Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Ukpabio replies

    “Mark Oppenheimer what about your wife? What is she hunting after? She hunts after monkeys and dogs, no wonder she has only one child.”

  • Mark Oppenheimer meets Helen Ukpabio

    Ukpabio sued Igwe, Foxcroft and others, saying state law against accusing children of witchcraft infringes on her religious freedom.

  • NY Times profiles Helen Ukpabio

    The Nigerian Pentecostal minister at the centre of the child-witchcraft hysteria in Akwa Ibom State.

  • A shabby pretext

    Inayat Bunglawala is pondering (in a rather inconclusive and unproductive way, which I suppose in his case is probably just as well) the tensions between religious freedom and other kinds of freedom, religious rights and other kinds of rights. One thing he mentions needs more second-guessing than it usually gets.

    Professor Roger Trigg kicked off last night’s discussion by pointing out that Article 9 of the European convention on human rights guarantees that “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to … manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.” However, Professor Trigg argued that, in reality, a number of recent cases showed that this religious freedom was being trumped by other human rights.

    He cited the case of a registrar in the London borough of Islington who had objections to conducting civil partnership ceremonies. The registrar happened to be a Christian and “could not reconcile her faith with taking an active part in enabling same sex unions to be formed”. This was a case where the freedom to manifest one’s religious beliefs in practice appeared to come into direct conflict with the right not to be discriminated against due to one’s sexual orientation.

    Here’s what I think needs closer examination: in what sense is it really part of the registrar’s religious beliefs that gay people shouldn’t get married?

    Is that something Jesus is quoted as saying? Is it a central Christian belief? Is it a religious belief at all?

    Not that I know of. As far as I know, it’s just a traditional entrenched customary belief – a “Yuk” belief, to borrow from Leon Kass and Jonathan Haidt. It doesn’t really have any strictly religious content. Yet it gets called a religious belief. Why? Partly to make it seem more respectable, and partly precisely to take advantage of the rights that Bunglawala mentions. A mere stupid bit of bigoted dislike doesn’t deserve or get the dignity of a right, but if you say it’s a religious belief – oh well that’s different. Only it isn’t. But a lot of people say it is. It’s mostly a con, and should be treated as such.

  • Zimbabwe: gay activists released after alleged torture

    They had a letter in their office from former San Francisco mayor criticising Mugabe’s opposition to homosexuality.

  • Malawi: Ban Ki-moon urges change to laws

    38 out of 53 African countries criminalise consensual gay sex; in some it’s a capital crime.

  • Malawi pardons jailed gay couple

    Their lawyers say the two men are likely to be freed by Monday.

  • Archbish of Cant tries to stamp out dissent

    Dissent continues to ignore archbish.

  • Violence in Latin America’s cities

    Fear of street harassment prevents women from freely moving around and hinders their studies, work or recreation.

  • An exciting breakthrough

    Okay this is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in awhile. On Facebook at least. Salman Rushdie learned from a Facebook friend how to find various “interesting characters” to “add to one’s ✍ writing.” So now he gets to spark up his famously dull prose with little pointing hands ☛, umbrellas ☂, telephones, and other tiny symbols. One wag remarked

    oooh! can’t wait for
    ☀☃✗✈✖☺☆by Salman Rushdie – Published by Random House

    Hahahahahahaha.

  • Aceh: Islamic cops forcing women to wear long skirts

    No jeans allowed; women wearing jeans are arrested, forced to put on long skirt and forfeit their jeans.

  • In philosophy ‘certainty’ has a specific meaning

    Jim at Apple Eaters sees Pessin’s ‘paradox’ the way I do.

    Man, there is so much sloppiness here that I want to bite something. First, in philosophy “certainty” has a specific meaning, and it means that there is no doubt. If that’s not what Pessin has in mind, he should define the term. The point there is that, even if I recognize that I am fallible and capable of mistakes, I likely am not certain that I have made some mistake in my reasoning. Were that the case, I would be going over that reasoning carefully to find the error. Rather, I just see that it is possible that I made a mistake, but that is nothing like having certainty about it.

    Just what I say. If he doesn’t really mean ‘certain’ then he should say so – he shouldn’t pretend he means ‘certain’ in order to pretend there’s a paradox but then treat the certainty as actually just a possibility. That’s [Jon Stewartian high-pitched squeal] cheating.

    Accepting contradictions is not a way to accomplish anything except confusion. Being sloppy in your definitions only spreads confusion. Confusion is not peace. In fact, confusion is often the origin of conflict. Pessin is the kind of philosopher who gives the rest of us a bad name.

    Just what I say.

  • Kristof on the excommunicated nun

    Priests who rape children are not excommunicated, but a nun who assents to an abortion to save the woman’s life is.

  • House votes to allow repeal of ‘don’t ask don’t tell’

    The provision would allow military commanders to repeal the ban.

  • Apple Eaters on Pessin on certainty

    ‘In philosophy “certainty” has a specific meaning, and it means that there is no doubt.’

  • Rust Belt Philos on life-saving abortion and ‘trust’

    Funny how it’s only in the case of abortion that we have to trust that God has a plan.

  • C and not-C

    And then there is this fella Andrew Pessin, who says you can be certain and also uncertain and that way all shall win, all shall have prizes. You do it using the Paradox of the Preface.

    Imagine an author writing something like this as a preface to her work:

    I am certain, of each and every sentence in this work, that it is true, on the basis of various considerations including the careful arguments and use of evidence which led me to it. And yet I recognize that I am a fallible human being, likely to have made some error(s) in the course of this long work. Thus I am also quite certain that I have made some such error somewhere, even if I cannot say where.

    I could buy that if he had made it “I am sure, of each and every sentence” and so on. I could buy it if he had made it I am convinced, or I strongly believe, or I really really think. But by making it “I am certain” he turns the whole thing into gibberish. If you are already quite certain that you have made a mistake somewhere, then you can’t also be certain that you haven’t – you can’t be certain that every sentence is true.

    Maybe he meant a kind of colloquial version of ‘certain’ which is like the colloquial version of ‘literal’ in that it doesn’t mean what the word means. I have noticed that a lot of people use the word to refer to claims that they can’t possibly be certain of, and wondered if they actually think it is an exact synonym of ‘sure’ or ‘convinced.’ But if he did…that’s kind of stupid, frankly, since the whole piece depends on that word, and he used it sloppily. You can’t be certain that you have made no mistakes and at the same time certain that you have made a mistake.
    Anyway, I avoid this kind of tangle by simply never being certain or even sure that I have made no mistakes.

  • The usual stupid way of time and the masses

    And while I’m at it, allow me to pause over Grayling’s comment, too.

    An equally bad thing about the Dalai Lama’s article is that he calls Buddhism a religion‚ and indeed in the superstitious demon-ridden polytheistic Tibetan version of it that he leads, that is what it is. But original Buddhism is a philosophy, without gods or supernatural beings—all such explicitly rejected by Siddhartha Gautama in offering a quietist ethical teaching; but he has of course been subjected to the Brian’s Sandal phenomenon in the usual stupid way of time and the masses.

    Sad, isn’t it. Time and the masses can’t leave a very good and interesting ethical teaching alone, no, they have to stuff superstition and demons into it, to make it more exciting and colorful and photogenic and thrilling. They have to sex it up, in short. But wouldn’t it be nice if time and the masses could learn to sex things up in other, better ways – with sex, perhaps, or lashings of bright color and embroidery and tinkling bells, or food, or music. Demons are fine for stories, but you don’t want to go taking them seriously.

  • Secrets of the Dalai Lama

    Here’s a useful item lifted from a comment on Jerry Coyne’s post on Anthony Grayling on the Dalai Lama. The comment is by Michael Kingsford Gray, who has been making sweeping and wrong generalizations about philosophers at Jerry’s, but all due credit to him for the useful item:

    1) Who told a press conference in 1997 that men to men sex and woman to woman sex is sexual misconduct?
    The Pope, or the Dalai Lama?

    2) Who told a Swiss magazine in 2001, that sexual organs were created for the reproduction of the male element and the female element, and anything that deviates from this is not acceptable?
    The Pope, or the Dalai Lama?

    3) An anti-abortion lobby group called “Consistent life” was given a huge boost after on of the world’s most prominent religious leaders offered his endorsement?
    The Pope, or the Dalai Lama?

    4) Who published a collection of religious teachings declaring that masturbation is forbidden?
    The Pope, or the Dalai Lama?

    5) Who declared that oral sex is not acceptable, even between a husband and wife?
    The Pope, or the Dalai Lama?

    6) Who published a collection of religious teachings in 1996 declaring that anal sex is not acceptable, even between a husband and wife?
    The Pope, or the Dalai Lama?

    7) Who said that having sex during the day is sexual misconduct?
    The Pope, or the Dalai Lama?

    Of course, every single answer is: The Dalai Lama.
    That usually throw these happy-go-lucky Buddhist wanna be for a six!
    (Especially the ban on daytime sex.
    The Pope is far more liberal on many of these issues)

    _________________
    References:
    1. San Francisco Chronicle, 11 June 1997
    2. Dimanche magazine, Jan 2001
    3. Reuters, 22 Jan 2001
    4, 5, 6 & 7. “Beyond Dogma (The challenge of the modern world)” by the Dalai Lama (1996)**

  • Nigel Warburton on Mohammed and the fundamentalists

    The scale of the internet censorship imposed in Pakistan is startling, and not just to “free speech fundamentalists.”