Author: Ophelia Benson
Ophelia Benson edits the Butterflies and Wheels website. She was formerly associate editor of Philosopher’s Magazine and has coauthored several books, including The Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense (Souvenir Press, 2004), Why Truth Matters (Continuum Books, 2006), and Does God Hate Women? (Bloomsbury Academic, 2009).
Nontheism and Feminism: Why the Disconnect?
You would think that nontheism and feminism should be a natural combination. Women have the most to gain from escaping religion, after all: monotheism gives men higher status, starting with their allegedly being made in the image of God. But atheism hasn’t always been very welcoming to women. Maybe there’s an idea that men created …
Who’s Oppressing Whom?
This past January and February were a very busy time for theocratic enemies of free speech, thought, and inquiry. On January 11, U.S. District Judge Ronald Lagueux ruled a school prayer mural on the wall of a Cranston, Rhode Island, public high school unconstitutional. The suit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on …
The Trouble with Gods
It could have been a good idea, the invention of gods. It could have been a way of solidifying thoughts about how humans could be better than they are. It’s an impressive and touching thing about us that we realize we’re not good enough. Gods (or God) could have been a helpful or even inspiring …
The Presence of Justice
One of the pleasanter changes in morals and manners over the last few decades has been the marginalization of ugly talk about “the Xs”—the Jews, the Mexicans, the Chinese, the queers. Thoughtful people don’t talk like that anymore, and what a relief that is, grumbles about political correctness notwithstanding. The old style now reeks of …
Getting It Wrong
The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures, by Nicholas Wade (New York: Penguin, 2009, ISBN 978-1-59420-228-5) 310 pp. Cloth $29.95. Recently, Pope Benedict XVI told his followers and other Christians, “While we are on the path towards full communion, we are called to offer a shared witness against the ever more complex …
A Broader Horizon
Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (New York: Free Press, 2007, ISBN 978- 0-7432-8968-9) 353 pp. Cloth $26. The issue of Islam and women’s rights is both a hot topic and a neglected one—a subject some people worry about and others ignore or sweep under the carpet. It is, in fact, an issue on which progressive …