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Jaime: Okay, so why do you believe that your god is a good explanation for the universe? Robin: Because everything that exists needs an explanation and the universe is no exception. Jaime: But then why doesn’t your god need an explanation? Aren’t we just headed for an infinite regress unless you just admit that something doesn’t need [...]
Archive for the ‘Atheism’ Category
Examining Some Alleged Divine Attributes
February 21st, 2012 
Daniel Fincke 
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, Atheism, Christianity, Christianity, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion 
Tags: Classical Theism, Divine Attributes, Divine Simplicity, Divine Timelessness, Eternal, God, God's Timelessness, Immutability, Temporality and Eternality, Theistic God, Timeless 
22 Comments »Grief Beyond Belief, A Resource For Bereaved Atheists
February 18th, 2012 Daniel Fincke The “Grief Beyond Belief” Facebook page gets a write up in USA Today: When Rebecca Hensler’s infant son died in 2009, she received numerous condolences from friends, colleagues and even total strangers she met online. She knew their intentions were good, but their words weren’t always helpful. And in the rawness of her grief, Hensler [...]
Is It Just A Mystery Whether God Exists?
February 16th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Robin: Jaime, what bothers me about your atheism is that it’s so dogmatic. You claim to know there is no God. That’s so arrogant. Jaime: Yes, I claim to know there are no gods. But I don’t claim it dogmatically or arrogantly. I claim it based upon the fact that the evidence is overwhelmingly against [...]
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, Atheism, God, God, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism Tags: Agnostic Theism, Believing by Faith, Can We Know There Is No God?, Dogmatic Atheism, Faith vs. Knowledge, Gnostic Atheism, God and the Mystery Excuse, God is a Mystery, Is God Just A Mystery?, Knowing There Is No God, Metaphysics, Mystery, Mystery vs. Pseudomystery, What is a mystery? 70 Comments »No, Not Everyone Has A Moral Right To Be Offended By Just Any Satire or Criticism
February 15th, 2012 Daniel Fincke 4 Misconceptions About the Nature of Offense Here are four common sense assumptions about giving and taking offense that I think are fundamentally mistaken and which atheists need to argue against: “You have every right to be offended, but you don’t have the right to censor others just because you’re offended.” “You cannot blame people [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheism, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Ethics, Ethics, Free Speech, Free Speech, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion, Religious Satire, Religious Satire, Virtues, Virtues Tags: "You Have The Right To Be Offended", Andy Drennon, Denial of Atheists From Gelato shop, Gelatogate, In Defense of Blasphemy, Moral Rights, Offense as a Moral Category, Offense As Value Judgment, Religion, Religious Offense, Satirizing Religion, Skepticon IV, Values Perceptions 53 Comments »Support Hamza Kashgari However You Can
February 13th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Maryam Namazie has been on top of the story of Hamza Kashgari, a 23 year old Saudi journalist whose life is on the line after he tweeted the following on Mohammad’s birthday: “On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to [...]
Posted in Atheism, Islam, Islam, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Theocracy, Theocracy, Theocrats, Theocrats Tags: Death Penalty for Apostates, Freedom of Expression, Hamza Kashgari, Islamic Violence, Religious Freedom, Religious Violence, Saudi Death Penalty for Apostates, Violence against atheists 1 Comment »Happy Times
February 11th, 2012 Daniel Fincke The Obama campaign commemorates 5 years since Obama announced for president. It’s political propaganda, of course, but boy is it some slick, professional, cutting edge advertising. And the consistency in tone with the ’08 campaign shows a remarkable feel for continuity of “branding”: So does this mean that the 2012 Obama campaign will be going, [...]
Mitt Romney Is No Longer A Mormon.
February 8th, 2012 Daniel Fincke That’s right. Mitt Romney, America’s most famous representative of the Church of Latter Day Saints no longer belongs to the Mormon faith. His associations with the church were invalidated when a moment ago I took it upon myself to unbaptize him. So, spread the word far and wide, fellow atheists, Mitt Romney is now one [...]
The Amazing Rape-Celebrating Atheist
February 8th, 2012 Daniel Fincke High alert trigger warning. Read with caution.
Hell As The Absence of God
January 29th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Robin: I know you don’t want to hear it, but Jesus loves you, Jaime. Jaime: Yes, yes, a man who either never existed or who is long dead and rotted by now loves me—and will torture me in hell forever if I don’t worship him, of course. Robin: He just wants you to love him but [...]
Posted in Atheism, Bible, Bible, Christianity, Christianity, God, God, Jesus, Jesus, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism Tags: God as Goodness, Goodness, Hell as Absence of God 84 Comments »Can Utilitarians Properly Esteem The Intrinsic Value of Truth?
January 22nd, 2012 Daniel Fincke The Obvious Intrinsic and Instrumental Values of Truth It is prejudicial and fallacious to assume that the world is an inherently just place and that all the traits we idealize as virtues will always lead to the best possible outcomes. So if we are to be honest and realistic in assessing those traits which are [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Ethics, Ethics, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Vices, Metaethics, Metaethics, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Rationalism, Religion, Religion, Virtues, Virtues Tags: Atheism and Truth, Atheism and Value of Truth, Consequentialism and Truthfulness, Faith in Truth, Moral Perfectionism and Truthfulness, Relative Value of Truth, Truthfulness, Useful Religious Fictions, Utilitarianism and Truthfulness, Value in Lying, Value of Falsehood, Value of Truthfulness 37 Comments »Gnu Atheists, Meet the Gnu Muppet
January 22nd, 2012 Daniel Fincke Are the Gnu Atheists in the market for a theme song? I can’t speak for the Gnus—camels (like me) are apparently not gnus as I just learned from the gnu in this video, who spelled out this point quite explicitly. Your Thoughts?
Part 3 of my interview with Bret at “Anything But Theist”
January 22nd, 2012 Daniel Fincke The first part of my four part interview with Anything But Theist was about Nietzsche’s role in my deconversion and about my views on the various kinds of atheists and Christians I observe. The second part of the interview focused on whether or how to prioritize truth against other competing values. (I’ll have more to [...]
Just How Much Should We Prioritize Truth Over Other Goods?
January 19th, 2012 Daniel Fincke As I mentioned the other day, in part one of my four part interview with Bret Alan of Anything But Theist, we talked primarily about the different, conflicting attitudes among a range of different kinds of atheists and about how Nietzsche got under my skin enough to drastically accelerate my deconversion. I also discussed various [...]
Posted in Atheism, Personal Tags: Do atheists worship truth?, The Value of Truth, Truth, Truth vs. Other Priorities 16 Comments »Make Muhammad Your Facebook Profile Picture, Get Kicked Out of School?
January 17th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Jen McCreight has an enraging summary of events: [Rhys Morgan] chose that photo [as his Facebook profile] to stand in solidarity with the University College London’s Atheist, Secular, and Humanist Society. The group was caught in a firestorm after someone complained about the image being used to promote their pub social and school officials ordered them to [...]
Posted in Atheism, Islam, Islam Tags: Freedom of Speech, Rhys Morgan, Rhys Morgan threatened with expulsion 8 Comments »How To Make God Die A Little More
January 17th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Scientific American summarizes studies which locate people’s distrust of atheists in their fears that atheists are more likely to act deviously in secret because they fear no god is watching them. We have talked about such research before. Then this article explores other research which gives indications about how to combat this problem: When we know [...]
6 Kinds of Atheists, 4 Kinds of Christians, and How Nietzsche’s Zarathustra Deconverted Me
January 16th, 2012 Daniel Fincke What are the differences between atheists who are ashamed, those who are apatheistic, those who are accommodationist, those who are lions, those who are children, and those who are hyenas? How did reading Nietzsche’s writings, and especially the book Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and Nobody, overwhelm me and undermine my faith so strongly [...]
A Conversation With Hank Fox, The Blue Collar Atheist
January 16th, 2012 Daniel Fincke So this weekend, I listened to two episodes of Reap Paden’s Angry Atheist podcast. First, I finally overcame my wariness about listening to myself and heard the interview I gave back in November and was very much pleased with it. I hope you’ll take a listen if you have not yet, as it’s a really [...]
The Author of The Cranston High School Prayer Outraged
January 14th, 2012 Daniel Fincke This week, Jessica Ahlquist and the ACLU won their court case against Cranston High School West in Rhode Island. The school was ordered to immediately remove a banner containing an official school prayer addressed to “Our Heavenly Father” and ending in “Amen”, which hung over the school gymnasium as an unambiguous endorsement of the Christian [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, News, News Discussion, News Discussion, Philosophy Of Religion, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Religion, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State, Theocrats, Theocrats Tags: ACLU, Cranston High School West, David Bradley, Jessica Ahlquist, The American Civil Liberties Union 22 Comments »How Atheist Reddit Doesn’t Get It
January 11th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Recently, a 15 year old atheist girl received a Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World from her religious mother. She thought this was neat and something that Reddit’s atheist community would appreciate, so she posted a picture of herself with the book. Before too long the conversation turned to the fact that she was pretty, which [...]
Against Atheistic Existentialism
January 11th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Jehne Lunden asks why I don’t identify as an existentialist: I’d be interested in your thoughts on existentialism. It seems it gets a bad wrap by both the philosophical community and the public at large. I understand that you are a Nietzschean scholar. Apparently he never called himself an existentialist. I am not versed enough [...]
Truth Requires Telling More Stories From More Perspectives
January 11th, 2012 Daniel Fincke I kicked off my 24 hour blogathon with a post questioning the value of stories and how to get around the pitfalls by which stories oversimplify complex moral and factual realities. In reply there are already two excellent replies. One is from Alex Songe, which leads to a great opportunity to briefly explain Nietzsche’s approach [...]
Tyler Cowen, Socrates, and How To Be Suspicious of Stories
January 11th, 2012 Daniel Fincke This is a funny, insightful, and thought provokingly paradoxical 16 minute must-see talk from Tyler Cowen, wherein he talks about the dangers of both believing and telling ourselves stories and narratives. He details numerous of the ways that stories exploit and exacerbate our cognitive biases. I won’t repeat his numerous gems below but to explore [...]
The Dangers of Religion Itself
January 8th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Salvaging Religion In this post I am going to explore the dangers of religion. For some context, I have written often that I think that there are good things that go by the name religion that atheists should try to salvage from authoritarians, irrationalists and bigots. I am generally optimistic about the idea that we [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Faith, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Islam, Islam, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Secularism 40 Comments »On Atheistic Religion
January 8th, 2012 Eric Steinhart Once upon a time, Carl Sagan predicted the appearance of an atheistic nature-religion: “A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge” [...]
Posted in 'Nuff Said, Atheism, Culture, Featured, Naturalism, Philosophy, Religion, Religion and Science 59 Comments »
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