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Michael Antony has an interesting but problematic article in Philosophy Now exploring whether “New Atheism” holds itself to a double standard when it comes to rules of evidence. He argues that New Atheists dismiss religious belief explicitly on “evidentialist” epistemic criteria whereby we must always proportion our belief to evidence, but at the same time, [...]
Archive for the ‘Evidence’ Category
Do New Atheists Unjustifiably Shirk Their Burden For Evidence?
July 7th, 2010 
Daniel Fincke 
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Featured, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, PZ Myers, PZ Myers, Religion, Religion, Secularism 
9 Comments »Beyond Agnosticism: More Details About How I Know Various Kinds Of Gods Do Not Exist, Based On Scientific And Philosophical Reasons
June 30th, 2010 Daniel Fincke While I agree with, and vigorously defend, the notion that there is an important difference between lacking a belief in gods (as an agnostic atheist) and believing there are no gods (as a gnostic atheist), I also think that atheists should not, based on the best available scientific evidence and philosophical arguments, merely lack belief [...]
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, Christianity, Christianity, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Evolution, Evolution, Featured, God, God, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Problem of Evil, Problem of Evil, Religion, Religion, Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church, Skepticism, Skepticism, Why I Am Not A Christian, Why I Am Not A Christian 
Tags: Agnosticism, Personal God 9 Comments »No, I’m Not An Atheist By Faith, Here Are My Arguments.
June 29th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Yesterday Ron Rosenbaum aggressively attacked atheism and defended agnosticism in Slate. He starts out with the familiar charge that atheists have “faith”. But faith in what? Atheists display a credulous and childlike faith, worship a certainty as yet unsupported by evidence—the certainty that they can or will be able to explain how and why the [...]
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, Cosmology, Cosmology, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Ethics, Evidence, Evidence, Faith, Faith, Featured, God, God, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Physics, Physics, Religion, Religion 45 Comments »Disambiguating Faith: Why Faith Is Unethical (Or “In Defense Of The Ethical Obligation To Always Proportion Belief To Evidence”)
June 21st, 2010 Daniel Fincke A couple of weeks ago, I argued that there was a real distinction between “lacking a belief in any God or gods” on the one hand and “believing there is no God (or gods)” on the other hand. Primarily I saw the heart of the distinction as resting with the difference between on the one [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Authority, Autonomy, Contemporary Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Disambiguating Faith, Duty, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Evidence, Faith, Featured, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Law, Metaethics, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Political Secularism, Politics, Rationalism, Religion, Religious Extremism, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Skepticism, Teleology, Virtues, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Agnostic Atheism, Agnostic Theism, Belief, Belief Apportioned To Evidence, Evolutionary Epistemology, Evolutionary Ethics, Gnostic Atheism, Gnostic Theism, Indirect Consequentialism, Moral Formalism, Moral Rationalism, Principle of Sufficient Reason, Rational Belief 10 Comments »Disambiguating Faith: How A Lack Of Belief In God May Differ From Various Kinds Of Beliefs That Gods Do Not Exist
June 7th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Yesterday on Friendly Atheist there was a vigorous debate in the comments section about whether there is a real and important difference between claiming one lacks belief in God (or gods) and outright claiming that there is no God (or gods). Here is a nice formulation of the argument that the distinction is an irrelevant [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Ethics, Evidence, Faith, Featured, God, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Metaphysics, New Atheism, Philosophy, Problem of Evil, Skepticism, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Agnostic Atheism, Agnostic Theism, Agnosticism, Friendly Atheist, Gnostic Atheism, Gnostic Theism, theism 24 Comments »Differently Abled Or Simply More Virtuous In One Respect
June 4th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Earlier today, I made a post comparing the different routes which atheists and those with Asperger’s syndrome take to their naturalistic explanations of causes of events that more religiously inclined people tend to chalk up to supernatural agency. Whereas religious people would attribute an illness or finding their true love to the purposeful forces, like God’s [...]
A Little Evidence That Atheists and Theists Don’t “Simply Think Differently”
June 4th, 2010 Daniel Fincke In order to respond to certain misunderstandings based on this post’s original, provocative title (Do Atheists Just Have Asperger’s?) I have re-edited it and retitled it. There is now a new opening paragraph and extra concluding paragraphs. It is often suggested that the difference between theists and atheists might simply stem from differences in their naturally given [...]
Religious Logic
October 28th, 2009 Daniel Fincke via
Posted in Comic Strips, Epistemology, Evidence, Faith, Religion Tags: Falsification, Unfalsifiability, Verification No Comments »Is Reason My God 4: On Reason As An Authority
October 13th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Even though this post is “part 4″ of a reply to the same commentator, it can be understood without reading prior installments. If you would like to catch up with prior installments nonetheless, here are parts 1, 2, and 3. In reply to this post, Grant writes: Appealing to the authority of reason is the [...]
Posted in Authority, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Evidence, Faith, Featured, God, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Philosophy Tags: Reason No Comments »Is Reason My “God” 2: On Authority, Uncertainty, and Inexplicability
October 13th, 2009 Daniel Fincke I’ve been remiss lately in replying to interesting reader challenges. A backlog is growing of remarks I intend to address. So I decided, in order to get back in the swing of things to quickly reply to this new one I just got. Grant writes, Seems there are people looking for an authority to believe [...]
Disambiguating Faith: Are True Gut Feelings And Epiphanies Beliefs Justified By Faith?
August 24th, 2009 Daniel Fincke In reply to my latest installment of the “Disambiguating Faith” series in which I replied to Adam’s query about whether an episode of House M.D. provided an example in which a choice to think irrationally (to eliminate symptoms when diagnosing an illness) might prove the more rational course. I argued that if eliminating symptoms helped [...]
Posted in Disambiguating Faith, Epistemology, Evidence, Faith, Featured, Philosophy Tags: Cognition, Confirmation, Dreams, Epiphanies, House M.D., Hypotheses, Perceptual Beliefs, Preconscious Reasoning, Sense Beliefs, Subconscious Reasoning, Thinking While Dreaming, Unconscious Reasoning 10 Comments »Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Guessing
August 24th, 2009 Daniel Fincke On Facebook (where you can also be my friend if you’d like), Adam replies to the latest installment of the “Disambiguating Faith” series with this question: Hate to be corny, but in an episode of House M.D., every rational road runs out and a case is seemingly unsolvable. Finally, by eliminating a symptom (which is [...]
Is Old Earth Geology A Godless Plot To Hate God Perpetuated By Godless God Haters?
August 21st, 2009 Daniel Fincke PZ Myers has a fascinating post on the history of geology which traces the first discoveries of evidence for an old earth by regular old tyme religious people during centuries wherein challenging belief in God was very few people’s top priority. The advent of Darwinism did not set in motion a conspiracy of atheists who [...]
Posted in Biology, Creationism, Epistemology, Evidence, Evolution, Geology, Philosophy of Science, PZ Myers, Religion and Science, Science Tags: Alexandre Brongniart, Answers In Genesis, Baron Cuvier, Evidentialism, Fossils, History of Science, Paradigms, Paris, Presuppositionalism, Robert Hooke, Theories, World View Canard No Comments »Rational Beliefs, Rational Actions, And When It Is Rational To Act On What You Don’t Think Is True
August 19th, 2009 Daniel Fincke We hold beliefs with various degrees of justification and the demands of rationality dictate to us that we proportion our degree of belief to the degree of our justification. If I am looking at evidence for two sides of a position and I find that 60% of the evidence seems to favor side A, whereas [...]
Posted in Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Ethics, Evidence, Faith, Featured, Philosophy Tags: Emotions, Emotions In Reasoning, Ethical Justification, Fear, Hope, Rational Actions, Rational Beliefs, Rational Emotions, Rationally Calibrating Beliefs To Evidence, Weighing Evidence 13 Comments »Atheist Testimonials In The Detroit Free Press
August 5th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Mojoey, the founder and curator of the Atheist Blogroll to which we owe great gratitude, points us to a great series running in The Detroit Free Press in which atheists give their testimonials. Here’s the one Mojoey highlighted yesterday: I was at work when someone brought up that I am an atheist.A nearby coworker nearly [...]
Does Faith Make You An Idiot?
July 27th, 2009 Daniel Fincke In reply to my recent posts on atheism and fundamentalism, a friend writes to me privately: Alright, first of all, I won’t pretend to have read everything with the thread or understand it all, but I do think I grasp the basic argument: Is it moral for atheists to try to get others to conform [...]
Posted in Atheism, Evidence, Evolution, Faith, Religion, Religion and Science, Secularism Tags: Civility, Insecurity, Irrationality 1 Comment »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 »
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