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Archive for July, 2009
Atheism, Certainty, Mysticism, And Faitheism
July 27th, 2009 
Daniel Fincke In reply to Daniel Dennett’s attack on the supposed need for belief in belief, a Daily Dish reader writes: Something I find annoying about this atheist-believer dispute is that it all depends on what you mean by “god”. If you require the talking snake, then, yeah, Dennet rules, in my opinion. But if you are [...]
Posted in Atheism, Comedy, Film, Religion, Religious Secularism, Science, Secularism, Videos 
Tags: Awe, Certainty, Christology, Dumb and Dumber, God Delusion, Ground of all being, Jim Carrey, Lauren Holly, Mystery, Mysticism, Pantheism, Richard Dawkins, Trinity, Uncertainty, Wonder 
No Comments »How Atheists Can Avoid Other Fundamentalisms: By Focusing On Rationalism First And Foremost
July 26th, 2009 Daniel Fincke I agree with this a whole lot (I most recommend the last link to PZ Myers’s assessment of Hitchens on war): The real-world implications of the “New Atheists” ideas are not insulated from the same dogmatism and intolerance that they decry. To get back to my original point about rationalism, the religious aspect is only [...]
Posted in Atheism, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, New Atheism, Rationalism, Secularism Tags: al-Dawinia brigades, Aryanism, Cognitive Errors, Denmark, Hitler, Kim Jung Il, Lamarckian Lysenkoism, Mao, North Korea, Osama bin Laden, Richard Dawkins, Robert Wright, Soviet Union, Stalin, Tim Garton Ash, Unwarranted Certainty, Weaver Santaniello No Comments »Why Do People Laugh At Creationists?
July 26th, 2009 Daniel Fincke There are over 30 parts, watch them all. Your Thoughts?
Do The New Atheists Target Religion Too Broadly?
July 26th, 2009 Daniel Fincke A reader at The Daily Dish has the following objection to the New Atheists: As an agnostic who sees all sides of this issue – brought up in a conservative Christian household, against which I rebelled, only to try to understand where they’re coming from, I can say that the main thing I object to [...]
Posted in Religion Tags: Buddhism, Eastern Religions, Group Think, Hinduism, Ritual, Sufism, Taoism No Comments »Atheist Hope
July 26th, 2009 Daniel Fincke From The Daily Dish (again), comes a superb reply to the charge that atheists live meaningless lives. First the charge: So, yes, religion has to answer for the crusades. And atheists have to answer for having no meaningful words of hope to provide in crisis. And then the reply: Excuse me? Just because the reader [...]
Should Freethinkers Give Up On Replacing Religious Rituals With Their Own?
July 26th, 2009 Daniel Fincke In reply to a reader of The Daily Dish on the pitfalls of “freethinkers’ groups” that try to replace religious rituals with their own (about which I commented here), comes these two remarks on The Daily Dish: Your reader’s comment about “atheist Sunday school” is phenomenal, and gets right at one of the most important [...]
Posted in Atheism, Christianity, Faith, Rationalism, Religion, Secularism Tags: Conformity, Cults, Dogma, Freethinkers Groups, Irrationalism, Liturgy, Non-Conformism, Ritual No Comments »Sex Change In Iran
July 26th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Strangely, in a country with a government that outlaws homosexuality, transsexuals are allowed to change their sex. A documentary on the subject: Thanks to The Daily Dish.
Posted in Islam, LGBTQAA, Politics, Religion, Religious Moderates, Religious Secularism Tags: Iran, Sha'ria Law, Shi'ites, Transgender, Transsexuals No Comments »Seeing God Like Seeing Different Colors, Or How Beliefs Change The Brain
July 26th, 2009 Daniel Fincke One of The Daily Dish readers posed an exceptionally provocative hypothesis: An interesting angle you haven’t mentioned concerns how belief systems concretely affect the development of the brain. People raised in cultures with distinct words for certain color tones see them more clearly than those in which just one word suffices (the most well-known example [...]
Posted in Atheism, Faith, Psychology, Religion Tags: Apostasy, Belief Formation, Brainwashing, Cognitive Psychology, Color Perception, Flexible Brain, Indoctrination, Mysticism No Comments »Anti-Theism or Pro-Atheism?
July 26th, 2009 Daniel Fincke A reader of The Daily Dish writes the following in reply to remarks by Andrew Sullivan’s under-blogger and temporary fill-in lead blogger, Patrick Appel: Almost every conversation about atheism on the Daily Dish seems to be confusing two very different sets of views — largely because both groups self-identify as atheists. I’m an atheist, and [...]
“Just Leave Us Our Fictions”
July 26th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Patrick Appel objected to Dan Dennett’s recent piece in The Guardian countering those faitheists who do not actually have religious beliefs themselves but believe in the necessity of religious beliefs for others to achieve various social goods. In reply, a reader wrote the following to him: Ironically, I don’t see any support in the quote [...]
On The Alleged Intolerance Of The New Atheists Towards “Faitheists”
July 26th, 2009 Daniel Fincke In reply to Daniel Dennett’s attack on “belief in belief”, Patrick Appel wrote the following: I consider myself an agnostic or pantheist depending upon how you define such labels but still have an acute nostalgia for my Catholic upbringing. I find the certainty of some atheists and most fundamentalists deeply grating. In reply, one of [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Political Secularism, PZ Myers, Secularism, Separation of Church and State Tags: Accommodationism, Belief in Belief, Civility, Ethical Justification, Faitheists, Patrick Appel, Politeness, Reigious Rights, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris No Comments »Sympathies For The Religious
July 26th, 2009 Daniel Fincke An hour or so ago, I explained my reasons for agreeing with Daniel Dennett’s recent attack on the “belief in belief.” But Patrick Appel was less thrilled with Dennett’s piece. Appel wrote: I consider myself an agnostic or pantheist depending upon how you define such labels but still have an acute nostalgia for my Catholic [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Fundamentalism, Religion, Secularism, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Belief in Belief, Contemporary Christian Music, Evangelical Chrisitan Upbringing, Grove City College, Ligonier Camp and Conference Center, Patrick Appel, Repression No Comments »It Sounds Like Bart Simpson Is Shilling For Scientology
July 26th, 2009 Daniel Fincke But it’s just the woman who voices him using his voice for their nefarious purposes: Fox is having a cow over an automated voicemail message left by Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, recruiting attendees for a Church of Scientology event, reports USA TODAY’s Gary Levin. In the message, Cartwright, who introduces herself as [...]
Posted in News, Pop Culture, Religion Tags: Bart Simpson, Cults, Nancy Cartwright, Scientology, Thetans No Comments »Against The Faitheists’ Belief In Belief
July 26th, 2009 Daniel Fincke During Andrew Sullivan’s absence, this last week at The Daily Dish, there has been a flurry of discussion around issues related to Daniel Dennett’s recent attack on “belief in belief”. In a series of posts, I want to go through a number of these interesting lines of thoughts that have been raised and possibly bring [...]
Stem-Cells Reversing Blindness
July 26th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Amazing: Thanks to Unreasonable Faith and Gizmodo
Were The Israelites Polytheistic?
July 26th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Robert Wright makes an interesting argument: Consider this innocent-sounding verse from the thirty-second chapter of Deuteronomy as rendered in the King James Version, published in 1611: When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of [...]
Should Atheists Raise Their Kids As Atheists
July 26th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Jen, an atheist blogger, makes an interesting case why not to and what should be done instead: Steve and I were both raised in secular families. Our parents didn’t go to church, didn’t talk about religion, didn’t explicitly teach us anything about God or Christianity, didn’t force some sort of belief system on us. So [...]
Posted in Atheism, Cultural Secularism, Education, Secularism, Skepticism Tags: Children, Dale McGowen, Indoctrination, Parenting No Comments »The 90 Year Old Galapagos Giant Tortoise Virgin
July 26th, 2009 Daniel Fincke until recently that is: Last Tuesday, amazed keepers discovered a clutch of unhatched eggs in his “bachelor” pen in the Galapagos Islands. No wonder they were amazed – a team of scientists have been doggedly coaxing the sullen creature to mate since 1993, when they introduced two female tortoises of a different subspecies into his [...]
Posted in Biology, News Tags: Endangered Species, Galapagos Giant Tortoise, Galapagos Islands No Comments »Pastor Ronald Cody Explains It All
July 26th, 2009 Daniel Fincke The cartoon portions are rather lame but the pastor is rather enjoyably religulous.
Atheist Groupthink?
July 25th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Replying to a blog post at End Hereditary Religion, 0ne of the commenters spoke out against the “scarlet A.” The scarlet A serves as the rallying symbol for Richard Dawkins’s “Out Campaign”, which is designed to encourage atheists to own up to their atheism more publicly and vocally, and to support one another as fellow [...]
Dog Psychics?
July 25th, 2009 Daniel Fincke A few years ago Harmon Leon did an experiment in which he called four dog psychics to ask them to analyze his dog over the phone—only Leon didn’t actually have a dog. Below is a transcript of the 1st conversation, all four are hilarious and worth reading in full: I decide to test pet psychic [...]
Posted in Atheism, Skepticism Tags: Charlatans, Dog Psychics, Frauds, Harmon Leon, Paranormal, Psychics, SFWeekly No Comments »Debunking Mediums
July 25th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Thanks, as seemingy always, goes to the indispensable Atheist Media Blog for the find.
Posted in Atheism, Skepticism, Videos Tags: Charlatans, Frauds, Mediums, Paranormal, Scam Artists No Comments »Marcus Brigstocke On Cursing And The Ten Commandments
July 25th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Fewer than one in 20 are able to name all Ten Commandments, while 62% did not know the parable of the Prodigal Son and 60% could not name anything about the Good Samaritan. The initial research findings from The National Biblical Literacy Survey 2009 also revealed that 40% did not know that among Christians the [...]
Testing The Irish Blasphemy Law
July 24th, 2009 Daniel Fincke In response to Ireland’s recent decision to outlaw blasphemy, a commenter at jesusandmo.net offers this suggestion for how to test the law’s fair applicability: Stonyground says: July 24, 2009 at 7:47 pm When the bill regarding a ban on promoting religious hatred was being discussed in the UK (a kind of blasphemy law in disguise) [...]
Posted in Bible, Christianity, Law, News Discussion, Politics, Religion Tags: Blasphemy, Blasphemy Laws, Ireland, Religious Violence No Comments »
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