Nicholas Kristof spots a trend. A few years ago, God seemed caught in a devil of a fight. Atheists were firing thunderbolts suggesting that “religion poisons everything,” as Christopher Hitchens put it in the subtitle of his book, “God Is Not Great.” Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins also wrote best sellers that were scathing about God, …
Tag Archive: The backlash
Apr 05 2012
Part deux
More on O’Neill. (Don’t ask ‘why.’ I’m interested in this kind of thing – the blithe indifference to facts, the perversity, the malice, the lack of responsibility, the should-know-better quality; the smugness, the preening, the bullying on behalf of the already powerful.) on 31 March, atheists in the US military had their first-ever get-together on …
Apr 05 2012
How dare you rebel against the tyrant
Brendan. At it again. Possibly more indifferent to the facts than ever. I know Easter is traditionally a time when Christians give praise for the rising again of Jesus after his flagellation and crucifixion by the Romans. But this year, in the midst of your Easter egg-eating and possible Mass-attending, try to spare a thought …
Apr 02 2012
What “everybody knows”
Eric MacDonald has a very good piece on Julian’s humanist manifesto. He makes the same point I kept making (and really, it’s hard not to – it’s so obvious): Julian Baggini has now published his Heathen’s Manifesto, which he begs atheists to read. I wish I could understand the motivation behind it. It seems to …
Mar 27 2012
Vocational hazards
Barbara J King at NPR is repeating her mantra that it’s wrongwrongwrong bad awful reprehensible to say that absurd beliefs are absurd. Last Thursday, I spoke with evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in a recorded interview at the NPR studios in Washington, D.C. That meeting was suggested by the American arm of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for …
Mar 26 2012
A tribe of one
There was an earlier Heathen’s Progress a few days ago, which did hint that the series isn’t in fact intended to go on forever. That’s good to know. (One needs to know what to pack.) On the other hand, Julian used it to treat all disagreement as “tribalism,” which looks to a naive observer like …
Mar 26 2012
A spectre is haunting the Guardian Open Weekend
Oh no not that – not another installment of Heathen’s (ant-like) Progress. But yes, it is so. This time it’s a manifesto. Oh good, more management of atheism by a self-nominated boss of atheism. More telling us all how to do it more korrektly by some random guy. More “we have to do it this way” from one …
Mar 16 2012
Another week, another inch of heathen progress
Oh dear god, Julian is still boring for Britain. What in hell do the people at Comment is Free – Andrew? David? – think they’re doing? Do they really think the series – Heathen’s Progress – is so brilliant or witty or enlightening or whatever to be worth carrying for all this time? Didn’t it start …
Mar 14 2012
Keep your little pulses
Thestupiditburns. Melvyn Bragg?! I liked Melvyn Bragg; I think In Our Time is a great thing and I wish we had anything nearly as good in the US. But this is a nasty, ragey, wrong, silly outburst. What he says about reason is ridiculous, for a start. He begins with a superfluous and venomous announcement that Hume …
Mar 06 2012
People who know what god likes
I have a squillion things to do before I leave again tomorrow (like preparing my talk, for instance…), including offering some more detail on the conference, but I can’t ignore a new bit of point-missing and god-frotting from Be Scofield. It’s about how Natalie Reed says god doesn’t love transgender people and Be responds (by …
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