Category: Society

"Some independent religious scholars argue the cartoonists were wrong to offend Muslims and say the drawings made dialogue impossible".

Notice the failure to point out that some ‘independent religious scholars’ (whatever that is supposed to mean) and some other kinds of people argue that on the contrary the cartoonists were not wrong to draw cartoons about Mohammed; notice the ‘wrong to offend Muslims’ as if what the cartoonists did had been to ‘offend Muslims’ as opposed to drawing cartoons; notice that any satirical or political or otherwise substantive cartoon can always ‘offend’ someone; notice giving the stupid evasive anonymous smeary ‘the cartoonists were wrong to offend Muslims’ claim the last word; notice doing that in an article about the attempted ax-murder of a 75-year-old cartoonist in his own house. Notice, and be disgusted.

I’ve only just caught up with Danah Boyd’s description of her experience when presenting at the Web2.0 Expo event. It was clearly very distressing for her, and understandably so. It would seem that the use of Twitter provided a backchannel for an audience to carry on a completely different conversation instead of taking the trouble to pay attention to the presenter. Mob behaviour resulted. In my day, I only had the rudeness of seeing some members of the audience doing emails on their laptops while I was attempting to give a presentation.

‘arguments which survive to be raised again, for eternity, no matter how many times they are shot down. “Homeopathy worked for me”, and the rest. Zombie arguments survive, they get up and live again, immortal and resistant to all refutation, because they do not live or die by the normal standards of mortal arguments. There’s a huge list of them at realclimate.org, with refutations. There are huge lists of them everywhere. It makes no difference’.

Just been watching the Intelligence Squared Debate on the proposition that “Atheism is the New Fundamentalism”. Speaking for the motion were Richard Harries and Charles Moore. Speaking against the motion were AC Grayling and Richard Dawkins.

It won’t come as a surprise to learn that the proposers of the motion were trounced.

Harries was ineffectual and Moore was bordering very close to ad hominem attacks on Dawkins. The problem that the proposers had is that, as evidenced from their opponents’ performances tonight, Dawkins and Grayling clearly aren’t “Atheist Fundamentalists”, no matter how much Harries, and Moore in particular, would like them to be. Dawkins and Grayling were very good and effortlessly staked out their position against the motion.

It seems to me that an Atheist Fundamentalist is something of a mythical beast, invented by the religious, and has no more likelihood of existence than a pink unicorn. It’s a simplistic label for the lazy to rail against the Four Horsemen of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens.

Take it away, Lily and GayClic!

I see that Tariq Ramadan has been giving us the benefit of his opinions again:

My position on homosexuality is quite clear…Islam, as Christianity, as Judaism, as even the Dalai Lama…[are] not accepting of homosexuality, saying that this is forbidden according to the principles of our religion…My position, with homosexuals, is to say, "We don’t agree with what you are doing, but we respect who you are," which I think is the only true liberal position that you can have.

As Ophelia says, this is hardly the “only” true liberal position that you can have. In fact, I would go as far as to say that it shows very clearly what a piece of work Tariq Ramadan is, and why I totally reject his “philosophy”. Indeed, I think Mo sums Ramadan up pretty well. It’s hardly surprising that the city of Rotterdam terminated his contract as an “integration advisor”. But then again, one wonders how they ever fell for his sophistry in the first place.