All Proceeds Benefit the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Security Trust

3 Responses to All Proceeds Benefit the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Security Trust

1. anonymous says:

   Wednesday, 16 January, 2008 at 11:37

   Hmmmm, so it’s an awful lot of nodding and patting each other on the back and then possibly a media spectacle wherever they disagree with each other…

   Good cause for the to donate to. I am not sure if I’m terribly interested in getting it though. Every one of those guys has this habit of irritating the hell out of me:

   Richard Dawkins – My opinion of him has actually improved in recent years. As much as I’m not awfully impressed with ‘The God Delusion’, I do think it has done Dawkins a lot of good to try to tackle the subject of religion head on rather than making snide comments against religion while focussing on his main subject of evolutionary biology.

   I first knew Dawkins for a number of programmes he gave on the truth of evolution in opposition to (Christian) religion, but it was always irritating that he never seemed to acknowledge the vast majority of Christians who actually accept evolution with ease. His programme prior to his book ‘Root of all evil?’ suffered from some nasty teething problems in the first half, partly because of channel 4′s choice of title and partly because of the fact that many interviewees turned out to be substantially more extreme in their viewpoints than originally expected. Nevertheless, since then Dawkins defence of his position on television interviews has been very balanced and even enlightening. His recent announcement that he doesn’t have anything against Christmas and, on the contrary, enjoys singing Christmas carols. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7136682.stm

   Christopher Hitchens – While Hitchens often says fascinating things about his view on religion, I can’t help but be worried by him asides from this. His support of the Iraq war is one thing, but his refusal to accept the ruling of a court of law in the case of the whole Scooter Libby scandal really showed his Republican bias in action: http://www.slate.com/id/2168642/

   Hitchens, while absolutely right to criticise Mother Teresa, seems to be making living out of ridicule. He ridiculed Bob Hope as “Hope was a fool, and nearly a clown, but he was never even remotely a comedian” in the period shortly after the man’s death. He ridiculed Elie Wiesel asking “is there a more contemptible poseur and windbag”. He has even written a book insisting that Henry Kissenger should be incarcerated as a war criminal. He also wrote an article for The Atlantic ridiculing Churchill entitled “Boorish, drunk and mostly wrong” (a rebuttal of his various claims about Churchill can be found here: http://www.courts.fsnet.co.uk/wscatlantic.htm#a )

   The issue is not simply that he ridicules people, but that he makes a living out of spite. What really pushed me over the edge with Hitchens is the following article: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/01/hitchens200701
   At the end of page one of this article Hitchens espouses the most horrifically sexist and even anti-semitic sentiments! I just can’t respect someone who would write this kind of filth.

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2. anonymous says:

   Wednesday, 16 January, 2008 at 11:38

   - Sam Harris
   While he’s often criticised for his strange dichotomy between mysticism and religion (as if they weren’t two sides of the same coin) and the lack of real clarity he puts into his discussion of the difference he sees between them, there’s a bigger problem with Harris. Basically Harris has done more than any other of figure to alienate perhaps our best allies in undermining religious extremism: religious moderates. I never fail to be surprised by how much support is given to the idea that religious beliefs are nothing but nonsense. We don’t look at Homer’s Iliyad as nonsense, so why should we seemingly give Greek myths a greater respect than Christian ones? Harris appears to give fundamentalists a greater amount of respect than moderates because he believes fundamentalists to be more true to their scriptures. This is actually an absurd point of view since fundamentalists almost completely ignore the findings of Biblical criticism and their interpretation is normally based on a naive acceptance of English KJV translation of the Bible and at times a completely forced interpretation.

   Dan Dennett – Not really much criticism to be made here. He’s a philosopher and a biologist, and does a great deal of research into evolution and cognitive science. The problem is that he’s not really one of the best in any of his fields. His recent book “Breaking the Spell” gained this damning criticism, not because of his view on religion, but because of his rather sloppy techniques in the field of cognitive science:
   http://www.teo.au.dk/en/research/current/cognition/onlinepapers/geertzdennet.pdf

   The point here is that none of these figures is without their weaknesses, and the idea of them in a room together patting each other on the back for coming to same conclusions strikes me as rather dull. Aren’t we more impressed with them when they go up against a proper villain in public debates?

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3. anonymous says:

   Wednesday, 6 February, 2008 at 17:10

   Whwen i Ayaan Hirsi Alis book tour for 20008? Or does anyone have the full schedule.

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