Sufi Muslims embrace music, dancing and meditation and are appalled at desecration of graves.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Save the Salinger Archives
Jun 9th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
It seems possible he could be typing out the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit over and over again.… Read the rest
Man Jailed for ‘Honour’ Killing of Sister
Jun 9th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Hasibullah Sadiqi gunned down his sister Khatera and her fiancé Feroz Mangal.… Read the rest
One of me, two of them
Jun 9th, 2009 10:25 am | By Ophelia BensonThis will amuse you – I’m going to be on Nightwaves on Thursday. A ‘debate’ – more or less about the book, as I understand it. The Other Side will be represented by two people – which perhaps hints at where the BBC’s sympathies lie.
I won’t tell you who the other people are now, because I prefer to tell you later.… Read the rest
The transparency project
Jun 9th, 2009 10:12 am | By Ophelia BensonOne reason religion is not good for women.
God represents an absent, unknown, unknowable, unaccountable, arbitrary power – which makes God a tyrant. To quote from the book, it’s a bad principle to expect humans to obey a putative god that is inaccessible and unknowable, just as it
would be to expect us to obey human legislators who were equally
hidden and unknowable and unaccountable. The God of most believers is a God that no one has
ever seen, that does not make appearances, that sends no messages;
this God is hidden, secretive, permanently and inviolably locked away
from all living people; this fact alone is enough to disqualify it as a source of laws or morality.
It’s surprising, in … Read the rest
Bullying the Special Rapporteur
Jun 8th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The SR for the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression must shut up or else.… Read the rest
Catholic Church Lectures Gays on Child Abuse
Jun 8th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Well they are the experts.… Read the rest
OIC to Special Rapporteur: Watch Your Mouth
Jun 8th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
He said restrictions on free speech should never be used to protect beliefs, including religious ones. Horrors!… Read the rest
Muriel Gray on Obama’s Speech
Jun 8th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Surely the boldest way forward is to tell the uncomfortable truth instead of obsequious fawning. … Read the rest
Catholic Theologian Reacts to Ryan Report
Jun 8th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Suggested part of the problem came from the church’s failure to develop a self-critical, thinking Christianity.… Read the rest
Pope Briefed on Ryan Report
Jun 8th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Listened carefully to what archbishop and cardinal said. Suggested ‘deep soul-searching.’… Read the rest
Tolerance and the dignity of all human beings
Jun 8th, 2009 11:48 am | By Ophelia BensonMuriel Gray points out some sad realities.
… Read the restWhat new creative solutions were on offer to reconcile the directly opposing ideologies that are obedience to Islam and progressive Western democracy? No big thinking of any kind. Actually, worse than that…Obama informed us that throughout history, “Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality”. Hasn’t it just? Darfur was all a silly misunderstanding, and Sunni and Shia Muslims tolerate each other magnificently. Islam also, the president assured us, overlaps and shares common principles with America, namely the “principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings”. Many of these can currently be seen on view in Afghanistan, northern Nigeria, Somalia,
It’s Men Who Hate Women, Not God
Jun 7th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Yes…the title is metaphoric.… Read the rest
Obama in Cairo: The Religionizing of Politics
Jun 7th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Those who live in Muslim-majority countries seem not to be citizens or Asians or Arabs or Africans but simply ‘Muslims.’… Read the rest
Reinforcing presumed religious identities
Jun 7th, 2009 | By Marieme Helie LucasFrom siawi.org.
June 4, 2009
It is beyond doubt that many people around the world, of various political opinions and creeds, will feel relieved after the discourse the President of the USA delivered in Cairo today. It is apparently a new voice, a voice of peace, quite far from Bush’s clash of civilisations. But is it so?
I presume that political commentators will point at the fact that Obama equates violence on the side of occupied Palestinians to violence on the side of Israeli colonizers, or that he has not abandonned the idea that the USA should tell the world how to behave and fight for their rights, or that the Israelo-Palestinian conflict is reduced to a religious conflict, … Read the rest
Possible is one thing, reasonable is another
Jun 6th, 2009 12:21 pm | By Ophelia BensonJason Rosenhouse looks at this natural v supernatural problem.
If you hold views about a supernatural realm that have absolutely no empirical consequences whatsoever then you have nothing to fear from science. There are even certain religious systems that posit such a realm. But that is not the sort of faith held by most Christians.
True; so the business about what is ‘beyond’ nature becomes irrelevant.
So long as we are talking about a divine creator in the abstract then there is no conflict with evolution. Deism is not threatened by evolution.
But Deists aren’t the people who freak out about evolution, so they’re not actually the people Mooney is talking about, so again, they are irrelevant.
… Read the restOne more
Jesus and Mo Listen to Bill Donohue
Jun 6th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
On the Ryan report as anti-Catholic propaganda and the benefits of being whipped by nuns.… Read the rest
Orwell and His Contradictions
Jun 6th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
In truth, Orwell was wrong about all sorts of things, not least the inner logic of totalitarianism.… Read the rest
Mark Oppenheimer on George Scialabba
Jun 6th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Scialabba has the time, freedom, and passion of the amateur, and the perspicacity of the pro.… Read the rest
Bad Astronomy on Lethal Homeopathy
Jun 6th, 2009 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Antivaxxers’ work, belief in homeopathy, denying science-based medicine will result in more babies dying. … Read the rest