Nice.

The ordeal of ill-fated Irshad Bibi, who suffered burns in an acid attack by her husband, seems far from over despite generous offer by an NGO as her very own people blocked her way to accept the help and go for the treatment…[H]er family and relatives stopped her from going to Islamabad for treatment at the expense of the NGO on the plea that “such organisations have the reputation of committing immoral activities and they will use her also for their nefarious designs”…A resident of the area to which the victim belonged defended the family’s stance, saying: “The NGOs are involved in un-Islamic activities and it is a sinful act to get treatment from them”.

Therefore, Irshad Bibi … Read the rest

Michael Ignatieff says something in his article on ‘Getting Iraq Wrong’ that ties up with this discussion of belief and intuition we’ve been having.

Having taught political science myself, I have to say the discipline promises more than it can deliver. In practical politics, there is no science of decision-making. The vital judgments a politician makes every day are about people: whom to trust, whom to believe and whom to avoid. The question of loyalty arises daily: Who will betray and who will stay true? Having good judgment in these matters, having a sound sense of reality, requires trusting some very unscientific intuitions about people.

I’ll buy that. That is one place where intuition mostly does work a lot better … Read the rest

There are some excellent things in parts of God is not Great*. I thought I would give you a sample.

Pp. 175-6:

…it is only in the reported observations of Jesus that we find any mention of hell and eternal punishment. The god of Moses would brusquely call for other tribes, including his favourite one, to suffer massacre and plague and even extirpation, but when the grave closed over his victims he was essentially finished with them unless he remembered to curse their succeeding progeny. Not until the advent of the Prince of Peace do we hear of the ghastly idea of further punishing and torturing the dead…[T]he son of god is revealed as one who, if his milder

Interesting. I’m told that Why Truth Matters was scheduled to be discussed on Classic FM this evening, on Newsnight. I don’t know though, I tried the Listen Again button but although I got the player and clicked on the sound button, I couldn’t get it to play. In the unlikely event that anyone is interested, there it is. (In the even more unlikely event that anyone would like to transcribe it for me, do feel free!)

Update: dear kind Arnaud did a transcript for me. (Or perhaps he simply made it up; it’s certainly pleasing enough to be a fantasy.) Merci, Arnaud.

John Brunning: Well next stop, Chris, a book on a subject I know is dear to your … Read the rest

Rape is used as a weapon of war. Cath Elliot thinks bishops and their churches ought to ponder that fact a little more deeply.

What the bishop and his church fail to understand is that forcing a woman to continue with a pregnancy against her will is a continuation of the violence against her. It doesn’t matter how much empathy and support is on offer, at the end of the day it is the woman, not the church, who is faced with the reality of an unwanted child…When they occur as part of an armed conflict, forced pregnancy and forced maternity are regarded as war crimes and are breaches of the Geneva convention.

But no matter – there’s always someone … Read the rest