Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Heidegger as Nazi philosopher

    The seminars of 1933-5 show the outright transformation of Heidegger’s thought into a tool of Nazi indoctrination.

  • Worldwide trends in honor killings

    Honor killings are based on codes of morality often reinforced by fundamentalist religious dictates.

  • Underpinnings

    The Sydney Anglican diocese is pissed off because students who have the option are ditching classes in “scripture” to take ethics classes instead. The Sydney Anglican diocese seems to consider this some kind of violation of nature and of its property rights in the children of New South Wales.

    The controversial trial of secular ethics classes has ”decimated” Protestant scripture classes in the 10 NSW schools where it has been introduced as an alternative for non-religious children, with the classes losing about 47 per cent of enrolled students.

    The figure was calculated by the Sydney Anglican diocese, which is so concerned about the trial that it has created a fund-raising website to ”protect SRE” (special religious education). The website says the values underpinning ”Australia’s moral framework” are under threat…

    ”If we lose religious education, we risk losing true, fundamental ‘ethics’ that have underpinned Australia’s moral framework for hundreds of years,” the website says.

    Well, no; more likely, you “risk” losing false, misleading, often bad underpinnings and replacing them with better thinking. Australia’s moral framework for hundreds of years, by the way, has been as limited and often ruthless as anyone else’s; it stands shoulder to shoulder with the US in its not altogether praiseworthy treatment of its indigenous population. The Anglican church didn’t prevent that, after all, so why should anyone believe it has some pipeline to better “underpinnings”?

  • Palin thinks US law should be based on bible

    Cites 10 commandments, which mandate monotheism, sabbath, methods of swearing, iconoclasm.

  • Prayers and god ruled ok at inaugurations

    Because they’re longstanding traditions therefore they are constitutional, federal appeals court rules.

  • Scripture classes “lose” half of students to ethics

    Because of course the scripture classes owned the students to begin with.

  • Your petrodollars at work

    A group of lawyers in Egypt who call themselves (with horrible sarcasm) “the Association of Lawyers Without Restrictions” have sued a bunch of people for publishing or just somehow vaguely having something or maybe nothing to do with publishing The Thousand and One Nights,

    claiming that the book “offends public decency.” Hisba cases allow citizens to prosecute individuals who they deem to have insulted Islam…

    They are demanding those responsible for the publication be brought to trial under Article 178 of the Penal Code, which if convicted is punishable by imprisonment for a term of two years and a fine for everyone that publishes any prints or pictures that “offends the public decency.”

    I heard an Egyptian guy talking to the World Service about this a couple of days ago, disgustedly saying that this is just Wahhabism and nothing to do with Egypt or the way Islam is understood there.

    Wahhabism sucks.

  • Hesba law lets fanatics sue intellectuals

    There are many in Egypt who regard this type of legal vigilantism as ludicrous.

  • Egypt: call to ban Thousand and One Nights

    A direct result of opening Egypt to the fundamentalist winds of Wahhabi Salafism.

  • Saudi photo of women with naked faces shock

    Titanic struggle between reactionaries and lunatics plays out in Wahhabi kingdom.

  • The pastor and the rent boy

    Baptist minister George Rekers co-founded influential right-wing Family Research Council, hired male prostitute to “carry heavy baggage.”

  • The document trail: William Levada

    The New York Times gives 81 pages of primary docs.

  • NY Times looks at Cardinal Levada’s record

    Complicated by the fact that his congregation’s decisions are shrouded in confidentiality rules.

  • It’s national prayerbook day

    So you’ve spent the day praying, right? Well not all of you of course, but those of you who are loyal citizens of the United States…and hey, why not, also those of you who want to show solidarity with devout Americans. No doubt there are some of you bending the knee or head-butting the floor in Swansea and Cracow, Lagos and Kinshasa, Bombay and Karachi, Lima and Santiago, Kyoto and Shanghai, just for the sake of showing that state-sponsored prayer must be supported by the united peoples of the world. Yes?

    Okay, I’ll stop now. I’ll just offer a thought from Americans United for Separation of Church and State:

    It’s obvious that Americans don’t need a government-sponsored day to pray. But this day has never really even been about prayer or the freedom to pray or not.

    Instead, the NDP has served as another opportunity for the Religious Right to exert its influence on our government and laws and send a not-so-subtle message that those who don’t agree with the Religious Right on theology are second-class citizens.

    Go, sing a song, read a poem, watch a hummingbird, or just scratch your bum and eat a chocolate bar.

  • Religious Right’s Public Piety Pageant Goes On

    But this year Shirley and James Dobson were not invited to the White House.

  • Jesus and Mo are sad about bigots

    Nobody seems to care what they think any more!

  • Behzti is no longer taboo

    Of course that doesn’t mean you can actually see it performed.

  • Philippa Stroud’s lawyers warn media

    Stroud denies belief that homosexuality is an illness, refuses comment on belief that it is demonic possession.

  • Ayala receives Templeton Prize in palace ceremony

    Ma Teresa, Billy Graham, not in opposition, often complementary, two windows, same world, different views.

  • Polygamy in France

    It can be a nice little earner for the men.