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The Onion reports on the blunder: WASHINGTON—At a press conference Monday, visibly embarrassed leaders of the Republican National Committee acknowledged that their nonstop, effusive praise of Ronald Reagan has been wholly unintentional, admitting they somehow managed to confuse him with Dwight D. Eisenhower for years. The GOP’s humiliating blunder was discovered last weekend by RNC [...]
Archive for February, 2011
Daily Hilarity: Republicans Confuse Reagan For Eisenhower
February 25th, 2011 
Daniel Fincke 14 Year Old Girl Evaluates Whether Bible Is Good For Children
February 25th, 2011 Daniel Fincke This is both hilarious and inspiring: via Blag Hag. Your Thoughts?
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, Bible, Bible, Christianity, Christianity, Religion, Religion, Skepticism, Skepticism, Videos 
No Comments »Why Bad Beliefs Don't Die
February 25th, 2011 Daniel Fincke The thoughts of Gregory W. Lester (as edited down by John W. Loftus) (okay, now I feel like calling myself Daniel W. Fincke): Because senses and beliefs are both tools for survival and have evolved to augment one another, our brain considers them to be separate but equally important purveyors of survival information….This means that [...]
Daily Hilarity: Reply All
February 24th, 2011 Daniel Fincke I post this for that one other person out there (assuming there is one) who actually does not watch the Super Bowl and missed this humorous ad that night: Bridgestone Tires “Reply All” Extended Ad – Watch more Funny Videos Your Thoughts?
The Role Of Honor In Moral Revolutions
February 24th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Kwame Anthony Appiah explores a thesis I’ve never heard before in his new book, The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen summarized by Matthew Pianalto: Judged by contemporary Western standards, honour has a mixed moral record. On the one hand, a sense of gentlemanly honour underwrote the practice of duelling, long after it had been [...]
Posted in Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Ethics, Ethics, History, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Virtues, Virtues 
Tags: Honor, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Matthew Pianalto, Moral Revolution, Philosopher's Magazine 4 Comments »Dawkins Against Religion's Claim To Superiority Because It Offers Absolute Morality
February 24th, 2011 Daniel Fincke This is one of the most concise, eloquent, and accurate statements on the problem with religious absolutism in morality and the superiority of secular, non-absolutist approaches to morality I have ever heard. And it is certainly Dawkins’s best 2 and a half minutes on the topic of morality I have ever heard: Thanks to Lucy. [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Authority, Authority, Bible, Bible, Christianity, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Ethical Pluralism, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Ethics, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Islam, Islam, Koran, Koran, Metaethics, Metaethics, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion, Secularism, Videos Tags: Absolute Morality, Non-Absolute Morality, Richard Dawkins 2 Comments »The Simulation Hypothesis
February 24th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart Atheists can use the traditional arguments for God in strange new ways. There’s no reason to reject those arguments – on the contrary, I think they should be carefully studied, and their flaws should be repaired. But I don’t think they lead to God. I love the Cosmological Arguments. And the ones [...]
Do Atheists Have An "Us vs. Them" Mentality?
February 24th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Atheist Revolution argues we do but that it’s not our fault because religion started it and there is no avoiding it as long as religion perpetuates it, so we cannot be blamed for just acknowledging it’s there: I think that an “us vs. them” mentality was established long ago by religious believers and has been [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Religion, Religion 2 Comments »TOP Q: "How Is It Fair To Question Other People’s Identity-Forming Beliefs While Demanding Respect For One’s Own Belief-Formed Identities?"
February 23rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke I always tell my students as they start studying philosophy that it is crucial that they not associate their ideas too closely with themselves. They need to get used to not taking criticism of their ideas personally. I warn them that if they cannot disassociate from their ideas when they fail, they will never be [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Featured, Homophobia, Homophobia, Homosexuality, Homosexuality, Islam, Islam, LGBTQAA, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, PZ Myers, PZ Myers, Religion, Religion, Today's Open Philosophical Question (TOP Q) Tags: Evangelicalism, Identity-Politics, Tolerance 9 Comments »What Closed-Mindedness and Open-Mindedness Actually Entail
February 23rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Yesterday, I offered 10 tips for religious people who want to reach out to atheists. Joseph wants me to mention one more thing: Very good! One thing that you missed and would have lived to see is the accusation from theists to us heathens that we are narrow minded or closed minded. This drives me [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, Probability, Science, Science, Skepticism, Skepticism Tags: Closed-mindedness, Open-mindedness 2 Comments »Campaign Promises, Democracy, And What Fair Warning Requires
February 23rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Andrew Sullivan points out and documents that even though Governor Scott Walker campaigned on the promise to cut public sector salaries, as he claims, and has an arguable democratic mandate therefore to propose some of the cuts he has (and which unions have conceded to), he did not during the campaign advocate ending unions’ collective [...]
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 4 Comments »The Banality Of Facts
February 23rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Sendai Anonymous picks apart a critique of Hannah Arendt’s famous analysis of Nazi Adolf Eichmann as embodying the banality of evil: It is the last paragraph of Sholem’s letter that seems to me most revealing: Sholem remarks that he regrets that she rejected the previous version of her analysis of evil, an analysis that was [...]
Posted in Historical Philosophy, Historical Philosophy, History, Philosophy Tags: Adolf Eichmann, Banality of Evil, Evil, Hannah Arendt 1 Comment »A Rape Victim's Heartbreaking Testimony About Planned Parenthood's Support
February 23rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke via PZ Myers comes a vital video by Chloe Heintz: UPDATE: Now there’s a follow up interview with Chloe from CBSNews.com Your Thoughts?
Creepiest. Commercial. Ever.
February 23rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke I’m speechless: Thanks to Chrissy for the find. I think. Your Thoughts?
Stream Lykke Li's New Album, Wounded Rhymes
February 23rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Lykke Li’s debut Youth Novels was one of my very favorite albums of the last few years. Her new one, Wounded Rhymes, drops next week. In the meantime, you can stream it here. A little bit of Lykke Li’s genius from the first album for the uninitiated: Your Thoughts?
Christopher Hitchens Rebuts The Atheist Atrocities Charge
February 23rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Convincing? Your Thoughts?
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Religion, Religion, Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church, Secularism, Videos Tags: Fascism, Marxism 2 Comments »Why, As A Skeptic, Focus So Much On Religion?
February 22nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Matt Dillahunty explains why he focuses his skeptical energies so much on religion: Your Thoughts?
How An Omniscient Being Would Fulfill The Desire To Be Known Completely
February 22nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Jean-Paul Sartre reasoned that the loss of belief in God causes an existential feeling of abandonment. He was referring to our losing the potential for divine guidance but Jon Adams’s feeling of abandonment is a new one to me. He wishes he could still believe there was someone up there who knew him completely: Atheist [...]
Top 10 Tips For Reaching Out To Atheists
February 22nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Last week I lambasted Rabbi Adam Jacobs who wrote an “open letter to the atheist community”. As someone else has astutely observed, the rabbi’s letter was practically a model for how not to address serious atheists. In hopes for better future discussions between believers and non-believers, I decided to give some advice to believers who [...]
Clarifying The Relationships Between Dogmatism, Skepticism, And Properly Proportioned Belief
February 22nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke In a post last weekend entitled ”Evangelical Atheism?“ I explored the ways in which some atheists may both be called “evangelical” with some justification and yet deserve to be spared the moral approbation aimed at the most notorious kinds of theistic proselytizers. In reply Greg Teed suggested to me that atheists could not be “evangelical” in any [...]
Dispelling Misconceptions About China
February 22nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke An illuminating video: Your Thoughts?
Thin-Skinned Author Sues Book Reviewer For Damaging Her Reputation With Bad Review
February 22nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Apparently in France the legal concept of defamation treats attacks on honor as a form of assault. Karin N. Calvo-Goller, an Israeli author, is taking a German book reviewer to court in France over a four paragraph long negative review on Global Law Books, a New York Web site associated with The European Journal of [...]
Theophilus London And Sara Quin On David Letterman
February 21st, 2011 Daniel Fincke In case you don’t know what Sara Quin’s twin sister Tegan looks like, here’s a heads up: that’s not her with Sara in the video below, Sara is branching out: Your Thoughts?
Defending The Apparent Truth Of Evolution's Mindlessness
February 21st, 2011 Daniel Fincke Last Christmas Eve, I argued that the belief that God “guided evolution” was not a rationally respectable way to reconcile science with faith but rather it was essentially an effective denial of the theory of natural selection, in its scientifically explanatory sense. Part of the revolutionary character of the discovery of evolution by natural selection [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Biology, Biology, Creationism, Creationism, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Evolution, Evolution, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, God, God, Historical Philosophy, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Science, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Science, Secularism Tags: Alvin Plantinga, Eugenie Scott, Huston Smith, Jerry Coyne, National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT), National Center for Science Education (NCSE) 4 Comments »
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