious about it? It’s quite open about it, it’s trying to promote its cause, that’s what any foundation would do, I can’t see what’s insidious about it.”

    “It’s trying to undermine rationality,” Atkins replies firmly.

    “But,” squeaks the presenter even more squeakily, “but does all religion, does all promotion of religion necessarily undermine rationality?” “Oh, absolutely,” says Atkins, and Wolpert seconds him, with “That’s the whole point of it.”

    And that’s why we hates it, Precious.

  • Lewis Wolpert and Peter Atkins on Templeton prize

    “But does all religion necessarily undermine rationality?” “Oh, absolutely.”

  • Kadyrov is turning the clock back in Chechnya

    Women face coercion to wear hijab as part of a “virtues” campaign, men are allowed polygamous marriage and alcohol is forbidden.

  • Ronald de Sousa on the problem with the sacred

    A rational mind has room for conviction, commitment, passion, perhaps even for parochialism and bias. But not for the sacred.

  • HRW to Libya: allow Eman al-‘Obeidy to leave Tripoli

    Al-‘Obeidy says she has tried to leave Tripoli three times since she first told journalists about the rape on March 26, but was stopped by government forces.

  • Record number of German Catholics quit church

    50,000 more Catholics cancelled their church membership last year than in 2009, an increase of 40 percent.

  • Lots of Satanism on the internet

    Thus need for lots of exorcists. Jobs for Catholic priests! And in the nick of time, too…

  • Independent talks to critics of Templeton prize

    Dawkins, Kroto, Coyne, and Grayling point out that in religion, faith is a virtue, while in science, faith is a vice.

  • Discipline

    Must stop must stop must stop. Must stop arguing with ridiculous guy on Facebook who calls Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Wafa Sultan “racists” because he dislikes them. He’s lily white himself of course. Must stop must stop must stop.

    He’s a “humanist,” according to him. He’s yet another anti-gnu. He’s a chump. Must stop must stop must stop.

    I did a podcast interview earlier this afternoon with Johan Signert of the Swedish Humanists.

    I’m invited to the Let the Light Howthelightgetsin thingy at Hay on Wye. I just might do it.

  • Hitchens on Karzai and Jones

    The terrible thing about indiscriminate violence and religious hysteria is how much damage a little of it can do.

  • Pertussis closes Waldorf-based private school

    The local Health Care Director unambiguously stated that lack of vaccinations caused this outbreak and that the children affected were unvaccinated.

  • You get what you pay for

    Jerry Coyne’s take on the Templeton Prize is slightly different from Mark Vernon’s.

    Templeton plies its enormous wealth with a single aim: to give credibility to religion by blurring its well-demarcated border with science. The Templeton Prize, which once went to people like Mother Teresa and the Reverend Billy Graham, now goes to scientists who are either religious themselves or say nice things about religion.

    That’s why it really is a form of bribery. It’s open, transparent, accountable bribery, as opposed to back-room under the table bribery, but it is bribery: the prize rewards a predetermined ideological viewpoint, as opposed to research or inquiry or art. It rewards various versions of the claim that religion and science somehow work together as opposed to competing or clashing; it does not reward versions of the claim that they don’t and can’t.

    Templeton’s mission is a serious corruption of science. Like a homeopathic remedy, it dilutes the core of the scientific enterprise, which has achieved its successes by holding doubt as a virtue and faith as a vice.

    And by doing this it also balks and confuses the public understanding of science and of thinking in general. It obscures the fact that “faith” is not a useful tool for finding things out.

    …although science and religion are said to be “different ways of knowing”, religion isn’t really a way of knowing anything – it’s a way of believing what you’d like to be true. Faith has never vouchsafed us a single truth about the universe.

    And the “different ways of knowing” claim, again, is a snare and a delusion for people in general. It’s the wrong kind of “framing”…