Thursday 28 April 2011

Burnee links for Thursday

Amis on Hitchens: 'He's one of the most terrifying rhetoricians the world has seen' | Books | The Observer
This is almost a eulogy, by the one person probably most qualified to deliver it.

Jack of Kent: An Atheist on Easter Sunday
David Allen Green ponders his atheism.

Mocking and satirising are marks of respect | HumanistLife
An unusual slant on the idea of respect for religious (or any) views.

Cristina Odone “loathes” Terry Pratchett | HumanistLife
A quick way to tell if someone is ideologically against assisted dying: they refer to it as "assisted suicide". HumanistLife analyses Cristina Odone's Telegraph article and finds it has no substance. Odone says she loathes Terry Pratchett because he wants people to have a choice at the ends of their lives. I highly recommend Pratchett's Dimbleby Lecture on the subject, as it was a paragon of calm assessment of reality. All the arguments against assisted dying are seriously flawed — most are based on faulty logic or religious dogma.

Sir Terry Pratchett, poster-boy of assisted suicide, has the BBC doing his bidding – Telegraph Blogs
The Odone article referred to above.

Terry Pratchett, Patrick Stewart and Ian McEwan back assisted dying | HumanistLife
More about the BBC's forthcoming documentary on assisted dying.

NonProphet Status » Blog Archive » Why Do We Need New Atheists? Can’t We Just Spruce Up The Old Ones?
Pretending to be the voice of reason, Karla McLaren uses military metaphors and straw men to perpetuate the notion that New Atheists are strident, shrill and "not helping". Serious irony failure here.