New atheists, shoddiness, sheer philosophical illiteracy, sheer aggressive intolerance, violent.… Read the rest
Individual Rights and Collective Responsibility
Apr 5th, 2010 | By Joshua F. LeachThe standard collectivist critique of individual rights has been with us a long time. It was best formulated in its classic outlines by the Catholic Church during the nineteenth century, amidst a great many cries for social and political change. The line the Church took at the time was essentially to say that rights cannot be understood without respect to “duties,” and that suffering and self-sacrifice are great virtues against which the individual should not be protected. As the classic statement on Catholic social teaching, the Rerum Novarum (1891), puts it, “The… pains and hardships of life will have no end or cessation on earth; for the consequences of sin are bitter and hard to bear, and they must accompany … Read the rest
Bunting pulls out the ‘new atheist’ file yet again
Apr 5th, 2010 11:34 am | By Ophelia BensonAnother consignment of rebarbative truculent inaccurate wool from Madeleine Bunting. About…? The Vatican’s petulant cries of ‘petty gossip’ in response to revelations of its settled habit of concealing and protecting child rape? No. The ‘new’ atheists – that’s what’s got her worked up: the endless unappeasable horror of the ‘new’ atheists. Their wrongness. Their violence. Their ignorance. Their deafness to the overwhelming arguments of Karen Armstrong and Terry Eagleton.
… Read the rest…in the years since the publication of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion in 2006 and Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great in 2007, there has been an addition every few weeks from enraged philosophers, theologians, historians and journalists, all trying to convince readers of the shoddiness of the New Atheists.
The Mafia doesn’t give Easter sermons
Apr 4th, 2010 6:01 pm | By Ophelia BensonSholto Byrnes, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, doesn’t entirely buy Peter Hitchens’s line on atheism.
For while Stalin’s atheism may have been a necessary condition for the atrocities he committed — I completely agree with Hitchens that “without God, many more things are possible than are permitted in a Godly order” — it is not a sufficient one. I part company with him when he claims that his preceding sentence proves that which follows it: “Atheism is a licence for ruthlessness, and appeals to the ruthless.”
Good about parting company, but I part company earlier than that. Atheism is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for committing atrocities, and it isn’t necessarily the case that ‘without God, many more things … Read the rest
Anxiety After Terreblanche Murder
Apr 4th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAfrikaner farmers have objected in court to ANC leader singing the old struggle song ‘Kill the Boer’ in public.… Read the rest
Vatican Still Complaining of ‘Petty Gossip’
Apr 4th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Holy Father, the people of God are with you and will not let themselves be influenced by the petty gossip of the moment.’… Read the rest
Saudi Arabia: Lebanese ‘Sorcerer’ Gets Stay
Apr 4th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNot this Friday, but perhaps next Friday. Horoscopes are ‘condemned as un-Islamic’; off with his head.… Read the rest
Demonizing Atheism is a Bad Way to Defend Faith
Apr 4th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘People who are given to ruthlessness can always find a justification for it,’ notes Sholto Byrnes.… Read the rest
New Scientist Talks to Francisco Ayala
Apr 4th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonReligion and science ‘deal with different ways of knowing.’… Read the rest
What kind of interface?
Apr 3rd, 2010 4:25 pm | By Ophelia BensonMichael Ruse says why the Templeton Foundation is a good thing.
More recently, the award has been given to academics working on the science-religion interface. It was therefore appropriate that this year the Prize went to Francisco Ayala, a Spanish-born population geneticist at the University of California at Irvine. Ayala (a former Catholic priest) has long been interested in the science-religion relationship…
The science-religion interface? What’s that? That’s the kind of thing that Templeton always talks about, but what exactly is it? And what does Michael Ruse think it is?
It could just mean, or be intended to mean, scientists and religious believers talking. That would certainly be unexceptionable. The trouble is, that doesn’t really seem like a very plausible … Read the rest
NY Times on Vatican’s Rebuke of NY Times
Apr 3rd, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonCardinal Levada singled out several Times reporters and columnists for criticism.… Read the rest
Vatican Official Rebukes New York Times
Apr 3rd, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDetailed fury at reporting, zero worry about victims.… Read the rest
Exiled Murphy May Have Continued Abuse
Apr 3rd, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHe interacted freely with children for the rest of his life, never having been punished by church or secular law.… Read the rest
Vatican Quickly Distanced Itself From Remarks
Apr 3rd, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonYet the official Vatican newspaper published the remarks in its Saturday edition.… Read the rest
Angry Reaction to Cantalamessa’s Remarks
Apr 3rd, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonVatican is saying ‘nothing to do with us’ but the sermon probably circulated for comment at a senior level.… Read the rest
Atheists Reject Clerical Attack on Non-belief
Apr 3rd, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen on Friday described non-belief as an ‘assault on God.’… Read the rest
Some Speech Deserves to Be Marginalized
Apr 3rd, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe political freedom to speak your mind does not entail a right to be taken seriously or given deference.… Read the rest
Cardinal attends to what really matters
Apr 3rd, 2010 11:34 am | By Ophelia BensonRatzinger gave his old job to an American when he (Ratz) was bumped upstairs. Cardinal William Levada now heads Ratzinger’s old Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This week he expressed his sorrow and sympathy for what the church has enabled priests to do to generations of children by…writing a long article saying how awful the New York Times is.
He starts by singling out Laurie Goodstein.
… Read the restOnly after eight paragraphs of purple prose does Goodstein reveal that Fr. Murphy, who criminally abused as many as 200 deaf children while working at a school in the Milwaukee Archdiocese from 1950 to 1974, “not only was never tried or disciplined by the church’s own justice system, but also got
Shed a tear for the sufferings of the Vatican
Apr 2nd, 2010 5:30 pm | By Ophelia BensonUn.Be.Lievable. They still don’t get it. They still think they are the victims. Still! Half the world has explained it to them with one voice, and they still don’t get it!
The Pope’s preacher today likened recent attacks on the pontiff over the Catholic sex abuse scandal to the “most shameful acts of anti-Semitism”.
Not ‘attacks by priests on children’ but ‘attacks’ meaning criticism by victims and observers on the pope who helped conceal and perpetuate those very attacks by priests on children – that’s what they’re comparing to anti-Semitism! It’s – it’s – it exhausts my capacity to revile it. The self-pity, the world-blotting egocentrism, the blank inability to grasp the misery of people outside their own circle, the … Read the rest