One of America’s most noted philosophers is Thomas Nagel of New York University. Nagel is an atheist, but lately he has set a very large cat among his fellow atheists by dissenting from their reductionist, materialist doctrine which, among other things, denies the existence of free will....
The Minister for European Affairs, Lucinda Creighton, has said she will vote according to her conscience on the abortion Bill and said she was “deeply concerned” about the suicide clause in the legislation. Speaking in the Dáil debate on the issue yesterday, she also criticised the “groupthink” which she said dominated the abortion issue in...
I’ve been reading some of the contributions made in the Dail so far as part of the debate on the abortion Bill. Several stand out for all the wrong reasons. The worst I’ve come across so far is from Education Minister, Ruairi Quinn. He told the House, “this Bill, when enacted, will still not be...
On Tuesday The Iona Institute held a conference on child-care prompted by the recent Prime Time programme on this topic. The keynote speaker was Jonas Himmelstrand, a critic of the Swedish daycare system. He was interviewed by Drivetime on Monday. The next day, Drivetime interviewed a number of participants at the conference to give a...
Writing in today’s Irish Times (Letters) psychotherapist Joseph Flanagan indulges in the by now semi-obligatory go at the Catholic Church. The context is the current abortion debate. He accuses the Church of trying to “control this nation’s moral judgement” and of being “hysterical” in its reaction to the abortion bill. He brings up the issue...
Last week, two cases emerged in the UK which highlighted the continuing assault on religious liberty and freedom of conscience. The Greater Glasgow and Clyde section of the NHS announced that it is to appeal Scotland’s supreme civil court ruling that two Catholic nurses would not have to delegate,...
Stephen Collins, the respected political editor of The Irish Times, has a real bee in his bonnet about the Church’s interventions in the abortion debate. A few months ago he suggested that the bishops’ interventions were practically subversive and the Government had to resist at all costs in the...
We have argued for a long time that the logic of egalitarianism when applied to marriage leads inexorably to it being stripped of special status entirely. The Village magazine agrees. It doesn’t think marriage should have special status. For sure, it believes that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, but it believes no special...
The last decade has seen a surge in fashionable atheism, led by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. But in this piece in the Spectator, the UK’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, tackles their intellectual superficiality. He makes the point that the New Atheists have been lamentably weak at facing up to...
According to a survey in the Irish Times, fully 43pc of women feel that society values women who are in paid employment over women who work in the home. A piece in today’s Irish Times nicely captures that sense of being undervalued. Written by Aine O’Sullivan, it sums up the feeling of being judged for...
