The elephant in the room.

[cathy]

A foolish idea, but I don't believe for a moment he intended to segregate women, any more than he would force car mechanics or gardeners into special pages and those pages only.

Sorry do you mean Richard Dawkins didn't intend to segregate women or the Islamists didn't intend to segregate them? You've lost me a bit?

I think whenever he tackles Islam or RCC or christianity his own unconscious sexism puts him on dodgy ground but I'm not clear what you're on about here.

[Brian Jordan]

A foolish idea, but I don't believe for a moment he intended to segregate women, any more than he would force car mechanics or gardeners into special pages and those pages only.

Sorry do you mean Richard Dawkins didn't intend to segregate women or the Islamists didn't intend to segregate them? You've lost me a bit?

I think whenever he tackles Islam or RCC or christianity his own unconscious sexism puts him on dodgy ground but I'm not clear what you're on about here.

I don't think Dawkins intended to segregate women, full stop. Quite how his "unconscious sexism" leads him to devote a page on his blog to denigrating sexual segregation, I fail to understand.
As for my remarks, I'm simply saying that a newspaper's having a section "for women" neither forces women to read only that section nor forbids men to read it. Compare that with the Islamists' attempts to enforce sexual segregation in a public lecture in a university lecture theatre!
In the final analysis, what goes on in journalism is about making money, not compulsion according to religious dogma.
I'm sure Tzortzis will be delighted to see secularists worrying about the odd mote whilst neglecting his extremely large beam.

[cathy]

don't think Dawkins intended to segregate women, full stop. Quite how his "unconscious sexism" leads him to devote a page on his blog to denigrating sexual segregation, I fail to understand.

I've never actually claimed he did, just that I find it hypocritical of him to say anything about anyones treatment of women till he cleans up his own act. I doubt even he would segregate and I didn't know he was setting up a magazine/newspaper. Have I missed something?

[Brian Jordan]

I doubt even he would segregate and I didn't know he was setting up a magazine/newspaper. Have I missed something?

No, I wasn't writing very clearly. Someone unearthed a forgotten page on which he mentioned rather grandiose plans for his website, with pages for all manner and condition etc. I was just likening that to a newspaper.

Anyway, while we're a bit off-topic, here's an article incorporating an article by Krauss, in which he says that every year they find that 50% of Americans think the sun goes around the earth! With an education like that, no wonder they fall for creationist tripe. I wonder - to drag it back on topic - how many Muslims are geocentrists? Far fewer, I suspect.

Teaching Creationism is Child Abuse

http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/Teaching-Creationism-is-Child-Abuse-20130318

[Brian Jordan]

The elephant is beginning to trumpet:

Islamic State issues new school curriculum in Iraq
National history, literature, art, and evolution banned from school curriculum in Mosul, the largest city under the control of Isil militants, according to new decree
<snip<
Science is permitted, so long as it does not conflict with a literalist interpretation of religious teachings, like the Darwinian theory of evolution.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11099882/Islamic-State-issues-new-school-curriculum-in-Iraq.html

[Roger Stanyard]

The elephant is beginning to trumpet:

Methinks it is something coming out of the other end of the elephant,