All entries by this author

Somalia: al-Shabab Destroying Graves *

Jun 9th, 2009 | Filed by

Sufi Muslims embrace music, dancing and meditation and are appalled at desecration of graves.… Read the rest



Save the Salinger Archives *

Jun 9th, 2009 | Filed by

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

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

This 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

One 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

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

Well they are the experts.… Read the rest



OIC to Special Rapporteur: Watch Your Mouth *

Jun 8th, 2009 | Filed by

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

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

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

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

Muriel Gray points out some sad realities.

What 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,

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It’s Men Who Hate Women, Not God *

Jun 7th, 2009 | Filed by

Yes…the title is metaphoric.… Read the rest



Obama in Cairo: The Religionizing of Politics *

Jun 7th, 2009 | Filed by

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 Lucas

From 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

Jason 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.

One more

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Jesus and Mo Listen to Bill Donohue *

Jun 6th, 2009 | Filed by

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

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

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

Antivaxxers’ work, belief in homeopathy, denying science-based medicine will result in more babies dying. … Read the rest