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An intriguing feature of Wicca is that sexual equality is built directly into its theology. The Farrars stress the balance of male and female polarities in the divine (1981: ch. XV). Buckland urges gender equality: “both the God and the Goddess are important and should be equally revered. There should be balance” (1986: 22, his [...]
Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category
Wiccan Theology and Sexual Equality
December 30th, 2011 
Eric Steinhart 
Posted in Atheism, Ethics, Featured, Feminism, LGBTQAA, Paganism, Sex, Wicca, Women's Issues 
5 Comments »The Increasing Prevalence of Woo
December 29th, 2011 Eric Steinhart The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life conducted a survey which reports on the percentages of belief among respondents. The survey is statistically sound and thus indicates that similar percentages hold in the American public. The percentages are: 24% believe in reincarnation, that people will be reborn in this world again and again. And [...]
Criticizing Wicca: God and Goddess
December 29th, 2011 Eric Steinhart According to several Wiccan texts, the Wiccan ultimate deity manifests itself in two forms, the male god and the female goddess. The first way to think about the god and goddess is realistic. This is theological realism: the god and goddess are both real things. They exist. A Wiccan who thinks like this is ontologically [...]
On Participation in Being-Itself
December 29th, 2011 Eric Steinhart On Tillich’s view, since the divine is being-itself, all humans participate in the divine simply by existing. But that participation is not experiential. Any experiential participation in the divine can only be through the distinctive ways in which humans exist. We participate in being-itself through our own being. Since you are material, you experience being-itself [...]
Religious Diversity among Atheists
December 28th, 2011 Eric Steinhart The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life conducts the US Religious Landscape Survey. The second report in this survey tells us that: Among atheists, 21% believe in God; 12% believe that God is an impersonal force; and 6% believe that God is personal. Among atheists, 12% believe in heaven while 10% believe in hell. [...]
The Wiccan God and Goddess: Reality and Mythology
December 28th, 2011 Eric Steinhart The Farrars have an intriguing discussion of the ontological commitments of Wiccans to their god and goddess. Their discussion has three parts: (1) the realist thesis; (2) the anti-realist antithesis; and (3) the pragmatic resolution. The more detailed version of the Farrar’s discussion goes like this: (1) The realist thesis says that the god and [...]
Posted in Atheism, Featured, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Rationalism, Wicca 7 Comments »Wicca and the Problem of Evil
December 28th, 2011 Eric Steinhart Many Wiccan writers criticize Christians for dividing the ultimate deity into a purely good God and a purely evil Devil. They deny this division. Buckland writes: “the idea of dividing the Supreme Power into two – good and evil – is the idea of an advanced and complex civilization. The Old Gods . . . [...]
The God and the Goddess
December 27th, 2011 Eric Steinhart On the basis of their own texts, presented in an earlier post, it seems like Wicca affirms the existence of an ultimate deity. On my analysis, the Wiccan ultimate deity is the ultimate immanent creative power of being. It is an entirely natural power and it appears that the concept of the Wiccan ultimate deity [...]
Posted in Atheism, Featured, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Wicca 5 Comments »Criticizing Wicca: Rationality
December 26th, 2011 Eric Steinhart According to the Farrars, “Witches [that is, Wiccans] are neither fools, escapist nor superstitious. They are living in the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages” (1981: 105). The Farrars write that “Many witches are scientists and technicians . . . If modern witchcraft did not have a coherent rationale, such people could only keep going [...]
Atheism and Wicca: The Road Ahead
December 25th, 2011 Eric Steinhart I’ve been doing a long series of posts on atheism and Wicca. I’m working out the idea that atheistic and neo-pagan communities have more in common than they might think, and that, as American religiousity continues to shift away from Christianity, those two communities will increasingly be blended into each other. This will be messy [...]
Posted in Atheism, Featured, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Rationalism, Religion and Science, Wicca 8 Comments »Atheism and Wicca: The Discussion So Far
December 24th, 2011 Eric Steinhart I’ve been doing a long series of posts on atheism and Wicca. I’m about mid-way through– after taking break for the weekend, I’ll be back on Monday with posts about the Wiccan god and goddess; then on to the Wheel of the Year, reincarnation, and magic. At this half-way point it’s a good idea to take [...]
Posted in Atheism, Featured, Paganism, Philosophy, Rationalism, Religion, Religion and Science, Science, Wicca 32 Comments »Pure Objective Reason
December 23rd, 2011 Eric Steinhart As immanent, being-itself is just the ultimate nature of every natural thing. So, how does this immanent being-itself manifest itself? It manifests itself in all the categories of nature. These are the categories of naturalistic ontology. To use some language from Nicholas of Cusa, these categories are derived from the self-unfolding of being-itself. This unfolding [...]
Posted in Atheism, Featured, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Rationalism, Religion and Science 15 Comments »Atheism and the Sacred: Being-Itself
December 22nd, 2011 Eric Steinhart Paul Tillich defined God as being-itself. He argued that being-itself is not any being; it is not a thing, and it does not even exist. For Tillich, being-itself transcends existence. It cannot be identified with any being (neither with any particular nor with any universal). It cannot be located within the categories of any ontology [...]
The Impossible God of Paul Tillich
December 21st, 2011 Eric Steinhart Paul Tillich was a Protestant theologian writing in the middle of the Twentieth Century. His writing is highly abstract, so you’ll have to forgive me for using abstract language here. He is perhaps best known for his idea that God is the ground of being; that is, God is being-itself. For atheists, Tillich says some [...]
Atheism and Possibility
December 20th, 2011 Eric Steinhart The concept of natural creative power (natura naturans) is found in both Wicca (where it is the ultimate deity) and in atheistic philosophers (who do not deify it). Natural creative power is the ultimate immanent power of being; it is being-itself. Unfortunately, being-itself, as the deepest and most abstract of all universals, also seems to [...]
Atheist Ceremonies: De-Baptism and the Cosmic Walk
December 19th, 2011 Eric Steinhart An earlier post presented nine theses on the possible future development of atheism and neo-paganism in America. The third thesis is this: As the atheistic community grows larger, social and practical pressures will compel it to begin to develop rituals and ceremonies. As support for the third thesis, I gave various examples of atheists celebrating [...]
Atheism and the Divinity of Truth
December 15th, 2011 Eric Steinhart There’s been some great discussion here about issues related to truth – thanks! Still, I’m surprised that nobody has yet addressed the claims about atheism and reverence for truth. The real issue for me is whether or not atheists tend to agree with my last paragraph: Paul Tillich wrote that “whatever concerns a man ultimately [...]
Do Atheists Worship Truth?
December 15th, 2011 Eric Steinhart Although many atheists seem hostile to metaphysics, that hostility is misplaced. Any deep philosophical position is bound to presuppose some metaphysics. Pure reason is also highly abstract. Should pure reason be constrained by empirical evidence? How? All efforts to specify any criterion of empirical verifiability or falsifiablity have failed. Science today is highly abstract – [...]
Nietzsche's Immoralism As Rebellion Against The Authoritarian Tendencies Of Moralities
August 21st, 2011 Daniel Fincke Nietzsche casts himself, quite provocatively, as an “immoralist”. In this post, I want to make clear what Nietzsche means by this term as a first step towards understanding the exact nature and scope of his hostility to morality. As should already be apparent to longtime Camels With Hammers readers, I am optimistic about philosophy’s possibilities [...]
Posted in Authority, Authority, Autonomy, Autonomy, Ethical Pluralism, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Historical Ethics, Historical Ethics, Historical Philosophy, Historical Philosophy, Metaethics, Metaethics, Morality, Morality, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy 
Tags: Authoritarianism, Beyond Good and Evil 202, Daybreak 3, Hypocrisy, Immoralism, Will To Power 306, Will To Power 308 2 Comments »Coming Soon To Camels With Hammers: More Nietzsche
August 17th, 2011 Daniel Fincke I wrote my doctoral dissertation primarily on Nietzsche’s philosophy. In the first four chapters, I developed a textual, systematic reading of Nietzsche’s views on metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, and in the fifth chapter I gave my own account of metaethics which attempted, on the one hand, to further develop, supplement, and systematize Nietzsche’s best ideas, [...]
'Nuff Said Award Winner: James Sweet
August 11th, 2011 Daniel Fincke It’s time for another award for a commenter who says something that needs no further commentary. This time the award goes to James Sweet who offered this response to the post about hate messages against an atheist on Facebook: This is probably a minority of Christians who are like this. A significant minority, mind you, [...]
Posted in 'Nuff Said, 'Nuff Said, 'Nuff Said, Christianity, Christianity, Featured, Jesus, Jesus, Morality, Morality, Philosophy Of Religion No Comments »On Evolution
August 9th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart A process atheist is someone who agrees that every question that used to be answered by appealing to God can be better answered by appealing to some form of evolution. So you might wonder about the meaning of the term evolution. Since the term evolution is abstract, it’s definition will be abstract: [...]
Process Atheism
August 8th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart A process atheist is someone who agrees that every question that used to be answered by appealing to God can be better answered by appealing to some form of evolution. Dan Fincke gets credit for coining the phrase “process atheism”. Process atheism is one type of atheism among many. Process atheism is [...]
Posted in Atheism, Featured, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Philosophy, Rationalism, Religion and Science 4 Comments »Call Me A Freethinker
August 8th, 2011 Daniel Fincke All week, Eric and I have been volleying back and forth about the proper places of skepticism, on the one hand, and metaphysics, on the other, in an atheist worldview and self-presentation. I have argued that placing an emphasis on an evolutionary metaphysics as the primary identifier of an atheist worldview would be perceived as [...]
Loveliness is Rare
August 5th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart Order, complexity, regularity, patterning, are all examples of features that I’ll just refer to as lovely. It’s a term of art, and it’s a lovely term. Within many familiar systems, loveliness is very very rare. It’s very rare within the models of simple physical theories and even more rare within the models [...]
Posted in Atheism, Cosmology, Featured, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Science, Uncategorized 5 Comments »
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