REGULARS 5 EditorialHowtodeal

with denial 6 Parish news 8 Yours sceptically Readers’

letters 9 Chris Maslanka’s Quiz 50 Endgame Laurie Taylor

is gagging for it FEATURES

10 I shot the Pope Keith

Porteous Wood explains how he got the Vatican running for cover

12 Better, juster, nobler

JS Mill is the enlightened infidel we need today, says Jonathan Rée 15 After the watershed

Caspar Melville talks to Manning Marable about Obama, Katrina and post-racial America 18 Neurotrash Raymond Tallis

dissects the latest wild claims for brain sceince 22 Déjà vu, only worse Four

years after his wife’s trial for offending the Orthodox Church, Michail Ryklin revists a familiar courthouse 26 God’s ornaments Sally

Feldman celebrates the fossil hunter Mary Anning 30 Are you positive? What’s

an AIDS denialist? Seth Kalichman explains all 34 Beyond belief

Dawkins triggered some elegant defences of God,

but do they stand up to scrutiny? Richard Norman puts them to the test 38 Living the life Fred Inglis

on the noble tradition of practical British philosophy 41 Outisde story The Museum

of Everything collects the work of the world’s forgotten artists

[12]

JS Mill on God

[41]

Outsider Whatis

Art?

[15] How did Katrina

lead to Obama?

COLUMNS 7 DiaryRichardHerring

praises the runner-up Messiah 24 Opinion It’s not just authors

who lose over censorship, says Sherry Jones 40 Media Roger Davidson

tunes in to the TV sitcom that dares to laugh at Islam BOOK REVIEWS 44 Elizabeth Wilson on two new

books breathing life back into feminism 46 Louise Foxcroft finds

a portrait of famous hypochondriacs really hits a nerve 47 Stephen Howe on a new

history of the Arabs 48 Keith Kahn-Harris enjoys

Barbara Ehrenreich’s antidote to positive thinking 48 Owen Hatherley finds Žižek

tu

aac ct ua al ll ly ym ma ak ki in ng gs se en ns se

e

[26] The woman who dug for Darwin

NOVEMBER DECEMBER 2009 New Humanist 3