This is appalling.

Sabrina Rahim doesn’t practice any particular faith, but she had no problem signing a letter declaring that because of her deeply held religious beliefs, her 4-year-old son should be exempt from the vaccinations required to enter preschool. She is among a small but growing number of parents around the country who are claiming religious exemptions to avoid vaccinating their children.

And by doing so, to put countless other children and adults at risk – a small but growing number of parents who feel entitled to endanger other people for no good reason.

[P]ublic health officials say it takes only a few people to cause an outbreak that can put large numbers of lives at risk. “When

And while we’re on the subject of strange readings and stranger arguments, Mark Vernon offers some more of those.

I have sometimes wondered why no enterprising journalist, as far as I know, hasn’t had a dig around in Richard Dawkins’ past in order to find the cause of his revolt against religion. But perhaps there is no need. It is all there in The God Delusion. A little analysis draws attention to three psychoanalytically significant things that stand out in the book. The first, that one can be certain God does not exist. With science, Dawkins has killed him. This, of course, is for Freud an Oedipal slaying of the God/Father.

Except that Dawkins not only doesn’t say … Read the rest

Roger Scruton, with an eyebrow (if not two, or six) lifted in amused skepticism, reads Anthony Grayling. Oh these funny little people who prefer mental freedom to the other thing – how droll they are, but in the end how tarsome.

While treating us to some agreeable ventures in the history of ideas, he recycles the Victorian notion that the West has progressed from oppressive superstition to enlightened liberty.

Dear me, does he really, how very old hat. (But then if we think progress from this to that is a silly idea, why does it matter that it’s old hat? Well because my dear you know ‘Victorian’ – they never got any sex, so it always pays to throw … Read the rest