Wiley-Blackwell sent me The Secular Outlook by Paul Cliteur a few days ago. It has a blurb by Russell Blackford on the back, which is a good sign.

Cliteur says it’s important to distinguish between  predictions of secularization, which are descriptive, and secularism, which is normative. There’s an amusing passage on page 4 where it becomes apparent that he does not think much of Karen Armstrong.

Armstrong, like some other authors writing on religion and secularization, mixes up “secularism” and “the secularization thesis.” A secularist to her is someone who believes in the secularization thesis. ..Armstrong and others may, of course, gleefully criticize the secularization thesis, but that is flogging a dead horse. Their argumentation has no consequence whatsoever for

I’m going to Stockholm for a couple of days next week. It seems very absurd to go from Seattle to Stockholm for a couple of days, but then again, it’s better than not going to Stockholm at all, so I’m going. Does God Hate Women? is being published in translation, and there’s going to be a launch and stuff.

I will have a very horrible time the first day at least, and possibly throughout, because they got confused and scheduled a seminar and then the launch on the day I arrive as opposed to the next day. I have to go directly from the airport to the seminar. This is not good. I will be filthy and red-eyed and ravenous … Read the rest

Damon Linker makes a great observation, in discussing Hitchens and death and god. He compares Hitchens on the difference between his lucid self and the thing he could be turned into by drugs or pain, to Primo Levi on entering Auschwitz as a non-believer and exiting it the same way, and cites a too-devout Christian former colleague of his who had only contempt for Levi’s stoicism, calling it sinful pride.

Levi and Hitchens imply that a person’s capacity to determine the truth depends on his or her ability to think calmly, coolly, dispassionately. It depends on the capacity to bracket aspects of one’s subjectivity (like intense emotions, including fear of imminent death) that might distort one’s judgment or obstruct

How familiar this statement by Rachel Polonsky sounds…

I am very glad to report that the legal dispute that Robert Service and I have had with Orlando Figes and Stephanie Palmer has now been settled.

This dispute began in mid-April when Orlando Figes denied responsibility for the ten Amazon reviews signed ‘Historian’ in a circular email to colleagues…

Our objectives in pressing this case were…to gain a contractual undertaking from Professor Figes not to use fraud, subterfuge or unlawful means to attack or damage us or our works in the future; and to require Professor Figes to circulate a formal apology and retraction to all the recipients of his email of 15 April.

Doesn’t that sound familiar? The denial … Read the rest

So. There was this widow in Afghanistan; she was 35, and pregnant. So, the Taliban decided the thing to do with her was first to imprison her for three days, then to whip her in public: to whip her two hundred times, in public, being pregnant and all, and a widow. And then to shoot her in the head. And then to dump her body somewhere.

Why? Well the Taliban said she’d committed adultery. The thing to do with a woman who has committed adultery is to whip her two hundred times in public, and then shoot her in the head.

The man, not so much. The man wasn’t punished. The man didn’t get so much as a … Read the rest

Sarah McKenzie points out that religion and atheism both need smart women.

Part of the problem, I think, stems from the brand of atheism that is dominant today. Many people, especially women, might find it intimidating or unappealing…Atheists must be prepared to actively defend their non-belief, a process that by definition will offend many believers.

While there is most definitely a place for this so-called “militant” atheism, it is little wonder that some women might find it off-putting. After all, girls are taught to be sensitive and emotional, to not cause trouble or be particularly forthright with their opinions.

Some girls are. I can’t say that I remember being taught that, and if anybody really did attempt to teach … Read the rest

Oh, sad – Gillian McKeith is in trouble for saying what her spa can do. The Advertising Authority thinks she might not quite be on firm ground here.

Scottish nutritionist Gillian McKeith is to be reported to the advertising authorities over claims that visitors to her new age health resort can be healed by mystic powers.

The Perth-born health guru has set up a Wellness Retreat in rural Spain, which boasts that its “amazing energy vortex” can help to heal and rejuvenate visitors as well as assist them in losing weight.

Yes – so? Maybe it can. Spain is a mystical kind of place, especially rural Spain, so maybe its energy vortices can do just that.

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