Seems to assume that all Muslim suffering is at the hands of non-Muslims. Not quite right.… Read the rest

I too have a very low opinion of Karen Armstrong, Debbie Schlussel, Fred Phelps, Rush Limbaugh, and Ronald Reagan. I’m likely to use harsh adjectives and/or swear words to describe them. I’m just saying.

How do we draw the border between what we know and what we have learned from people who know? The question is prompted by a discussion on a public post of Ed Brayton’s on Facebook about sophisticated theology and Karen Armstrong and agnosticism. Dan Linford (who teaches philosophy) said this: Armstrong thinks that we can know […]

Compassion is at the heart of every great religion. (Karen Armstrong) That’s good, because if it weren’t, religious zealots might do some really horrible things now and then. A British aid worker kidnapped in Pakistan in January has been found dead, the Foreign Office has said. Khalil Dale, 60, who worked for the International Committee [...]...

Karen Armstrong tells us all, not for the first time, how swell Islam is. First, she tells us the problem. It’s that “western people” think Islam is “a violent and intolerant faith” but this is all wrong. Couldn’t be more wrong. Very very wrong. It’s the hajj what does it, you see. Religion is like [...]...

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on What is up for debate.

It’s difficult to represent the strongest form of their argument, not because their argument is bad, but because they have multiple arguments pointing to multiple conclusions that are mutually exclusive. The ends of their motte’s arguments are different from the ends of their bailey’s arguments. The arguments deployed in the motte are actually logically incompatible with those deployed in the bailey, so we’d have to handle each of those separately.

Even restricting our attention to just the motte or just the bailey, however, we find mutually exclusive arguments in terms of both premises and conclusions. In the motte, for instance, some arguments proceed from the premise … Read the rest

A priest in Australia has been charged with hiding child sexual assaults by another priest. He didn’t just hide them, either, he caned two boys who reported being assaulted. Father Brennan, 74, was arrested and charged yesterday with two counts of  misprision of a felony – failing to disclose a serious crime – relating to alleged child sex offences [...]...

This one is on an oldish thread, and I wouldn’t want anyone to miss it, because it’s so…choice. It’s from someone indignant about my thoughts on the Vatican’s attitude to “radical feminist” nuns, so presumably from a devout Catholic, who presumably thinks that he is therefore A Good Person. [Compassion is at the heart of every great [...]...

. People could wear little paper hats with Twitter account names on them...

Interesting post of PZ’s on being “good without god” and whether that’s a goal or slogan worth having. The implication of “good” is thorough conformity. Has challenging an authority figure ever fit the definition of being good? When abolitionists broke the law by smuggling slaves into Canada, when suffragettes picketed to demand the vote,  when [...]...

Frederick Sparks has an incisive post on Be Scofield on “new atheists” and racism. In referring to Dr King and the civil rights movement, Scofield also falls into the trap of “the Civil Rights Movement, Brought To You By Black Church”…a bit of historical revisionism that ignores, as professor Anthony Pinn points out, the secular philosophical influences, [...]...

So after weeks of heavy breathing, Julian’s Heathen’s Progress arrives at what we already knew – that believers actually do believe the tenets of their religion. So what is the headline finding? It is that whatever some might say about religion being more about practice than belief, more praxis than dogma, more about the moral [...]...

Part 2 of Julian’s cunning plan. His suggested stripped-down religion isn’t finding many takers. But since the main purpose of posting my articles of 21st-century faithwas to find out just how many could support them, the project is not worthless if we find out the answer is hardly anyone at all. To recap, there’s a [...]...

I’m beginning to think Julian set a cunning trap with his Heathen’s Progress series. He started with everybody gets it wrong, it’s more complicated than that. He went on to let’s offer a minimal version of religion and see if all those non-literal (sophisticated, “it’s more complicated than that”) believers will sign up to it. He [...]...

Eric has a post on Christian interference and coercion with respect to assisted suicide. One aspect in particular hooked my attention. Christians who are anti-choice-in-dying have been complaining for some time now that it’s not just about pain. In fact, they point out that of those in Oregon who choose assisted suicide very few are [...]...

Stephen Law has an excellent (and entertaining) new book, Believing Bullshit. It discusses eight “intellectual black holes” that can yank people into various delusional convictions. He names them “Playing the Mystery Card,” “‘But It Fits!’ and The Blunderbuss,” “Going Nuclear,” “Moving the Semantic Goalposts,” “I Just Know!,” “Pseudoprofundity,” “Piling Up the Anecdotes,” and “Pressing Your Buttons.”

They’re all good, but I think my favorite was “Pseudoprofundity,” maybe because it reminded me of my old Guide to Rhetoric, which alas disappeared in the transition from the old B&W to the new one. The subheads are very reminiscent: State the obvious; Contradict yourself; Deepities; Trite-nalogies; Use jargon; Postmodern pseudoprofundity.

He’s good on Karen Armstrong (in the “Moving the Semantic … Read the rest

Magdalenes? What Magdalenes?

…it was Ireland’s hidden scandal: an estimated 30,000 women were sent to church-run laundries, where they were abused and worked for years with no pay. Their offense, in the eyes of society, was to break the strict sexual rules of Catholic Ireland, having children outside wedlock.

Their “offense” – but it wasn’t a mere offense, was it, it was a crime. We know this because of what the passage says: the women were imprisoned for years. They got the kind of sentence a convicted murderer gets. They were locked up, for years, and abused and worked for no pay. That’s an extremely harsh prison sentence – for having children outside marriage.

Until recently, the

… Read the rest

I was re-reading a bit of Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God this morning, and I encountered something odd. It’s in chapter 12, “Death of God”; she gives an account of Stephen Jay Gould’s NOMA and how it works, and then says:

But the new atheists will have none of this, and in his somewhat immoderate way, Dawkins denounces Gould as a quisling.

There’s no reference. Well where did he say that? I wondered. I knew he’d used the word at one point, but I didn’t think it was about Gould. I read the bit about NOMA in The God Delusion, and it’s not there. When I got on the computer I googled it, and got nothing.

I don’t … Read the rest

There’s a churchy thing called a Couples Retreat. It’s at the First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana, where the pastor is Jack Schaap, who is apparently what professionals call a Real Doozy. The church offers a list of What We Believe, in case any confused people try to join in, thinking they’re Wiccans or something. The list of What They Believe would cause a wondering frown to appear on the face of Karen Armstrong, and as for Terry Eagleton, he would probably decide to become a line order cook.

We take instruction from the Bible literally; we believe what it is actually saying, not that it is an allegory or a fable. We take instruction from the

… Read the rest

Eric has an excellent post on Catholic casuistry, compassion, and authority today. It’s a bit like Google Earth, examining this subject – we get closer and closer and closer. The closer we get, the more ridiculous Karen Armstrong’s claim that compassion is central becomes. Compassion is not only not central, it’s nowhere. Compassion is beside the point altogether.

Ronald Conte, as I pointed out yesterday, simply says what the rules are, over and over again, and quotes popes also saying what the rules are. He quotes JP2 saying what they are:

Therefore, by the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, and in communion with the Bishops of the Catholic Church, I confirm that the direct and voluntary

… Read the rest