Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Oliver Kamm on Sholto and sharia

    Byrnes’s views are reactionary and illiberal, and illustrate a fundamental difference of values within the Left.

  • Madeleine Bunting is excited about something

    Big Ideas, insights, intriguing, failed, soul-searching, progressive, Enlightenment, Eurocentrism, Islam, the west, progress, optimism.

  • A schism between the nice people and the demons

    Another columnist does a bang-up job of describing explicit atheists in such a way that everyone will take care to hate them.

    the split also underscores a serious and widening schism in the broader community of non-believers, between those who want civil engagement with people of faith, and even cooperation where possible, and atheist “fundamentalists” (as Kurtz and the old guard call them) — true believers in godlessness who belittle religion and religious people at every turn, and yet by doing so can wind up sounding like the very enemy they are trying to defeat.

    That’s wrong. It’s false. It’s inaccurate. We are not “fundamentalists” in any meaningful sense, we do not belittle religion and religious people at every turn, some of us don’t belittle religious people at all, and we don’t sound at all like “the enemy.” And notice how sweetly reasonable the other side of this “schism” is made to sound – all they want is civil engagement with people of faith, and who could say boo to that?

    So, once again, we are given an unsubtle reminder that we are Other and unacceptable and to be maligned.

    “Although we” [quoting Paul Kurtz] “are skeptical of religion, we nonetheless have a positive statement to make. We want to work with religious people solving our planetary problems. This represents a basic philosophical difference.”

    No it doesn’t. Explicit atheists have sworn no oath of refusal to work with religious people solving our planetary problems. There is no basic philosophical difference about that. We don’t walk around with “Explicit Atheist” labels on our clothes, so there is no barrier to our working with anyone to solve our planetary problems. It’s a non-issue, one that’s been worked up to make explicit atheists look stupid and evil.

    The wider debate among secularists over whether to engage religious believers, or whether snark and sneer are the best ways to defeat faith and rally unbelievers to atheism, seems destined to continue.

    Same thing. Exaggerated at best. Snark and sneer is not all we do. David Gibson is himself uncivil and inaccurate. Bad journalist. No cookie.

  • Equality begins at home

    They get it in Sweden, it appears.

    “I always thought if we made it easier for women to work, families would eventually choose a more equal division of parental leave by themselves,” said [former deputy PM Bengt] Westerberg. “But I gradually became convinced that there wasn’t all that much choice.”

    Sweden, he said, faced a vicious circle. Women continued to take parental leave not just for tradition’s sake but because their pay was often lower, thus perpetuating pay differences. Companies, meanwhile, made clear to men that staying home with baby was not compatible with a career.

    “Society is a mirror of the family,” Mr. Westerberg said. “The only way to achieve equality in society is to achieve equality in the home. Getting fathers to share the parental leave is an essential part of that.”

    Sholto Byrnes please note. The family isn’t some wholly private realm that has no effect on the broader society, for good or ill. Family law is not something that can be shrugged off as a minor matter that is not worth worrying about.

  • One version of Center for Inquiry ‘schism’

    With plenty of rude language for overt atheists and tender language for the people who hate them.

  • Gender equality in Sweden

    ‘Society is a mirror of the family. The only way to achieve equality in society is to achieve equality in the home.’

  • Steven Pinker on moral panics over new media

    Media critics write as if the brain takes on the qualities of whatever it consumes.

  • Ben Goldacre on the superstition effect

    Confidence tends to improve performance.

  • Falling at the first post

    Mary Midgley begins badly.

    Science really isn’t connected to the rest of life half as straightforwardly as one might wish. For instance, Isaac Newton noted gladly that his theory of gravitation gave a scientific proof of God’s existence. Today’s anti-god warriors, by contrast, declare that Darwin’s evolutionary theory gives a scientific disproof of that existence and use this reasoning, quite as confidently as Newton used his, to convert the public.

    No they don’t. So why should we pay any attention to the rest of what she says? If she can’t even get the first paragraph right, why trust her?

    No reason, so I won’t bother discussing the rest of what she says, which is just sentimental gesturing. But it’s interesting that people keep cranking this kind of thing out, without even bothering to improve it. God is special, God is nice, today’s anti-god warriors are nasty. For this Comment is Free needs a philosopher?

  • Bangladesh: paper allowed to resume publishing

    But the editor of the opposition daily is still in jail, charged with sedition.

  • A colour never before seen?

    What would it be like to see a really new colour?

  • Mary Midgley on evolution and “anti-god warriors”

    A philosopher should not start with a strawman.

  • If the BP disaster had happened in the Channel

    We would not be hearing about “anti-British rhetoric.”

  • You call that a response?

    Sholto Byrnes has heeded all the comments on his sharia post and has posted a thoughtful well-reasoned explanation of his meaning.

    No he hasn’t, of course he hasn’t, I’m making it up. I’m saying what he should have done instead of what he did do. What he did do is complain about comments at Harry’s Place – comments, not the post – and then offer more useless generalities and then accuse the people who disagree with him, which is almost everyone who has said anything about him, of wanting a “bloody and cataclysmic clash of civilisations.” That’s it. No particulars of where there actually is the good benign justice-seeking kind of sharia, or of how that differs from secular law, or of how he responds to the urgent concerns of women who don’t want to wave a forlorn bye-bye to their rights. No, just a snicker, and a whine, and a smear.

    [T]he majority of commenters prove my point by focusing on the most extreme forms of sharia — which as I have said, many Muslims feel to be perversions — and concluding that that’s all it is. They don’t seem to be remotely open to the possibility that it could vary in any way.

    As I none too gently pointed out, that’s because he hasn’t bothered to say anything about some “less extreme” form of sharia – he’s used the words, but he hasn’t told us where we can look to examine any.

    He needs to explain why anyone needs sharia instead of secular law to begin with. He needs to explain what the problems are with secular law that theocratic law would fix. He hasn’t so much as made a pass at doing that – he seems to be simply assuming it. But it’s far from self-evident.

    I find his flippancy and indifference highly offensive – “offensive” is for once the right word. He can’t be bothered to defend his own claims, he can’t be bothered to engage with what his critics say, he just shrugs and says he has to go have his weekend now.

    This is no time to play Bertie Wooster.

  • Press conference on the kidnapping and assassination of journalist Sardasht Osman

    Press conference on the kidnapping and assassination of journalist Sardasht Osman in Iraqi Kurdistan
    6.00-6.40pm, Tuesday 15 June
    Abrar Foundation, 45 Crawford Place, W1H 4LP
    (Nearest Tube: Edgware Road)
    Political activists, academics and writers from Iraqi Kurdistan are holding a press conference to expose the kidnapping and murder of Sardasht Osman and demand justice.
    Sardasht Osman, 23, was a journalist and final year university student when he was abducted on 4 May in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Erbil. His body was found on 6 May in the city of Mosul. Sardasht had written articles criticising the Kurdish government, particularly the Barzani family.
    This press conference will address violations against freedom of expression and political activism, and attacks on journalists and critical voices. We will address the media in three languages – English, Kurdish and Arabic.
    Speakers:
    Dr. Kamal Mirawdeli: political personality and writer
    Houzan Mahmoud: political activist
    Dashti Jamal: president of International Federation of Iraqi Refugees
    Khalil Karda: Writer
    For further information, contact Houzan Mahmoud and Peshawa Majid
    Tel: 07534264481 & 07739337778See More

  • Press conditions deteriorate in Iraqi Kurdistan

    Sardasht Osman, 23, a reporter for the opposition semi-monthly Ashtiname, was found shot to death in the city of Mosul on May 6.

  • Sholto Byrnes replies to critics

    By ignoring everything they said.

  • Right-wing loonies fume at “Britain-bashing”

    They’ll be demanding Obama’s birth certificate next.

  • “Has US bloodlust for BP gone too far?”

    If a US corporation destroyed all of Sussex, the British would not say a word. Right?

  • “Is Obama being anti-British?”

    Is that a stupid question?