Wait – what?

It is 97 per cent certain that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead – based on sheer logic and mathematics, not faith – according to Oxford professor Richard Swinburne…This conclusion was reached after a complex series of calculations. In simplified terms, it began with a single proposition: the probability was one in two that God exists. Next, if God exists, the probability was one in two that he became incarnate.

A single proposition – that the probability is one in two that God exists. Um.

We talked (or wrangled) about this last year, when this article on a similar but not identical theme appeared.

A scientist has calculated that there is a 67% chance that God

The trouble with the ‘rage, injustice, grievance, violence inflicted on Muslims, marginalization’ approach is that it takes the action being explained too seriously, too politically, too as-if-rational-y, too as-if-adult-ly, and above all, as an instrument, a tool, a means, rather than as an end in itself, which is what it is. It is not a case of: bang: redress our grievances lest we do it again; it’s a case of: bang: hooray, ha ha, nyah nyah, take that, suffer, die, hooray. Period. The killing is the goal. 7/7 is not October 1917 or the Easter Rising, it’s Auschwitz and Rwanda and Srebrenica.

Along with a huge element of childish fun and games. It’s important not to overlook that. It’s necessary … Read the rest

I wrote that comment before I read David Aaronovitch’s piece which says some of the same things.

Mass murder, however, with your own slaughter centre stage, is a pretty extreme act. It is an act of such narcissistic destructiveness, displaying such an incapacity to empathise (you have to be there in the carriage with the Polish girls), that you’d imagine some warning signs, if only you could recognise them…It was also, in a psychological sense, a perverted act. The boys will have known (don’t the relatives remind us?) something of the wrongness of what they did, just as the Columbine school killers did. For whatever reason, however, the pleasure of contemplating the act was greater than the knowledge of its

All right, why did they do it? That’s the question people keep asking or rather answering. They did it because of rage, because of a sense of grievance, because of injustice, because all those people marched and no one listened, because of Fallujah, because of Afghanistan (but not because of Bosnia or Kosovo), because of exclusion and marginalization, because of the violence perpetrated on Muslims. But hey – maybe they didn’t. Maybe even apart from the fact that those are all contemptible ‘reasons’ – maybe they’re not reasons anyway. Maybe they’re only pseudo-reasons, like the ‘reasons’ people protest the G8 summit or the ‘reasons’ people toss a brick through Starbucks’ window and then run away. Maybe all that is bullshit … Read the rest

This is funny. I know, I shouldn’t laugh, it’s serious, but it’s funny.

A statement that has warned against the dangers of allowing women to drive in Saudi Arabia was released on the Internet on Friday…It said the enemies of Islam have portrayed the image of Muslim women being without rights and having “a broken wing,” saying that their homes are prisons, their husbands mistreat them, and their hijabs are a sign of backwardness. It said that they have come up with the terminology of “injustice for women” in our country and have used it in the media lately introducing the fact that they are not allowed to drive as a sign of injustice.

They did? Those bastards. … Read the rest

Tzvetan Todorov has a good essay in Theory’s Empire. I’ll give you a quotation from it.

The renunciation of judgment and of values leads to insurmountable aporias, as well. To make their own task easier, deconstructionists seem to have assimliated all values to religious values, thus rejecting the distinction between faith and reason, and they treat reason as an avatar – no more and no less – of God, thus wiping out several centuries of struggle with a single stroke of the pen.

Rejecting that distinction between faith and reason is – such a bottomlessly terrible idea.… Read the rest