Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Oliver Kamm Rebukes Yale Over the Motoons

    ‘Yale sententiously describes itself as “an institution deeply committed to free expression”. That is nonsense.’

  • Nick Cohen on the Return of Deference

    Class warriors use the law of libel and a privacy law they have virtually invented to protect the wealthy from scrutiny.

  • Oliver Kamm on Voltaire’s Children

    ‘For cultures born of the Enlightenment, private religious belief is not so much an enemy as an irrelevance.’

  • Beware that extreme minority over there

    It goes on, the relentless othering of atheism.

    “The anti-evolutionist fearmongers have to link Darwin to every perceived evil from mankind,” says Kevin Padian, professor of paleontology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Berkeley. “The two kinds people who believe that religion and evolution can not coexist are extreme atheists and extreme religious fundamentalists. Everyone else doesn’t really have a problem. [A majority] of Americans believe that a belief in god is compatible with evolution.”

    Got that? Atheists who think religion is not epistemically compatible with science (which of course is the view that Padian strawmanned by substituting ‘who believe that religion and evolution can not coexist,’ which no one thinks) are extreme, and furthermore, they are not part of the majority of Americans. They must be very bad people indeed. It must be a good idea to hate them very hard. It must be necessary to say bad things about them at every opportunity so that everybody will hate them very hard. There is of course no need for the bad things said about them to be accurate. Good heavens no; there is no need for pedantic accuracy when there is a war on.

  • Steve Fuller Responds

    ‘Simon Underdown indulges in the pop-science fantasy that a clear line can be drawn between science and politics.’

  • Blaming Darwin for Hitler

    ‘Here is a book that leaves the reader wondering time and time again if the author is serious.’

  • Australia: Churches May Discriminate

    Victoria’s tweaked equal opportunity laws will still let churches exclude gays and single parents.

  • Seyran Ates: Human Rights Before Religion

    In Germany’s recent past, many people have forgotten that human rights must come before religious practices.

  • Ben Goldacre Sees an AIDS Denialist Film

    Do you give idiots a wider audience when you respond to them? Are they marginal and irrelevant?

  • Ben Goldacre on How Patents Affect Science

    Drug patents are a fascinating trade off between the benefit of incentive and the harm to innovation.

  • Johann Hari on ‘the Queen Mother’

    She would see her children for an hour a day and get them to chant: ‘We are not supposed to be normal.’

  • World Without Lies is a World Without Religion

    Gervais is refreshingly open about his atheism, which can be risky in a country as pious as the US.

  • The Repercussions for Muslim Women

    Decisions made by Sharia councils have no room in British law.

  • The attack in Calabar: Religious Extremism in Nigeria

    Around 11:30 am on Wednesday July 29 2009, a mob of about 200 persons from the Liberty Gospel Church invaded the Cultural Center in Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria. The Cultural Center was the venue of a public symposium on witchcraft and child rights organised by the Nigerian Humanist Movement and Stepping Stones Nigeria.

    Most of them arrived at the venue in buses wearing orange T-shirt while others donned plain clothes to hide their identity. As we were about to start, some of them stormed the conference hall stamping their feet on the ground and chanting slogans critical of the event and the organisers.

    I tried calming them down without success as they were determined to disrupt the event and ensure that the program was not held. The representative of the Commissioner of Police in Cross River State, Anthony Placid, was there and he tried calling them to order but they rebuffed him.

    At one point I walked up to one of the camera boys who was videoing the whole chaos and pandemonium and tried to inquire who authorized him to cover the event. I held the camera and around ten of them came and started dragging it with me. At some point they said the camera had broken and consequently all them pounced on me and started hitting me on the head and at my back. They snatched my bag containing my digital camera, conference papers and some cash. They destroyed my eyeglasses and made away with my mobile phone. The mob went away with some of our conference banners and some anti witchcraft T-shirts and caps which we gave to participants. Some friends who tried rescuing me from these idiots were also beaten.

    The representative of the Commissioner of Police called and had some police officers sent to the scene who brought the situation under control. The police dispersed the thugs and arrested one of the pastors, Jeffrey Bassey. In his statement at the police station, Bassey told the police that they were instructed by Evangelist Helen Ukpabio to disrupt the event. He was detained and was later released on bail.

    Incidentally the attack by the Liberty Gospel Church happened at a time the Nigerian police and the army were doing a battle with an Islamic sect called Boko Haram in Bornu State in Northen Nigeria. This fanatical group had declared a war against the state. They attacked and beheaded police officers and civilians in a violent campaign to foist their own version of Sharia law on the country.

    It is unfortunate that Helen Ukpabio has turned her Liberty Gospel Church into a fundamentalist sect in Calabar. Helen has been heavily criticized for fueling witchcraft accusation and persecution through her ministry. She claims to be a former witch and to have powers to exorcize witchcraft. She organizes witch testing, witch screening and witch deliverance sessions. Helen has written books and articles, produced films, like the End of the Wicked and published newsletters detailing the characteristics of witches and how a witch can be delivered.

    But Helen and her rag tag ministry called Liberty Gospel Church are not alone in this shameful scheme. Many pastors in Nigeria are in the business of witch exorcism for which they charge a lot of money. The activities of Helen, the Liberty Gospel Church and other unscrupulous Penticostal pastors are largely to be blamed for the tragic phenomenon of witch children. Witchcraft accusation of children has caused so many problems for families and communities across Nigeria. Today many states in Nigeria are grappling with the problem of street children. And many of the kids are those abandoned, driven to the streets or displaced due to witchcraft accusations. Some witch children have been tortured or killed by their own parents or family members, others by pastors during exorcism.

    The Nigerian authorities should take note of this and take action against this moron and her terrorist group before it is too late.The Nigerian government needs to immediately arrest Helen Ukpabio and investigate the activities of the so called Liberty Gospel Church. Tomorrow may be too late.

    Taken from a comment at Bartholomew’s Notes September 26 2009.

  • Humanists to Hold an Anti-witchcraft Conference in Uyo

    In October (21-22) humanists will be meeting in Uyo, the capital of Akwa Ibom State, for yet another conference on witch hunt and child abuse This is the second antiwitchcraft program to be organized by the Nigerian Humanist Movement (NHM) this year. In July, NHM cosponsored with Steppingstones Nigeria a public symposium in Calabar on Witchcraft and Child Rights. The October meeting, sponsored by the International Humanist and Ethical Union, will be held at the University of Uyo Commmunity Centre. The Governor of Akwa Ibom state, Chief Godswill Akpabio is expected to declare it open.

    The theme of the conference is Witch hunt, Christian Fundamentalism and Child Abuse. In the past 10 years, there has been an upsurge in witchcraft accusation, persecution and killing of children in Akwa Ibom State and in other states across Nigeria. Witchcraft is an age-old traditional belief and predates the advent of Christianity and Islam to Nigeria. People accused of witchcraft, in most cases women and the aged, are persecuted or suffer displacement or extrajudicial killing in communities across Nigeria.

    But today what is going on in Akwa Ibom state and most parts of the country is a wave of witch hunts driven, aided and abetted by Christian fundamentalism. Pastors brand innocent children witches and wizards or force them to confess to be so. Children alleged to be witches are subjected to torture and inhuman and degrading treatment in the name of exorcism. Churches incite parents and family members to abuse, beat, kill or abandon innocent kids accused of witchcraft. Many children alleged to be witches have been chained, starved, beaten or lynched. Unfortunately the response of the government, including the police authorities, has been slow and inadequate. This is mainly because local officials and security agents believe in witchcraft and are afraid of witches and wizards.

    This conference is organised to provide a humanist response to the problem of witch hunt and Christian fundamentalism in Akwa Ibom and in Nigeria at large. The organisers are putting in place adequate security arrangements for our guests and participants – particularly in the light of the attack in Calabar by Christian fanatics from the Liberty Gospel Church.

  • Well hello fossil!

    One reason science is epistemically incomatible with religion is the fact that in science it is not legitimate to form strong affirmative beliefs when the evidence is missing or thin. You see this over and over again reading Why Evolution is True – it’s full of ‘we don’t know the answer to this,’ ‘the evidence is not clear about that,’ ‘thirty years ago we had no idea but now the evidence is abundant’ – you get a sense of how cumulative it all is and how gaps remain gaps pending better evidence.

    Religion is entirely unlike that – and that’s not a leap, not a worldview, not metaphysics; it’s epistemology. It’s ‘how do you know that?’

    Some examples from WEIT –

    But if feathers didn’t arise as adaptations for flying, what on earth were they for? Again, we don’t know. [two possibilities]…And what feathers evolved from is even more mysterious. The best guess is that they derive from the same cells that gave rise to reptilian scales, but not everyone agrees. [p 46]

    We expect to find, in the genomes of many species, silence, or ‘dead’ genes: genes that were once useful but are no longer intact or expressed. In other words, there should be vestigial genes…Thirty years ago we couldn’t test this prediction because we had no way to read the DNA code. Now, however, it’s quite easy to sequence the complete genome of species…[p 67]

    Now, we’re not absolutely sure why some species retain much of their evolutionary history during development. [p78]

    One more, on page 44, goes like this:

    All these nonflying feathered dinosaur fossils date between 135 and 110 million years ago — later than the 145-million-year old Archaeopteryx. That means that they could not be Archaeopteryx’s direct ancestors, but they could have been its cousins. Feathered dinosaurs probably continued to exist after one of their kin gave rise to birds. We should, then, be able to find even older feathered dinosaurs that were the ancestors of Archaeopteryx. The problem is that feathers are preserved only in special sediments — the fine-grained silt of quiet environments like lake beds or lagoons. And these conditions are very rare. But we can make another testable evolutionary prediction: someday we’ll find fossils of feathered dinosaurs that are older than Archaeopteryx.

    And what do you know!

    Beats prophesy any day.

  • Fossils Fulfill an Evolutionary Prediction

    ‘Feathered dinosaurs probably continued to exist after one of their kin gave rise to birds’ – and sure enough!

  • Feathered Fossil Older Than Archaeopteryx Found

    The new fossils, from two separate locations, are about 10 million years older than Archaeopteryx.

  • Girl’s Refusal to Be Child Bride Inspires India

    She refused to be married off and stayed in school instead; now other girls in the village are doing the same.

  • Simon Schama on Ahmadinejad

    Not the least repellent aspect of his reiteration that the Holocaust was a lie, was the muffled response.