Gary Gutting is a philosopher of religion at Notre Dame, a Catholic university in the US; he writes for the New York Times philosophy blog The Stone. He has a long post saying what’s wrong with Dawkins’s arguments for the strong improbability of god. It’s worth reading because it’s more than just shouting or hand-waving or tone trolling or border disputing or last Thursdayism or science has nothing to say about the supernatural-ism. That’s not to say it’s convincing, but at least there’s something there.

He addresses Dawkins’s argument (not unique to him, of course) that a god that created the universe would have to be even more complex than the universe, and thus would require explanation even … Read the rest

Oh come on. The brush Toby Young paints with is so broad that he’s lost his grip.

No other prominent feminist has spoken out about Ashtiani’s case, unless you include Yoko Ono who has signed the petition calling for her to be freed. We’ve heard nothing from Germaine Greer, nothing from Gloria Steinem, nothing from Jane Fonda, nothing from Naomi Wolf, nothing from Clare Short, nothing from Harriet Harmen.

Well that’s interesting, and in some cases reprehensible if true, but it’s hardly conclusive. That’s not a complete list of prominent feminists, to put it mildly; arguably it’s not even a list of feminists. Jane Fonda? Yoko Ono? They’re celebrities rather than feminists.

 Almost no one on the left, with

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