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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 [...]
Archive for the ‘PZ Myers’ Category
My Thoughts On Eric’s Wicca and Atheism Experiment
January 6th, 2012 
Daniel Fincke 
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 »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 »Thinking According To Scale
November 21st, 2011 Daniel Fincke PZ and Crommunist offer nice denunciations of the significance of a graphic which has been going around the internet which concludes that the chance of any given individual alive today ever existing was 1 in 102,685,000. Below the fold is the graphic, key snippets of their remarks and the lesson to draw for how we should consider [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Biology, Biology, Ethics, Ethics, Evolution, Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Metaethics, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Naturalistic Fallacy, Naturalistic Fallacy, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Probability, Psychology, Psychology, PZ Myers, PZ Myers, Science, Science, Sociobiology, Sociobiology 
Tags: Crommunist Manifesto, Grind the universe down to its finest powder, Hierarchical Reductionism, PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, Richard Dawkins on Reductionism, Terry Pratchett, The Blind Watchmaker 3 Comments »Penn and PZ on Libertarianism and Atheism
October 9th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Adam Lee of Daylight Atheism has had a much deserved opportunity to move his blog to the site of Big Think, which features video interviews from the most popular and cutting edge public intellectuals of our time. Adam got the chance to lob the first question asked of Penn Jillette in a new interview at the site. [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Politics, Politics, PZ Myers, PZ Myers Tags: Penn Jillette 9 Comments »Are Supernaturalists Actually Super-materialists?
September 25th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Ophelia plucks and highlights a comment so good and philosophically interesting from PZ’s comments section that I just have to reproduce it too. For the background, Colin Tudge falsely claimed that in Richard Dawkins’s new introduction to science for children, The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True, Dawkins dogmatically imposes on children a “crude materialism” that [...]
Posted in 'Nuff Said, 'Nuff Said, 'Nuff Said, Love, Love, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, PZ Myers, PZ Myers Tags: Ophelia Benson, Richard Dawkins 12 Comments »TOP Q: "How Is It Fair To Question Other People’s Identity-Forming Beliefs While Demanding Respect For One’s Own Belief-Formed Identities?"
February 23rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke I always tell my students as they start studying philosophy that it is crucial that they not associate their ideas too closely with themselves. They need to get used to not taking criticism of their ideas personally. I warn them that if they cannot disassociate from their ideas when they fail, they will never be [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Featured, Homophobia, Homophobia, Homosexuality, Homosexuality, Islam, Islam, LGBTQAA, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, PZ Myers, PZ Myers, Religion, Religion, Today's Open Philosophical Question (TOP Q) Tags: Evangelicalism, Identity-Politics, Tolerance 9 Comments »You Might Be An Atheist Even If You Hate The New Atheists
February 13th, 2011 Daniel Fincke There are a lot of people who dislike Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, PZ Myers, and other prominent “New Atheists” (or, as some prefer “Gnu Atheists”) so much that they do not want to be called atheists. John Wilkins at Evolving Thoughts had a post (and many remarks in the comments section [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Featured, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, PZ Myers, PZ Myers, Secularism Tags: Agnosticism, Deism, Gnu Atheism, John Wilkins 7 Comments »PZ Myers Shouldn't Sound Like Sarah Palin
February 13th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Alright, before I get into my possibly anal critique of an off-hand remark from the good Dr. Myers of Pharyngula fame, let me preface what follows with the disclaimer that I really love PZ Myers. I think he’s great. There are few bloggers I read who make both my brain happy and butter up my [...]
The "A" Word
February 8th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Yesterday, Eric Steinhart pointed out that “Much entails atheism but atheism entails little”, which inspired F.O. to write to me, Now I just think about how much it took me to really admit to myself that I was an atheist, using that word and not any other alternative, and I found that funny somehow. Why [...]
The Positive Content of Atheism
February 7th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers recently wrote about being irked by “Dictionary Atheists”. He doesn’t like it when people say that atheism means nothing more than denying God. His post is long, but I just want to focus on the issue of the meaning of atheism: why complain about dictionary atheists? After [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Authority, Featured, God, Metaphysics, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, PZ Myers, Religion, Secularism 8 Comments »“Beware The Believers”
January 31st, 2011 Daniel Fincke I have no idea whether this parody (which is several years old) is actually against us or is just irreverently for us. I think that’s part of why I like it so much. That, and it’s totally well made, mesmerizingly bizarre, and undeniably hilarious in its visuals: (NSFW) Okay, after writing the above, I did [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens, Comedy, Comedy, Creationism, Creationism, Hilarious, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Music Videos, Music Videos, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Parody, Parody, PZ Myers, PZ Myers, Religion and Science, Satire, Satire Tags: Daniel Dennett, Eugenie Scott, Richard Dawkins 2 Comments »PZ Myers Video: Science And Atheism Are Natural Allies
January 30th, 2011 Daniel Fincke The first, and most interesting, claim: “Nothing will ever prove that evolution is wrong.” Second, and second most interesting, claim: “Nothing can prove the existence of gods, not one thing.” Third, and third most interesting, claim: that all this entails not closed-mindedness but pragmatism. Fourth, and fourth most interesting, claim: atheism is more than what [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, Biology, Biology, Evolution, Evolution, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, PZ Myers, PZ Myers, Science 5 Comments »In Defense Of Offering The Whole Truth And Nothing But The Truth
October 12th, 2010 Daniel Fincke PZ Myers has put online the text of an impassioned speech he recently gave against accommodationism. It’s a must-read so read it in full and pass it on to your friends. Here’s the gist: Shouldn’t we move beyond just reacting to every assault by Idiot America on science education, and honestly look at the root [...]
Hitler’s Remarks About Religion (And, Specifically, Christianity)
September 17th, 2010 Daniel Fincke In Engalnd, the pope is trying to terrify people into avoiding atheism by once again blaming Nazism on godlessness. The first simple fact is that even were Hitler an atheist (which he manifestly wasn’t) it would not mean either that atheism was false or that his views on morality were at all necessarily entailed by [...]
Gay Sex And Reality
July 18th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Recently a University of Illinois adjunct professor in a course on Catholicism got into unfairly lost his job over expressing his philosophical opposition to homosexuality in an e-mail to his student in what seems to me like a pretty clear violation of academic freedom. As to the substance of his arguments though, PZ Myers does [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Ethics, Ethics, Homophobia, Homophobia, Homosexuality, Homosexuality, LGBTQAA, Morality, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, PZ Myers, PZ Myers, Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church, Sex, Teleology, Teleology Tags: Natural Law Theory, University of Illinois, William Howell No Comments »Do New Atheists Unjustifiably Shirk Their Burden For Evidence?
July 7th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Michael Antony has an interesting but problematic article in Philosophy Now exploring whether “New Atheism” holds itself to a double standard when it comes to rules of evidence. He argues that New Atheists dismiss religious belief explicitly on “evidentialist” epistemic criteria whereby we must always proportion our belief to evidence, but at the same time, [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Featured, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, PZ Myers, PZ Myers, Religion, Religion, Secularism 9 Comments »Would Aliens Realize We Were Intelligent?
April 26th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Greg Mayer, as part of a charming larger piece, relates a back and forth he had with some students a few days ago on whether or to what extent we and alien intelligent life forms would be able to identify each other as intelligent life forms: I mentioned to the students that I’d seen a great [...]
“NASA has an underground bunker with life support, the human race does not. Don’t euthanize the human race by bombing planets!”
November 7th, 2009 Daniel Fincke PZ Myers relays an urgent plea to NASA from a courageous prophet. Your Thoughts?
Posted in Bible, PZ Myers, Religion, Religulous, Unintentional Comedy Tags: Moon, NASA No Comments »Intelligent Design In A Nusthell
November 7th, 2009 Daniel Fincke PZ Myers starts off his lecture from the Atheist Alliance International meeting last month with an encapsulation of Intelligent Design thinking. The key word is complex: Your Thoughts?
Daily Hilarity: PZ Myers Counsels Mr. Deity
October 12th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Funny stuff! And in case you’re out of the loop on the unstated joke at the end, catch up with one of the most famous memes of the evolutionist/creationist debate: Your Thoughts?
Posted in Atheism, Atheist Videos, Biology, Comedy, Evolution, Hilarious, Mr. Deity, Parody, PZ Myers, Religious Satire, Satire, Videos Tags: Bananas, Design, Kirk Cameron, Mr. Deity, Ray Comfort No Comments »On Facts, Theories, And The Philosophy Of Science
October 9th, 2009 Daniel Fincke PZ Myers fisks Nicholas Wade’s review of Richard Dawkins’s The Greatest Show on Earth, in which Wade gets pedantic about a distinction between facts and theories which only shows his own ignorance about how the two relate to each other. Along the way Wade badly invokes the philosophy of science. First off Myers quotes Stephen [...]
On The Symbolism Of Book Destruction
September 19th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Over the past few days we’ve been discussing creationists Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron’s plan to freely disseminate 50,000 copies of a new version of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species which they are putting out and which contains a deceptive, creationist introduction filled with bad science and false history. RichardDawkins.net and Pharyngula have encouraged people not only to [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Authoritarianism, Civil Liberties, Creationism, Cultural Secularism, Education, Featured, Free Speech, Intelligent Design, Political Secularism, Politics, PZ Myers, Secularism Tags: Barack Obama, Book Burning, Book Mutilation, Censorship, Joe Wilson, Kirk Cameron, Ray Comfort, Ray Comfort's Version of Origin of Species, RichardDawkins.net, Symbolism No Comments »In Defense Of Curiosity Against The Religious Barnacles
September 17th, 2009 Daniel Fincke PZ Myers takes on the latest insufferable nonsense from Stanley Fish, this which advances the thought of regressive religious thinkers who, as religious thinkers have always done, attack curiosity as a threat to their superstitions. Myers’s whole piece is great and worth your time, but for those of you who don’t read it at least [...]
Are The New Atheists The New Prophets?
September 14th, 2009 Daniel Fincke PZ Myers, a prominent “New Atheist” reports on his being designated a prophet: Michael Dowd, the peculiar author of Thank God for Evolution, has a strange podcast up that promotes the New Atheists because they are the new prophets — we’re telling it like it is, and religious folks need more of that. He also urges people [...]
Posted in Atheism, New Atheism, PZ Myers, Religion Tags: Michael Dowd, Pharyngula, Richard Dawkins, Thank God For Evolution No Comments »They Might Be Paleontologists
September 3rd, 2009 Daniel Fincke They Might Be Giants have a new DVD, Here Comes Science, which promotes science to kids. PZ Myers got the chance to preview it and is tickled. Here is their cute kiddie video, I Am A Paleontologist: Your Thoughts?
Posted in Comedy, Education, Evolution, Music Videos, PZ Myers, Science, Videos Tags: Kids Stuff, Kids Videos, Paleontology, They Might Be Giants No Comments »
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