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Pride is essentially the personal identification with something admirable. When I am rightly proud of my traits, I rightly take the traits themselves each to be admirable in one way or another and rightly take myself to be admirable insofar as they are part of me and expressions of me. When I am rightly proud [...]
Archive for the ‘Intellectual Virtues’ Category
Rightful Pride: Identification With One’s Own Admirable Powers And Effects
June 23rd, 2010 
Daniel Fincke 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 »Michael Shermer On “The Pattern Behind Self-Deception”
June 14th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Shermer does TED and explains how two of the brain’s most basic, hard-wired traits, useful for survival, backfire on us: Your Thoughts?
Michael Sandel On “The Lost Art Of Democratic Debate”
June 9th, 2010 Daniel Fincke A good video from Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel, who recently wrote a book on justice for a popular audience, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, and who last year released on YouTube high production value videos encapsulating his lectures for his standard introductory level ethics class at Harvard. You can start watching those videos here. [...]
Posted in Epistemology, Ethics, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Historical Philosophy, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Law, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Same Sex Marriage, Teleology, Virtues Tags: Aristotle, Aristotle's Theory of Justice, Democratic Debate, Golf, Harvard University, Justice, Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice John Paul Stevens, Michael Sandel, Phronesis, Sports, United States Supreme Court No 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 [...]
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 [...]
Some Preliminary Conceptual Distinctions Related To Belief And (Dis)Belief
October 7th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Spootmeister, a Camels With Hammers reader whose advice on videos has led to many a great find that we have been able to feature here, has finally produced his first video on atheism and theism. It’s an interesting video in which he tries to make several key distinctions between types of beliefs and types of [...]
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 »Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Subjectivity Which Claims Objectivity
August 29th, 2009 Daniel Fincke In a previous post, I wrote the following of Rod Dreher’s decision to inculcate in his children a faithfulness that would safeguard their faith against intellectual faltering: I can say that it is utterly depressing you could be so self aware about inculcating your children to believe regardless of truth or falsity, to put faithfulness [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemology, Ethics, Faith, Featured, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Metaethics, Philosophy, Political Secularism, Religion, Secularism, Spinoza, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Deism, Experience of God, Ground of all being, Irrationalism, Kierkegaard, Knowing God, Objectivism, Personal God, Relativism, Rod Dreher, Subjectivism, Suicide Bombers 9 Comments »Disambiguating Faith: Heart Over Reason
August 29th, 2009 Daniel Fincke In reply to Rod Dreher’s recent post explaining his decision to train his children’s wills to be faithful since the intellect was not a firm foundation of faith, I critically characterized his position as essentially boiling down to the following: So, the solution is not to train your children to be intellectually scrupulous but to [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Christopher Hitchens, Cultural Secularism, Daniel Dennett, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemology, Faith, Featured, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Philosophy, Political Secularism, Religion, Religious Secularism, Secularism Tags: Affective Value Perception, Authority, Belief Proportionate To Evidence, Emotional Reasoning, Reason and Emotions, Value Perception, Will To Believe 6 Comments »Disambiguating Faith: Faith As A Form Of Rationalization Unique To Religion
August 29th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Rod Dreher confronts psychological research which illustrates the pervasive role of rationalization in our thought processes, which leads us reflexively to seek out information that confirms preexisting beliefs rather than challenges them among other techniques for seeing only what we want to see. Turning to the implications of the realities of rationalization for the religious [...]
Posted in Atheism, Christianity, Disambiguating Faith, Divine Intervention, Epistemology, Faith, Featured, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Metaphysics, Miracles, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Spinoza Tags: Crunchy Con, Gods of the Philosophers, Ground of all being, Materialism, Paul Tillich, Rationalization, Rod Dreher 10 Comments »On The Meaning Of Meaning
August 21st, 2009 Daniel Fincke In reply to some remarks I made about the recognition of genuine meaning without reference to religion, George replied with this challenge: Dan, Now you have got me thinking…. I’m not entirely clear about your point of meaning in everyday events. My logic tells me that a completely statistically probable event happens and I impart [...]
Posted in Atheism, Creationism, Ethics, Faith, Featured, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Nietzsche, Philosophy, Psychology, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Authenticity, Character, Character As Fate, Choices, Decision Psychology, Existentialism, Fate, Jean-Paul Sartre, Personal Necessity, Psychological Determinism, Psychology of Will, Self-Realization 1 Comment »The Complicated Relationship Of An Apostate To His Religious Friends And His Reilgious Past
August 20th, 2009 Daniel Fincke In reply to this post from the other day and subsequent discussion in the comments section about the ways that religious belie can interfere with both reason and love, George writes, For the past year I have been trolling blogs and websites trying to wrap my brain around religion in general and evolution denial in [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Love, Music, Music Videos, Religion, Secularism, Videos, Virtues, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Apostasy, Boatman's call, Friendship, Into My Arms, Meaning, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Nihilism 3 Comments »On Unjustifiably Leveraging One’s Credibility
August 18th, 2009 Daniel Fincke WIC writes this reply to recent remarks I made to him. I am only quoting here the portion I specifically address, to read his counter to me in its entirety, click here. The question then becomes whether or not Collins is truly ‘sloppy’ outside the lab in regards to religion. You, Harris, Myers, and other [...]
More Thoughts On Scientists In The Public Square
August 17th, 2009 Daniel Fincke My previous post today on religious scientists was based on a comment I first made on the blog He Lives in reply to a post there. Below is a subsequent comment from that blog from “Wandering Internet Commenter” interspersed with my replies to him. Normative arguments are fun and all, but it never hurt to [...]
Posted in Atheism, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Ethics, Featured, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, New Atheism, Philosophy, Religion and Science Tags: Academic Disciplines, Academic Specialization, Epistemic, Jerry Coyne, Political Ethics, Public Intellectuals, Richard Dawkins, Value Perception No Comments »How PZ Myers Differs From Rush Limbaugh
August 17th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Prometheus Unbound takes issue with PZ Myers: I certainly understand why people like PZ Myers’s style. It is easy and uncomplex, and impatient with nuance. It’s what makes Fox News so popular. And it may well draw a crowd of young people. Myers is ever on the ready to stir the shit. And he is [...]
Disambiguating Faith: Blind Faith: How Faith Traditions Turn Trust Without Warrant Into A Test Of Loyalty
August 14th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Tuesday, I began my series of posts attempting first to disambiguate the various senses of the word faith, to explore how the various practices referred to under this one word’s umbrella all relate to each other and how they can be ethically and epistemologically assessed, both as they occur individually and in various combinations with [...]
Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Loyally Trusting Those Insufficiently Proven To Be Trustworthy
August 12th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Yesterday I began my series of posts attempting first to disambiguate the various senses of the word faith, to explore how the various practices referred to under this one word’s umbrella all relate to each other and how they can be ethically and epistemologically assessed, both as they occur individually and in various combinations with [...]
Almost All My Opinions Remain Disputable
August 10th, 2009 Daniel Fincke In a previous post I discussed part of my thought process in leaving Christianity and then contrasted my experience in Christianity, spent desperately trying to rationalize what were apparent falsehoods, with my experience of thinking free of faith ever since: it took me (and is taking me) years to painstakingly develop my own constructive conception [...]
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 [...]
What’s Wrong With Prejudice And Is It Prejudicial To Dislike Someone Over His Bad Thinking?
August 4th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Over at Unreasonable Faith, guest contributor Custador thinks he is a bigoted atheist: The knowledge that my cousin is a creationist has actually made me dislike him. I wonder now if I’m any better than any other prejudiced person — a racist or a sexist or a homophobe — because I pre-judge a group of [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Epistemology, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Faith, Featured, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Moral Psychology, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Prejudice, Secularism, Virtues Tags: Bias, Character, Fairness, Rational Evaluation, Unconditional Love, Value Perception, Value Theory, Volitional Love 8 Comments »Psychotic Reasoning, The Will To Believe, And Religious Interpretations Of The Mentally Ill
July 29th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Yesterday morning, The Friendly Atheist’s Hemant Mehta analyzed stories of mothers who murdered their babies under religiously interpreted delusions with a critical eye towards the religions which put certain fantasies in their heads. In reply to criticisms of his making this connection that came from skeptigirl (in this terrific post on psychosis you should read), [...]
Posted in Atheism, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, News Discussion, Psychology, Religion and Science, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: A.J. Burger, Andrea Yates, Ascetics, Belief Without Sufficient Evidence, Demon Possession, Dena Schlosser, Epilepsy, Ethics of Belief, Evidentialism, Mental Illness, Mystics, Otty Sanchez, Prophecy, Psychopathy, Religious Justification, Saints, skeptigirl, Superstition, Visions, Voltaire, William James, WK Clifford 1 Comment »
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