Horrible man, the archbishop of Canterbury – cruel, callous, ruthless, tyrannical. He doesn’t think so of course, but he is. He’s again sticking his oar in to prevent suffering people from ending their own lives.

Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury; Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, and Sir Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, have come together for the first time to urge peers to reject proposals that would allow families to help loved ones to die abroad free from the threat of prosecution.

Why? No reason – just to show off the superior devoutness of devout people by straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.

It would surely put vulnerable people at serious risk, especially sick

I’m thoroughly tired of attempting to get a straight answer out of Chris Mooney, so I’ll drop the subject, but I just want to note that he has an annoying habit of attributing ignorance to people who disagree with him. He did it a month ago in his first reply to Jerry Coyne:

I guess you could say I’ve changed my view; certainly I’ve changed my emphasis. A lot more reading in philosophy and history has moved me toward a more accomodationist position. So has simple pragmatism; I don’t see what is to be gained by flailing indiscriminately against religion, other than a continuation of the culture wars. That’s especially so when those who flail against religion do so

Allow me to run down a few of the claims in Sholto Byrnes’s review of our book that are not true.

Actually, first, let me start with a plain oddity, since it appears in the first sentence.

The question of whether God hates women is not one that can be answered with certainty; not least since, by the time any of us dared ask a putative deity such an impertinent question, we would be in no position to communicate the response to our fellows.

Ah – so he admits it. The putative deity is one that we cannot question or otherwise address until after we’re dead – by which time it is too late to ameliorate anything the putative god’s … Read the rest

Yesterday, by way of refreshment from enumerating the falsehoods in Sholto Byrnes’s review of our book, Jeremy and I chatted a little about elephants. He’d sent me a picture of the Toronto elephants playing water games, so I made him envious by saying I used to join the Seattle elephants in their pool to scrub their backs and generally play with them. This led to a discussion of how one gets used to being around such large animals, and Jeremy asked if they knew not to tread on people by accident. I said they do, and told a little story to illustrate, and he thought I should share it, so I will. Consider it refreshment from whatever you need … Read the rest

Chris Mooney wonders something.

Wilkins’ post stirs up something that, especially as a journalist, has always made me wonder about the New Atheists–how are they so confident?…I met a lot of moderate religious people, in the course of my life, who were anything but irrational or fundamentalist. And they changed me…[T]hey certainly made me less of an absolutist. They made me less confident that I had all the answers, that my way was the only way–not just for finding out the truth, but for getting through life.

How are ‘the New Atheists’ so confident of what? What is it that Mooney takes ‘the New Atheists’ to be so confident of? Apparently that they have all the answers and … Read the rest