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So here I am at the airport. I got nothin to say except that I’m at the airport. I’m at SeaTac’s fancy sitting-area place, which faces a giant window – from the table where I am it’s acres of grey sky with a little scrim of airplanes and runways at the bottom. Quite nice.
Archive for February, 2012
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The disease of education
February 29th, 2012 
Ophelia Benson Lawrence Krauss says a necessary thing. He starts from a campaign argle-bargle by Rick Santorum saying that higher education is bad because it kills faith. Mr. Santorum views this apparent facet of higher education as a danger, and his proposed solution is simple-less higher education and more faith. As a faculty member at an institution of higher [...]
Whereabouts
February 29th, 2012 Ophelia Benson I’m off to Orlando in a couple of hours, to help with (or get in the way of, as the case may be) Moving Secularism Forward. I may do a pointless post from the airport, saying I am now at the airport.
More from Opinionista
February 28th, 2012 Ophelia Benson Opinionista has a fantastic post, reminiscent of Greta Christina’s reasons atheists are angry: “Over It” – The rant of an angry, Agnostic, British, Indo-Pakistani woman of Muslim heritage. I am over the complete ignorance by Muslims and non Muslims (particularly UK politicians and media) alike of the fact that “Muslim communities” contain non religious, spiritual [...]
We mandate no belief
February 28th, 2012 Ophelia Benson Behold – what Ronald Reagan was able to say in 1984. We in the United States, above all, must remember that lesson [of the Holocaust], for we were founded as a nation of openness to people of all beliefs. And so we must remain. Our very unity has been strengthened by our pluralism. We establish [...]
Tags: What is belief
February 28th, 2012 Ophelia Benson A stack of interesting comments on the thread about getting it; about whether or not it took; about the feeling of belief. It’s interesting that they all converge, those by people like me who as far as they can tell never got it, and those by people who did get it at some point but [...]
You can’t win
February 27th, 2012 Ophelia Benson Richard Dawkins has a very amusing piece about the journalistic take on his discussion with the archishop the other day. One stupid cliché after another, most of them derogatory. Dawkins is a charismatic preacher haw haw; bust-up; ardent atheist – and so on. There was no bust-up, so the audience was in despair – in [...]
It never took
February 27th, 2012 Ophelia Benson Several of you replied to Julian’s claims about atheists’ deafness to religion by pointing out that most atheists were raised theist by theists so we’re not deaf at all, we’re familiar with the music. It’s a good point, but at the same time – I’m not sure it’s always true. I’m not sure that being raised [...]
The majority has spoken
February 27th, 2012 Ophelia Benson A historian named Timothy Messer-Kruse has been doing research on the Haymarket riot and trial of 1886 for the past ten years. He was prompted by a student question about the orthodox version of the trial, which was that the prosecution did not offer evidence connecting any of the defendants with the bombing. One of my [...]
Oh they’re all like that
February 26th, 2012 Ophelia Benson Mark Jones has an excellent post on Julian’s tone piece. A snippet: As often when it comes to this sort of accusation, no evidence is linked to support Baggini’s position. To be clear, I don’t doubt that the occasional atheist might make a tone-deaf pronouncement. I object that atheists are characterised as a group with [...]
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