atheism | Pandaemonium

ABORTION, INFANTICIDE, HUMANITY, FREE SPEECH

March 7, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Is there no moral distinction between killing a newborn baby and aborting a fetus? And should an academic paper that seemingly advocated the killing of newborns have ever been published? Those are the questions at the heart of a controversy that has erupted after the publication of a paper entitled ‘After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?’ in the Journal of Medical Ethics. Two Australian academics, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, argued that the moral status of a newborn baby was […]

Categories: Free Speech, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: abortion, atheism, ethics, free speech, humanism, infanticide, peter singer, religion, utilitarianism, women's rights

WHO NEEDS GOD?

February 6, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Like a lion, perhaps, in a den of Daniels, I gave a talk last week on ‘Why I am an atheist’ to theology students at Bristol’s Trinity College. It was an enjoyable event, and hopefully helped me to think through and sharpen my arguments (though not, I suspect, to change anyone’s mind). Here’s the transcript. There are three kinds of arguments that an atheist can make in defence of the insistence that no God exists. First, he or she can argue […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: aquinas, aristotle, atheism, camus, christianity, ethics, euthyphro dilemma, first cause, god, greek philosophy, religion, william craig

GOD, THE UNIVERSE AND A BACON SARNIE

October 10, 2011 by Kenan Malik

The latest strip from the irrepressible Jesus and Mo may seem like a typical dig at the inconsistencies and illogicalities of religious faith. But, in its own inimitable way, it taps into one of the most difficult theological conumdrums for believers. A common argument in the increasingly tedious ‘God Wars’ is the claim by believers that atheists are naive about religious belief. They read holy books too literally and think of God as an old man with a white beard. […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: aquinas, aristotle, atheism, christianity, god, jesus and mo, morality, muslim rationalism, new atheism, religion, sam harris, secularism, terry eagleton, theology, via negativa

SPINOZA, LOCKE AND THE BATTLE OVER TOLERATION

August 27, 2011 by Kenan Malik

In my recent post on ‘Rethinking the idea of Christian Europe’, I mentioned the debate between the Radical and the mainstream Enlightenment, a debate superbly explored by Jonathan Israel in his books Radical Enlightenment and Enlightenment Contested. The mainstream Enlightenment of Kant, Locke, Voltaire and Hume is the one of which we know and which provides the public face of the Enlightenment. But it was the Radical Enlightenment, shaped by lesser-known figures such as d’Holbach, Diderot, Condorcet and, in particular, […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Free Speech, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: atheism, christianity, enlightenment, free speech, freedom of worship, jonathan israel, liberties, locke, radical enlightenment, religion, secularism, spinoza, tolerance

WHY I DON’T BELIEVE IN GOD

July 28, 2011 by Kenan Malik

The New Statesman asked various people from AC Grayling to PZ Myers to explain why they did not believe in God. This is my response. The full set of replies is here. I am an atheist because I see no need for God. Without God, it is said, we cannot explain the creation of the cosmos, anchor our moral values or infuse our lives with meaning and purpose. I disagree. Invoking God at best highlights what we cannot yet explain […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion • Tags: atheism, god

THE POETRY OF AN OLD ATHEIST

April 25, 2011 by Kenan Malik

‘The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts: those with brains, but no religion, and those with religion, but no brains.’ No, not the latest missive from Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris. In fact, it’s a missive not from a New Atheist at all, but from a very old one: Abul Ala Al-Ma’arri, a remarkable eleventh century Arab poet and freethinker. Today we have become used to thinking of the Islamic world as walled-in, insular, hostile to reason and […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: al-ma'arri, aquinas, arab literature, aristotle, atheism, falsafah, god, greek philosophy, ibn rushd, ibn sina, judeo-christian tradition, mu'tazilite, muslim rationalism, muslims, poetry, religion

THE SEARCH FOR ETHICAL CONCRETE [PART 2]

March 31, 2011 by Kenan Malik

This is the second part of my talk on ‘God, science and the quest for moral certainty’. I posted the first part yesterday. The whole of the transcript is on my archive site. IF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY SAW THE ‘DEATH OF GOD’ – MUCH EXAGGERATED though that death may have been – the twentieth century witnessed what we might call the Fall of Man. The history of the twentieth century – two world wars, the Depression and Holocaust, Auschwitz and […]

Categories: Science & Technology • Tags: alister mcgrath, atheism, berlin wall, camus, death of god, eo wilson, ethics, euthyphro dilemma, french revolution, god, human agency, human nature, julian savulescu, michael ignatieff, murray bookchin, plato, sam harris