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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 [...]
Archive for the ‘New Atheism’ Category
Is It Just A Mystery Whether God Exists?
February 16th, 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, 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 »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?
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 »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 »My Thoughts On Eric’s Wicca and Atheism Experiment
January 6th, 2012 Daniel Fincke In early December, after juggling 9 classes and a daily blog all semester, I got sick. Eric Steinhart, a previous guest contributor on the blog, stepped in and has been the primary blogger on the site for one month now. He has discussed possible connections between atheists and Wiccans. Thursday was my first day where [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Paganism, Philosophy Of Religion, Pseudoscience, PZ Myers, PZ Myers, Rationalism, Religion, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Wicca 85 Comments »Why Cee-Lo’s Imagine Fail Matters
January 2nd, 2012 Daniel Fincke An atheist activist on Facebook asked why he should care at all about Cee-Lo changing the words to “Imagine” to sanitize its anti-religious sentiment last night. Me? I think it’s a great idea to seize on this story. What I’m discovering from this incident and from the one last month where Rick Perry made an [...]
Answering Greta: My Goals As An Atheist Writer
December 21st, 2011 Daniel Fincke In order to deal with the questions of whether we should argue with religious believers or insult and mock religions, Greta Christina raised question of what the atheist movement should be aiming at. If we adequately define our goals, then we can assess what is or is not counter-productive to achieving them. I agree with Greta [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion Tags: Anti-Intellectualism, Atheistic Religion, Authoritarianism, faith (i.e., Mocking Religious Beliefs, moral and cultural regressivism, moral and cultural stagnation, Nationalism, patriarchal values, Pseudoscience, racism, Supernaturalism, Superstition, the willful belief contrary to rational evidence), traditionalism for its own sake 18 Comments »black
December 20th, 2011 Daniel Fincke for Christopher Hitchens, by Helen Sotriadis of Too Many Tribbles. ©2011 helen sotiriadis. View the photo “in the dark”. More of her photos inspired by Christopher Hitchens are here. See a video slideshow of more of her photos here.
Christopher Hitchens and Freethinking Parenting At Its Best
December 18th, 2011 Daniel Fincke One of our last, and by far the most touching, videos we have of Christopher Hitchens comes from the Texas Freethought Convention this past October. Watching him with the charmingly and precociously smart little girl in the video, he is downright grandfatherly: Mason was interviewed afterward: Why did you decide it was important to ask [...]
A Few Christian Replies to Hitchens’s Death Worth Noting
December 17th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Shortly before Christopher Hitchens’s death, Andrew Sullivan movingly reminisced about him and gave a sense of how their friendship was so strong despite such differing views on faith:
Hitchens on Mother Theresa, Hitler, and Immortality
December 17th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Few of those left on the planet can say this much this true this well, in just 7 minutes: His documentary take down of Mother Theresa can be seen here.
In Memory of Christopher Hitchens, A Nietzschean Lion
December 16th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Christopher Hitchens was not fond of Nietzsche. When I picked up his Portable Atheist I flipped to the table of contents to see what Nietzsche selections he’d included. And saw none. None?? Possibly the most famous, unabashed, and irreverent atheist of all time was not worthy of inclusion in Hitchens’s compendium? A brief remark found [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Authoritarianism, Authoritarianism, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, News Discussion, News Discussion, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Personal, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Why I Am Not A Christian, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: and Child, Camel, Christopher Hitchens, Hitchens and Nietzsche, Lion, lost a lion, Nietzsche, Three Metamorphoses of the Soul, Three Transformations of the Soul, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Tribute to Christopher Hitchens, Truthfulness 11 Comments »An Atheist’s Reply To Rick Perry
December 8th, 2011 Daniel Fincke James Kotecki responds to this. Friendly Atheist has a reply of their own up too. Your Thoughts?
Dan Barker Makes Sense of the Gospel Message
December 3rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke I know Dan Barker claims to be only a former Christian minister but he still has a gift for bringing the Gospel message alive in a fresh, new way that makes powerful sense of it. It’s weird it would take an atheist’s description to make me see angles in the story of salvation which I [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, Christianity, Christianity, God, God, Hilarious, Jesus, Jesus, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Religulous, Religulous, Satire, Satire 3 Comments »Greta Deftly and Thoroughly Explains Atheist Anger To The Bewildered
November 30th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Greta’s talk at Skepticon IV hits the nail on the head about the nature and justification of atheist anger: Her blog post on atheists and anger from 2007 is a definitive go-to piece for me when I am asked about atheist anger. Your Thoughts?
Fellow Atheists, What Do You Like Or Dislike In Holiday Cards?
November 29th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Marta is one of my Christian friends who comments a lot around here and always seems to sympathize with my secular values quite a bit. She raises a good question that I’d love to see you readers address: I wonder about your thoughts on atheism/secularism and holiday cards? Recently I tried to find some cards [...]
Learning About Love From The Bible
November 24th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Using the “New Comprehensive Self-Referencing, Taking The Words on the Page To Mean What They Actually Say Version” of the Bible (that’s the NCSRTTWOTPTMWTASV), NonStampCollector shows us how the biblical God of love (the God who is love) models and illuminates for us all the virtues of love described in 1 Corinthians 13: Your Thoughts?
On Not-Pologies, Forgiveness, and Gelato
November 23rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Kinds of Forgiveness Let’s start with the theoretical. How should we characterize forgiveness, and when and why should we forgive people? Full forgiveness involves three things: 1. Waiving all just moral and/or legal penalties, including all forms of restitution and compensation, that we would normally demand for wrongdoing. 2. Restoring amicable emotional, social, and/or professional [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Ethics, Ethics, Morality, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, News Discussion, News Discussion, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State, Virtues, Virtues 39 Comments »Sam Singleton’s Revival Act That Began Gelatogate
November 23rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Andy Drennen saw a portion of this act and had this response: Once the store slowed down, I decided to walk down the street to learn more about the convention, fully thinking it was something involving UFOs (“skeptics”). What I saw instead was a man conducting a mock sermon, reading the bible and cursing it. [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, PZ Myers, PZ Myers 32 Comments »The Injustice of the Universe and Christianity
November 22nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Matt Dillahunty has a nice five minute reply to someone who believes in Christianity in order to believe justice will be meted out even to those escape worldly justice. He weaves several important considerations about the irrationality of basing a belief on such a desire and about the problems with Christianity’s views on justice: Your [...]
Calling Out And Debunking William Lane Craig’s Smears Against Infidels and Apostates
November 21st, 2011 Daniel Fincke Is William Lane Craig a philosopher? Some atheists seem to want to dismiss him as strictly a theologian and in no way a philosopher but sometimes he clearly attempts to make strictly philosophical arguments. By strictly philosophical arguments I mean ones whose premises make no necessary appeal to any presumed religious authorities but theoretically could [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Personal, Secularism, Why I Am Not A Christian, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Apostates, Sex and Apostasy, Why People Leave Their Faith, William Lane Craig 16 Comments »
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