ID a waste of time: evolutionary science is bountifully endowed with genuine controversy.… Read the rest
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Updates from New Orleans Times-Picayune
Sep 1st, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonOn the scene.… Read the rest
Deeper Levels
Sep 1st, 2005 3:36 am | By Ophelia BensonSusan Haack takes issue with Paul Davies in Defending Science – Within Reason.
… Read the restIn The Mind of God, Paul Davies, also a physicist, but a believer (and winner of the million-dollar Templeton prize ‘for progress in religion’) concludes that ‘belief in God is largely a matter of taste, to be judged by its explanatory value rather than logical compulsion. Personally I feel more comfortable with a deeper level of explanation than the laws of physics. Whether the use of “God” for that deeper level is appropriate is, of course, a matter of debate.’ This, from the idea that explanatoriness is just a matter of taste, through the play on ‘deeper,’ to the insouciance about the meaning of ‘God,’
Telling the Truth About Polio
Sep 1st, 2005 1:40 am | By Ophelia BensonMore on the return of polio and why it has returned. Allen Esterson did some research and found this article at News-Medical.
… Read the restAlmost two years after radical Islamic preachers in Nigeria influenced parents against having their children vaccinated against polio for fear it was part of a U.S. plot against Muslims, a Nigerian strain of the virus that causes the crippling disease has occurred as far away as Indonesia. Many residents in Kano, northern Nigeria’s largest city still refuse to have their children vaccinated, not just against polio but against other childhood diseases such as measles. Mustafa Balarabe a 37-year-old father of four said his children wouldn’t be vaccinated, citing “the general Western plot against Muslims worldwide” as the
Dodgy Ruse
Sep 1st, 2005 1:39 am | By Ophelia BensonMichael Ruse is another. Funny, strange, puzzling; something like that. There’s this interview in Salon – which means you have to page through an irritating pictorial (therefore slow to load) ad to read it, which is why I hardly ever link to Salon, but there it is in case you want to read the whole thing. It’s about his latest book and the usual subject – ‘evolutionism’ is religion blah blah.
… Read the restBut he thinks evolutionists must purge themselves of reflexive anti-religious fervor, and acknowledge at least the potential validity of the classic Augustinian position that science and theology can never directly contradict one another, since science can only consider nature and God, by definition, is outside nature. Without this consciousness,
UN Envoy Says US Harming Ugandan Aids Fight
Aug 31st, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSays Washington pressures Uganda to emphasize abstinence more than condoms.… Read the rest
Michael Ignatieff as Canadian PM?
Aug 31st, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIgnatieff returns to Toronto from Harvard to teach human rights.… Read the rest
Roger Scruton on Maurice Cowling
Aug 31st, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIrony as moral seriousness that would not allow itself the luxury of illusions.… Read the rest
Cass Sunstein on the Precautionary Principle
Aug 31st, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonStatus quo bias and the way emotion can overwhelm rational faculties.… Read the rest
Broken Levees Continue to Flood New Orleans
Aug 31st, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPeople stranded on roofs, shelters evacuated, roads closed, Biloxi devastated.… Read the rest
Nightmare in New Orleans
Aug 31st, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWaters rise, 80% of city underwater, break in levee on Lake Pontchartrain.… Read the rest
Polio and ‘Public Figures’
Aug 30th, 2005 8:12 pm | By Ophelia BensonHere we have a media watch item. A rather strange one.
I noticed it late yesterday when I posted this item on the polio outbreak in Indonesia (dated today but I saw and posted it yesterday my time – today UK time). I noticed something missing that I was pretty sure I had seen in previous BBC articles on the subject – a paragraph on how the outbreak was thought to have started. Previous articles had, I thought, mentioned the fact that Muslim clerics in norther Nigeria had urged people not to get vaccinated (and not to vaccinate their children – with horrible results) because the vaccine was contaminated in a US plot. That item wasn’t in this latest article. … Read the rest
Can You Say ‘Average’?
Aug 30th, 2005 7:10 pm | By Ophelia BensonOh, come on, Beeb – can’t you write headlines better than that? “‘Men cleverer than women’ claim”? “Academics in the UK claim their research shows that men are more intelligent than women.”? Come on – pull your socks up, or get on your bike, or something.
A study to be published later this year in the British Journal of Psychology says that men are on average five points ahead on IQ tests.
Hello? That’s not the same thing as saying ‘men are more intelligent than women’? At all? Surely, surely, you know that, if you think about it for five seconds. Think of the stupidest man you know. Now think of the cleverest woman you know. Is he more … Read the rest
Enlightenment or Submission
Aug 30th, 2005 | By Ophelia BensonMany people and groups have called (especially, for obvious reasons, recently) for the secularization of Islamic societies, for reform of Islam and Koranic laws, and for less attention and publicity for fundamentalist groups and putative ‘leaders’ and ‘representatives’ like the Muslim Council of Britain, and more for secular and rationalist groups and individuals.
… Read the restHowever, this is the same [Iqbal] Sacranie who, in 1989, said that “Death is perhaps too easy” for the author of “The Satanic Verses.” Tony Blair’s decision to knight him and treat him as the acceptable face of “moderate,” “traditional” Islam is either a sign of his government’s penchant for religious appeasement or a demonstration of how limited Blair’s options really are…The
Waters Rising in New Orleans
Aug 30th, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonGulf Coast, Mississippi after one of the most devastating storms ever to hit US.… Read the rest
Stupid Headline, Stupid Subhead
Aug 30th, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Men cleverer than women’ – all men cleverer than all women? No. Stupid headline.… Read the rest
Salman Rushdie on Today [audio]
Aug 30th, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe rise of fundamentalism in Kashmir, religious hatred law, the MCB, ‘faith’ schools.… Read the rest
Indonesia Launches Record Anti-Polio Drive
Aug 30th, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWHO warns virus could spread to Malaysia, China and the Philippines. … Read the rest
UN Official Accuses Bush Over Condom Policy
Aug 30th, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonCutting funding for condoms could damage fight against Aids in Uganda.… Read the rest
Republicans Demand Scientists’ Papers
Aug 30th, 2005 | Filed by Ophelia BensonInfluential scientists say request for materials going back decades looks like intimidation.… Read the rest