Poor reasons to be a theist
And why they need to be reconsidered I wrote an article, some weeks ago, enumerating some less-than-satisfactory reasons for being an atheist. I had stated therein that I was not necessarily claiming…
Where have all the female sages been hiding?
Another age-old conundrum What do Thales, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Byron, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bentham, Mill, Marx, Bergson,…
Honey and olive oil in Grey Goose bottles
Or what makes liquor a moral issue I am sure Ali Amin Gandapur and Sharjeel Inam Memon have excellent reasons for keeping honey in liquor bottles, and those will be extremely instructive…
Who created God?
On faulty questions and the need to agree on meanings of words The more things change, the more they remain the same. This is especially true of discussions on metaphysics or religion,…
Thank you, Imran Khan
For depicting the desi liberals in their true light Imran Khan, now Prime Minister Khan, has taken oath of his new office. Winning the ultimate prize after being ridiculed, written-off, and character…
The war to end all wars
It’s coming Warning: satire ahead. The author bears absolutely no responsibility in the event of it being taken up by one or more of our eminent think-tanks. Sometimes it looks imminent, sometimes…
Nine not-so-good reasons to be an atheist
And why that’s so It’s one of the hallmarks of thoughtful people that either they think long and hard about a problem before taking a position on it; or else they take…
In the New Pakistan
Can we revert to some old things, please? ‘Who writes your scripts?’ an excited Graham Gooch had asked Ian Botham when the latter had taken a wicket on his very first delivery…
Democracy in Pakistan
Past, present and prognosis People have all sorts of views on the institution of democracy as a way of running a society. To some, it leads to a government of the people,…
When the shoe is on the other foot
Time to swap the arguments Imam Khomeini (and later Benazir Bhutto to some extent) did a great disservice to politicians in the subcontinent, because now every ‘revolutionary’ wants a similar return where…
The curious case of the onus of proof
Another great mystery of our time It was hardly rocket-science stuff, one would have thought. What with the quality of what passes for journalism in the Islamic Republic however – or are…
They kept the mou’ fires burning
A fond tribute The standalone moustache has seen some dark days in its time. Though it never completely disappeared – and thank God for that – in certain places, times and professions…
Three countries, three systems
Method in the slowness? The British National Health Service (NHS) provides free healthcare to its patients. The flip side is that getting examined is often preceded by notoriously long waiting times. There’s…
Beware of the false analogy
It’s beneath you The thing with analogies is that they inevitably break down at some point – they must, because the two items involved aren’t exactly alike. That’s quite all right of…
A compendium of dumb reasons to get married
Simply put, best abstain! Somebody once remarked that no woman was good enough for a man, but that no man was good enough for a good woman. Please solve the riddle yourself.…
Another intriguing love affair
The ‘liberal’ love for Nawaz Sharif This is not about the big fish: the NGO liberals, the ‘program’ liberals, the ‘activists’, etc, whose prosperity is closely linked with that of Nawaz Sharif.…
‘Dumb’ is the new smart
Ten reasons why you could be smarter than owning a smartphone I realise that ‘feature phone’ is the prevailing euphemism for dumb phones, but the very necessity of a euphemism here is…