In a possible indication that this PledgeBank pledge (reported previously) has proved highly successful, it is reported today that The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is the most popular holiday read for the UK’s Labour party MPs this summer. The popular tract is also in second place for the Liberal Democrats (ahead even of Harry Potter!) and second place overall.
In October 2000 a Pakistani, Dr Younus Sheikh, was arrested on the charge of “blasphemy” and he was later found guilty and sentenced to death. He had been an active humanist and campaigner, and only after a concerted effort on behalf of humanist and other NGOs and rights groups was he finally freed in 2004, after three years spent mostly in solitary confinement.
This week, another man who by coincidence is also named Younus Sheikh — a writer who has criticized Islam — has been found guilty of “blasphemy” and sentenced to life in prison. And once again, the media outrage is limited — at this moment there are just two related news stories on Google, one from Pakistani newspaper The News, and the other from the UK’s National Secular Society.
The government of Pakistan has today added its voice to the official condemnation against the British government’s honouring of novelist Salman Rushdie (now “Sir Salman”) in the bi-annual British hounours ceremony. Iran had already passed a resolution of condemnation yesterday.
Of course, the rent-a-mobs are back out for their now-traditional bi-annual effigy burning photo opportunity. There have been renewed calls for Rushdie’s death.
(Iran’s official position as of 1998 is that Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Rushdie was void, but the Iranian state media famously followed the announcement with news that leading clerics considered the fatwa irrevocable, leaving the actual state position somewhat ambiguous.)
The influential but always controversial figurehead of philosophical post-modernism, Richard Roty, died on Friday at the age of 75.
His writings are often prominently cited as a prime example of intellectual relativism. Rorty earned often bitterly hostile reviews from analytic philosophers, frustrated by his assertions that no culture and no methodology were any better reflections of reality than any other. Daniel Dennett said he showed “flatfooted ignorance of the proven methods of scientific truth-seeking and their power” and Rorty (in his own words) was often characterized as one of the “smirking intellectuals whose writings are weakening the moral fiber of the young”.
Peter Hitchens today “reviewed” (Hitchens vs Hitchens) his brother Christopher Hitchen’s new book, God is Not Great, which is currently riding high on the secularist publishing wave.
The “review” barely focuses on the book, which he “enjoyed” and recommends “to anybody who is interested in the subject. Like everything Christopher writes, it is often elegant, frequently witty and never stupid or boring.” Despite this, “I also think it is wrong”.
Richard Dawkins, Enthusiastic Bright, author of The God Delusion and now of Richard Dawkins Foundation fame has a guest contributor spot in the Times of London today.
Objectively judged, the language of The God Delusion is less shrill than we regularly hear from political commentators or from theatre, art, book or restaurant critics. The illusion of intemperance flows from the unspoken convention that faith is uniquely privileged: off limits to attack. In a criticism of religion, even clarity ceases to be a virtue and begins to sound like aggressive hostility.
More here: “How dare you call me a fundamentalist“
Online magazine Slate has today completed a run of three excerpts from Christopher Hitchens’ new book, God is Not Great.
Wednesday — “Religion Poisons Everything”
Thursday — “Was Muhammad Epileptic”
Today “Mormonism: A Racket Becomes a Religion”
The book is published on 1st May.
(If you purchase the book via the Brights’ Net’s affiliation with Amazon then 6% of the price goes to the-brights.net at no extra cost.)
Former Honorary President of the American Humanist Association, the renowned science-fiction novelist Kurt Vonnegut, died yesterday. He was 84.
His most famous books include Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle.
Vonnegut is reported to have referred to the AHA Honourary President position as “that totally functionless capacity”. He replaced Isaac Asimov in the role.
(Cory Doctorow mourns his passing. Also see this Rolling Stone feature on Vonnegut from August 2006.)
The Richard Dawkins Foundation (RDF) has drawn special attention to a PledgeBank pledge aiming to send a copy of Dawkins’ The God Delusion to every Member of Parliament in the UK. The pledge author is also maintaining the list of MPs to avoid duplication.
In more good, book-related news, the Georgia state department of education (US) upheld a decision on Thursday, previously taken by the Gwinnett County school board, allowing famous pagan protagonist, Harry Potter, to remain in school libraries in the Gwinnett school system. The presence of British author J K Rowling’s popular series was threatened in October 2005, when mother Laura Mallory asked her local committee to remove the books from their libraries on the grounds that they were violent and promoted witchcraft.
