What the Saudi king said.

This message declares that Islam is a religion of moderation and tolerance, a message that calls for constructive dialogue among followers of religions, a message that promises to open a new page for humanity in which, God willing, concord will replace conflict.

And God not willing? What then?

More to the point, of course, the idea that Islam and especially Wahhabi Islam is a religion of moderation and tolerance is a bad joke. Saudi Arabia tolerates almost nothing, especially if women want to do or drive or walk into or sit down in or refuse or accept or look at or listen to or read it.

Mankind is suffering today from a loss of

This is a very stupid observation, presumably by a dull-witted sub-editor who didn’t read the article with attention:

The fruits of the feminist revolution? Sisterhood, empowerment, and eight hours a day in a cubicle.

That’s right. Why? Because lots of jobs involve eight hours a day in a cubicle. Such is life. But the point of the feminist revolution is that women ought not to be debarred from life in the larger world merely because they are women. Women ought to be seen as and treated as people just as men are people, and both sexes ought to have the ability to take their chances in the world as it is. That’s all. ‘The feminist revolution’ did not think … Read the rest

Not believing there is a god should be enough (enough for atheism, enough for being an atheist). We shouldn’t have to sign up to more. We don’t have time to figure out all the things that we think don’t exist. We can just not think they exist, and let it go at that – or we can not think they exist and then go on to think they don’t exist, if we want to and have time, but that’s extra. Just not thinking so is the minimum needed for entry, or at least it should be.

There’s no sense in believing things exist for no reason – so we don’t (if we have sense) – and for atheists ‘god’ is … Read the rest

There’s a discussion at Talking Philosophy of how to define atheism. It’s basically about the difference between saying atheism is not believing that there is a god and saying that it is belief there there is no god. Me, I would define it the first way first and then add the second as a more affirmative or energetic version – but what I wouldn’t do is leave out the first. I think the first is 1) an important part of atheism and 2) a version of atheism that is more useful to a lot of people than the more affirmative version is. It has to be possible to be definitely non-theist without having to be affirmative about it.

It does … Read the rest