To improve art literacy in America, neorealists should pretend to respect crap that could be painted by a 5-year-old.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Sleeping Bags and Critical Thinking
Jul 29th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe camp insists that when it comes to God, it is not telling the children what to think but how to think. … Read the rest
Letters Reply to Sam Harris on Francis Collins
Jul 29th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Science reaches beyond itself to undervalue mythic insight’ etc etc.… Read the rest
Adam Hochschild: Rape of the Congo
Jul 29th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAlmost all the warring factions have used rape as a calculated method of sowing terror.… Read the rest
Waist-deep in the moral slime
Jul 29th, 2009 9:05 am | By Ophelia BensonI wasn’t going to inflict any more Mooney-Kirshenbaum nonsense on you, but now Mooney (at least) has taken a couple more steps further into the moral slime, and I feel it My Duty to record the fact. I think it’s time to declare Chris Mooney officially morally bankrupt. He’s not just wrong – he’s doing bad things.
On that post I criticized on Monday, a commenter announced that I was lying.
… Read the restWhen Ophelia Benson claims through her “questions” that Chris and Sheril have no evidence she is not telling the truth. It’s one thing for people who haven’t read the book to assert this – she has the book.
So let me say that again and more emphatically:
Religion is a very public matter
Jul 28th, 2009 12:44 pm | By Ophelia BensonEric MacDonald made a comment that needs to be on the main page:
In their little piece on civility, where Barbara Forrest is quoted as saying “Be nice”, Mooney and Kirshenbaum say this:
Religion is a very private matter, and given that liberal religionists support church-state separation, we really have no business questioning their personal way of making meaning of the world.
This is false. Religion is not a very private matter. It is a very public matter, and it is increasingly more and more public. How people make sense of the world, religiously, almost always seeks to impose itself on others.
Religion does not respect boundaries. For a long time it was thought that religion had retreated to … Read the rest
Jerry Coyne Reviews Robert Wright on God
Jul 28th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe faithful – the ones who care about science – have tweaked the theory of evolution to make it more congenial. … Read the rest
Quarrel Over ‘Islamic School’ in Sydney
Jul 28th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSome campaigners say the debate has been laced with racial and religious intolerance.… Read the rest
Nigeria: Islamist Group Kills 150 People
Jul 28th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonRadical Islamists, who claim to be linked to al-Qaeda, have killed more than 150 people in two days of violence.… Read the rest
Charles Taylor Notices the Obvious
Jul 28th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonYou can’t fit a serious argument onto the side of a bus. Who knew?!… Read the rest
Johann Hari Talks to Malalai Joya
Jul 28th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Your governments have replaced the fundamentalist rule of the Taliban with another fundamentalist regime of warlords.’… Read the rest
Court Backs Gujarat Riot Probe
Jul 28th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonCourt rejected a bid to delay the probe into the role of the chief minister in communal riots in 2002.… Read the rest
PZ Myers on Francis Collins
Jul 27th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonCollins does not trust the godless people in his communities because, to his mind, they are blind to good and evil.… Read the rest
Russell Blackford on Francis Collins
Jul 27th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonFolk metaethics is probably mistaken, whether an almighty law-giving deity exists or not. … Read the rest
Sam Harris on Francis Collins
Jul 27th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIt can be difficult to think like a scientist. But few things make thinking like a scientist more difficult than religion.… Read the rest
Coyne on Francis Collins, Science and Religion
Jul 27th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBy describing in the same talk the evidence for evolution and the ‘evidence’ for God, he is confusing his audiences.… Read the rest
M and K to ‘the New Atheist Blogosphere’
Jul 27th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThey try to engage in a civil debate, but it’s hopeless, because ‘the New Atheists’ just don’t understand.… Read the rest
The first step is getting the facts right
Jul 27th, 2009 11:43 am | By Ophelia BensonMooney and Kirshenbaum have struck again. They’ve written a piece on their blog telling some entity unattractively called ‘the New Atheist blogosphere’ why TNAB is wrong and M&K are right. It’s a repulsive read, because (as usual but more so) it’s so willfully blind, so obstinately determined not to heed reasonable objections but instead to ‘frame’ them as irrational outbursts from Declared Enemies.
They’ve created this bind for themselves, of course. They spent a large chunk of their very short book blaming ‘New Atheists’ for American ignorance of science, and then labeled all criticism as coming from ‘New Atheists’ and therefore (in ways not always specified) tainted and wrong and thus safe to ignore. The problem there is that they’re … Read the rest
Sign, sign, sign your rights away
Jul 26th, 2009 5:15 pm | By Ophelia BensonDoesn’t Scientology sound attractive. All you have to do if you want to be a scientologist is sign away all your rights, including the right to earn the minimum wage. Then if you leave or they kick you out – you have to give them some money.
… Read the rest7. BREACH OF COVENANT. If a staff member . . . breaks his agreement either by leaving staff before completing his commitment [either 2 1/2 or 5 years] or by violating his good standing as a Scientology staff member so that he is dismissed in accordance with policy, he or she shall remit forthwith to the Church a penance for violation of this covenant in accordance with the ecclesiastical policy of the
The Scientology Contract
Jul 26th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonYou too can become a scientologist provided you don’t mind signing all your rights away.… Read the rest