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On the basis of my reading of a few Wiccan texts, I said that Wiccans believe that their ultimate deity is the ultimate immanent creative power of being. This is an old Platonic idea. The existence of such a power of being is endorsed by a number of atheistic philosophers (like Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and [...]
Archive for the ‘Epistemology’ Category
Criticizing Wicca: Energy
December 13th, 2011 
Eric Steinhart Podcast Series Covering The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps
December 2nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Earlier today, I posted a link to an exceptional, accessible podcast introduction to the philosophies of the ancient cynics. The whole series that that podcast comes from is a marvelous idea and the few I’ve listened to are just great. It’s called “The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps” and it’s a must listen, basically a [...]
Posted in Epistemology, Epistemology, Ethics, Ethics, Historical Ethics, Historical Ethics, Historical Philosophy, Historical Philosophy, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Love, Love, Metaethics, Metaethics, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Plato, Plato, Teleology, Teleology, Virtues, Virtues 
Tags: Anaxagoras, Anaximander, Anaximines, Ancient Atomists, Aristotle, Aristotle on Biology, Aristotle on Four Causes, Aristotle on God, Aristotle on Logic, Aristotle on Mind, Aristotle on Physics, Aristotle on Soul, Aristotle's Life and Works, Aristotle's Politics, Aristotle's Rhetoric, Atomists, Charmides, Cratylus, Cynics, Cyrenaics, Empedocles, Epicurus, Euthydemus, Gorgias, Hellenistic Philosophy, Heraclitus, Hippocrates, Melissus, Parmenides, Plato, Plato's Cratylus, Plato's Erotic Dialogues, Plato's Gorgias, Plato's Parmenides, Plato's Republic, Platonic Love, Presocratics, Pythagoras, Socrates, Sophists, Sorabji on Aristotle, Thales, The Republic, The Sophist, Zeno 
8 Comments »Why Moral Nihilism Is Self-Contradictory
November 22nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke My post against moral nihilism on Friday received many stimulating replies. I hope to address those replies, or their general concerns, as there is time and occasion in future posts. In this post–and in another I have written for later today–I want to start by answering thedudediogenes. He is the most seemingly self-conscious moral nihilist [...]
Posted in Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Ethics, Ethics, Metaethics, Metaethics, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Naturalistic Fallacy, Naturalistic Fallacy, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Teleology, Teleology 19 Comments »A Philosophical Polemic Against Moral Nihilism
November 18th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Jesse is undeterred by my argument that at least some of our moralities (or elements of them) can be objectively defended even though the physical universe (taken as an entirety) does not care about them: Daniel– I haven’t gone deeply enough through the other posts you linked to, and I will — but I think [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Ethical Pluralism, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Ethics, Evidence, Evidence, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Metaethics, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Teleology, Teleology, Virtues, Virtues 31 Comments »A Cartoon on the Problem of Induction
November 18th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Kids can be so surprisingly philosophical, can’t they? Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal via LogBlog Your Thoughts?
John Shook: Proving God’s Existence Is Impossible
November 17th, 2011 Daniel Fincke This semester I have been teaching Philosophy of Religion using John Shook’s superbly thorough, systematic, incisive, and critical summation of the arguments for and against the existence of God, The God Debates: A 21st Century Guide for Atheists and Believers (and Everyone in Between). The book is impressive enough that I would give it the [...]
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, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion 14 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 »“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 »Force and Reason
October 21st, 2011 Daniel Fincke In previous posts (like Rational Passional Persuasion and On Zealously, Tentatively, and Perspectivally Holding Viewpoints) I have argued that there is a proper place for emotional appeals as part of a rational argument. In the last couple of weeks, though, I have also argued firmly against certain kinds of emotional appeals that I consider abusive, counter-productive, and hypocritical [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Authority, Authority, Autonomy, Autonomy, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Ethics, Ethics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Virtues, Virtues Tags: Coercion, Emotional Appeals, Emotional Persuasion, Emotions in Reason, Emotivism, Force of Reason, Manipulation, Objective Valuing, Perspectivalism, Persuasion, Rational Appeals, Rational Force, Rational Persuasion, Rationality, Reason and Emotion, Subjective Valuing, Values 15 Comments »Nietzsche: We Cannot “Selflessly” Investigate Morality
October 14th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Nietzsche writes a lot of things which attack the ideal of selflessness. Yet he does not make any blanket call for an ideal of unmitigated, small-minded selfishness. He calls for certain kinds of self-concern and in some cases certain kinds of self-denial in the pursuit of higher purposes or higher ideals of self-cultivation. Rather than [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Autonomy, Autonomy, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Ethical Pluralism, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Ethics, Evidence, Evidence, Historical Ethics, Historical Ethics, Historical Philosophy, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Metaethics, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy 6 Comments »Nietzsche: “‘Good’ Is No Longer Good When One’s Neighbor Mouths It”
September 26th, 2011 Daniel Fincke I argued yesterday that Nietzsche believes that there are objective standards of value for assessing divergent moralities. In reply, Juno (of the blog Letters from Le Vrai) asks what I would make of Section 43 of Beyond Good and Evil which reads, in full, as follows: Are these coming philosophers new friends of “truth”? That is probable enough, for [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Autonomy, Autonomy, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Epistemology, Epistemology, Ethical Pluralism, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Ethics, Historical Ethics, Historical Ethics, Historical Philosophy, Historical Philosophy, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Metaethics, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Virtues, Virtues 3 Comments »Can Good Teaching Be Measured?
September 8th, 2011 Daniel Fincke In recent posts I have been arguing that if only we interpret the word “good” to mean “effective” we can ground our discussions of values (moral and otherwise) in facts about effectivness. I argue that in that context we can have greater and lesser degrees of goodness, measurable in terms of greater or lesser degrees [...]
Posted in Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Education, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Ethics, Ethics, Evidence, Evidence, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Metaethics, Metaethics, Naturalistic Fallacy, Naturalistic Fallacy, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Teleology, Teleology, Virtues, Virtues 6 Comments »Believing Too Little Is As Bad As Believing Too Much
September 6th, 2011 Daniel Fincke When formulating principles and practices for forming good beliefs and avoiding bad beliefs, the first thing we must keep in mind is that consciously affirming a belief, consciously affirming a disbelief, deliberately avoiding believing or disbelieving are all actions. When we choose our standards for what propositions count as worthy of our belief, our disbelief, or [...]
Mostly True, Not Mostly False
September 3rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke I wrote a post where I effectively argued that any genuine truth in art and in myths (including religious art and myths) could be essentially translated into, and defended in the form of, philosophical propositions. James counters: my question regards the notion that myths or art can be “true” or not, and that the way [...]
Addressing Skepticism About Atheism’s Value To Skepticism
August 31st, 2011 Daniel Fincke In reply to my post last week about why atheism is important to advancing proper skepticism, Armchair Skeptic writes: You touch on some good points here. It would help, I think, if you start by defining what you consider to be “proper” skepticism; I didn’t really get a clear understanding of that from this post. [...]
Disambiguating Faith: How Religious Beliefs Become Specifically *Faith* Beliefs
August 5th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Faith is the deliberate will to believe, in advance of all future evidence and investigation, what one perceives to be either unsupported by evidence or even outright undermined by evidence. In this way faith is essentially a matter of will and not just belief. Simply having a belief that is unsupported or undermined by evidence [...]
Posted in Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Faith, Faith, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Philosophy Of Religion, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion Tags: Cognitive Dissonance 5 Comments »Disambiguating Faith: Naturalism, Materialism, Empiricism, And Wrong, Weak, And Unsupported Beliefs Are All Not Necessarily Faith Positions
August 2nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Here at Camels With Hammers Eric Steinhart recently accused popular atheism with being guilty of faith in versions of naturalism, materialism, and empiricism on the grounds that their particular positions are “based on weak arguments or no arguments at all”. But believing a position based on a weak argument is not the same thing as believing [...]
Contra-Steinhart: Why We Should Not Identify As "Evolutionists"
July 31st, 2011 Daniel Fincke While I agree with Eric Steinhart’s claims that atheists need to take metaphysics seriously and while I would be open to considering evolutionary models for answering metaphysical, ethical, and cosmological questions if they are promising, below I am going to briefly surmise several serious reservations I have to Eric’s suggestions that we ditch the term [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Biology, Biology, Cosmology, Cosmology, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Evolution, Evolution, Faith, Faith, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Science, Secularism 5 Comments »Philosophy Can Debunk Myths About Atheism
March 13th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by James Gray Many people are taught many strange things about atheists. For example, supposedly atheists can’t be moral, can’t have a source of “meaning” in their lives, and can’t attain knowledge. Many atheists will say that they are being misrepresented by theists because they believe morality, meaning, and knowledge can exist without God. The [...]
Disambiguating Faith: Why You Cannot Prove Inductive Reasoning Is Faith-Based Reasoning But Instead Only Assert That By Faith
March 3rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke In the comments section of a post I asserted that, “We can say we know induction works to a high degree of certainty.” James Sweet, of No Jesus, No Peas, responds: How do we know that? The only reasons I can come up with rely either on inductive reasoning — circular argument. Remember also that [...]
On Zealously, Tentatively, and Perspectivally Holding Viewpoints
March 2nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke In a recent post, I wrote the following: Changing people’s minds to make them stop holding positions dogmatically and instead hold them tentatively is still a change of mind one may zealously pursue. On Facebook, Greg writes in reply: I want to address the peculiarity of this statement. One may passionately pursue such a change [...]
Posted in Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Featured, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Personal, Philosophy, Skepticism, Skepticism Tags: Nietzsche's Perspectivism, Nietzsche's Perspectivist Theory of Truth, Perspectival Epistemology, Perspectivalism 5 Comments »The Flexibility of the Word "Evangelical"
March 1st, 2011 Daniel Fincke In a previous post, I conceded that it was acceptable to call at least some activist atheists like me “evangelical atheists” on some possible senses of the word “evangelical”. Greg wanted to say that this could not be so because all that atheists do (or should) advocate is tentative, skeptical empiricism, and that we do not (or should [...]
Why Bad Beliefs Don't Die
February 25th, 2011 Daniel Fincke The thoughts of Gregory W. Lester (as edited down by John W. Loftus) (okay, now I feel like calling myself Daniel W. Fincke): Because senses and beliefs are both tools for survival and have evolved to augment one another, our brain considers them to be separate but equally important purveyors of survival information….This means that [...]
Defending The Apparent Truth Of Evolution's Mindlessness
February 21st, 2011 Daniel Fincke Last Christmas Eve, I argued that the belief that God “guided evolution” was not a rationally respectable way to reconcile science with faith but rather it was essentially an effective denial of the theory of natural selection, in its scientifically explanatory sense. Part of the revolutionary character of the discovery of evolution by natural selection [...]
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, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Biology, Biology, Creationism, Creationism, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Evolution, Evolution, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, God, God, Historical Philosophy, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Science, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Science, Secularism Tags: Alvin Plantinga, Eugenie Scott, Huston Smith, Jerry Coyne, National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT), National Center for Science Education (NCSE) 4 Comments »Atheists Have Affirmative Positions On The Status Of Evidence And On The Standards Of Belief
February 21st, 2011 Daniel Fincke In reply to my defense of what is sometimes called “Evangelical Atheism” on my personal Facebook page, Greg Teed thinks my account comes “so close” to correct but argues that I missed something crucial: All good points, but there is a radical difference *in kind* between what atheists/skeptics promote and what the religious evangelical proselytizes. Sometimes [...]
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