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This video, from ABC’s show What Would You Do?, features an incredible gesture of altruistic human love which made me quite teary to watch. And it’s by someone inspired by Jesus. If only this was the sum of what following Jesus meant to people: Your Thoughts?
Archive for the ‘Sociology’ Category
The Best Christian Ever
May 24th, 2011 
Daniel Fincke 
Posted in Christianity, Christianity, Jesus, Jesus, Psychology, Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology, Sociology, Videos 
Tags: ABC's "What Would You Do?" 
7 Comments »The Religious Conservative's False Choice: "Big Brother" Or "Heavenly Father"
February 23rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke In an e-mail to me, Caroline proposes thought provoking reasons for non-believers to encourage (or at least to not actively discourage) religious beliefs: It would also be nice if people would carry out actions in good conscience of just being decent human beings rather than in fear of reprisal in the afterlife, but as there [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Authoritarianism, Authoritarianism, Authority, Authority, Autonomy, Autonomy, Christianity, Christianity, Civil Liberties, Civil Liberties, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Duty, Duty, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, George W. Bush, George W. Bush, Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy, Law, Law, Law & Politics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, News Discussion, News Discussion, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Secularism, Social Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology, Sociology, Theocrats, Theocrats, Torture, Torture, Virtues, Virtues, World Affairs, World Affairs Tags: Political Philosophy, Social Contract, Victor Frankl 3 Comments »Sex And Apostasy
February 9th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Drew Dyck has written a book called Generation Ex-Christian: Why Young Adults Are Leaving the Faith. . .and How to Bring Them Back. I want to focus on just a few passages from his interesting five page article from last fall in last November’s Christianity Today. Unlike many Christians who, despite living in a culture [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Autonomy, Autonomy, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Prejudice, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion, Secularism, Sex, Social Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology, Sociology, Why I Am Not A Christian, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Sex and Faith, Sex and Religion, Sexual Ethics, Sexual Experimentation, Sexual Hypocrisy, Sexual Values, Young Adult Sexuality 8 Comments »Near Mindedness Vs. Far Mindedness
December 30th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Robin Hanson explores the causes and nature of our double-mindedness that makes us talk a good game about long term goals and make grand long term commitments only to default to short term preferences in practice: All animals need different ways to reason about things up close vs. far away. And because humans are especially [...]
Should Gays Have Kids?
October 11th, 2010 Daniel Fincke bewarethelizards42 explains why it’s gay-okay: And her follow up replying to homophobic comments: Your Thoughts?
Love, Polygamy, And Arranged Marriage In The Tanzanian Maasai Tribe
July 13th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Cultural variation is amazing: Your Thoughts?
Posted in Ethics, Feminism, Love, Social Psychology, Sociology, Women's Rights, Women's Issues Tags: Africa, Arranged Marriage, Maasai Tribe, Marriage, Polygamy, Tanzania No Comments »Why I Think Theistic Religion’s Psychological Grip Can Be Weakened Or Broken
July 10th, 2010 Daniel Fincke In a recent comments section, Gregory Wahl argued to me that religion is so deeply rooted in psychological needs, specifically the longing for immortality, that there is an inherent limitation to the ability of all my philosophical arguments to dissuade the faithful. As this line of reasoning goes, they do not believe for intellectual reasons [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophy Of Religion, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Secularism, Social Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Sciences, Sociology, Sociology Tags: Atheistic Existentialism, Atheistic Nihilism, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalist Nihilism, Healthy-Soul Religion, Jean-Paul Sartre, Nihilism, Nihilistic Existentialism, Sick-Soul Religion, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Values, William James No Comments »Tom Rees On Why Loss Of Faith Might Be A Two Generational Process
July 2nd, 2010 Daniel Fincke The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life study this February revealed that less than one fifth of all American adults under 30 report regular church attendance. But they still also overwhelmingly claim belief in God. Tom Rees thinks that despite their beliefs, their abandonment of the pews may indicate that a multi-generational secularization [...]
Posted in Evolutionary Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion, Social Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Sciences, Sociobiology, Sociobiology, Sociology, Sociology Tags: and Culture at the University of British Columbia, Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition, Costly Signaling, Credibility Enhancing Displays, Joe Heinrich, Pope John Paul II, Religion in America, Signaling, Tom Rees No Comments »Contrasting Muslim And Western Psychologies: The Locus Of Control
July 1st, 2010 Daniel Fincke Nicolai Sennels spent several years working with criminal Muslims in Copenhagen (where as of March 2009 “70% of the prison population in the Copenhagen youth prison consists of young man of Muslim heritage.”) He writes the following about the different ways that Westerners and Muslims view the locus of control: There is another strong difference between the [...]
Posted in Islam, Islam, Psychology, Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology, Sociology, World Affairs, World Affairs Tags: Copenhagen, Denmark, Islam In Europe 8 Comments »Some Suspicions About The Superiority Of Liberal Moral Values
June 18th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Earlier today, I drew attention to Greta Christina’s article formulating some ideas she picked up from Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. If you have already read either or both of those posts, you can just skip the next two paragraphs meant to catch up new readers. The Goldstein/Greta Christina argument built off of Jonathan Haidt’s theory of [...]
Posted in Authority, Autonomy, Contemporary Ethics, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, Featured, Hypocrisy, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Prejudice, Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Sciences, Sociobiology, Sociology, Teleology, Virtues Tags: Conservative Values, Flourishing, Greta Christina, Hierarchy, Impartiality, In-group Loyalty, Jonathan Haidt, Liberal Values, Loyalty, Moral Modules, Moral Universalism, Purity, Rebecca Goldstein, Universalism No Comments »Are Liberal Values Objectively Better Than Conservative Ones?
June 18th, 2010 Daniel Fincke In recent years, Jonathan Haidt has been influentially arguing that there are five essential modules in the mind from which human moral concerns originate. He has made this claim in several places, most prominently among philosophers in his contribution to Moral Psychology, Volume 2: The Cognitive Science of Morality: Intuition and Diversity (from Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s groundbreaking [...]
Emotional Rollercoaster Relationships Harder On Young Men Than Young Women
June 18th, 2010 Daniel Fincke A study of 1,000 men and women ages 18-23, “Nonmarital Romantic Relationships and Mental Health in Early Adulthood” by Robin Simon and Anne Barrett, finds that young men benefit more from a romantic relationship going well and suffer worse from the strain of a bad one, whereas young women benefit more from simply being in [...]
Posted in Love, Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology Tags: Romantic Relationships, Young Men, Young Women No Comments »The Secret Powers Of Time
June 10th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Some interesting insights, but visually a blast to watch: Your Thoughts?
Posted in Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Sciences, Sociology, Videos Tags: Philip Zimbardo, Time No Comments »Is Belief In Love Like Belief In God?
May 25th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Roger Friedland finds an interesting correlation between the two kinds of belief and examines its possible causes and implications: We found that belief in God has no impact on young people’s sex lives. College virgins are no more likely to believe in God than non-virgins. Even those who took a virginity pledge are not sexually [...]
Posted in God, Psychology, Sex, Social Psychology, Sociology Tags: Casual Sex, College Sex, Friends With Benefits, Love, Religion and Sex, Roger Friedland, Sex and Love, Teenage Sex 1 Comment »Miserable Pastors
May 20th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Via Pharyngula comes a bleak picture of what is going on in the lives, hearts, and minds of Evangelical pastors: Another article reveals even more telling statistics based on a survey of 1,050 evangelical Pastors (note these are evangelical pastors not liberal pastors): 89% considered leaving the ministry at one time. 57% said they would leave [...]
Marrying For Sex
November 7th, 2009 Daniel Fincke One of Andrew Sullivan’s readers has an interesting and accurate seeming account of the effects of conservative American Christianity’s obsessive and draconian opposition to all premarital sex and its implications for contributing to the hysteria about children learning about same sex couples: I teach at a large university in a conservative part of the country, [...]
Posted in Christianity, Fundamentalism, Homophobia, Psychology, Religion, Sex, Sociology Tags: Evangelicalism, Marriage 12 Comments »Untangling The Language Of Racists Who Deny They’re Racists
October 25th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Sendai Anonymous pointed me to a really interesting sociological study by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva which attempts to shed light on the various contortions that “color blind” racists go through in an incoherent attempt to evade their racism while expressing their views. First, I document how whites avoid direct racial language while expressing their racial views. [...]
Posted in Racism, Social Psychology, Sociology Tags: Color Blind Racism, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Language, Racial Language, Semantics No Comments »“The Atheist” As Symbol And Boundary-Marking Cultural Category In America
September 23rd, 2009 Daniel Fincke The hostility to atheism is so incredibly illogical, but there it is, from this paper out of the University of Minnesota, published in American Sociological Review in April 2006: The core point of this article can be stated concisely. Atheists are at the top of the list of groups that Americans find problematic in both [...]
An Argument For Gay Marriage And Against Traditionalism
July 27th, 2009 Daniel Fincke I am puzzled by appeals to history to oppose gay marriage because history is only the story of what people have done and never of itself directly tells us anything about right or wrong. Results of history can serve as warnings about effective and uneffective approaches to goal x or goal y but what people [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Autonomy, Civil Rights, Cultural Secularism, Culture, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Gay Marriage, Homosexuality, Jesus, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Political Secularism, Politics, Psychology, Religion, Religious Secularism, Same Sex Marriage, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Social Psychology, Sociobiology, Sociology, Virtues Tags: Attractions, Aversions, Beauty, Civil Unions, Definition of Marriage, Disgust, Gay Adoption, Homophobia, Irrational Moral Judgments, John Richardson, Jonathan Haidt, Joshua Greene, King David, Michel Foucault, Misogyny, Nathan The Prophet, Nietzsche, Polygamy, Separate But Equal, Socrates, Traditionalism, Ugliness 11 Comments »A Statistical Case For Atheist Ethics
July 22nd, 2009 Daniel Fincke Your Thoughts?
The Gayby Boom?
July 20th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Johann Hari on the rise of open gay parenting in the UK and the research indicating no averse effects for children: The children of gay couples are desperately and passionately wanted. They are, by definition, planned, with parents who have to go to a great deal of hassle and heart-searching before they are created. Compare [...]
10 Basics Of Group Dynamics
July 19th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Go here for the explanations of each of the 10 basic “psych 101″ points and also to find further articles on the topic. I found point 6 most interesting and so included it in full below: 1. Groups can arise from almost nothing 2. Initiation rites improve group evaluations 3. Groups breed conformity 4. Learn [...]
Posted in Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Sciences, Sociology Tags: Change, Competition, Conformity, Gossip, Group Psychology, Group Think, Initiation Rites, Leadership, Persuasion, Trust 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 »Female Performance Anxiety?
July 18th, 2009 Daniel Fincke A week ago we pointed readers to a study that provided evidence women tend to psyche out when they think they are playing chess against men and perform worse than they are capable. Here Laura Woodhouse from thefword.org shares her own anecdotes about underperforming at tasks when she is around men. She finds herself [...]
Posted in Feminism, Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Sciences, Sociology Tags: Women No Comments »Palin As Figurehead
July 3rd, 2009 Daniel Fincke The other day I quoted one of Andrew Sullivan’s readers who attributed Sarah Palin’s popularity among fundamentalists to the fact that they and she are both fundamentally liars who have to refuse reality to sustain their beliefs. I used this remark for a launching pad for discussing Nietzsche’s critique of theologians as fundamentally deceitful and [...]
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