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Many a religious person defending her own religious beliefs will argue that a given politically, morally, or intellectually unflattering interpretation of her faith is simply not a true representation of her faith. While the question of who has the right or the adequate means to decisively determine with any rational clarity which competing interpretation of any [...]
Archive for the ‘Authoritarianism’ Category
True Religion?
August 17th, 2010 
Daniel Fincke 
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Authoritarianism, Authoritarianism, Bible, Bible, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, History, Judaism, Law, Law, Law & Politics, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Science, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Pseudoscience, Rationalism, Religion, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Science, Science, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State, Theocrats, Theocrats 
Tags: Literalism, Philosophy of Science, Primitivism, Ronald Dworkin 
12 Comments »On The “Compassion” In The Catholic Bishops’ Letter To Congress Against Gay Rights
June 21st, 2010 Daniel Fincke Recently, United States bishops petitioned Congress to not protect gays from being fired for their sexual orientation. Andrew Sullivan already precisely attacked the bishops’ immoral political calculation by which they explicitly committed themselves to a perverse moral contradiction whereby they simultaneously concede that homosexuality is to a significant extent not a choice and argue that [...]
Posted in Andrew Sullivan, Authoritarianism, Christianity, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Homophobia, Homosexuality, Law, Law & Politics, LGBTQAA, Politics, Religion, Religious Rights, Right Wing Politics, Roman Catholic Church, Same Sex Marriage Tags: ZJ Jones, ZJemptv No Comments »Cults Of Inerrant Leaders
June 15th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Glenn Greenwald summarizes an atrocity of institutionalized injustice, whereby the executive branch of the United States has the power to abduct and torture innocent people with impunity: The Supreme Court today denied a petition of review from Maher Arar, the Canadian and Syrian citizen who was abducted by the U.S. Government at a stopover at JFK Airport when returning [...]
Posted in Andrew Sullivan, Authoritarianism, Barack Obama, Civil Liberties, Featured, George W. Bush, Law, Law & Politics, Politics, Right Wing Politics Tags: Canada, Glenn Greenwald, Maher Arar, Omnipotence, Superpower, Syria, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Torture, United States Supreme Court No Comments »Johann Hari On Ayn Rand
November 8th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Johann Hari has two exquisitely written and detailed pieces on Rand, one from 2005 and one from this past week. I have to admit that she is held with so much contempt by philosophers that I have never bothered to read her, even if only to understand the influence of her infamously crude appropriation of [...]
Posted in Authoritarianism, Right Wing Politics Tags: Ayn Rand, Johann Hari, Leninism, Right Wing Extremism 5 Comments »“There’s A Rep For That”
October 19th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Robtish has another great video, this one on the most offensive Republican Congresspeople and some of their most outrageous remarks and legislative proposals: Thanks again to Gaytheists. Your Thoughts?
Posted in Authoritarianism, Civil Rights, Gay Rights, Homophobia, Law & Politics, Parody, Political Satire, Politics, Right Wing Politics, Satire, Videos Tags: Bill Sali, Demagoguery, domestic violence, Joe Wilson, John Shimkus, Louie Gohmert, Lynn Jenkins, Mark Kirk, Michelle Bachmann, Randy Forbes, Republican Congresspeople, Right Wing Extremism, Robtish, Steve Buyer, Steve King, Trent Franks, Virginia Foxx No Comments »Philosophical Ethics: Hobbes On The Source Of Authority
October 4th, 2009 Daniel Fincke In a series of posts this semester, I am blogging all (or almost all) the lecture topics for the two Philosophical Ethics classes I am teaching this semester. Each of these posts primarily explicates the reading or a theme that dominated class discussion in a way that should be accessible to novices (such as my [...]
Posted in Authoritarianism, Authority, Cultural Secularism, Ethics, Featured, Historical Philosophy, Moral Psychology, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Political Secularism, Politics, Secularism Tags: "State of Nature", An Unjust Law Is Not A Law", Aquinas, Augustine, Bella Contra Omnes, Divine Command Theory, Free Rider Problem, Hobbes' Cardinal Virtues of War, Martin Luther King Jr, Monarchism, Moral Authority, Political Philosophy, Prisoner's Dilemma, Social Contract Theory, Sovereigns, Thomas Hobbes, Voluntarism No Comments »Camels With Hammers Philosophy
September 27th, 2009 Daniel Fincke After this introductory paragraph, every sentence in this post will summarize and link a different post expressing my views, primarily on topics related to atheism, philosophy, and ethics—which are the primary preoccupations of this blog. I am organizing all of these links into this one summary statement of “Camels With Hammers’ Philosophy.” This post will [...]
Posted in About This Blog, Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Authoritarianism, Authority, Autonomy, Christianity, Contemporary Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Duty, Epistemology, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Faith, Featured, Fundamentalism, God, Historical Ethics, Historical Philosophy, Homophobia, Homosexuality, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Metaethics, Metaphysics, Moral Psychology, Nietzsche, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Political Secularism, Politics, Psychology, Religion and Science, Religious Extremism, Religious Rights, Religious Secularism, Secularism, Sociobiology, Teleology, Virtues, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Camels With Hammers 3 Comments »The Internet In The Hands Of Dictatorships
September 25th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Evgeny Morozov discusses how repressive regimes use the internet to spread propaganda, finding it is a more powerful tool than censorship. Your Thoughts?
Posted in Authoritarianism, Culture and Technology, Politics, Videos, World Affairs Tags: Evgeny Morozov, TED No Comments »On The Symbolism Of Book Destruction
September 19th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Over the past few days we’ve been discussing creationists Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron’s plan to freely disseminate 50,000 copies of a new version of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species which they are putting out and which contains a deceptive, creationist introduction filled with bad science and false history. RichardDawkins.net and Pharyngula have encouraged people not only to [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Authoritarianism, Civil Liberties, Creationism, Cultural Secularism, Education, Featured, Free Speech, Intelligent Design, Political Secularism, Politics, PZ Myers, Secularism Tags: Barack Obama, Book Burning, Book Mutilation, Censorship, Joe Wilson, Kirk Cameron, Ray Comfort, Ray Comfort's Version of Origin of Species, RichardDawkins.net, Symbolism No Comments »“Why Should God Bless America?”
September 19th, 2009 Daniel Fincke This laughable awfulness would be qualify as funny if the theocratic attitudes it expressed were not so serious and were the forum for this nonsense was not a presidential debate. Rachel Maddow had a great report last night on this year’s meeting of the same group that sponsored this. The footage of the astoundingly self-absorbed [...]
Posted in 2008 Presidential Race, Authoritarianism, Christianity, Fundamentalism, Politics, Religion, Religious Extremism, Separation of Church and State, Theocrats, Unintentional Comedy, Videos Tags: "God Bless America", "Why Should God Bless America", Carrie Prejean, Rachel Maddow, Religious Authoritarianism, The Church of God Choir of Springfield Ohio, Values Voter, Values Voter Presidential Debate No Comments »The Value Of Religious Moderates And The Danger Of Isolating Religious And Political Fundamentalists
September 18th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Recently Karen Armstrong is coming out with a book arguing for an extremely apophatic conception of God that rejects all manner of biblical literalism but still insists on some important reference to God and is critical of the New Atheists. Recently she and Richard Dawkins both responded to a Wall Street Journal solicitation for their [...]
Posted in Atheism, Authoritarianism, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cutural Criticism, Faith, Featured, Fundamentalism, God, New Atheism, Political Secularism, Politics, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Secularism, Sarah Palin, Secularism Tags: Albert Mohler, Karen Armstrong, Moderates, Richard Dawkins, Robert Jensen, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, VorJack 6 Comments »‘Nuff Said Award Winner: Lord Robert May On Religion’s Connection To Authoritarianism, Its Past Uses, And Its Current Fundamentalist Risk
September 7th, 2009 Daniel Fincke via Jerry Coyne come remarks from Oxford’s Lord Robert May, president of the British Science Festival and former chief scientific adviser to the British government, expressing views which I think are in keeping with (while further developing) the broader philosophical pictures that I lay out here, here, here, here, here, and, most of all, here. Lord [...]
Posted in Atheism, Authoritarianism, Cultural Secularism, Faith, Fundamentalism, Political Secularism, Religion, Religious Extremism, Secularism Tags: Authoritarianism, Faith vs. Evidence, Faith vs. Reason, Fundamentalist Backlash, Lord Robert May, Moral Progress, Non-zero-sumness, Religious Authoritarianism, Religious Traditionalism, The Expanding Circle No Comments »Dispelling The Myth That Nazism Was An Outgrowth Of Darwinian Atheism
August 16th, 2009 Daniel Fincke In April of last year, Richard Dawkins wrote this letter (which should be read in full) to someone duped by the slander that Darwinian atheism led to Hitler’s ideals and goals: His horrible bidding was done by millions of ordinary German footsoldiers, and the great majority of them were Christians. Many were Lutheran, and many [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Authoritarianism, Christianity, Ethics, History, Metaethics, Politics, PZ Myers, Religion, Roman Catholic Church, Secularism Tags: Adolph Hitler, Artificial Selection, Ben Stein, Christian Anti-Semitism, Darwinism, European Anti-Semitism, Expelled, Herbert Spencer, Hitler and Atheism, Hitler and Catholocism, John D Rockefeller, Mein Kampf, Michael Shermer, Natural Selection, Political Ethics, Richard Dawkins, Science and Ethics, Social Darwinism, World War II No Comments »Jeff Sharlet On The Family
August 1st, 2009 Daniel Fincke Last night on Real Time With Bill Maher, Jeff Sharlet, the profiler of The Family:
A Follow Up Post On Gays And Christianity
July 6th, 2009 Daniel Fincke In reply to this post I wrote about an archbishop of the Anglican church’s claims that those Christians who accept homosexuality do not share the same faith as him and that such people are being rolled over by “cultural trends,” came this passionate defense of Christian leaders’ right to discriminate against gays in the comments [...]
Posted in Andrew Sullivan, Applied Ethics, Atheism, Authoritarianism, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Ethics, Fundamentalism, Homophobia, Homosexuality, News Discussion, Religion, Religious Satire, Religious Secularism, Satire, Secularism, Videos Tags: Anglican Church, Apostle's Creed, Barna Group, Betty Bowers, Biblical Literalism, Box Turtle Bulletin, Council of Nicea, Divine Command Theory, Gay Churches, Homophilia, Homophilic Bible, Michael Nazil-Ari, Newsweek, Orthodoxy, Religious Gays, Reverend Gene Robinson No Comments »Against Faith and In Defense of Naturalism and Induction
June 30th, 2009 Daniel Fincke It should not be necessary for understanding this post, but in case you’d like to catch up on the full debate with Camels With Hammer Reader/Debate Spar Extraordinaire Shane leading up to this post, here are the previous installments: Objections to Religious Moderates and Intellecuals 1 Objections to Religious Moderates and Intellectuals 2 Objections to [...]
Posted in Atheism, Authoritarianism, Authority, Evidence, Faith, God, Miracles, Naturalism, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Religion Tags: Anomalies, Christology, Hume, Inductive Reasoning, Justification, Non Overlapping Magisterium, Philosophy, Propitiation, Religion, Supernaturalism, Superstition, Trinity No Comments »How Faith Is Not Like Other (Revisable) Reflexive Assumptions
June 29th, 2009 Daniel Fincke (It should not be necessary for understanding this post, but for the full backstory to this debate see my series on Objections to Religious Moderates and Intellectuals, parts 1, 2, 3, & 4 and my post “On Teleology and Intellectual Virtues and Vices”) Shane writes in reply to my post “On Teleology and Intellectual Virtues [...]
Posted in Atheism, Authoritarianism, Epistemology, Ethics, Faith, Historical Ethics, Metaethics, Metaphysics, Miracles, Naturalism, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Teleology Tags: A Priori Moral Knowledge, Aesthetic Knowledge, Assumptions, Cultural Relativism, Emotivism, Epistemology, Hermeneutics, Humean Skepticism, Mathematical Knowledge, Metaethics, Mythology, Nietzsche on Objective Values, Perceptual Knowledge, Philosophy, Prejudices, Religion, Supernaturalism 3 Comments »The Theocratic Mindset of James Dobson
June 24th, 2008 Daniel Fincke As something of a Rawlsian about public discourse, I have no problem with religious people arguing in government for application of ideals that they personally discovered through their religion or their sacred texts, their religious institutions, etc. as long as they respect the need to give reasons that are publicly accessible, reasons that do not [...]
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