Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Zakir Naik to headline Toronto conference

    In videos on YouTube, Naik advocates death to homosexuals and to Muslims who leave the faith.

  • Cue Twilight Zone music

    Remember Kees? I mean “Kees”? The troll who appeared in February-March 2009 pretending to be a naive observer who had just discovered moral relativism by watching a tv documentary about a South Pacific island where the men (prepare for a shock) ran everything?

    Who then revealed himself (by emailing a lot of commenters here to urge them to escape my dictatorship, and using a revealing email address) to be the same as one “Bernie Ranson” who had staged a similar extended charade at Talking Philosophy more than a year earlier, in January 2008?

    Remember him? (He claimed to be male, and I think that particular claim is true.)

    I’ve been reading some of his comments from those two encounters. They’re very interesting, in a way, though in a more usual way they’re utterly boring. They betray an odd and inexplicable (from a stranger) obsession with me. Obsession and hatred, of course – people don’t do this kind of thing out of friendship. He makes much of my putative lying and hypocrisy, my censorship and dominance, my evasiveness and general shiftiness – all this after days and days, and thousands of words, trying to argue him into reasonableness. All very odd. Remember?

    I was reading through his comments because I was reminded of him. I was reminded of him by a newish blog that made its debut a couple of months ago and has made a specialty of (cough) criticizing four bloggers in particular. I’m one of them; the others are far more illustrious than I am. The language and mood of this blog is very reminiscent of “Kees”/”Bernie Ranson” – though it could just be the language and mood that are common to all enterprises of this kind. Then again, I’m not familiar with enterprises of this kind, so I don’t know. It seems very eccentric, because it’s time-consuming without really being rewarding. B&W is time-consuming too, but it’s rewarding. A blog that does almost nothing but shout at four bloggers in increasingly obscene terms seems as unrewarding as it could be.

    This blog is anonymous of course. You may have seen another anonymous troll who turned up here on Monday. I was suspicious of it because it had just started a blog two days before it turned up; because the new blog sounded a good deal like the above-mentioned anonymous blog; because this troll seemed peculiarly interested in B&W and me for someone who appeared from nowhere. Within about three days the troll had done quite a few things to confirm my suspicions.

    I don’t know that any of this has anything to do with “Kees” and “Bernie Ranson” but I think it might. I think that, for one thing, because I find it hard to believe that there are all that many people who are weirdly obsessed with me. Why would there be? I’m a very small player, after all; why would guy after guy after guy after guy work up a foaming hatred of me? I know of a couple of others (non-anonymous) as it is; I think it’s far more likely that there’s one more rather than two or three or five more. Still – it’s a very busy blogger/troll, I must say. Full marks for industriousness!

  • Leo Igwe on caste in Igboland, Nigeria

    Nwadiala regard themselves as people of ‘pure blood’ and Osu as people of ‘impure blood’.

  • London council drops prayer for poetry

    Telegraph claims, “The vast majority of councils choose to start meetings with Christian Prayers.”

  • Ayala says you can have it all

    “If humans came about by evolution, then the Bible isn’t wrong when it says that humans were created in the image of God.”

  • Clumsy cover-up in Cherie Blair case

    The Office for Judicial Complaints sent its letter to the NSS second class.

  • Mixed messages on Cherie Blair complaint

    A statement suggested she had been cleared but a private letter to the NSS said the complaint was partly upheld.

  • The AAAS “Dialogue on Science and Religion”

    Some of the scientists said unfriendly things about “the new atheists” – surprise surprise.

  • The Irish to the bishops

    The poor Irish bishops aren’t getting the deference they’re used to.

    But Mark Kelly, director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), dismissed the bishops’ call. “The ICCL seriously doubts that the Irish Catholic bishops retain sufficient moral authority to pontificate on the Civil Partnership Bill,” he said.

    And the ICCL isn’t the only one.

    The Union of Students in Ireland said it was extremely disappointed the bishops were resisting equality for same sex couples. President Peter Mannion said: “While USI respects the viewpoint of the Catholic Church we do not agree with it. Objecting to the implementation of equal rights for Irish citizens may be seen as an absence of moral conscience.”

    Omigod he said the bishops lacked a moral conscience! That’s gotta sting.

    Aengus O Snodaigh, Sinn Fein justice spokesman, said he rejected bishops trying to pressurise politicians. “The Catholic bishops’ time would be better spent getting their own house in order rather than seeking to interfere in the work of the Oireachtas.”

    Pow! Boom!

    And about time too.

  • Michael De Dora on science and religion

    The “appeal to common practice” is a fallacy.

  • Another mystery for Karen Armstrong

    Theocracy in Israel.

    Parents of European, or Ashkenazi, origin do not want their daughters to be educated in the same classroom as schoolgirls of Middle Eastern and North African descent, or Sephardim, claiming that they are not as religious…

    Batting off accusations of racism, the parents, who live in the West Bank settler community of Immanuel, have argued that their wish to separate their children is motivated only by religious and cultural differences between the different Jewish communities.

    “The Sephardic Jews are less observant, they dress differently,” said Carter Schwartz, a 31-year-old protester with an American accent. “It’s like sending kids of a totally different learning level to Harvard, and the government forces [Harvard] to take them in.”

    And thus we see how religion makes people nicer and more compassionate.

    Dressed in their traditional black garb and wide-rimmed hats, bearded marchers held aloft banners saying “God will rule for all eternity”, a reference to the supremacy of religious interests over secular law, and “High Court against the people”.

    Right, and that’s why people like that are so terrifying.

    The Haredi Jews are seen as an economic drain on society, with many of the men choosing years of subsidised religious studies over paid employment. A soaring birth rate has led to predictions that they could form a majority of Jerusalem’s half-million population in a decade.

    In recent months, they have proved a disruptive presence, littering Jerusalem with rubbish and soiled nappies to protest against a new parking lot that would encourage more traffic on the Sabbath and clashing with police to prevent the exhumation of ancient human remains that they claim are Jewish to make way for a new emergency hospital wing.

    Right, and that’s why people like that are such a pain in the ass.

  • Women’s rights and “peace” in Afghanistan

    We are told that violations of women’s rights are part of someone else’s culture, and that we have no business interfering.

  • Ben Goldacre on the Independent on bad science

    A worrying resistance to the idea that anyone should dare to engage in legitimate criticism.

  • If the earth quakes, blame the scientists

    Italian seismologists are now being indicted and investigated for manslaughter, because they failed to shout “earthquake!”

  • Matt Ridley on rational optimism

    At some point in human history, ideas began to meet and mate, to have sex with each other.

  • Do you care if what you believe is true or not?

    Greta Christina wonders about people who explicitly say they don’t care whether the things they believe are true.

  • George Pitcher “leaves” the Telegraph

    Did he jump, or was he pushed? Were his attacks on Evan Harris too much even for the Telegraph?

  • London: rally against sharia Sunday

    If you’re in London, or say maybe Dorking, or St Albans, or High Wycombe, or what the hell, Manchester, or Bristol, or Norwich, on Sunday, get yourself to Hyde Park for the rally against sharia and religious laws in the UK.

    Swell the crowd. Bring a friend; bring your dog; bring an inflatable doll. Show the New Statesman that sharia is not wanted.

    Make up the numbers. Tell your friends. Turn up.

  • New report on sharia in Britain

    Sharia courts work against rather than for equality, and are incompatible with human rights.

  • Ireland: rights groups tell bishops where to go

    ICCL seriously doubts that the Irish Catholic bishops retain sufficient moral authority to pontificate on the Civil Partnership Bill.