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Faith is a form of loyalty. But more than that, faith is a form of trust which does not calibrate itself to objective standards of trustworthiness but trusts people despite their limitations as provably trustworthy people or even despite counter-evidence to the notion that they are worthy of trust at all. Even more than that, however, faith [...]
Archive for August, 2009
Disambiguating Faith: The Threatening Abomination Of The Faithless
August 14th, 2009 
Daniel Fincke 
Posted in Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Authority, Disambiguating Faith, Ethics, Faith, Featured, Fundamentalism, Moral Psychology, Philosophy, Religion, Religious Moderates, Secularism 
Tags: Faithfulness, Faithlessness, God as Personification of Tradition, God as Proxy For Tradition, Godlessness, Loyalty, Morality as Tradition, Religious Liberals, Tradition, Traditionalism, Trust 
19 Comments »Disambiguating Faith: Blind Faith: How Faith Traditions Turn Trust Without Warrant Into A Test Of Loyalty
August 14th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Tuesday, I began my series of posts attempting first to disambiguate the various senses of the word faith, to explore how the various practices referred to under this one word’s umbrella all relate to each other and how they can be ethically and epistemologically assessed, both as they occur individually and in various combinations with [...]
Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Tradition
August 14th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Earlier this week I began this series of posts attempting first to disambiguate the various senses of the word faith in order to explore how the various practices referred to under this one word’s umbrella all relate to each other and how they can be ethically and epistemologically assessed, both as they occur individually and in various combinations with [...]
Posted in Disambiguating Faith, Ethics, Faith, Featured, Moral Psychology Tags: Community, Faith Traditions, Group Dynamics, Orthodoxy, Rites, Symbols, Tradition 7 Comments »In Further Defense Of They
August 14th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Evangelos points us to this solid piece by Geoffrey Pullum who last week defended Obama’s choice to use “they” in a sentence about “somebody:” Strunk and White baldly assert that this is an error. They simply say don’t use they with syntactically singular antecedents like somebody. They don’t give a reason; and it is pretty [...]
Posted in Barack Obama, George W. Bush Tags: Geoffrey Pullum, Grammar, Strunk and White, Style No Comments »Turning Ease Into Virtue
August 14th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Yglesias makes a dynamite observation about part of the reason leaders of social conservatives put so much energy into anti-gay crusades rather than any of a number of other matters of social concern (via Patrick Appel): Most of what “traditional values” asks of people is pretty hard. All the infidelity and divorce and premarital sex [...]
Posted in Morality, Nietzsche, Politics Tags: Matthew Yglesias, Right Wing Politics, Social Conservatives No Comments »German Jews Want Critical Edition Of Mein Kampf Available
August 13th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Via The Huffington Post: Germany’s Central Council of Jews has taken the unprecedented step of backing a proposal to republish Adolf Hitler’s infamous autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf, which has been strictly outlawed in the country since the end of the Second World War.Although many German Jews still oppose reissuing Hitler’s anti-Semitic work, Stephan Kramer, the [...]
Posted in News Tags: Adolph Hitler, Central Council of Jews, Germany, Mein Kampf, Nazism, Neo-Nazism, Stephan Kramer No Comments »Qualia Soup Explains Evolution
August 13th, 2009 Daniel Fincke This video is must-see if only for the fascinating history of the banana towards the end if nothing else.
Is American Scientific Illiteracy The New Atheists’ Fault?
August 13th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Jerry Coyne pushes back hard (again) against the latest publication of the falsehood that American resistance to evolution is the New Atheists’ fault: 1. The “new atheists” have been on the scene for exactly five years, beginning with Sam Harris’s The End of Faith, published in 2004. But American’s attitudes to evolution have been relatively [...]
Posted in Atheism, New Atheism, Religion and Science, Secularism Tags: Accommodationism, Chris Mooney, Jerry Coyne, Unscientific America No Comments »Daily Hilarity: Harrison Ford’s Wife And Family
August 13th, 2009 Daniel Fincke via The Daily Dish
Posted in Comedy, Hilarious, Unintentional Comedy, Videos Tags: Air Force One, Frantic, Harrison Ford, The Fugitive No Comments »Debunking The Bible Code
August 13th, 2009 Daniel Fincke via Holly Pugliares Your Thoughts?
Posted in Religion, Videos Tags: "Bible Code", Barry Simon, Michael Drosnin, Michael Shermer No Comments »Using “They” As A Universal Singular Pronoun
August 13th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Inhabitatio Dei finds some precedents with clout for using “they” rather than “he” or “she” as a pronoun for a general human being without gender specified: Here are just a few samples of “they” being used as a universal singular pronoun in Western literature: — Shakespeare: and every one to rest themselves betake; — Jane [...]
Banning the Burqini
August 13th, 2009 Daniel Fincke The official reason was strict public health standards: PARIS — A Muslim woman who tried to go swimming in a head-to-toe “burquini” has been banned from her local pool in the latest tussle between religious practices and secular authority in France. Officials on Wednesday insisted they banned the woman’s use of the Islam-friendly swimsuit because [...]
Posted in Civil Liberties, Islam, News, Politics, Religion, World Affairs Tags: Bikini, Burqa, France, Public Health, Religious Rights No Comments »Judge This: Sex Offenders In Illinois Banned From Social Networking Sites
August 12th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Today, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed a law making it illegal for sex offenders to use social networking sites. Is this a necessary ban to protect the state’s children? Or a misguided move guaranteed to keep criminals who’ve paid their debt living on the margins of society? Read the story here (and its comments [...]
Posted in Civil Liberties Tags: Illinois, Pat Quinn, Sex Offenders, Social Networking Sites 4 Comments »Religious Extremists Appeased Again
August 12th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Disgraceful: Yale University and Yale University Press consulted two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism, and the recommendation was unanimous: The book, “The Cartoons That Shook the World,” should not include the 12 Danish drawings that originally appeared in September 2005. What’s more, they suggested that the Yale press also refrain [...]
Posted in Comedy, Cultural Secularism, Featured, Free Speech, Fundamentalism, Islam, News, News Discussion, Political Secularism, Politics, Religion, Religious Extremism, Videos, World Affairs Tags: Danish Cartoons, John Donatich, Marcus Brigstocke, Muhammad, Reza Aslan, The Cartoons That Shook The World, Yale University Press No Comments »Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Loyally Trusting Those Insufficiently Proven To Be Trustworthy
August 12th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Yesterday I began my series of posts attempting first to disambiguate the various senses of the word faith, to explore how the various practices referred to under this one word’s umbrella all relate to each other and how they can be ethically and epistemologically assessed, both as they occur individually and in various combinations with [...]
Natural Selection In The Modern Human Species
August 12th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Yale University’s Stephen Stearns argues we’re not done evolving: Stearns hired a postdoc, Sean Byars, and together with Govindaraju and Douglas Ewbank, a University of Pennsylvania demographer, set to work analyzing a handful of medically relevant traits for their effects on women’s lifetime reproductive rates. They measured the statistical associations between the traits and family [...]
Gay Marriage Responsible For Drought
August 12th, 2009 Daniel Fincke This is why we need faith-based arguments in the public square. How would any rational 21st Century person be able to divine such important truths as Mike Heath figured out for us if it weren’t for the input of faith? in recent days, we are all taking more notice of the sky for the simple [...]
Posted in Civil Rights, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Politics, Religion, Religulous, Separation of Church and State Tags: Mike Heath, Rain, Superstition No Comments »Digital Intelligent Design?
August 12th, 2009 Daniel Fincke In reply to this new video arguing for Intelligent Design: Mark Chu-Carroll writes: They claim that DNA is “digital information”. What does that mean?Three possible definitions of digital information: Information consisting of a collection of numbers. Information encoded in any discrete form which can be represented by a sequence of symbols. Information which can be [...]
Posted in Biology, Creationism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science, Videos Tags: Digital Information, Intelligent Design No Comments »Camels With Blaghags
August 12th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Couldn’t pass up the opportunity to post this photo of our favorite animal with one of our favorite bloggers: Be sure to catch each installment of BlagHag’s funny, depressing, informative, and educational report on her trip the creation museum by following these links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, [...]
Don’t Tase Them, Bro
August 12th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Pam’s House Blend makes the case that tasers are being used excessively. Her most disturbing (but, sadly least surprising) revelation is that blacks are getting disproportionately tased: The abuse of this device is disproportionately deployed against minorities (surprised, no?). In Houston, an audit found incredible statistics: Black officers are less likely to use Tasers, but [...]
County Officials Call Newborn’s Exposure To Second-Rate Classical Music “Child Abuse”
August 12th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Click here for The Onion’s radio report on the alleged abuse.
A Christian In Atheist Shoes
August 12th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Via Prometheus Unbound comes a post from a Christian who attended the Creation “Museum” as part of the Atheist tour group. He was appalled by how they were treated by other Christians: There were hateful glances, exaggerated perceptions, waxing surveillance by security, and anxious but strong ‘amens’ accompanying a lecture on “The Ultimate Proof of [...]
Remembering G.A. Cohen
August 12th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Brian Leiter rounds up tributes to the recently deceased political philosopher.
How We Spend Our Day
August 11th, 2009 Daniel Fincke A fascinating and richly detailed chart based on surveys of thousands of people of how they spend all the minutes of the day. via The Daily Dish
Atheism’s Evil History
August 11th, 2009 Daniel Fincke via Hollie Pugliares
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