.png){kind=logo}
In reply to my post on the story of Sister Margaret McBride whom the Catholic Church “automatically excommunicated” for helping to give the go-ahead to an abortion claimed necessary for saving the life of an 11 week pregnant mother, I have already received two interesting replies. The first challenged the medical argument for the necessity of [...]
Archive for May, 2010
Moral Actions, Moral Sentiments, Moral Motives, and Moral Justifications: More On The Nun Excommunicated For Approving A Life-Saving Abortion
May 18th, 2010 
Daniel Fincke 
Posted in Abortion, Applied Ethics, Authority, Autonomy, Bio-Medical Ethics, Christianity, Contemporary Ethics, Duty, Ethics, Featured, Feminism, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Religion, Roman Catholic Church, Secularism, Teleology, Virtues, Women's Issues 
Tags: Action Theory, Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, Consequentialism, Doctrine of Double Effect, Excommunication, John Garvie, Moral Judgment, Moral Justification, Moral Motivation, Moral Sentiments, Phoenix Archdiocese, Sister Margaret McBride, Vice, Vicious Motives, Vicious Sentiments, Virtue Ethics 
5 Comments »Daily Hilarity: God’s Moral Framework
May 18th, 2010 Daniel Fincke DarkMatter2525 takes on the 10 Commandments hilariously, insightfully, and vulgarly (warning NSFW language): ] Your Thoughts?
“Boy Renter” George Rekers’s Attempts To Modify A Boy’s Effeminacy
May 18th, 2010 Daniel Fincke By now, surely you know who George Rekers is—he was founding member of the Family Research Council and former officer for the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), who lost that last job when he rented a boy through a website called “Rentboy.com” to “carry his luggage” (and give him nude massages). [...]
Posted in Fundamentalism, Homophobia, Homosexuality, LGBTQAA, Psychology, Religious Extremism, Social Psychology Tags: Behavior Modification, Ex-Gay Ministries, Ex-Gay Movement, Family Research Council, George Rekers, Hypocrisy, National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), Religious Hypocrisy, Social Engineering No Comments »Daily Hilarity: Preaching To The Liar (Prank Call To A Televangelist)
May 18th, 2010 Daniel Fincke This is great: H/T: Rebecca Watson Your Thoughts?
Legalism Over Life: Nun Supports Life-Saving Abortion And Gets Excommunicated
May 18th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Feministing: Sister Margaret McBride has been demoted from her position at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, AZ after participating in the approval of an abortion for a critically ill patient in 2009. McBride was part of the hospital ethics committee that approved an abortion for a patient with pulmonary hypertension, which can be [...]
Posted in Abortion, Applied Ethics, Bio-Medical Ethics, Duty, Ethics, Featured, News, News Discussion, Philosophy, Religion, Roman Catholic Church, Women's Rights Tags: Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, Consequentialism, Doctrine of Double Effect, Excommunication, Feministing, John Garvie, Phoenix Archdiocese, Sister Margaret McBride 12 Comments »Frenchwoman Rips Off Muslim Convert’s Burqa
May 18th, 2010 Daniel Fincke The Telegraph calls it “burka rage”: A 26-year-old Muslim convert was walking through the store in Trignac, near Nantes, in the western Loire-Atlantique region, when she overhead the woman lawyer making “snide remarks about her black burka”. A police officer close to the case said: “The lawyer said she was not happy seeing a fellow [...]
Posted in Civil Liberties, Free Speech, Fundamentalism, Islam, News, Politics, Religious Rights, World Affairs Tags: burka, Burqa, Burqua Ban, France, Loire-Atlantique No Comments »69.7% of Philosophy PhD Holders “Accept or Lean Towards” Atheism
May 18th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Last November, PhilPapers did a rather thorough and comprehensive survey of both professional philosophers and aspirants to the profession which explored our views on a number of major philosophical issues. Here’s a breakdown of the survey’s participants: The PhilPapers Survey was a survey of professional philosophers and others on their philosophical views, carried out in November [...]
Evolution and Epistemology
May 17th, 2010 Daniel Fincke If our minds take to be true only what evolution has conditioned us to think is true for the sake of fitness for survival, does this mean that our beliefs cannot be genuinely true but only some sort of useful ways of thinking that do not necessarily track how the world actually is? And if [...]
Posted in Atheism, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Evolution, Featured, Nietzsche, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science Tags: "On Deriving and Defending An Axiology of the Will To Power", Alvin Plantinga, Eric Steinhart, Evolution and Truth, John Wilkins, Nietzsche's Perspectivist Theory of Truth, Perspectivism, Theories of Truth No Comments »CNN Reports On Christian Fundamentalism In US Military
May 17th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Your Thoughts?
Saudi Woman Beats Up “Virtue Cop”
May 17th, 2010 Daniel Fincke The Jerusalem Post reports: When a Saudi religious policeman sauntered about an amusement park in the eastern Saudi Arabian city of Al-Mubarraz looking for unmarried couples illegally socializing, he probably wasn’t expecting much opposition. But when he approached a young, 20-something couple meandering through the park together, he received an unprecedented whooping. A member of the Commission for the [...]
Hillsong
May 17th, 2010 Daniel Fincke A critical video on the internationally famous, multi-million dollar Australian prosperity Gospel megachurch/music group (the video starts discussing Hillsong at about the 2 minute mark): Your Thoughts?
The Evil God Hypothesis
May 17th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Stephen Law has recently published an article in Religious Studies showing how many of the arguments used in theodicy (meaning, in attempts to prove that there is a good God, despite the existence of evil) could equally well be employed to prove that there is an evil God. Listen to Law explain and defend the [...]
Daily Hilarity: The Noam Chomsky Show
May 17th, 2010 Daniel Fincke The jokes could be a lot more specific, but the results of the paternity test made laugh out loud: Your Thoughts?
Patrick Henry College
May 16th, 2010 Daniel Fincke A look inside a college devoted to creating theocratic American political leaders and soldiers: Your Thoughts?
More On Pascal’s Wager From Qualia Soup and Theramin Trees
May 15th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Recently I posted a terrific video challenging the value of Pascal’s Wager from numerous perspectives. Qualia Soup and Theramin Trees, the creators of that video, have a new video replying to criticisms they received after posting the first video. Below is first the original video again for those who missed it (or who saw it [...]
Alternatingly Platitudinous and Judicious
May 15th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Referencing some of Elena Kagan’s earlier remarks about the confirmation hearing performances of Justices Ginsburg and Justice Breyer performances, Ed Morrissey contemplates what’s ahead for Kagan should she be confirmed for the Supreme Court: [S]he called out justices [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer — both Clinton appointees — for dodging tough questions. “I suspect that both [...]
Posted in Politics Tags: Ed Morrissey, Elena Kagan, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Stephen Breyer No Comments »Is There No Such Thing As Radical Islam?
May 15th, 2010 Daniel Fincke United States Attorney General Eric Holder seems to be of the opinion that if an ideology is violent and extremist, then it cannot even be called a form of Islam, not even a “radical” one: “In the case of all three attempts in the last year, the terrorist attempts, one of which was successful, those [...]
Posted in Islam, Politics, Religious Extremism Tags: Eric Holder, Fort Hood Shootings, Lamar Smith, Mark Steyn, Radical Islam, Times Square Bomber No Comments »John Hurt’s Subtle Take On Science And Religion In The Contemporary Age
May 15th, 2010 Daniel Fincke I tend to read things about quantum physics and stuff like that — I don’t have a background in it, I try to understand it, I grapple with it. I don’t read for entertainment, I can’t see the purpose of that. Science is such an interesting area. It’s so fascinating to have lived in a [...]
Freethinking Islamic Scholars
May 15th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Amira Nowaira laments that well over a thousand years ago, Islamic scholarship had more room for rationalists than it seems to have today: Although many of those thinkers, according to Badawi, did not attempt to disprove the existence of God, they lashed out against the notion of prophethood and argued against the privileged position occupied [...]
Odds Are We’re All Related
May 13th, 2010 Daniel Fincke And by “all” I mean every single living thing that ever existed, insofar as we all most likely go back to the same single cell organism: Using computer models and statistical methods, biochemist Douglas Theobald calculated the odds that all species from the three main groups, or “domains,” of life evolved from a common ancestor—versus, say, [...]
“Get Out of There!”: A montage
May 13th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Neat stuff from a youtuber who specializes in montages of film moments: via The Daily Dish Your Thoughts?
Posted in Film Tags: 24, A Simple Plan, Air Force One, Airplane!, Alien, Aliens, Antz, Apocalypse Now, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Arachnophobia, Armageddon, Avatar, Back to the Future Part II, Bad Boys II, Band of Brothers, Band of Brothers x2, Black Hawk Down, Black Rain, Blue Velvet, Bourne Supremacy, Bourne Ultimatum, Cliffhanger, Crimson Tide, Cube 2: Hypercube, Deep Impact, Die Hard: With a Vengeance, Do The Right Thing, Dreamcatcher, Enemy of the State, Eraser, Film Montages, Finding Nemo, Flags of Our Fathers, Free Willy, G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra, Grosse Pointe Blank, Hollow Man, Honey I Shrunk The Kids, Independence Day, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, King Kong, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Leon: The Professional, Lethal Weapon, Lethal Weapon 3, Lord of the Rings: Two Towers, Lost In Space, Mad Max, Mou gaan dou (Infernal affairs), National Treasure, Novelties, Ocean’s Twelve, Pandorum, Pearl Harbor, Pushing Tin, Rambo III, Rear Window, Reign of Fire, Rescue Dawn, Revolver, Saw II, Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, South Park, Sphere, Spirited Away, Star Trek: Wrath of Khan, Sunshine, The Birds, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Dirty Dozen, The Fast and the Furious, The Fifth Element, The Firm, The Incredible Hulk, The Man with the Golden Gun, The Manchurian Candidate, The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, The Mexican, The Perfect Storm, The Taking of Pelham 123, The X-Files, Tomorrow Never Dies, Top Gun, Ultimate Avengers, War of the Worlds, X-Men 2, X-Men: The Last Stand No Comments »A Creationist Science Teacher Explains His Approach
May 12th, 2010 Daniel Fincke From a BBC1 documentary from the mid-90s: Thanks to Timothy for the find. Your Thoughts?
Are Legal Burqas A Security Risk?
May 8th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Now in Australia, a senator is making this argument: Tasneem Chopra comes off most impressive. Your Thoughts?
Posted in Feminism, Islam, News, News Discussion, Political Secularism, Religion, Separation of Church and State, Videos, Women's Issues, World Affairs Tags: Australia, Australian, burka, burkha, Burqa, Burqua, Cory Bernardi, Europe, Freedom, headscarf, Kevin Rudd, Michael Brooks Jones, Offence, Religious Rights, Robert Henning, Tasneem Chopra, Terrorism, Tolerance, Unaustralian No Comments »Dan Barker on FOX News Defends Ruling Against National Day of Prayer
May 8th, 2010 Daniel Fincke And he nails the case beautifully, replying to the question whether prayer might not benefit some people: And those people can’t pray unless the government holds their hand? Those people are not free to pray unless the President gets up and proclaims a day of prayer? This is a country of freedom. The country is [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Tags: 1st Amendment, Barbara Crabb, Dan Barker, FOX News, Freedom From Religion Foundation No Comments »Jimmy Stewart and Stephen Hawking Reenact Goodfellas
May 8th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Brandon Hardesty reenacts classic scenes from dozens of films. Below is a full list of links for your convenience (and here’s his YouTube link with all the reenactments and more): #1 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (reenacted by Christopher Walken and Jack Nicholson) #2 As Good As It Gets #3 Silence of the Lambs (reenacted [...]
Posted in Comedy, Film, Hilarious, Parody Tags: 12 Angry Men, A Charlie Brown Christmas, A Few Good Men, American Pie, American Psycho, Arnold Schwarzenegger, As Good As It Gets, Atonement, Batman, Beetlejuice, Bonus: Back to the Future, Brandon Hardesty, Clerks, Devil's Advocate, Dogma, Downfall, Fargo, Fight Club, Full Metal Jacket, Glengarry Glen Ross, Goodfellas, Happiness, Harvey, Home Alone (sort of---"keep the change, Impressions, It, Jimmy Stewart, Jurassic Park, Labyrinth, Michael Clayton, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, Network, No Country For Old Men, Ocean's Eleven, Pan's Labyrinth, Patton, Planes Trains And Automobiles, Pulp Fiction, Punch Drunk Love, Reservoir Dogs, Silence of the Lambs, Star Trek: First Contact, Stephen Hawking, The Big Lebowski, The Breakfast Club, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight A Christmas Story, The Empire Strikes Back, The Little Rascals, The Princess Bride, The Room, The Shawshank Redemption, The Shining, There Will Be Blood, Twilight, Uncle Buck, V For Vendetta, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Woody Allen, you filthy animal" scene) No Comments »
Recent Comments