What is missing in the protests against Terry Jones’s plans to burn a Quran, as well as Mohammed Vawda’s plan to burn a Bible, is why anyone else should care about your beliefs, or desist from offending those beliefs. We can agree that doing so is rude, offensive, insensitive and all the rest, but these… Continue reading Freedom of speech and burning holy books
Category: Religion
Respecting people versus respecting beliefs
There is no contradiction between saying that someone has a misguided, uninformed or laughable point of view, and at the same time recognising that person’s worth or dignity in general.
The defense of reason
Amongst the things we probably know is that (to quote Hitchens again) “the defense of science and reason is the great imperative of our time”. And the enemies of science and reason are not always somewhere else – they are sometimes next door to you, or even sharing your bed.
Thought police impede liberty
Difficult choices and their consequences are what we learn from, and removing choices can make children more difficult to protect – simply because part of what you are doing by limiting choice is turning adults into children, and thereby making your problem larger.
Comment on DStv’s plan to introduce a porn channel
Has porn been proved to cause sexual violence, as they claim? No. Does our Bill of Rights enshrine freedom of expression? Yes. And has DStv put systems in place to prevent children from accessing its adult channels? That would be another yes.
Religion education in SA schools
The topic of religion education in South African public schools has recently been quite a hot issue – mostly in the Afrikaans papers – following Prof. George Claassen’s article about the topic on his blog and follow-up radio interviews and the like. To put it quite plainly, certain schools are clearly in violation of the… Continue reading Religion education in SA schools
Radio, September 22
Here is a recording of a brief radio interview following the publication of Goblins and Gobbledegook last week (10MB, mp3): JoziFM
The National Interfaith Leadership Council
A FSI response to this story from the Mail and Guardian (11 September 2009): Morally complex issues deserve careful consideration, rather than resolutions by appeal to tradition, prejudice or superstition. This is why we find professional ethicists on bioethics committees, and why insights from disciplines such as evolutionary psychology and moral philosophy need to be… Continue reading The National Interfaith Leadership Council