Well, quite a good day in a lot of ways. Just for one thing – it’s been raining here almost without cease, all day and all night nearly every day, for about three weeks, and today suddenly (it was raining sideways last night) it’s not only not raining, it’s not only sunny, it’s warm. It’s one of those spring-in-winter days. Balmy, fresh, smelling wonderful, of mud and wet vegetation and clean air. I went for a walk down to the cemetery, and was looking at a bare tree against the blue sky and noticed it had robins perched all over it. They looked like Xmas decorations – they looked festive. I enjoyed that sight for a minute, then realized that … Read the rest

The Bishop of Motherwell is a funny guy.

The Bishop of Motherwell last night called on the Catholic Church in Scotland to stop “cowering” before the government. The Rt Rev Joseph Devine warned Christians against the “creeping political correctness” that was stifling religious expression. In an address to a Motherwell audience, the bishop said: “The Church needs to rediscover a political voice and stop cowering before the apparatus of government and its politically approved doctrines.”

That’s interesting, don’t you think? The Catholic Church had oughta stop ‘cowering’ before the government – and do what? Set up a rival government? Make the government do the cowering instead? Break the law? Whither religion’s famous humility and uncertainty now, eh?

And there’s ‘to … Read the rest

Hagiography raises a lot of interesting issues.

Waldstreicher falls into a long line of historians who see the other side of Franklin. The wiry, sardonic 39-year-old author is not a fan of rah-rah Franklin books, especially given his view that “Franklin’s anti-slavery credentials have been greatly exaggerated.” He regards Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin: An American Life as “a good read” with “insightful moments,” but sees Isaacson as “already on the stump, talking about why we should find Franklin inspiring, why he’s better, why he’s neither too far left nor too far right, why he’s so reasonable. It’s been disturbing to see it called the standard biography now,” Waldstreicher says, because “it doesn’t build on any of the scholarship in early

George Szirtes mentioned in a comment on that post Science and Religion that he has a blog, where he commented further on the subject we were discussing there. (It doesn’t have permalinks, so scroll down.) This subject interests me, and I agree with George on most of it. Especially some of it.

My contention is that the experience of listening to, say, Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion, strikes some people with the force of truth. It is not some verifiable truth about the existence or otherwise of God. The music doesn’t set itself out as proof of anything. The sense of truth arises because the music seems profoundly true to some element of human experience. In that sense

Some brief notices. Daniel Dennett is going to be on Philosophy Talk on January 17 to discuss ‘Intelligent Design’.

Pharyngula has moved to here. Change your bookmarks!

David Luban has a terrific guestpost at Balkinization on what’s wrong (hint: everything) with an article in defense of broad executive power by Harvey Mansfield in the Weekly Standard.

The article is loaded with gravitas, and Mansfield obviously wants to sound deep. But the depth is all on the surface. Read with care, Mansfield’s arguments are profoundly silly.

There’s a lot of that about. People wanting to sound deep, and just being silly instead. A lesson for us all. (Except me, because I never want to sound deep. Rude, hostile, irritating, … Read the rest

Let us now praise famous imams and representatives of various British Muslim organisations – every single one of them male, if I’m not mistaken. What a swell bunch – all two and twenty of them.

In light of the bizarre news that the Metropolitan Police is to “investigate” comments about homosexuality made by Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, we, the undersigned, Imams and representatives of various British Muslim organisations, affirm that Sir Iqbal’s views faithfully reflected mainstream Islamic teachings…The practice of homosexuality is regarded as being sinful in Islam.

Yes, and in other religions too, as Ratzinger keeps anxiously pointing out, in case we might confuse him with someone else. So what? Who … Read the rest

I know it’s obvious, but this kind of thing gets on my nerves. I know it’s obvious, I know this is The Economist, but still.

When IBM announced an overhaul of its pension plan for employees in America last week, it joined a parade of employers that are shifting more responsibility for saving for retirement on to workers.

Shifting more responsibility. As if those slacker employees have been just flopping around expecting employers to spoon-feed them, because they’re such babies. As if pensions were not simply part of the agreed compensation package, like, you know, wages. If IBM announced an overhaul of its payment plan for employees, which consisted of reducing their salaries by 100%, would that be shifting … Read the rest