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There are a lot of anti-atheistic responses to us that get indignant that we try to organize, have community, and make ourselves known as a public presence. A lot of people reflexively and unfairly respond to all of this by feeling it as inherently threatening and inherently rude and intolerant. The most upsetting part of [...]
Archive for January, 2011
Who Cares About Atheists?
January 5th, 2011 
Daniel Fincke 
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Featured, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Religion, Religion, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State, Skepticism, Skepticism, Uncategorized 
Tags: Richard Wade 
9 Comments »The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth—But With No Name Calling
January 5th, 2011 Daniel Fincke So, with Camels With Hammers down from Monday afternoon until yesterday afternoon, I went and wandered the internet. Before too long I wound up spending a good deal of time at Ophelia’s place after I responded to a post in which she did a superb job summing up the core value judgment that motivates [...]
CNN Brings On Kirk Cameron As End Times Expert In Wake Of Mass Bird Deaths
January 5th, 2011 Daniel Fincke I hope vorjack can forgive me but I can neither set up nor follow up this video better than he does so I’m going to reproduce the whole thing: You may have heard about the strange case of the mass bird deaths in Arkansas. As part of the coverage, Anderson Cooper brought on noted expert, Kirk [...]
Scientists’ Spiritualities As Alternative Models Of Religiosity
January 5th, 2011 Daniel Fincke In my last post, I made clear that I am by no means an “accommodationist” who wants to let religious claims to hegemony over ethics, metaphysics, or epistemology go unchallenged as part of a deal whereby it agrees to either cooperate with or, minimally, not interfere with science education and science-based public policy. In a [...]
Posted in Astronomy, Astronomy, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Biology, Biology, Cosmology, Cosmology, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Featured, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Science, Science, Secularism Tags: Accomodationism, Adam Frank, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Chris Mooney, E. O. Wilson, Elaine Howard Ecklund, James Moore, Peter Doherty, Rudolf Otto, The Constant Fire: Beyond the Science vs. Religion Debate, The Origin of Species, The Voyage of the Beagle 4 Comments »Against Accommodationism: Religion Has NO Rightful Claim To An Unencroachable “Magisterium” Of Its Own
January 5th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Chris Mooney is an accommodationist. In the conflict between science and faith, he is the sort of atheistic science defender who wants to minimize all appearance (and existence) of conflict between religious and scientific ideas because he thinks that vital public policy on matters like climate change hinges on scientists’ abilities to garner trust, cooperation, [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Epistemology, Epistemology, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State 2 Comments »Daily Hilarity: Josh Groban Sings Kanye’s Tweets
January 5th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Hilarious: Your Thoughts?
Posted in Comedy, Comedy, Hilarious, Music, Music, Parody, Parody, Pop Culture, Pop Culture Tags: Jimmy Kimmel, Josh Groban, Kanye West, Twitter No Comments »NYPD Blue Moons The FCC With Court Approval
January 4th, 2011 Daniel Fincke A good day for freedom of speech as the censorious FCC loses its case trying to levy a fine for a naked butt on NYPD Blue: NEW YORK – The Federal Communications Commission cannot fine broadcasters for showing a woman’s nude buttocks on a 2003 episode of “NYPD Blue,” a federal court ruled Tuesday, citing [...]
Daily Hilarity: The Amazing Atheist Drubs Revenge Of The Sith
January 4th, 2011 Daniel Fincke For those of you who find it cathartic to have my beloved Star Wars prequels dragged through the mud cleverly and didn’t think Mr. Plinkett’s two hour evisceration of Revenge of the Sith was thorough enough, here is The Amazing Atheist’s review of it: You can also find his takedowns of the previous prequels via [...]
Posted in Comedy, Comedy, Film, Film, Film Reviews, Film Reviews, Hilarious, Pop Culture, Pop Culture Tags: Amazing Atheist, Star Wars No Comments »Pakistani Governor Murdered For Opposing Blasphemy Laws
January 4th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Enraging news: Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) — The governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province was assassinated by his own security guard Tuesday, according to Interior Minister Rehman Malik, apparently because he spoke out against the country’s controversial blasphemy law. The security guard was arrested, Malik said. The shooting occurred at Islamabad’s Kohsar Market, which is frequented by [...]
Posted in Civil Liberties, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Free Speech, Free Speech, Islam, Islam, Law, Law, Law & Politics, Politics, Politics, Religion, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Rights, Religious Rights, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Theocracy, Theocracy, Theocrats, Theocrats Tags: Blasphemy Laws, Pakistan, Rehman Malik 1 Comment »Camels With Hammers Outage
January 4th, 2011 Daniel Fincke I’d like to take a moment and apologize for the outage we’ve experienced over the past 24 hours. Our host was in the process of transitioning us to a new, more advanced data center, but the process didn’t go as smoothly as anticipated. It may take a few more hours for our new address to [...]
TOP Q 4: What Obligations Is Someone Prominent Under When She Is Perceived To Speak For A Group?
January 4th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Prominent leaders of political, social, religious, and even anti-religious organizations, movements, governments, etc. should not simply echo back what their “constituencies” already think and want to hear—otherwise they would not be leaders at all. But to a certain extent, once it becomes clear that a great many people do associate their views closely with certain [...]
Daily Hilarity: “Intervention” By Tegan & Sara & Margaret
January 3rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke I had never found Margaret Cho remotely funny before but I love Tegan & Sara just way too much not to find this video incredibly awesome: Margaret Cho – Intervention – featuring Tegan and Sara from Margaret Cho on Vimeo. Your Thoughts?
Posted in Comedy, Comedy, Hilarious, Indie Music, Indie Music, Music, Music, Music Videos, Parody, Parody Tags: Comedy Music, Indie Pop, Intervention, Margaret Cho, Parody Songs, Tegan & Sara 1 Comment »3rd TOP Q: Can Virtues Conflict Or Must Every Truly Virtuous Action Be Approvable According To Every Other Virtue As Well?
January 3rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Would you ever call a terrorist brave? Were there brave Nazis? Does fighting using unjust tactics or fighting for an unjust cause make one’s own willingness to face mortal threats less brave or can one have the virtue of bravery even though one resorts to evil techniques or serves evil purposes? Assuming the soldier or [...]
Sundaily Hilarity: Jesus Is A Jerk
January 2nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke At the website With You Always, you can see Larry Van Pelt’s drawings of Jesus accompanying people throughout all the moments of their lives . And at Jesus Is A Jerk they add captions to them. The combined result usually comes out like these: And so on and so forth, there are many hilarious ones. [...]
Posted in Comedy, Comedy, Hilarious, Jesus, Jesus, Parody, Parody, Religious Satire, Religious Satire, Satire, Satire 6 Comments »2nd Top Q: “Is It Unfair To Call All Religions ‘Scams’?”
January 2nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke According to the Friendly Atheist, American Atheists are running the ad below in Huntsville, Alabama: Is it fair to call all churches scams? Obviously there are at least some quite sincere believers. Do all perpetuations of falsehoods and false promises for profit (of various forms) count as scams? Or are the only scams those which [...]
This Could Actually Turn Me Catholic
January 2nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke As any one who knows me knows I find the idea that there is something supernaturally powerful and life saving, even god-incarnating, about Doritos pretty freaking compelling. Based on my experience with Doritos and my experience with communion wafers, only the former make any sense as a possible conduit in which Jesus comes back to [...]
Posted in Christianity, Comedy, Comedy, Hilarious, Parody, Parody, Religion, Religion, Religious Satire, Religious Satire, Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church, Satire, Satire Tags: Advertisements, Blasphemy, Cool Advertisements, Doritos, Offending Religious Sensibilities, Pepsi, Super Bowl, Super Bowl Commercials, Transubstantiation 1 Comment »Daily Hilarity: Red Letter Media Eviscerates Revenge Of The Sith
January 1st, 2011 Daniel Fincke I am a Star Wars fan and one of the few passionate defenders of the prequels, each of which I wholeheartedly loved the first dozens of times I saw each one. But, if you are going to hate on the prequels, you cannot do a much more thorough, defensible, or hilarious job than Red Letter [...]
Posted in Comedy, Comedy, Film, Film, Film Reviews, Film Reviews, Hilarious, Pop Culture, Pop Culture Tags: Plinkett, Red Letter Media, Revenge of the Sith, Star Wars 2 Comments »1st TOP Q: “How, If At All, Can People’s Claims To Simply Intuit That There Is A God Be Rationally Refuted Or Supported?”
January 1st, 2011 Daniel Fincke Today’s inaugural open philosophical question is inspired by a good question raised this summer by long time friend of Camels With Hammers George W. of the blog Misplaced Grace. I am going to slightly modify his question since it involves addressing a particularly weak and willfully illogical form of an argument for the ability to [...]
Introducing The “Today’s Open Philosophical Question (TOP Q)” Series
January 1st, 2011 Daniel Fincke This year I’ve decided to introduce what I hope will be a fruitful new (hopefully) daily dimension to the blog, what I am going to call “Today’s Open Philosophical Question” (which will be abbreviated as “TOP Q”), in which I pose a question for the readership about either an abstract or applied philosophical question. Sometimes [...]
How DADT Made Things Worse For Gays In The Military Than They Were
January 1st, 2011 Daniel Fincke A Daily Dish reader’s first hand experience: before DADT the policy was more about conduct at least in the minds of the commanding officers, not the mere mention of the fact that one was gay or had those inclinations. I joined the Army National Guard in 1988 and was called up for a time in [...]
Posted in Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Gay Rights, Gay Rights, Homophobia, Homophobia, Homosexuality, Homosexuality, LGBTQAA, Military Tags: Don't Ask Don't Tell 1 Comment »
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