Archive for the ‘Prologue’ Category
Open Season
Human rights conventions extend the same protection to religious beliefs as to skin colour, ethnic origins, sexual orientation, disability and so forth. The Organization of the Islamic Conference, however, has attempted – so far unsuccessfully – to induce the UN explicitly to equate criticism of religion with racism. This is a category error; beliefs have […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Prologue
On Muggles And Kant
Whenever domestic tyrants denigrate “Reason”, we must refrain from being drawn on the philosophy, because that is not what it is about. We need immediately to ascribe what looks like an epistemological doctrine to their natural aversion to anything that might help the marks figure out the particular scam they are running. Such people, and […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Prologue
Behind The Wizard’s Curtain
Anyone who claims that he knows absolutely that no cosmic intelligence exists is a fool, but this is not what atheism is actually about. Such a position ought more properly to be called adeism, since Deism is the belief in a god that does not intervene. What atheism denies is theism, the idea that the […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Prologue