Now this is satisfying. A lot of people telling the infuriating smug NY Times what a crap review that review by Wieseltier was. It would be all the more satisfying to see Wieseltier admit as much and express remorse and embarrassment at the horrible juvenile abusive spittle-flecked tone of it – but this is satisfying all the same.

Sam Harris:

Wieseltier writes with triumphal smugness about the “excesses of naturalism” that apparently blight Dennett’s work. He might as well have pointed out the “excesses of historical accuracy” or the “excesses of logical coherence.” If utter naturalism is a sin, it is one only from the point of view of religious faith — a faith that has grown ever more

Not a good day. A frustrating day, a malfunctioning day, an irritating day. Email problems – or perhaps correspondent problems. It can be so hard to tell. When someone ignores several emails, you may decide ‘well, I guess I can take a hint (however belatedly)’ and stop emailing, but then when the same person emails on unrelated subjects, you think ‘Hmm, did my emails not get through?’ so you ask – only to be ignored again. Then you scratch your head until the blood drips onto the floor and the cat squalls in alarm, wondering whether what we have here is an email problem or an irritating correspondent problem. This causes bad temper and a strong desire to be in … Read the rest

Thought for the Day. Via Deborah Lipstadt’s blog History on Trial, from a correspondent…

Although I am not anti-semitic, your Jewish greed is overbearing and crippling.… Read the rest

More on free speech and the discussion with Norm, who has said more on the subject.

If the law does not prohibit people from doing something, then legally – and assuming no restraints created by voluntary contracts etc – they have the right to do that thing. It is what is sometimes called a ‘liberty right’, as opposed to a ‘claim right’…If (where) Holocaust denial is not a criminal offence, consequently, Irving and others have a liberty right to say, to write and to publish that the Holocaust did not happen or that it has been exaggerated.

Sure. I’ve stipulated that more than once – though without knowing the term ‘liberty right’, which is useful. But on the other … Read the rest

Good, someone else besides Richard Dawkins and PZ and me who thinks science and religion are not compatible.

At an August 2005 City College of New York conference featuring a panel of Nobel Laureates, one scientist created a stir by arguing that belief in God is incompatible with being a good scientist and is “damaging to the well-being of the human race.”…Hauptman: The only significant negative reaction came from Cornelia Dean, a reporter from The New York Times. I was later told by several of the other Nobel Laureates that they agreed with me, but for reasons of their own, they just did not respond…[O]bviously this view is unpopular in this overly religious society. People who are outspoken

And more again. It seems worth trying to figure all this out and get clear what we’re talking about (I think discussions about free speech tend to be surprisingly unclear). With clarity goes honesty, rather than the hypocrisy that cartoon-offended Muslims accuse defenders of ‘blasphemous’ cartoons of, in some ways with justice.

To repeat, or restate. I’m claiming that disputes like the ones over the prophet cartoons and over Irving and Holocaust denial are not simply a matter of Free Speech full stop, or of Free Speech unless there is imminent danger of physical harm. They’re also not a matter of either-or, all or nothing; not a matter of: either criminalization or unqualifed Right; it’s a matter of what lies … Read the rest