Butterflies and Wheels » Ophelia Benson

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We’re here

Oct 21st, 2008 12:38 pm | By Ophelia Benson

Ron Aronson points out that atheists and secularists get undercounted in the US.

Surveys regularly receive front-page coverage for reporting, as the 2008 Pew U.S. Religious Landscape Survey did, that nearly all Americans believe in God. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life concluded that 92% of Americans are believers and that only 5% of Americans don’t believe in God…But something is wrong with this picture. It erases vast numbers of Americans…It encourages the sense that there are two kinds of Americans, the overwhelming majority who believe and belong, and those few do not believe, and are outsiders. But the conventional wisdom that nearly all Americans believe in God is wrong.

A senior fellow at Pew says the … Read the rest

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Saudi: Executions Target Foreign Nationals

Oct 21st, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia Benson

Saudi executed at least 158 in 2007; almost half were foreign nationals from poor and developing countries.… Read the rest

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Poverty and the Death Penalty in Nigeria

Oct 21st, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia Benson

‘Nigeria: Waiting for the Hangman’ says those sentenced to death are poor; most confessed under torture.… Read the rest

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Humanitarian Workers are Targeted

Oct 21st, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia Benson

Deliberately killing humanitarian workers is an outrage which we don’t denounce enough.… Read the rest

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UN Engineer Killed in Somalia

Oct 21st, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia Benson

Intelligence sources say the assassination of aid workers by trained killers has become the norm.… Read the rest

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Charity Worker Killed in Afghanistan

Oct 21st, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia Benson

Taleban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told AFP that they killed Gayle Williams.… Read the rest

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Kambaksh Death Sentence Commuted

Oct 21st, 2008 | Filed by Ophelia Benson

To 20 years in prison for downloading material from the internet on women’s rights in Islam.… Read the rest

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The fact that nearly half of all Americans reject evolution is depressing enough, but the opinions of college graduates may cause despair. One in three holders of bachelor’s and postgraduate degrees deny that “Darwin’s theory of evolution [is] proved by fossil evidence.” Even more dismal, only about one-third of U.S. college graduates and postgraduates admit to a “belief in evolution”—while about sixty percent accept Creationism or its Trojan Horse, Intelligent Design.[1] In over thirty countries, including every other advanced society, a higher percentage of the general population accepts evolution: in pious Ireland, for example, the number accepting evolution is sixty percent higher than in the U.S.! Americans are just as likely to choose to believe in ghosts and UFOs as … Read the rest

Posted in Articles

The right to be offended

Oct 20th, 2008 4:21 pm | By Ophelia Benson

Shelina Zahra Janmohamed has read The Jewel of Medina.

Muslims hold Muhammad, Aisha and other religious figures very close to their hearts, dearer to them than their own parents, and just as much to be respected, protected and defended.

What other religious figures? And how many of them? And in any case how very peculiar to hold long-dead people dearer than one’s parents, and also to consider them to need to be respected, protected and defended. They’re dead – they don’t need to be respected, protected and defended, and furthermore, as ‘religious figures,’ they shouldn’t be respected, protected and defended as a matter of right and duty; they should be closely watched, questioned, doubted, and if necessary disobeyed. This … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 19 comments