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Robin: Look, I get it, Jaime. As an atheist, you think that God’s wisdom is foolishness, that God’s righteousness is wickedness, and that the bloody death of Jesus on the cross is hateful and ugly rather than the epitome of love and beauty that Christians like I think it is. The Bible makes it very [...]
Archive for the ‘Problem of Evil’ Category
God and Goodness
January 30th, 2012 
Daniel Fincke 
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, Authority, Authority, Bible, Bible, Christianity, Christianity, Ethics, God, God, Metaethics, Metaethics, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Morality, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy Of Religion, Problem of Evil, Problem of Evil, Rationalism, Religion, Religion 
Tags: Divine Command Theory, God and Goodness, God's goodness, Theological Voluntarism 
26 Comments »Thoughts and Questions About Obama
December 11th, 2011 Daniel Fincke 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, [...]
20 Christian Academics Speaking About God
September 5th, 2011 Daniel Fincke So many religious believers I encounter want to cite the existence of smart religious people as proof enough that their beliefs are rational. Below is a video just demonstrating how unintelligible, contradictory, or explicitly anti-reason many otherwise brilliant and highly credentialed scholars sound when they start actually explaining the religious beliefs that laypeople want to [...]
“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 »On God And The Japanese Earthquake
March 16th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Edward Tarte says everything that shouldn’t need to be said on the topic, but sadly does: The word poison is a bit unnecessarily strong, but the rest is spot on. Your Thoughts?
How Belief In "Theistic Evolution" Is Nearly As Much A Denial Of Science As Creationism
February 12th, 2011 Daniel Fincke The following is a repost from December 24, 2010: 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 [...]
All Things Dull And Ugly
February 6th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Earlier this afternoon, I encouraged us to sing a hymn about how all things bright and beautiful were made by evolution. While many religious believers and non-believers alike could sing that song together, I worry some religious believers who do not believe in evolution may have been left out of all the fun and singing. [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, Christianity, Christianity, Comedy, Comedy, God, God, Hilarious, Music Videos, Music Videos, Parody, Parody, Problem of Evil, Problem of Evil, Religious Satire, Religious Satire, Satire, Satire, Videos Tags: Monty Python 2 Comments »Pleasure And Pain As Intrinsic Instrumental Goods
January 27th, 2011 Daniel Fincke In recent posts I have been arguing that there is one sense of the word “good” which can be analyzed in terms of facts and that this is the kind of “goodness” which we can consider a real part of the world. This real, intrinsic, factual sense of goodness is its meaning as “effectiveness”. We [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Autonomy, Autonomy, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Historical Ethics, Historical Ethics, Metaethics, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Problem of Evil, Problem of Evil, Teleology, Teleology, Torture, Torture, Virtues, Virtues Tags: Bernard Reginster, Pain, Pains, Pleasure, Pleasures, Will to Power 5 Comments »On God As The Source Of Being But Not Of Evil
July 9th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Introduction This post is a long one but an important one for understanding what sophisticated Roman Catholic philosophers have traditionally meant when they have said that “God is good” and that the existence of evil is not to be taken as counter-evidence to their belief in God’s goodness. Very often we atheists are dismissed 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, Christianity, Christianity, Ethics, Featured, God, God, Historical Philosophy, Historical Philosophy, Metaethics, Metaethics, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Benedict XVI, Problem of Evil, Problem of Evil, Religion, Religion, Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church, Teleology, Teleology, Virtues, Virtues Tags: Thomas Aquinas No Comments »South Park’s Chef Explains God And Answers The Problem Of Evil
June 30th, 2010 Daniel Fincke I used this video to help illustrate a point over a year ago. Back then we did not have the capabilities to actually embed the video. Oh, and we had almost no readers either. But now that we are at a new host that lets us embed whatever we want, it’s been finally added to [...]
Posted in Christianity, Comedy, Comedy, God, God, Hilarious, Parody, Parody, Problem of Evil, Problem of Evil, Religion, Religious Satire, Religious Satire, Satire, Satire Tags: Chef From South Park, Original Sin, South Park, Stan From South Park 3 Comments »Beyond Agnosticism: More Details About How I Know Various Kinds Of Gods Do Not Exist, Based On Scientific And Philosophical Reasons
June 30th, 2010 Daniel Fincke While I agree with, and vigorously defend, the notion that there is an important difference between lacking a belief in gods (as an agnostic atheist) and believing there are no gods (as a gnostic atheist), I also think that atheists should not, based on the best available scientific evidence and philosophical arguments, merely lack belief [...]
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, Christianity, Christianity, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Evolution, Evolution, Featured, God, God, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Problem of Evil, Problem of Evil, Religion, Religion, Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church, Skepticism, Skepticism, Why I Am Not A Christian, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Agnosticism, Personal God 9 Comments »How Genesis Is Not Only Literally False, But Metaphorically False
June 12th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Mary Midgley argues that only the views of fundamentalist literalists are refuted by the fact of evolution: Appeals to evolution are only damaging to biblical literalism. Certainly the events described inGenesis 1 are not literally compatible with what science (from long before Darwin’s day) tells us about the antiquity of the Earth. But this is not [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Atheism, Atheist Videos, Bible, Christianity, Christopher Hitchens, Evolution, Featured, God, New Atheism, Philosophy, Problem of Evil, Secularism Tags: Garden of Eden, Literal Readings of the Bible, Literalism, Mary Midgley, Metaphorical Interpretations of Religion, Original Sin 11 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 »Daily Hilarity: Death’s Complaints
November 11th, 2009 Daniel Fincke The really funny new Mr. Deity is below. And this time the now regular plea for donations at the end has some moments that are even funnier than the episode. It’s all really hilariously done. 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 [...]
God’s Cool Designs
September 11th, 2009 Daniel Fincke An older Edward Current piece, brilliant as all of them: Your Thoughts?
Posted in Atheism, Intelligent Design, Problem of Evil, Religion, Religious Satire, Videos Tags: Edward Current No Comments »What Would Jesus NOT Do?
September 7th, 2009 Daniel Fincke This is another truly spectacular video from Non Stamp Collector, whose new video we featured yesterday. In this one he shows the real ways that a divine human could have provided evidence of his divinity and how a loving incarnated God could have morally and materially benefited humanity and demonstrated its benevolence and ethical interest. [...]
Posted in Atheism, Christianity, Problem of Evil, Religious Satire, Satire, Videos Tags: Non Stamp Collector No Comments »Sam Harris’s Case Against Collins
July 28th, 2009 Daniel Fincke President Obama’s recent choice to head the National Institutes of Health was Francis Collins who was both head of the human genome project and is an outspoken proponent of the complementarity of religion and science. Here are some of Sam Harris’s objections to his nomination: Why should Dr. Collins’s beliefs be of concern? There is [...]
Posted in Atheism, Cultural Secularism, Francis Collins, Fundamentalism, News Discussion, Political Secularism, Politics, Problem of Evil, Religion and Science, Secularism, Separation of Church and State Tags: Accommodationism, Altruism, Behavioral Economics, Free Will, Frontal Lobe Syndrome, Immortal Soul, National Institutes of Health, Neuroscience, Psychopathy, Sam Harris, Spiritual Hunger, Superstition No Comments »Is God Needed For Us To Care About Starving Kids A World Away?
July 19th, 2009 Daniel Fincke A few weeks ago now, I wrote a post, Commitment To Value Without God, in which I discussed how even when I was a Christian, I realized that I did not need to make reference to God in order to either psychologically recognize the value of sumptuous food or good friendship or any of various [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Education, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Moral Psychology, Philosophy, Problem of Evil, Psychology, Religion, Social Psychology, Social Sciences, Sociobiology, Sociology, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Africa, Colonialism, Compassion, Hell, In-group/Outgroup Psychology, Joshua Greene, Joshua Knobe, Nihilism, Peter Singer, Poverty, Starvation No Comments »Daily Hilarity: “Mr. Deity and The Evil”
July 17th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Dave’s posts on karma and on The Thinking Atheist’s very well made video on the problem of evil earlier tonight stirred some thoughts on the subject in me that I hope to sketch out at another time. In the meantime, I felt like this is a good time to post one of the best Mr. [...]
Posted in Comedy, Hilarious, Mr. Deity, Problem of Evil, Religious Satire, Satire, Videos No Comments »Gays and Christianity 3: If God Exists and Is Good, He Cannot Oppose Gay Love
July 9th, 2009 Daniel Fincke In two previous posts, I have addressed current tensions in the Anglican church over gays. You can find those posts here and here. In reply to my second post on the topic, I received several excellent comments. I decided to reprint the one which challenged me and my reply to that comment here to keep [...]
Why Worship Someone With Mysterious Motives?
June 26th, 2009 Daniel Fincke The Conversational Atheist raises a good point: When you ask a person to explain God’s apparently contradictory actions, you will inevitably get a shoulder shrug, and perhaps a “How am I supposed to know the mind of God?” Atheists need to figure out the kinds of questions that get a bit deeper. Don’t ask a [...]
Posted in Atheism, God, Problem of Evil, Religion Tags: Conversational Atheist, Hiddenness of God, Religion, Romans 9, South Park, Theodicy No Comments »
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