Monthly Archive for April, 2010

Battle of the Babies

Published on April 26, 2010 in News. 0 Comments

newhumanistbabycovernewfrom Casper Melville, in New Humanist

A new book argues that liberal secularism and high birth rates are fueling a revival of religious fundamentalism. Caspar Melville speaks to its author Eric Kaufmann:

Whenever demography is the subject a panicky headline usually follows. Generally these take the form of anxieties about overpopulation. “Are there just too many people in the world?” asks Johann Hari in the Independent. “The World’s population is still exploding,” confirms the Optimum Population Trust (patron David Attenborough). Though equally they could be about the opposite. “Is Europe Dying?” queries Catholic apologist George Weigel (before answering his own question: “The brute fact is that Europe is depopulating itself”). “Falling birth rate is killing Europe says Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks” is the Guardian’s offering. To these hysterical headlines let’s add another, especially for you secular folk: with birth rates of seven babies per women fundamentalists will take over the world. And here is the kicker: it’s all secularism’s fault.

To read more…

Were We Born to Believe?

Published on April 22, 2010 in News. 0 Comments

galilee2_1609258c

From Matthew Taylor, in Telegraph

Philip Pullman’s new novel The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is opening another chapter in the often acrimonious debate between religious believers and atheists. This is not, of course, a new argument, but it is one that was given new life by the religious justifications offered by the September 11 terrorists, and there is little sign of it abating.

Although Pullman’s attack is more on organised Christianity than faith, the aim of other strident atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens or Daniel Dennett, is to use the hammer of science and rationality to break the chains of religious superstition. Indeed, since the Ancient World, intellectuals have predicted that faith would wither away in the face of expanding human knowledge. But the prediction was wrong.

To read more…

The Origins of a Holy Book

Published on April 20, 2010 in News. 0 Comments

ideaskoran__1269621225_8889

From Drake Bennett, in The Boston Globe

Later this spring, a team of scholars at Germany’s Berlin-Brandenberg Academy of Sciences will complete the first phase of what will ultimately be an unprecedented, two-decade effort to throw light on the origins of the Koran.

The project, called the Corpus Coranicum, will be something that scholars of the Koran have long yearned for: a central repository of imagery, information, and analysis about the Muslim holy book. Modern research into Islam’s origin and early years has been hampered by the paucity and inaccessibility of ancient texts, and the reluctance of Muslim governments in places like Yemen to allow wide access to them.

To read more…