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Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category
“What Are The Limits of Church Authority In the Public Sphere?”
February 5th, 2012 
Daniel Fincke This is part 2 of a debate with Roman Catholic theology graduate student named Mary. In part 1, we introduced and began to debate the topic of whether or not universities, hospitals, and social agencies run by the Catholic Church should be exempted from laws requiring employers to provide their employees health insurance that covers [...]
Posted in Abortion, Abortion, Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Authoritarianism, Authoritarianism, Authority, Authority, Autonomy, Autonomy, Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Bio-Medical Ethics, Bio-Medical Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Feminism, Feminism, Gay Marriage, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Gay Rights, Homophobia, Homophobia, Law, Law, LGBTQAA, News Discussion, News Discussion, Personal, Philosophy, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Rights, Religious Rights, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State, Women's Rights, Women's Rights, Women's Rights, Women's Issues 
Tags: 1st Amendment, Affordable Care Act, Conscience Exemptions, Discrimination Against Gays, Free Exercise, Freedom of Religion, Gay Rights, Health Coverage For Gay Spouses, Mary C. Young, Pharmacists Rights of Conscience, Relig, Religious Discrimination, Reproductive Rights, Roman Catholic Adoption Agencies Refuse Gay Adoptions, Roman Catholic Charities, Roman Catholic Church 
55 Comments »“Should Catholic Employers Be Exempted From Paying For Health Insurance Covering Contraception?”
February 5th, 2012 Daniel Fincke If you were reading Camels With Hammers regularly before we made the move to Freethought Blogs, you would have frequently been treated to the long, insightful, and vigorously argued comments of my friend Mary. Mary is a Roman Catholic and is politically liberal in many (but not all) respects. We met when I was a [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Authoritarianism, Authoritarianism, Authority, Authority, Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Feminism, Feminism, News Discussion, News Discussion, Personal, Philosophy, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State, Women's Rights, Women's Rights, Women's Rights, Women's Rights, Women's Issues Tags: 1st Amendment, Affordable Care Act, Catholics and Obamacare, Conscience Exemptions, Discrimination, Freedom of Religion, Mary C. Young, obamacare, Obamacare and Contraception, Religious Discrimination, Reproductive Rights, Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Universities 48 Comments »Computer Problems
January 26th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Please forgive my uncharacteristic absence from the internet the last four days and possibly for the next four days. My computer died. The customer service of two companies has been abysmal. It’s been a miserable and frustrating few days (including my birthday on Tuesday). In addition to not being able to tend to the blog, [...]
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 »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 [...]
I’m a Muppet of a Man, I’m a Very Manly Muppet
January 11th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Life’s like a movie, make your ending, keep believing, keep pretending… As Tyler Cowen was talking about in the last post, humans are inexorably drawn to stories. I even like to think of every sentence as a story. It stars a subject which verbs something. And in my childhood there were two stories that loomed [...]
Moments
December 31st, 2011 Daniel Fincke Here’s to the many moments gone by already and the many more to come in the new year. Your Thoughts?
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 »Sick. Please Catch Up On Previous Posts While I Take A Short Hiatus
December 4th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Well, it was bound to happen. I’m finally sick. For over 3 months now I’ve been working 6 days a week teaching 9 sections of philosophy at 5 schools which are spread over 4 land masses in 3 states, all while devoting Sundays and late nights and early mornings to writing near daily philosophical essays [...]
Thanks
November 24th, 2011 Daniel Fincke First, let me quickly thank you, whoever you are, for reading this. I do not know even a fraction of all of you thousands of people who traffic through Camels With Hammers all week but your presence is my adrenaline which motivates me to think harder and write smarter in order to keep you interested [...]
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 »Before I Deconverted: I Was A Teenage Christian Contrarian
November 21st, 2011 Daniel Fincke A few weeks ago I began chronicling the story of my Christianity, my deconversion, and my personal and intellectual development post-deconversion. I began with the reminiscences, Before I Deconverted: My Christian Childhood and Before I Deconverted: Ministers As Powerful Role Models. This post is a series of recollections of my high school religiosity. Below I cover [...]
The Angry Atheist Interviews Me
November 7th, 2011 Daniel Fincke So, yesterday I got interviewed by Reap Paden of The Angry Atheist podcast. We discussed my biography, deconversion, my views on criticizing religious people without slamming them, my mom, the dangers of nihilism and misogyny, why trolls on the internet are so evil, politics, and more! Check it out! Plus they designed this fantastic logo [...]
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 [...]
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 »As I Watch Laura Marling Perform
September 28th, 2011 Daniel Fincke I got very lucky and my one Wednesday night off this semester (and one of my only week nights off period this semester) coincides (tonight) with the genius Laura Marling’s one trip to New York City on her fall tour for her fantastic new album, A Creature I Don’t Know. I am about to head out [...]
On Rejecting Faith in Morality
September 16th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Update: Joel Marks has replied to this post and to my first follow up post. I have reedited this post to incorporate his remarks at the end. Joel Marks is at the Center for Bioethics at Yale University and is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of New Haven. Though writing on ethics throughout [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Ethics, Ethics, Love, Love, Metaethics, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Personal, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Skepticism, Skepticism 1 Comment »Why I Blog
September 14th, 2011 Daniel Fincke To avoid living my entire life like this: via Your Thoughts?
CONGRATULATIONS DAVE AND MEAGAN!!!
September 12th, 2011 Daniel Fincke This is a special, special day for Camels With Hammers as Dave Smith, our webmaster, has just announced to Facebook (and thereby given me permission to announce to the rest of the world) that he is engaged to his beautiful, brilliant, and utterly hilarious new fiancé Meagan. Dave is an old friend. We lived across [...]
On The Value Of Taking Stands
March 27th, 2011 Daniel Fincke I’m doing a whole lot of spring cleaning this weekend. Part of it entails digging through and sorting out old papers. I just found a really great e-mail exchange from June of 2000 which encapsulates my thoughts during a really intellectually tumultuous time in my life (I had only renounced Christianity at the end of [...]
Meet Jesy Littlejohn, Founder of "Rainbow Bridge", Grove City College’s Unrecognized LGBTQ Awareness Group
March 14th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Grove City College, my alma mater from which I graduated with a BA in Philosophy and a minor in Religion in 2000, is an Evangelical Christian college which ranks among America’s most religiously and politically conservative colleges. Princeton Review ranks Grove City among the “Best Northeastern Colleges” and among the 373 best colleges in the [...]
My Great Niece
March 3rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Hey everybody, this is Lexie! That was her first birthday. She’s now 26 months old. Your Awwws?
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