Theists have a nasty tendency to tell whoppers about atheists. There’s the standing canard that atheists are necessarily immoral; and then there’s the great sea of misquotation, misrecollection, misrepresentation. Theists make a lot of these little careless errors. Like one in this review of Dennett’s new book. (It’s actually a rather interesting and witty review, so the careless error stands out.)

One savors the irony that these lines come from the same man who insisted in an op-ed article for the New York Times two years ago that society should start calling atheists “the Brights” because they’re so much smarter than theists. Right.

The hell he did. Not even close. I was sure of that even without reading it, but … Read the rest

More on Sen on multiculturalism. It’s a terrific article; don’t miss it.

Being born in a particular social background is not in itself an exercise of cultural liberty, since it is not an act of choice. In contrast, the decision to stay firmly within the traditional mode would be an exercise of freedom, if the choice were made after considering other altenatives. In the same way, a decision to move away – by a little or a lot – from the standard behavior pattern, arrived at after reflection and reasoning, would also qualify as such an exercise. Indeed, cultural freedom can frequently clash with cultural conservatism, and if multiculturalism is defended in the name of cultural freedom, then it

Amartya Sen on multiculturalism. Right at the beginning – in the second paragraph – he asks the questions that seem so obviously necessary to ask, but that seem completely ignored in the way that people generally talk (or prate, or babble, or rave) about multiculturalism. As Sen remarks, ‘There is no way of escaping these rather foundational questions if multiculturalism is to be fairly assessed.’ Just so, which is why it so seldom is fairly assessed, why it is instead simply assumed to be a good even without precise specification of what it means.

One of the central issues concerns how human beings are seen. Should they be categorized in terms of inherited traditions, particularly the inherited religion, of

This is a surprising news item.

Michael Ruse and Daniel Dennett are two of the most prominent philosophers writing about issues related to evolution. It seems they have been engaging in a bit of e-mail correspondence on the side. How do I know this? Because Ruse inexplicably sent the entire correspondence to William Dembski. I say this is inexplicable because there is no indication that Dennett consented to have his private e-mails made public. For Ruse to make public e-mails that were intended as part of a private correpsondence is an incredible breach of professional ethics.

Especially since, as you discover if you look at the correspondence, it was Ruse who initiated it. So – he asked Dennett … Read the rest

Ah. Someone finally points it out.

The notion of free speech, at its best, speaks to freedom of conscience – the idea that there’s no opinion or worldview whose expression should be proscribed. But it is ever more subject to be hijacked by the muddy notion that it protects all statements aspiring to the status of fact – be they truthfully believed or cynically falsified. Should we, necessarily, protect the statement “nobody died at Belsen”, any more than we regard as free speech a false claim in an advertisement for a vitamin supplement? I’m not sure.

Precisely. Neither am I. Furthermore, I am pretty sure that it’s not helpful to ignore that aspect of the issue when discussing the … Read the rest

Here it is again.

A virulently anti-Semitic film about the Iraq war has provoked a storm of protest in Germany after it sold out to cheering audiences from the country’s 2.5 million-strong Turkish community.

The Turkish community – as if they all live together in a rather large and crowded village somewhere. How much does this insistence on ‘the ___ community’ foster audiences that cheer anti-Semitic movies, one wonders. Talk of ‘the community’ and celebration of Hate Week are cheek by jowl.

At a packed cinema in a largely Turkish immigrant district of Berlin last week, Valley of the Wolves was being watched almost exclusively by young Turkish men.

So – yet again, as with the riots in the … Read the rest