‘Don’t you think a God could come up with a better plan than that?’ Why yes, as a matter of fact.… Read the rest
The Unseen Unknowable Has No Place in Science
Mar 19th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhen reason gets uncomfortably close, that’s when the desperate appeal to fuzzy thinking starts.… Read the rest
I knew I was not a cow, a chattel
Mar 18th, 2010 6:08 pm | By Ophelia BensonIn Ethiopia, men grab little girls, rape them and then marry them. The little girls don’t like it.
… Read the resteven though she was eight years old, she suspected at once what was happening. She had heard whispers that, when a girl is considered ready for marriage, a man will seize her, and rape her, and then she must serve him for the rest of her life. “That was the culture,” she says. But it wasn’t her culture: like all the other little girls, she didn’t want it. “I started screaming and tried to run out of the hut,” she says…She was taken back to his home, held down in front of his family, raped, and taken to be married the
That was then, this is now
Mar 18th, 2010 12:20 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe pope is not a modernist, nor is he any kind of pluralist. He is not one to think that morality improves over time.
When he was crowned Pope nearly five years ago, Benedict promised to clean up the Church. He would not be a showman Pope like John Paul II, he would not flog himself around the world addressing huge stadiums. The Church under his guidance would not have expansiveness as its goal, but purification.
He had a reformist phase in his youth, but he got over it.
… Read the rest…around 1968, he rejected all that and became a counter-revolutionary warrior, dedicated to liberating the Church from trendy nonsense and restoring the purity which he saw the reform movement as
Russell Blackford on Evolution and Morality
Mar 18th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonOur evolved psychology may impose limits on what real-world moral systems can realistically demand of us.… Read the rest
‘The Decent People of Armagh’ Applaud Brady
Mar 18th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘It was a different era back then and a lot of things happened that shouldn’t.’ Eh? But morality is absolute!… Read the rest
Pope Promised Purification of the Church
Mar 18th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBut events of recent weeks suggest that corruption is rooted close to its heart. … Read the rest
Race Relations at UC San Diego
Mar 18th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonFirst there was the ‘Compton Cookout’ to mock Black History Month – then there was the noose…… Read the rest
Johann Hari on Rape-Marriage in Ethiopia
Mar 18th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonShe was 8. A stranger raped her, then married her the next day. She ran away but was sent back. Multiply.… Read the rest
Polluting Australia
Mar 17th, 2010 5:49 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe usual – the Australian media are united in their scorn and loathing for atheists – at least for atheists who actually collect in one spot to talk about atheism. I don’t suppose the united Australian media pour scorn on people who collect in one spot to talk about theism – in, you know, churches and mosques and similar – but atheists doing that are an affront to all decent people.
Honestly, I must be clueless; I keep being surprised by the level of unreasonable hostility, distortion and plain rage people allow themselves to express about something that ought to be as ordinary as milk. Clearly it really isn’t permissible, except purely formally, to be overtly and explicitly atheist … Read the rest
No Foreign Sperm for Turkish Women
Mar 17th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWomen who seek sperm or egg transplant abroad can face one to three years in prison.… Read the rest
Turkey Threatens to Expel 100,000 Armenians
Mar 17th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNobody accuses us of genocide and gets away with it. Just ask Hrant Dink.… Read the rest
Victims React to Brady’s Apology
Mar 17th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘The notion of careful reflection is nonsense – he’s had 35 years to reflect on what he did then.’… Read the rest
Barney Zwartz Gives Atheists Some Free Advice
Mar 17th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBe less strident, less dogmatic, more humble.… Read the rest
Brady Apologizes for ‘Asking’ Children to Shut Up
Mar 17th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBBC keeps saying children were ‘asked’ to sign vow of silence. Victims say they were made to sign.… Read the rest
Religious Belief Cannot Trump Gender Equality
Mar 17th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonTension between gender equality and religious rights in rulings by Quebec’s human rights commission.… Read the rest
Andrew Brown on Why Brady Must Go
Mar 17th, 2010 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIt’s moral luck. He was a small cog at the time, but justice demands that he go now.… Read the rest
Oh and by the way new atheists are evil yeah?
Mar 16th, 2010 4:17 pm | By Ophelia BensonMichael Ruse did a piece on God and morality for Comment is Free Belief and talked sense for nine paragraphs, then in the tenth and last went completely random and gratuitous and childish.
God is dead. The new atheists think that that is a significant finding. In this, as in just about everything else, they are completely mistaken. God is dead. Morality has no foundation. Long live morality. Thank goodness!
Stupid, isn’t it. Frightful man – always spoiling for a fight. Everyone says he’s like that in real life, too.… Read the rest
Robes and furr’d gowns hide all
Mar 16th, 2010 3:46 pm | By Ophelia BensonHitchens doesn’t altogether see things the way Damian Thompson does.
On March 10, the chief exorcist of the Vatican, the Rev. Gabriele Amorth (who has held this demanding post for 25 years), was quoted as saying that “the Devil is at work inside the Vatican,” and that “when one speaks of ‘the smoke of Satan’ in the holy rooms, it is all true—including these latest stories of violence and pedophilia.” This can perhaps be taken as confirmation that something horrible has indeed been going on in the holy precincts, though most inquiries show it to have a perfectly good material explanation.
I had the same thought when I saw the exorcist piece. The Devil is at work inside … Read the rest
Go on, kick us again
Mar 16th, 2010 12:09 pm | By Ophelia BensonDamian Thompson, a Catholic, is in a frothing rage – not at the pope or the all-male hierarchy of his authoritarian church, but at the Times for reporting on it.
There is international outrage in Catholic circles over a headline in The Times this morning that many people regard as utterly misleading and part of the newspaper’s reliably biased coverage (reinforced by vicious cartoons) of anything to do with Pope Benedict XVI…A universally admired Catholic journalist contacted me this morning and accused The Times of (and I am toning this down for legal reasons) an extremely serious error of judgment.
A universally admired Catholic journalist? There is no such thing. There’s no universally admired anything, and certainly not a … Read the rest