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Last night James Croft attended a lecture by famous Christian apologist (and Oxford Professor of Mathematics), John Lennox. James was struck by the especial susceptibility of the American audience to emotional appeals, which led them to give a charming but intellectually shallow, evasive, and unoriginal defense of belief a standing ovation: This shows us something [...]
Archive for the ‘Divine Intervention’ Category
The Argument from the Bible in the Briefcase
February 18th, 2012 
Daniel Fincke “And There Are No Christians In Med School”
August 30th, 2011 Daniel Fincke I have an idea. In the future whenever you hear someone falsely say that there are no atheists in foxholes, don’t disagree with them. Don’t point out to them that this insults the bravery of countless non-theist soldiers by implying that without belief in God and an afterlife no one would ever courageously put his [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Bible, Bible, Christianity, Christianity, Divine Intervention, Divine Intervention, Faith, Faith, God, God, Jesus, Jesus, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Prayer, Prayer, Problem of Evil, Problem of Evil, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Skepticism, Skepticism 
5 Comments »How Belief In “Theistic Evolution” Is Nearly As Much A Denial Of Science As Creationism
December 24th, 2010 Daniel Fincke One often hears the refrain that it’s possible to believe in both God and evolution. And it is in fact true, both psychologically and, more importantly, logically, that one may both believe in God and in evolution. Psychologically we have ample evidence that plenty of people believe in both and logically it is clear that [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Biology, Biology, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens, Cosmology, Cosmology, Creationism, Creationism, Divine Intervention, Divine Intervention, Evolution, Evolution, Featured, God, God, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Science, Secularism 12 Comments »Why Progressive Interpretations Of The Old Testament Still Do Not Justify Its God Morally
July 11th, 2010 Daniel Fincke In reply to this video on various immoral things outright commanded in what is supposed to be God’s law in the Old Testament, Loyal writes: Militaristic non-Christians often seize upon the many difficult passages where God is condoning morally repugnant acts. I am glad you admit that they are morally repugnant acts and neither morally [...]
Earthquakes Explained: Promiscuous Girls The Cause
April 19th, 2010 Daniel Fincke We so often hear religion is not incompatible with science because “science can’t tell us everything”, with the implication being that religion can tell us what science cannot. This must be one of those things we need religion to explain to us, not how earthquakes happen but why they happen and how we can prevent them! [...]
Posted in Divine Intervention, God, Islam, Religion, Religion and Science, Religulous 
Tags: Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, Iran, Sadeq Mahsooli No Comments »Divine Serial Killer
April 12th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Dwindling In Unbelief provides a full chart of all biblical claims of divinely sanctioned killings, replete with death totals and links to blog posts discussing the details of most of them. A handy resource. Your Thoughts?
Posted in Christianity, Divine Intervention, God, Judaism, Religion Tags: Biblical Atrocities, Biblical Violence No Comments »God Cites “Moving In Mysterious Ways” As Motive For Killing 3,000 Papua New Guineas
April 11th, 2010 Daniel Fincke The Onion has full coverage of God’s remarks here and of Jesus Christ’s recent decision to hire an associate christ here. Your Thoughts?
Posted in Comedy, Divine Intervention, God, Hilarious, Jesus, Parody, Religious Satire, Satire Tags: "God Works In Mysterious Ways", God As Mystery, Mystery No Comments »Daily Hilarity: Accu-Wrath Forecast
April 9th, 2010 Daniel Fincke A great, older Bill Maher bit I only just discovere: Your Thoughts?
“Where Was His Miracle?”
October 9th, 2009 Daniel Fincke A poignant two paragraphs from Jerry Coyne’s piece reporting from the AAI that I mentioned Andrew Sullivan maligned earlier: It’s the first time I’ve been in a group of fellow atheists (and I haven’t detected one sign of stridency or militancy), and it gives one a warm supportive feeling. One of the functions of speaking [...]
What To Make Of “Bad” Theologians Who Do Good “Theology”?
October 8th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Halden muses about the independent relationship between theological study and personal piety and virtue: Its hard to find a more scandalizing bunch of people than theologians, and not in the good way. One would think that among a guild of professionals dedicated to getting to know God as well as possible you’d see less infidelity, [...]
Posted in Divine Intervention, Featured, Religion Tags: Holy Spirit, Jürgen Moltmann, Theologians, Theology No Comments »Thank God Prayer Doesn’t Work!
October 5th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Good Atheist remarking on a campaign to pray for liberal politicians makes the following astute value judgment: It’s a good thing prayer does absolutely nothing (well, other than waste people’s time I suppose). If it did, can you imagine the kind of world we’d be living in? How many times have people prayed for terrible, [...]
Posted in Atheism, Christianity, Divine Intervention, Politics, Prayer, Religion Tags: Conservatives, Liberals No Comments »Daily Hilarity: “Mr. Deity and the Skeptic”
September 16th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Guest appearance by Michael Shermer! Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at Caltech, and Adjunct Professor of Economics at Claremont Graduate University. Dr. Shermer’s latest book is The Mind of the Market, on [...]
Posted in Atheism, Comedy, Divine Intervention, Faith, Hilarious, Miracles, Mr. Deity, Parody, Religious Satire, Satire, Skepticism, Videos Tags: Abraham and Isaac, Michael Shermer No Comments »If These Are God’s Miracles, Where Are His Priorities?
September 12th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Brand new from ZJ: The French have a spring that is alleged to perform miracles. ZJ reasons that even if it did perform miracles it wouldn’t speak much of the deity behind them: Mr. Deity on the other hand seems to understand these criticisms and that’s why he never intervenes: Your Thoughts?
Posted in Divine Intervention, Jesus, Mr. Deity, Prayer Tags: 9/11, African starvation, argument from ignorance, Atheism, cancer, Christianity, Death, Faith Healing, France, genocide, God, Holocaust, hunger, inaction, interventionist, malnutrition, marian apparition, mary, medical bureau, medically inexplicable, Miracles, miraculous events, plague, Religion, roman catholic church bishop, rwandan, sanctuary our lady of lourdes, shrine, spanish flu pandemic, spring water cures, Starvation No Comments »Disambiguating Faith: Faith As A Form Of Rationalization Unique To Religion
August 29th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Rod Dreher confronts psychological research which illustrates the pervasive role of rationalization in our thought processes, which leads us reflexively to seek out information that confirms preexisting beliefs rather than challenges them among other techniques for seeing only what we want to see. Turning to the implications of the realities of rationalization for the religious [...]
Posted in Atheism, Christianity, Disambiguating Faith, Divine Intervention, Epistemology, Faith, Featured, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Metaphysics, Miracles, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Spinoza Tags: Crunchy Con, Gods of the Philosophers, Ground of all being, Materialism, Paul Tillich, Rationalization, Rod Dreher 10 Comments »“Faith Killing”
August 28th, 2009 Daniel Fincke You know, I’m tired hearing of these blood-boiling cases of children dying because of their parents influencing them to substitute prayer for medicine. Here’s the latest such murder to make the news, via Mojoey) I’m also tired of the term “faith healing” to describe these events. I suggest we call it what it really is: faith [...]
On Meeting People Where They Are
August 24th, 2009 Daniel Fincke While he was hospitalized a couple years ago, Daniel Dennett got irritated when people offered to pray for him and insisted that they thank doctors rather than offer their ineffectual prayers. The Wittenburg Door was appalled and inferred (quite unjustifiably) that Dennett did not understand that all many people mean to say when they say [...]
The Evil Atheist Philosophy Professor Vs. A Piece Of Chalk
August 7th, 2009 Daniel Fincke In response to a long running urban legend/chain intellectually insulting e-mail (which Snopes has a really good write up of here) comes this terrific comic stripization: The version of this story that deserves a separate cartoon of its own is a really disgusting one in which the professor’s closing challenge to God is to strike [...]
Atheist Testimonials In The Detroit Free Press
August 5th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Mojoey, the founder and curator of the Atheist Blogroll to which we owe great gratitude, points us to a great series running in The Detroit Free Press in which atheists give their testimonials. Here’s the one Mojoey highlighted yesterday: I was at work when someone brought up that I am an atheist.A nearby coworker nearly [...]
Debate On Miracles
July 30th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Michael Shermer vs. Adrian Holloway
James Randi Exposing Healing Frauds
July 22nd, 2009 Daniel Fincke James Randi, the former magician known as The Amazing Randi, in the ’80s went on Johnny Carson with some staggering footage and insight into how religious charlatans were faking miracles and swindling people. This video shows a portion of what they uncovered.
Naturalism As True By Definition
July 18th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Jason Streitfeld weighs in on the question of naturalism or supernaturalism, treated by Sean Carroll here, John Pieret here, and Shane and me in these this post and then this one. Streitfeld’s post is excellent so read it in full. Scientists do not rely on any notion of the supernatural to formulate their conception of [...]
Posted in Atheism, Biology, Creationism, Divine Intervention, Evolution, Law, Naturalism, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Physics, Religion and Science, Science Tags: Creationism, Intelligent Design, Jason Streitfeld, John Pieret, Metaphysics, Methodological Naturalism, Occam's Razor, Philosophical Naturalism, Scientific Demarcation, Scientific Method, Sean Carroll, Simplicity, Supernatural, Supernaturalism No Comments »Can Scientists Infer About Naturalism And Its Limitations?
July 18th, 2009 Daniel Fincke John Pieret is not thrilled with Sean Carroll’s foray into the philosophy of science and metaphysics from Thursday. Particularly, he is (rightly) critical of Carroll’s dismissal of major theories of scientific demarcation as mere “mottos” and his apparently unnuanced and uncritical preference for Occam’s Razor in all cases. Only in the final paragraph does he [...]
Posted in Academic Disciplines, Cosmology, Divine Intervention, Epistemology, Law, Naturalism, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Physics, Religion and Science, Science Tags: Creationism, Disciplinary Rigor, Intelligent Design, Inter-disciplinary, John Pieret, Metaphysics, Methodological Naturalism, Occam's Razor, Philosophical Naturalism, Samir Okasha, Scientific Demarcation, Scientific Method, Sean Carroll, Simplicity, Supernatural, Supernaturalism No Comments »Science And Supernatural Hypotheses, Present and Possible Future
July 16th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Via PZ Myers, comes a long and recommendable argument by Sean Carroll on the philosophy of science and how scientific understanding of the world thus far precludes any room for miracles (thus making the religion and science incompatible). Excerpted from the much longer article with interesting things on the philosophy of science which I recommend [...]
The Cognitive Dissonance Argument Against Modern Religious Thinking
July 13th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Making The Cut
July 3rd, 2009 Daniel Fincke Bradlaugh: A Yemenia Airlines plane crashed into the Indian Ocean Tuesday. Of the 153 people on board, only one survived, 13-year-old Bahia Baraki of Paris. Said her Dad: “I can’t say that it’s a miracle, I can say that it is God’s will.” I guess the relatives of the other 152 passengers, the ones who didn’t make the [...]
Posted in Divine Intervention, News, News Discussion, Religion Tags: God's Will, Plane Crashes, Yemenia Airlines No Comments »
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