“Salman Taseer was killed by the intolerance, the hatred, the extremism, the vigilantism, the violence and the jahalat that now defines our society.”… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Jesus and Mo do their act 
Jan 4th, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
“Tonight we’re going to put dogma before reason and then act upon our conclusions without regard to the consequences. Everybody sing.”… Read the rest
Lahore: protests at killing of Taseer
Jan 4th, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Dozens of supporters of the PPP took to streets in Lahore on Tuesday. Dozens.… Read the rest
Murtaza Razvi on the murder of Salman Taseer
Jan 4th, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Taseer’s outspoken defence of Aasia Bibi made him a hate figure for extremist and Islamist outfits and parties.… Read the rest
BBC on the murder of Salman Taseer
Jan 4th, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the guard told police that he killed Taseer because of the governor’s opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy law.… Read the rest
Salman Taseer murdered by his own security guard
Jan 4th, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Governor of Punjab opposed Pakistan’s blasphemy law.… Read the rest
Tell all the truth but tell it slant?
Jan 3rd, 2011 3:57 pm | By Ophelia BensonSo to return to the core of the issue that Ben was talking about – the utility of atheism for atheists, science communication, conflict as a way into discussion rather than an impediment to it, passion as a motivator. I talked to him about it at Facebook, and tried (not for the first time) to take a hard look at why I feel so strongly about the subject.
I said that I have a visceral reaction to advice about framing. I do. Why do I?
First of all, I’ve had it for a long time; maybe as long as I’ve been thinking about anything. I dislike all the manipulative “professions” – advertising, PR, political operative stuff. I dislike trickery and … Read the rest
Blaironfaith
Jan 3rd, 2011 12:22 pm | By Ophelia BensonTony Blair preaches the gospel according to Armstrong.
Common to all great religions is love of neighbors and human equality before God.
That’s a falsehood. I won’t even bother to elaborate, because it’s too obvious. It’s just a pious, smarmy, conventional, wishful falsehood.
Blair admits as much himself in the very next paragraph.
… Read the restUnfortunately, compassion is not the only context in which religion motivates people. It can also promote extremism, even terrorism. This is where faith becomes a badge of identity in opposition to those who do not share it, a kind of spiritual nationalism that regards those who do not agree – even those within a faith who live a different view of it – as unbelievers, infidels,
Rebecca Watson on Christianity and healthy eating
Jan 3rd, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
And Conservapedia. See this picture of Chuck Norris? QED.… Read the rest
Theocrats aren’t apathetic, so why are you?
Jan 3rd, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The religious right brazenly claims the moral high ground, insisting that their biblical interpretations allow them to dictate “family values” to everyone else.… Read the rest
Blair talks more stupid kak about religion
Jan 3rd, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
“Common to all great religions is love of neighbors and human equality before God.” Please.… Read the rest
More science eduation: more on species
Jan 3rd, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The problem is to explain why nature is discontinuous rather than continuous.… Read the rest
Science education: Coyne on speciation
Jan 3rd, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The “biological species concept” and its connection to what most evolutionists see as “the species problem.”… Read the rest
Atheism and utility
Jan 2nd, 2011 2:15 pm | By Ophelia BensonBenjamin Nelson has a very interesting post on science communication and atheism and passion at Talking Philosophy. Much of it transcribes a conversation he had with Chris Mooney in 2009, in which both of them agreed on some common ground.
… Read the rest…the most important point that I’m going to emphasize here is that [Mooney’s] stance is self-consciously political. At least to some extent, there is a “difference in goals” between Mooney and the activist atheists — by which, I think, he means a difference in priorities. Mooney does not think that speaking out against religion is a priority, and that it is on the whole detrimental to science education; while others think it is a priority, and that it supports science
Cairo: demonstrations protest sectarianism
Jan 2nd, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Human rights activists and bloggers are organizing a silent stand along the Kornish of Cairo on Friday afternoon.… Read the rest
Nick Cohen on Hungary and the EU
Jan 2nd, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Fidesz was elected with a clear mandate for change. If change involves attacking fundamental rights, that does not appear to be Brussels’s concern.… Read the rest
Ashtiani case may be dismissed
Jan 2nd, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
“She said she wanted to sue some of those involved in the campaign to free her for ‘bringing disgrace on me and the country’.” Terrific.… Read the rest
The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn [pdf]
Jan 2nd, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Jonathan Bennett on Huck, Himmler, and Jonathan Edwards, and the relationship between sympathy on the one hand and bad morality on the other.… Read the rest
What horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of my duties
Jan 1st, 2011 6:13 pm | By Ophelia BensonI mentioned in a comment yesterday that the way bishops and theologians pride themselves on not letting compassion or empathy trump their mindless Absolute Rules reminded me of something Hannah Arendt said in Eichmann in Jerusalem –
The Nazis prided themselves on exactly that – to the point that they got maudlin about it. “Nobody knows how difficult it is for us” sort of thing. Seriously. They did a lot of quiet boasting about their ability to rise above their sympathies.
I found the passage I was thinking of – pp 105-6 in the Penguin edition.
… Read the restThe troops of the Einsatzgruppen had been drafted from the Armed S.S., a military unit with hardly more crimes in its record than any
David Foster Wallace and Wittgenstein
Jan 1st, 2011 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Though it represented a clean break from philosophy, fiction offered something comparable to the feeling of aesthetic recognition in mathematical logic.… Read the rest
