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Welcome to the Halloween Philosophers’ Blog Carnival! (A quick word of apology at the start, in reply to Brian Leiter’s complaint that I spend too much of the carnival on my own posts—below I begin with the discussion of the recent debate on my own blog because I think it would be of interest to [...]
Archive for October, 2011
The Woman King
October 31st, 2011 
Daniel Fincke I read the PZ’s post about the decision of Patrick Henry High School’s students to vote a lesbian couple to be homecoming king and queen. It put a big smile on my face and this awesome song started playing in my head: Listen to it as you help to Pharyngulate the poll on whether the students’ judgment made sense. [...]
Posted in LGBTQAA, News, News Discussion, News Discussion 
Tags: "Woman King", Iron & Wine 
6 Comments »“Action Philosophers” Comic Books
October 31st, 2011 Daniel Fincke I have no idea if these are any good philosophically, so read at your own risk, but I figured it was worth noting that comic books trying to introduce famous philosophers’ ideas exist. Fred Van Lente explains that the origin of the idea involved wanting to help clear Nietzsche’s name: I thought it would be [...]
You Are Not So Smart
October 31st, 2011 Daniel Fincke The website You Are Not So Smart does an outstanding job of explaining all sorts of cognitive errors for a lay audience in an engaging way. Last week Dave McRaney, the site’s author, released a book version called You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly [...]
Plan 999 From Outer Space
October 31st, 2011 Daniel Fincke This put a smile on my face: via Thoughts in a Haystack Your Thoughts?
When I Deconverted: I Was Reading Antichrist 50
October 30th, 2011 Daniel Fincke In the posts Before I Deconverted: My Christian Childhood and Before I Deconverted: Ministers As Powerful Role Models, I have only begun to chronicle my deconversion story in detail. But since it was 12 years ago today that it happened, I will jump ahead in the story a bit and share with you the text from Nietzsche’s Antichrist (as [...]
Before I Deconverted: Ministers As Powerful Role Models
October 30th, 2011 Daniel Fincke To commemorate my 12th year anniversary of leaving Christianity, I am finally getting around to chronicling my Christian youth and my deconversion from biographical and philosophical perspectives. In my first post I described being a Christian kid and talked a bit about Christian camp. In this post, I explore the powerful influence upon who I [...]
Before I Deconverted: My Christian Childhood
October 30th, 2011 Daniel Fincke 12 years ago today, on October 30, 1999 as a 21 year old college junior majoring in philosophy and minoring in religion at religiously and politically super-conservative Grove City College, I stopped being a Christian. Below the fold, for those interested in these sorts of narratives, is the first installment of a series of posts [...]
Breaking News: Yankee Fan Takes Joy In Other Team’s Victory
October 30th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Freethought Blogs’ own Gentlemanly Physiology Professor spent the late summer months giving exquisitely nuanced baseball commentary, favoring his beloved Yankees but also being gracious and good natured as he gently ribbed their rival Red Sox. And he showed a gentleman’s magnanimity towards the Red Sox fans when they ultimately lost the wild card in a historic [...]
Posted in Baseball, Mets, Mets, News Discussion, News Discussion, Personal, Yankees, Yankees 2 Comments »Defending Philosophy 1: A Reply To Dr. Coyne
October 29th, 2011 Daniel Fincke A little Nietzsche to set the tone: Of the friend Our faith in others betrays wherein we would dearly like to have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer. And often with our love we only want to leap over envy. And often we attack and make an enemy in order [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Historical Philosophy, Historical Philosophy, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Science, Science, Science 94 Comments »Atheist Fundamentalism?
October 28th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Kelly: You are an atheist fundamentalist, Jaime. Jaime: That’s impossible, there can be no such thing. Atheism itself is just “a lack of belief”. There is no holy book or other source of “fundamental” positions any atheist must hold. Not every atheist even needs to be an atheist in the same way. Some can only [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Creationism, Creationism, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Rationalism, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates 38 Comments »Jerry Coyne’s Scientistic Dismissiveness Of Philosophy
October 28th, 2011 Daniel Fincke UPDATE: Dr. Coyne has been kind enough to take the time to reply to my remarks (and those of Verbose Stoic) below. My reply to his riposte is the inaugural post in a new series (which I hope does not need too many installments!): Defending Philosophy 1: A Reply To Dr. Coyne. Verbose Stoic replies here. Thursday, Jerry Coyne mocked Templeton for funding a post-doc studying issues related [...]
Retroactive Grade Inflation At Loyola Law School
October 27th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Last year Loyola Law School in Los Angelas decided to help its struggling graduates get jobs in the current miserable market by improving their grades for them retroactively. Loyola’s Law Dean Victor Gold explained at the time: Last week the faculty approved a proposal to modify the grading system. The change will boost by one [...]
A Call For Submissions From Closeted Religion-Critics In Academia (Or in Goverment, Or In Business, etc.)
October 27th, 2011 Daniel Fincke I just read Jen’s dispiriting blog post about how she needed to take down a blog post (one I very much liked) because she had to be wary about potential impacts on her relationships in her graduate school department and her potential to work in academia long term. And this reminded me of a plan I [...]
Some People Live Better As Short-Lived Football or Boxing Stars Than As Long Lived Philosophers
October 26th, 2011 Daniel Fincke I have argued in several posts that our good is to maximally flourish in our powers and recently I wrote that “it is a practical contradiction to destroy (or reduce on net) the preconditions of one’s own being.” In reply, Russell Turpin writes: There are myriad examples of people committing suicide or sacrificing their lives [...]
Posted in Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Ethical Pluralism, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Ethics, Metaethics, Metaethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Teleology, Teleology, Virtues, Virtues Tags: Desires, Judging Desires, Objective Flourishing, Practical Contradictions, Rational Desires, True Desires 7 Comments »Taxes, Employment Rates, and Deficits Explained In Less Than 2 Minutes
October 25th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Update: Tony Adams, from the video has stopped by in the comments section. Go welcome him and ask him anything his remarks in the video make you think about! This keeps happening that people whose writings or video interviews I talk about on the blog show up. Thanks to Greg. Your Thoughts?
Dawkins: “Somebody As Intelligent As Jesus Would Have Been An Atheist”
October 25th, 2011 Daniel Fincke “To the extent that a religious person believes an obvious falsehood like the world is only 6,000 years old, I’m going to have an argument with them,” Dawkins explained. “Your tea-drinking vicar who doesn’t believe that… I mean, of course those people are very different and I would have a very different kind of argument [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, Jesus, Jesus, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion Tags: Richard Dawkins 17 Comments »Rightful Pride: Identification With One’s Own Admirable Powers And Effects
October 25th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Reposted from June 23, 2010: Pride is essentially the personal identification with something admirable. When I am rightly proud of my traits, I rightly take the traits themselves each to be admirable in one way or another and rightly take myself to be admirable insofar as they are part of me and expressions of me. [...]
Natural Functions
October 24th, 2011 Daniel Fincke I have argued several times that objective goodness, factually speaking, tracks objective effectiveness. To say that something is good, in objective terms, is to say that it effectively (i.e., in fact) functions in such a way that it realizes a kind of being (such that it is a good instance of that kind of being), [...]
“Not Everything In Life Is Logical”
October 24th, 2011 Daniel Fincke When we rationalists, naturalists, and other assorted atheists insist that no one should form beliefs that disregard logic and evidence, the defenders of faith often tell us that “Not everything in life is logical”, or use some variant of this phrase. What might they mean by this? Where is their confusion exactly and how best [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Astronomy, Astronomy, Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Biology, Biology, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Evolution, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Physics, Physics, Rationalism, Religion, Religion and Science, Science, Science, Secularism, Technology, Technology Tags: "Not Everything In Life Is Logical", Logic, Naturalism 17 Comments »Catch Up With Major Posts You’ve Missed, While I Catch Up With Work
October 23rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke On September 23rd, I argued that we can talk about good institutions and practices humans create through culture as intrinsic goods: The Facts About Intrinsic and Instrumental Goods and The Cultural Construction of Intrinsic Goods. On September 25th, I examined what Nietzsche meant when he argued that Moral Absolutism and Moral Relativism Are “Equally Childish”. On September [...]
Recapping 2: Links To Key Posts From Mid-September
October 22nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke On September 7th, I addressed several common questions about my views on ethics in my (under-read) post The Contexts, Objective Hierarchies, and Spectra of Goods and Bads (Or “Why Murder Is Bad”). On September 8th, I complained when I saw Republican Candidates Take A Strong Stand Against Inoculating Girls Against Cancer-Causing Virus. That same day I [...]
Recapping Part 1: Links To Key Posts From My First 15 Days On FTB
October 22nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke There is a growing number of great comments on my previous posts which I want to address in blog posts, there are a handful of posts for which I have promised follow ups which are overdue, and there are a number of other new topics roaming around in my head which I want to get [...]
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