Dave's Archives

Tag: religion

  • Insulting Islam

    I came to know of Uthman Badar recently via the news that his talk at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, titled “Honour Killings are Justified”, had been called off. It’s certainly a provocative title. My instinct was not to take it at face value, and Badar himself said it would be “ludicrous”, but it’s difficult…

  • Straw alarmism

    So much is said in the political catastrophe surrounding climate change that I can’t quite imagine anyone keeping up with it. However, rbutr has informed me that one particular pseudo-anonymous article at something called the “Independent Journal Review” (or “IJReview”) could do with a closer look, and so I shall oblige. The IJReview discusses James Lovelock’s…

  • Trolling atheists

    Scott Stephens has a good heart, and is refreshingly well acquainted with the absurdities of politics. However, in his capacity as an antagonist of atheists, I find his arguments rather inadequate. While Stephens propounds his notion of “chic” and “fashionable” atheism, I sense that his own lines of reasoning are sculpted by the vacuous fashions of…

  • I’m not latently racist, but…

    It’s an interesting exercise getting people to admit to racism. The ABC reports on a nation-wide survey (or rather a collection of state-wide surveys) exploring the nature and extent of racist attitudes in Australia. Only 1 in 8 people were prepared to explicitly admit to racial prejudice. Yet, 1 in 2 people were found to be…

  • A “pseudo-intellectual trifle”

    Scott Stephens has an article on the ABC’s Religion and Ethics website called “The Poverty of the New Atheism“. PZ Myers has a go at this (and he’s seen it all before). Stephens’ article resembles the Courtier’s Reply, another of Myers’ illuminations. Theologians seem to object to atheist arguments not because they’re wrong – they hardly…

  • The institution of specious reasoning

    Stumbling across the ABC’s “Religion and Ethics” department, I discovered David Novak’s rather bluntly titled article: “No Right to Marriage for Same-Sex Couples“. It’s long, rambling and so far hasn’t attracted a lot of attention (judging from the solitary comment). Novak’s points are at least made clearly enough (though rather verbose), but in the end they…

  • False security, false feminism and false secularism

    There seems to be a growing school of thought in Western countries that the burqa (or other forms of Islamic headdress) should be banned, with several European countries (including Belgium, France and Spain) debating or already having passed laws against it. There are murmurings here too, by the Liberals’ Cory Bernardi and the Christian Democrats’…

  • One belief does not a religion make

    There’s nothing like a righteous religious leader for a good dose of stagnant inanity. Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen doesn’t let us down (SBS, ABC, News Ltd): As we can see by the sheer passion and virulence of the atheist – they seem to hate the Christian God – we are not dealing here with…

  • Biblical decline

    I read that the National Biblical Literacy Survey 2009 in the UK has reported a poor showing for Bible knowledge. I can’t say I’m either terribly surprised or troubled by this; there are any number of other literary works more deserving of public knowledge, and at some level this must be reflected in the public’s…

  • Ponderings of sanity

    There are many things to be said about debating in online forums. One, that you learn early on, is that it doesn’t take much effort to find the fruitcakes. It really doesn’t. The people who firmly believe that the World Trade Centre was brought down by explosives, as evidenced by the “indisputable fact” that it…