The only Americans who do the heavy lifting on issues of Muslim women’s rights are feminists.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Postmodernismen raserar vårt kunskapsarv 
Jun 5th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
It sounds better in Swedish.… Read the rest
Islam’s Voltaire: A Life of Aayan Hirsi Ali
Jun 5th, 2007 | By Max DunbarOne midnight in July 1992, a twenty-two year old Somalian Muslim known as Ayaan Hirsi Magan arrived in Holland fleeing an arranged marriage. Fourteen years later, Hirsi Ali was known as an outspoken Dutch MP and writer with strong views on religion and the role of women under Islamic law. With the director Theo Van Gogh she made a film, Submission, which took the form of a series of dialogues between Allah and female Muslims.
… Read the restThere is the woman who is flogged for committing adultery; another who is given in marriage to a man she loathes; another who is beaten by her husband on a regular basis; and another who is shunned by her father when he learns that
Faith is hutchputch therefore so is atheism
Jun 5th, 2007 10:13 am | By Ophelia BensonIt can be interesting to see the effect that a need to protect cherished beliefs can have on the health of a person’s thought processes. That need has a tendency to warp and distort the ability to 1) think clearly and 2) talk or write in a straightforward way.
Hitchens distances himself from the idea that he is a form of believer, claiming that his views are not beliefs like those of religious people but are based on reason. Thereby he privileges atheism and calls the result secular neutrality.
Note the sly implication that Hitchens is doing something illegitimate and probably elitist by ‘privileging’ non-theism. Note the faint implication of paranoia if not cowardice – Hitchens ‘distances himself’ from the … Read the rest
Not Bob Jones University but Oxford
Jun 4th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
College head thinks 95% of us will burn in hell; deputy believes it’s wrong for women to teach men.… Read the rest
Female Newsreaders Protest Threat
Jun 4th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Shameless women claim ability to dress themselves without help.… Read the rest
Islamist Group Offers to Behead Women
Jun 4th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Swords of Truth ‘will cut throats, from vein to vein, if needed to protect the spirit and morals of this nation.’… Read the rest
You Can See Why Atheists Snigger
Jun 4th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The first taste of their own rhetorical medicine reduces the godly to frothing rage.… Read the rest
Lee Smolin on the Other Einstein
Jun 4th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Not the one in Isaacson’s cozy patronizing mythology.… Read the rest
Another Bishop Backs Controls on Women
Jun 4th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
New bill will call for mandatory counselling and a seven day wait before any abortion.… Read the rest
Cardinals, Back Off
Jun 4th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The ferocity of the clerics’ language is important.… Read the rest
David Thompson Poses a Key Question
Jun 4th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Is it possible to oppose the oppression of women without challenging specific religious laws?… Read the rest
Nigel Warburton Interviews Michael Clark
Jun 2nd, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
What a paradox is and why philosophers should be interested in them.… Read the rest
Mark Perakh Reviews Stephen Barr
Jun 2nd, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Good physics, bad arguments that science is ‘the friend of faith.’… Read the rest
What Senator Brownback ‘Thinks’ on Evolution
Jun 2nd, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘Faith seeks to purify reason so that we might be able to see more clearly, not less.’… Read the rest
Iran Promoting Temporary ‘Marriages’
Jun 2nd, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
There are already tens of thousands of children from temporary marriages whose fathers deny them.… Read the rest
Why the Boycott is Stupid
Jun 2nd, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The academy is the arena for debate; the sharper that is, the more likely that truth is what will emerge.… Read the rest
What we can’t know
Jun 2nd, 2007 11:20 am | By Ophelia BensonAbout the theist four-step again – I’ve been pondering the fact that 2) and 4) are a tricky combination. What would it even mean to have reliable knowledge that ‘God’ is ‘good’? It’s not really even possible to know that. It’s possible to believe it in a sense, but not to know it.
It’s possible to imagine having reliable knowledge that God exists – and that God is all-powerful and all-knowing, and that it wants us to do certain things and not others. But that it is good? No. Because that’s not knowable in principle.
Imagine it. There’s been some global mass revelation that puts it all beyond question. Included in that is God’s own declaration that God is good. … Read the rest
Abortion is a Wedge Issue
Jun 1st, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Part of a wider attempt to roll back the values of secularism and impose religious views on everyone.… Read the rest
Collins Has It, Hitchens Doesn’t
Jun 1st, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
An intrinsic feeling for religion.… Read the rest
