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Before Obama, America had not elected as president a legislator, either a congressperson or a senator, for decades. We have consistently preferred governors, vice presidents, and generals. Now in electing Obama we have a legislator, law professor, and grass roots organizer. We have someone whose skills are building consensus, managing intricate relationships with allies and enemies, [...]
Archive for the ‘Disambiguating Faith’ Category
Thoughts and Questions About Obama
December 11th, 2011 
Daniel Fincke The “Moral Argument” For Free Will Is A Morally Troubling, Hypocritical, Faith Position
September 9th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Many who believe that we have free will are what philosophers call “libertarians”. These are not necessarily libertarians in the political sense but in a metaphysical sense. Libertarians conceive of free will as incompatible with determinism. Their notion is that to the extent that our actions are determined by forces or factors which are beyond [...]
Posted in Autonomy, Autonomy, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Ethics, Ethics, Faith, Faith, Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy, Metaethics, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy 
Tags: Determinism, Free Will, Hypocrisy of the moral argument for free will, Libertarian Free Will, The Moral Argument for Free Will 
25 Comments »What I Think About Faith And Religion
September 2nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Yesterday, I wrote a post to orient readers to my views on how values can be matters of fact. This afternoon I wrote 6 more such posts, delineating my positions on a number of other key topics which can serve as introductions and reference guides (with links) to my thinking. They are on the topics of the [...]
Disambiguating Faith: What About The Good Things People Call "Faith"? (Or "Why I Take Such A Strong Semantic Stand Against The Word Faith")
August 5th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Goeff has an interesting reply to my post about how faith poisons religion. In that post I talked about how religion is a vehicle for many people to get many good things. Then I put the blame on faith for making it so religion does an inadequate job of providing those goods the best it [...]
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: How Faith Poisons Religion
August 4th, 2011 Daniel Fincke There are many wonderful parts of life that billions of people experience through a religious framework, at least partially to their benefit. Spiritual experiences mean a lot to many people and many people interpret their spiritual experience within the symbols, concepts, rituals, metaphysics, and community of their religious group. Rituals enrich people’s lives by giving [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Ethics, Ethics, Evidence, Evidence, Faith, Faith, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Vices, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion, Skepticism, Skepticism 17 Comments »Disambiguating Faith: How Just Opposing Faith, In Principle, Means You Actually Don't Have Faith, In Practice
August 2nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Eric writes: Popular atheism in America celebrates versions of naturalism, materialism, empiricism, and so on, that are often based on weak arguments or even on no arguments at all. Popular atheism in America is already faith – and I’m sympathetic to the Christians who refer to it as such. Unfortunately, popular atheism is often just as [...]
Posted in Atheism, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Faith, Faith, Featured, Religion, Religion 6 Comments »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 »On Atheists And "Interfaith" Participation
April 30th, 2011 Daniel Fincke There is a lot of commotion in the atheist blogosphere about how and/or whether atheists should participate in so-called “interfaith” organizations in which (if I understand correctly) members of different religions cooperate on shared service projects, aim at shared goals together, and (possibly?) dialogue about where they might find philosophical, ethical, and political common ground [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Faith, Faith, Featured, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Secularism Tags: Interfaith 5 Comments »Disambiguating Faith: Faith Which Exploits Infinitesimal Probabilities As Openings For Strong Affirmations
January 8th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Pete C. argues that because our comprehension is limited, it is hubris for us to rule out faith in things that alleged to go beyond it: I’m not sure where I fall in the spectrum of agnosticism (if i belong there at all) so I can’t really self identify. But I will offer an explanation [...]
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, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Faith, Faith, Featured, God, God, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Spinoza, Spinoza 2 Comments »Disambiguating Faith: The Evidence-Impervious Agnostic Theists
December 29th, 2010 Daniel Fincke A vast majority of believers, though probably not all, believed in God before they ever encountered any arguments for its existence. For obvious cultural and psychological reasons, the concept of God is intuitively understandable and believable for most children and by far most believers start believing in childhood. Even those who spend a short time as [...]
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, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Faith, Faith, Featured, God, God, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion, Why I Am Not A Christian, Why I Am Not A Christian 21 Comments »Agnostics Or Apistics?
October 27th, 2010 Daniel Fincke In the past, I have defended the idea that rather than classifying people simply as atheists, agnostics, and theists that we should separate the questions of the contents of beliefs (whether they are atheistic or theistic) from whether one’s atheism or theism is held as a matter of knowledge or not. If one’s theism is [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Faith, Faith, Featured, God, God, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion Tags: Agnostic Atheism, Agnostic Theism, Agnosticism, Apistic Agnostic Atheism, Gnostic Atheism, Gnostic Theism, Pistic Agnostic Atheism 32 Comments »Disambiguating Belief
August 8th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Ophelia Benson counters a common and deeply misleading equivocation (one I counter often, but most specifically addressed here and here): Belief is about truth; it equates to”it is true that X”. It is thus cognitive rather than emotive. It seems odd to me to ask if it would be better to believe the things I [...]
Disambiguating Faith: Implicit Faith
July 5th, 2010 Daniel Fincke In last night’s installment of the “Disambiguating Faith” series, I talked about the difference between, on the one hand, volitionally choosing to believe something that is either not rationally warranted or which is positively refuted by the available evidence, and, on the other hand, simply thinking one has rational warrant for one’s belief and yet [...]
Posted in Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Faith, Faith, Featured, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Philosophy, Religion, Religion Tags: Cognitive Dissonance, Implicit Faith No Comments »Disambiguating Faith: Defending My Definition Of Faith As “Belief Or Trust Beyond Rational Warrant”
July 5th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Last week I responded to David Crowther’s argument that we should equally consider all beliefs that are not 100% certain to be “faith beliefs”. I argued that the word “belief” already covers the fact that we are fallible human beings and as such even our most nearly 100% certain propositions about the world are always [...]
Posted in Authority, Authority, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Faith, Faith, Featured, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion Tags: Faith As Loyalty, Faith as Trust, Loyalty, Trust, Trustworthiness, Volition, Volitional Disposition, Volitional Faith 9 Comments »Disambiguating Faith: Not All Beliefs Held Without Certainty Are Faith Beliefs
June 30th, 2010 Daniel Fincke David Crowther raises a crucial point of contention: What I really want to do, is get back to the question of whether atheism is necessarily a “faith position”. If we generalize the term “faith” to mean believing or relying on something without absolute proof, than I think it is true to say that every possible [...]
Posted in Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Faith, Faith, Featured, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Language, Religion and Science, Science, Science, Skepticism, Skepticism Tags: Beliefs, Certainty, Skepticism No Comments »No, I’m Not An Atheist By Faith, Here Are My Arguments.
June 29th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Yesterday Ron Rosenbaum aggressively attacked atheism and defended agnosticism in Slate. He starts out with the familiar charge that atheists have “faith”. But faith in what? Atheists display a credulous and childlike faith, worship a certainty as yet unsupported by evidence—the certainty that they can or will be able to explain how and why 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, Atheism, Cosmology, Cosmology, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Ethics, Evidence, Evidence, Faith, Faith, Featured, God, God, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Physics, Physics, Religion, Religion 41 Comments »Disambiguating Faith: Why Faith Is Unethical (Or “In Defense Of The Ethical Obligation To Always Proportion Belief To Evidence”)
June 21st, 2010 Daniel Fincke A couple of weeks ago, I argued that there was a real distinction between “lacking a belief in any God or gods” on the one hand and “believing there is no God (or gods)” on the other hand. Primarily I saw the heart of the distinction as resting with the difference between on the one [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Authority, Autonomy, Contemporary Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Disambiguating Faith, Duty, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Evidence, Faith, Featured, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Law, Metaethics, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Political Secularism, Politics, Rationalism, Religion, Religious Extremism, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Skepticism, Teleology, Virtues, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Agnostic Atheism, Agnostic Theism, Belief, Belief Apportioned To Evidence, Evolutionary Epistemology, Evolutionary Ethics, Gnostic Atheism, Gnostic Theism, Indirect Consequentialism, Moral Formalism, Moral Rationalism, Principle of Sufficient Reason, Rational Belief 10 Comments »Disambiguating Faith: How A Lack Of Belief In God May Differ From Various Kinds Of Beliefs That Gods Do Not Exist
June 7th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Yesterday on Friendly Atheist there was a vigorous debate in the comments section about whether there is a real and important difference between claiming one lacks belief in God (or gods) and outright claiming that there is no God (or gods). Here is a nice formulation of the argument that the distinction is an irrelevant [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Ethics, Evidence, Faith, Featured, God, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Metaphysics, New Atheism, Philosophy, Problem of Evil, Skepticism, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Agnostic Atheism, Agnostic Theism, Agnosticism, Friendly Atheist, Gnostic Atheism, Gnostic Theism, theism 24 Comments »Maximal Self-Realization In Self-Obliteration: The Existential Paradox of Heroic Self-Sacrifice
April 10th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Last summer I wrote a number of posts through which I sought to disambiguate the various senses of the word faith and in the process distinguish the various virtuous ethical and epistemic practices for which faith is typically confused by means of ambiguous equivocations. I attempted to distinguish the virtues of hope, loyalty, trust, intuitional [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Disambiguating Faith, Duty, Epistemic Justification, Ethics, Faith, Featured, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Secularism, Teleology, Virtues Tags: 9/11, 9/11 Firefighters, Courage, Existential Justification, Existentialism, Functionalism, Idealism, Indirect Consequentialism, Loyalty, Moral Perfectionism, Perfectionism No Comments »Andy Thomson on Why We Believe in Gods
April 10th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Your Thoughts?
Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Tradition’s Advocate And Enforcer, Opposed To Merely Provisional Forms Of Trust
September 12th, 2009 Daniel Fincke David appeals to MacIntyre to raise a really interesting question: What is your assessment of faith as the starting point of tradition constituted inquiry as understood by MacIntyre? This is accepting the standards of argument, explanation, justification internal to and partially constitutive of the extended argument that constitutes what MacIntyre calls a tradition. In this [...]
Posted in Atheism, Cultural Secularism, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemology, Faith, Featured, Philosophy, Political Secularism, Religion, Religious Secularism, Secularism Tags: Alasdair MacIntyre, Authoritarianism, Cross-Perspectival Criticism, Cross-Tradition Criticism, Gestalt Shifts, Multiculturalism, Paradigms, Perspectivism, Provisional Trust, Religious Authoritarianism, Tradition, Traditionalism 1 Comment »Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Admirable Infinite Commitment For Finite Reasons
September 11th, 2009 Daniel Fincke May your strength give us strength, may your faith give us faith, may your hope give us hope, may your love give us love. In recent weeks I have distinguished and criticized numerous distinct belief formation and justification practices which go by the name of “faith.” I have argued that it is neither rational nor [...]
Posted in Atheistic Ethics, Disambiguating Faith, Duty, Ethics, Faith, Featured, Moral Psychology, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Virtues Tags: 2001, 9/11, 9/11 Firefighters, Bravery, Commitment, Courage, Faith as Courage, Infinite Commitment, Kierkegaard, Proportioning Actions To Reasons, September 11, Supererogatory, Will No Comments »Disambiguating Faith By Soul Searching With Clergy Guy
September 7th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Please don’t dismiss this post as too long to take a shot on reading through. The debate it features promises to be candid and thorough and, I hope, thought-provoking for believers and unbelievers alike. I hope you find it as worth your time to read as I found it worth mine to write. It set [...]
Posted in Atheism, Disambiguating Faith, Faith, Featured, Jesus, New Atheism, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Doubt, The Existence of God, Tradition, Yahweh 13 Comments »Disambiguating Faith: Faith Is Preconditioned By Doubt, But Precludes Serious Doubting
September 5th, 2009 Daniel Fincke On Unreasonable Faith, there is thread chatting about doubt in the context of discussing a quote from Descartes about the necessity to thoroughly doubt at least once in one’s lifetime. In the ensuing discussion, Clergy Guy writes: Just wanted to chime in to say that I think one can have faith and doubts at the [...]
Posted in Atheism, Disambiguating Faith, Faith, Featured, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Doubt No Comments »
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