Is there a problem?… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Baggini Misunderstands Sin Shock-horror
May 10th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
If humans are made by God, rational animal’s happiness involves conformity to God’s will. Big if.… Read the rest
‘Vatican Astronomer’ on Creationism as Paganism
May 10th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Said the idea of papal infallibility had been a PR disaster.… Read the rest
Twirling
May 9th, 2006 10:48 pm | By Ophelia BensonA commenter raised an interesting point on the pontifical post, a point that I’ve been pondering on and off (mostly off) ever since JS cc’d me his replies to the HERO interview.
The point the commenter raises is the same one JS raises: the idea that it’s good to teach pseudoscience in universities because otherwise people get smug and lazy. Bridget in comments:
Students who are not exposed to a range of theories with stronger or weaker truth claims, do not develop the ability to critically judge the validity of what they are taught – they become lazy thinkers.
JS in the interview:
… Read the restI’m not comfortable with consensus, so I think if it turned out that the kinds
Radio Free Europe Interview With Jahanbegloo
May 9th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘The fourth generation is very attached to democracy and pluralism and has a global view.’… Read the rest
Iran Confirms Arrest of Jahanbegloo
May 9th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Authorities cite charges of ‘contacts with foreigners, including the Monarchists’.… Read the rest
‘Devout’ Christian Dies During Fast
May 9th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Died ‘devoting herself to the Lord’ because of her ‘strict’ and ‘strong’ Christian beliefs.… Read the rest
‘Faith’ Schools and Gender Inequality
May 9th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Can educational parity be squared with religions that traditionally subjugate women? … Read the rest
Review of Frederick Crews on Fuzzy Ideas
May 9th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Essays informed by the same hostility to woolly, untested thinking that drives Crews’ writing on Freud.… Read the rest
Better Than Being in the Phone Book
May 9th, 2006 2:12 am | By Ophelia BensonI found something at Wikipedia. It’s quite amusing.
The entry is: Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?
“Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?” is a quotation from Alexander Pope’s Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot of 1735, which has entered common use and has become associated with more recent figures.
Ah – has it? Who’s that then?
… Read the restThe philosopher Mary Midgley used a variation on the phrase in an article in the journal Philosophy written to counter a review praising The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, where she cuttingly said that she had “not attended to Dawkins, thinking it unnecessary to break a butterfly upon a wheel.” Dawkins replied that this statement would be “hard to match, in reputable
What Care I For Evidence, Peasant?
May 9th, 2006 1:53 am | By Ophelia BensonA reader sent me an article from Nature Immunology a couple of weeks ago – it’s about the part that immunology played in the Dover trial, and very interesting it is. Immunology and the stacks of evidence for how it evolved blew Behe and his black box out of the water. There’s a nice illustration of a tall pile of books with another thick pile of papers on top of it; the caption reads “We can look high or we can look low, in books or in journals, but the result
is the same. The scientific literature has no answers to the question of the origin of the immune system.” The footnote of course is to Darwin’s Black Box.… Read the rest
Bless This Laundry Room
May 8th, 2006 10:08 pm | By Ophelia BensonNnnnnnokay, time for another spot of mockery and ridicule. I’ve done plenty of real work today – plenty, I tell you. Finishing an article, subbing, official correspondence, all sorts. (Of course, I also took an hour or so to go for a walk in the fat leafy yellow-green lush spring streets, but hey, I’m not a vegetable, here, I can’t sit at the desk for twelve hours straight.) So it’s time for dessert. (Yes, besides the orange, and besides the chocolate cookie. Be quiet.)
Well, after all, what do you expect, when you get real estate agents and vicars together? Rational dialogue? I don’t think so. On the one hand you got people who talk about fabulous homes with … Read the rest
Bless This Fabulous Kitchen
May 8th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Vicars join real estate agents to bring Anglican feng shui to garage-blessing.… Read the rest
Witch Killing in India
May 8th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
There are scores of women who have been branded witch by villagers and tortured. … Read the rest
Bernard Lewis on Women and Islam
May 8th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Women not thought important enough to get brain-deadening indoctrination that passes for education.… Read the rest
Islamists Target Other Muslims
May 8th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Expanding the criteria for apostasy, blasphemy, heresy, all subject to punishment or death.… Read the rest
Jahanbegloo is Okay, Expects to be Released
May 8th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Arrested after writing an article in Spanish newspaper criticizing Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust.… Read the rest
When the Devil Still Matters
May 8th, 2006 | By R Joseph HoffmannSince September 11, 2001 literally dozens of books have appeared asking the question (many attempting to answer it) ‘Is Religion Violent?’ In particular the authors and commentators ranging from Bernard Lewis in What Went Wrong? to Mark Juergensmeyer in Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence are asking whether the monotheistic religious traditions in general and Islam in particular are more prone to violence than, say, Buddhism, Shinto and Scientology. Almost all of these books–including one I recently edited, spaciously titled The Just War and Jihad[1] – answer the question with an unhelpful, “It depends on what you mean by violence,” as if September 11th were not instruction enough, or “What do you … Read the rest
On Euthanasia
May 8th, 2006 2:17 am | By Ophelia BensonGeorge Felis wrote such an elegant and apposite comment in reply to another commenter that I wanted to put it on the main page.
You apparently missed the word “voluntary.” You typed out the word, but then you talked about doctors and relatives instead of focusing on the choices available (or denied) to suffering people – and not necessarily just the elderly. (I will simply ignore your instant degeneration into Nazi comparisons, which in reasoned argument is always the first resort of a scoundrel.) Have you actually read anything about the specific proposed law? Or are you opposing it on general principle and your vague suspicions about doctors’ and relatives’ nefarious “utilitarian” motives? Because the actual bill being proposed by … Read the rest
ICA Talk on Troof
May 7th, 2006 8:09 pm | By Ophelia BensonSo, those of you in or around London have a joyous opportunity to go to a talk on the question ‘Does Truth Matter?’. It sounds like fun to me. I’d go if I were in or near London – if I could scrape together the 8 quid.
… Read the restTruth has become a nebulous, even unfashionable notion in our contemporary society. Relativism and postmodernism have undermined our belief in the importance and certainty of truth.
On what basis can we now investigate the validity of claims by our politicians – the existence of weapons of mass destruction, for example? Is there still a moral imperative to tell the truth?
Speakers: Simon Blackburn, professor of Philosophy at Cambridge; Stephen Law, lecturer in Philosophy