Reading Time: 5 minutes Nathan Fielder’s new show The Rehearsal covers myriad topics, including secrets, emotional repression, social anxiety, connecting with other human beings, and parenthood. As with many Fielder projects, it’s meta-textual and voyeuristic in a way that breeds deep discomfort in the viewer. It’s a comedy show that lives on cringey moments where we watch people who […]
religious fundamentalism
Posted inEducation
Islam as a Religion of Peace? Problems with RE…
Reading Time: 4 minutes I am a socially and politically liberal commentator. I have also written many books and literally thousands of blog posts criticising Christianity. Nobody in my community bats an eyelid. I have done that because, as an atheist philosopher, I’ve been born and brought up within a Christian context. However, I have also been unabashed in […]
Posted inEthics and Morality, Psychology
Christians, Their Morality and Their Ironic Intolerance
Reading Time: 10 minutes God is love. Or something. Turns out, very often, Christians don’t reflect this ideal. This is kind of understandable given the distinct lack of such an ideal in the Old Testament. But if we park that whole tranche of biblical history for the time being, let’s look a little at the tolerance of Christians. What […]
Posted inUncategorized
Quote of the Day – Sheila C.
Reading Time: < 1 minute This one came from Sheila C. on the Liberal vs Fundamentalist Religion thread: I agree, and that’s why I never went for liberal religion. It sounds great — I would love some spirituality plus the freedom to follow my own conscience — but atheists and conservative religious people made the same good point: if there […]
Posted inUncategorized
Liberal vs Fundamentalist Religion
Reading Time: 2 minutes Robet M. Price, in his recent superb little book Blaming Jesus for Jehovah, points out the following: If resurgent fundamentalism is a last gasp, the meal-mouthed mewlings of liberal religion are death rattles, too. The whole enterprise of liberal religion is to humanize religion, to temper it with modern psychology, to use it for political engagement, […]
Posted inPolitics
Tom Holland on “This Week” on Islam’s existential crisis
Reading Time: < 1 minute This is a really good excerpt from the political discourse programme “This Week” on the BBC: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U9ml6RZO70[/youtube]
Posted inUncategorized
Syrian archaeologist ‘killed in Palmyra’ by IS militants
Reading Time: 2 minutes The archaeologist who looked after ancient ruins of Palmyra in Syria for 40 years is reported to have been killed by Islamic State (IS) militants.
Khaled al-Asaad had been held for about a month by the group, which seized the Unesco World Heritage site in May.
Posted inUncategorized
Bus riders shot in head for not being able to read Qu’ran
Reading Time: 2 minutes Oh dear. Kenya again feeling the brunt of Islamist extremism:
Gunmen from the Somali militant group al-Shabab say they have attacked a bus in northern Kenya, killing 28 people.
The bus was travelling to the capital, Nairobi, when it was stopped in Mandera county, not far from the Somali border.
Gunmen separated out non-Muslims by asking passengers to read from the Koran, officials and witnesses said. Those who failed were then shot in the head.
Posted inEducation, The Secular
‘Extremist’ nurseries to lose funding – Nicky Morgan
Reading Time: 2 minutes The post-Trojan horse shenanigans rumble on. The BHA are riding the secular wave – good on ’em. The BBC reports: Councils are to be given powers to stop funding early-years providers with links to extremism, Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has announced. The move, in England, follows a letter-writing campaign by the British Humanist Association. Members […]
Posted inThe Secular
Study finds religious fundamentalism unexpectedly common in Europe
Reading Time: 2 minutes From the National Secular Society:
Religious fundamentalism is not a marginal phenomenon in Western Europe, nor is it restricted to Islam. This conclusion is drawn in a large-scale study published by Ruud Koopmans from the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.