Why the human brain evolved. So that it could dream up pastimes like this:

A radical rabbi once linked to a plot to fire a missile at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, is hiding in Canada, Israeli police said Monday, announcing that he is wanted for his alleged role in a series of ghastly abuses of his followers’ children…[H]e has been described as the “spiritual mentor” of a group involved in the systematic abuse of children, allegedly using his status as a rabbi to convince a mother of eight that her children’s shortcomings could be beaten and burned out of them…Two of the eight children, aged 4 and 5, were hospitalized in serious condition two weeks ago after Mr. Chen allegedly

Blair doing God.

Issues of faith have clearly been consuming Mr Blair. Since leaving office, he has converted to Roman Catholicism. This requires much thought and reflection. After confessing serious sins, a convert must make the “Rite of Reception”, including saying that: “I believe and profess all that the Holy Catholic Church believes, teaches and proclaims to be revealed by God.”

And saying that requires thought and reflection? Wouldn’t you think it requires something more like the avoidance of thought, the abdication of thought? To say you believe all that the ‘Holy’ Catholic Church proclaims to be revealed by God is to say you believe something very all-encompassing, very broad, very dogmatic, and very evidence-free. What does that have … Read the rest

The BBC reports that what it calls the ‘next UN investigator into Israeli conduct in the occupied territories’ has defended his comparison of Israeli actions in Gaza to those of the Nazis. But a couple of paragraphs down it adds something that should be (but isn’t) decorated with little red warning flags.

Professor Falk is scheduled to take up his post for the UN Human Rights Council later in the year.

Ah – the UN Human Rights Council. How depressing it is that that sounds like a good thing and is in fact a very bad thing. The IHEU explains why.

By 2005, the Commission for Human Rights had become widely discredited…The Commission was abolished by vote of the

From David Littman’s article.

In an 18 February 1994 letter addressed to all delegates at the Commission on Human Rights, the Sudanese ambassador requested an immediate withdrawal of any reference – from the report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Sudan – in which certain inconsistences were indicated between the international human rights conventions and the provisions of Sudan’s Criminal Act of 1991. The ambassador alleged that the report “contained abusive, inconsiderate, blasphemous and offensive remarks about the Islamic faith.” A further Sudanese circular, entitled, “Attack on Islam,” claimed that portions of the report “represent a vicious attack on the religion of Islam and contain a call for the abolition of its Islamic Penal Legislation.”

The Rapporteur’s report indicated tensions … Read the rest

I mentioned that believers can resort to a quick and easy way with difficult questions that secular thinkers and atheists can’t, and that this lack is perhaps one reason students are always moral relativists. We can offer reasons for thinking X is better than Y, or for thinking Z is entirely unacceptable in any moral universe we can think of (executing gays for being gay, genocide, murdering women for talking to an unrelated man), but we can’t hand out anything as brisk and simple and conversation-stopping as ‘God said so.’ Believers* have a short cut which unbelievers don’t have. Believers have an answer that is both quick and easy, while unbelievers have to spend time and effort if … Read the rest