Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site

Keywords: Enlightenment

  • RELIGION

    Christopher Hitchens' illogical atheism

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 05 October 2009
    37 Comments

    Hitchens, like The God Delusion author Richard Dawkins, views belief in God not just as quaint, but as a sign of intellectual bad will. The age of muscular evangelical Christianity has been replaced by the age of muscular evangelical atheism.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Religious freedom and secular society

    • Moira Rayner
    • 13 August 2009

    What do our major religions have to fear from changes to equal opportunity law? The challenge is a worthy and a practical one: in what way do the activities of religious institutions actually reflect the values of their prophets and visionaries.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    The logic of the Bali death machine

    • Peter Hodge
    • 04 March 2009
    3 Comments

    In Kafka's 'The Penal Colony', a brutal, archaic killing device is valued more highly than the law it enforces. As members of the Bali 9 continue to languish, we ask whether 'because the law says so' is sufficient reason for them to die.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Art and the Piss Christ umbrella

    • Jessica Frawley
    • 02 March 2009
    8 Comments

    Paintings that once would have once sparked controversy now adorn biscuit tins, umbrellas, notebooks and a range of other merchandise. We have killed the controversy and challenges faced in the past by branding it to death.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Corruption may undermine Khmer Rouge justice

    • Sebastian Strangio
    • 23 February 2009
    1 Comment

    It was a momentous event: a senior leader of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime standing trial in a court of law. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia has set itself a mandate that goes far beyond rendering impartial verdicts.

    READ MORE
  • ENVIRONMENT

    At odds with the 'celebrity science'

    • Marko Beljac
    • 23 July 2008
    9 Comments

    It is easier to get a job or get on the box doing superstring theory — the elusive 'theory of everything'. Progress in the field is being conducted without reference to empirical reality, revealing a market driven form of collective irrationality.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    After the obscenity

    • Jo McInerney
    • 08 July 2008
    1 Comment

    It was easy to find the centre of the blast .. an eternity of razed houses, a stony desert .. dead soil, waiting for rain .. I write home often. My letters are cheerful.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Keeping a safe distance from religion

    • James McEvoy
    • 31 October 2007
    7 Comments

    Our secular age is schizophrenic, or better, deeply cross-pressured. People are not conscious of a need for religion, yet they are moved to know that there are dedicated believers, like Mother Teresa.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Power of polemic is self-perpetuating, but not persuasive

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 June 2007
    10 Comments

    The much commented-on recent books by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have reintroduced a broad brush anti-religious polemic. It has much in common with religious polemic against the secular world.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    In praise of hypocrisy

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 15 May 2007
    2 Comments

    Symbolic gestures, whether at personal or at national level, are effective, even though they will have a barely measurable effect on water supply or global warming. Our world becomes different, and our sense of what has priority in it also changes.

    READ MORE
  • MEDIA

    Alan Jones and the power of one

    • Morag Fraser
    • 16 April 2007
    13 Comments

    Jones' reflexes on air are assertive and territorial. A 'power of one' he may be, but he also makes a powerful appeal to the tribal in all of us. When we retreat into the tribe we lose the chance to experience of the kindness of strangers.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The dark gospel of Martin Scorsese

    • Scott Stephens
    • 02 April 2007
    1 Comment

    Scorsese’s is a fallen world. Like Cain, his tortured characters are driven further into the wastelands – whether the desert or the untamed streets of New York – by their acts of almost mythical violence, until any remaining vestige of hope or virtue is finally extinguished.

    READ MORE