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Jean Kazez argues that the public square is not the place for atheists to be arguing that science and religion are incompatible. I strongly reject her position on this point because not only do I believe that ordinary people are quite capable of handling a vigorous, no-holds-barred debate about religion but because I believe the [...]
Archive for the ‘Nietzsche’ Category
Is it Too Risky to Debate Morality's Foundations in the Public Square?
February 28th, 2011 
Daniel Fincke 
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Duty, Duty, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Metaethics, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Politics, Politics, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin, Secularism, Skepticism, Skepticism 
Tags: J.L. Mackie, Jean Kazez, Jean-Paul Sartre, Moral Anti-Realism, Moral Error Theory, Moral Realism, Pragmatism, Russell Blackford, Sam Harris, The Death of God 
8 Comments »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 »I Am Interviewed About My Personal (Atheistic) Religiosity/Spirituality
February 19th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Through Facebook, I was recently contacted by an old friend from high school (who was actually the first girl to go on a date with me). She is working on her Master’s in nursing and has an assignment which involves interviewing people about their views on religion and spirituality, for the purpose of thinking about approaches [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Indie Music, Indie Music, Indie Rock, Indie Rock, Love, Love, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Music, Music, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Personal, Philosophy, Religion, Religion, Secularism Tags: Eternal Recurrence, Eternal Recurrence of the Same, Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Stoicism No Comments »Apostasy As A Religious Act (Or "Why A Camel Hammers The Idols Of Faith")
February 17th, 2011 Daniel Fincke In “The Three Transformations of the Spirit” in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and Nobody, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra describes the human spirit as successively taking three different forms: the camel, the lion, and the child. The transformations begin with the spirit of the camel, which Nietzsche characterizes as consisting of obedient, self-sacrificing, reverential, [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Morality, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Secularism, Why I Am Not A Christian, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: "The Three Transformations of the Spirit", Camels, Camels With Hammers, Nietzsche on the Camel, Nietzsche on the Lion, Thou Shalt Not Lie, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Truth, Truthfulness 21 Comments »Wow! I Belonged To The TRUE Christian Church!!
February 8th, 2011 Daniel Fincke From ages 5-21, my entire time as part of the Protestant Christian Church, I was more specifically a member of the “non-denominational” Church of Christ which arose out of the “Restoration Movement” of America’s 2nd Great Awakening. John W. Loftus, a former minister and fellow former member of the Church of Christ turned atheist, has a [...]
Posted in Christianity, Christianity, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Religion, Religion Tags: Baptists, Charts, Christian Denominations, Church Of Christ, Congregationalist, Episcopalians, Exclusivism in Christianity, Greek Orthodox Church, Heresies, Hiddenness of God, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterian, Protestants, Restoration Movement, Schisms in Christianity, United Brethren 7 Comments »Pleasure And Pain As Intrinsic Instrumental Goods
January 27th, 2011 Daniel Fincke In recent posts I have been arguing that there is one sense of the word “good” which can be analyzed in terms of facts and that this is the kind of “goodness” which we can consider a real part of the world. This real, intrinsic, factual sense of goodness is its meaning as “effectiveness”. We [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Autonomy, Autonomy, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Historical Ethics, Historical Ethics, Metaethics, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Problem of Evil, Problem of Evil, Teleology, Teleology, Torture, Torture, Virtues, Virtues Tags: Bernard Reginster, Pain, Pains, Pleasure, Pleasures, Will to Power 5 Comments »Non-Reductionistic Analysis Of Values Into Facts
January 27th, 2011 Daniel Fincke I have recently been arguing that the term good: must be cashed out in fact terms lest it just be a projection of our preferences and nothing more. [And] if it means anything objective, it means effectiveness. In reply, James Gray accuses me of reductionism: One, “good” does not have be defined in non-good terms. [...]
Posted in Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Ethical Pluralism, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Metaethics, Metaethics, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Naturalistic Fallacy, Naturalistic Fallacy, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Teleology, Teleology Tags: Good, Immoralism, Intrinsic Goods, Metaphysics of Value, Natural Good, Non-Good Terms, Non-Reductionism, Reductionism, Values 8 Comments »A Video Of Me Rambling About Nietzsche
January 17th, 2011 Daniel Fincke This is from 2007 and I just found that it pops right up when one Googles me. It’s hard for me to watch because it involves watching me. But I figured it might be of interest to others. Forgive the extemporaneousness of it all and enjoy some of the more hilarious hand gestures. (My favorite [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Bio-Medical Ethics, Bio-Medical Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Historical Philosophy, Historical Philosophy, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Personal, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy Tags: Daniel Fincke, John Hazlet, Normativity, Truth, Values 9 Comments »On Defending True Spirituality And Taking The Word Back From Spiritually Bankrupt Fundamentalism
January 6th, 2011 Daniel Fincke So Chris Mooney’s article in Playboy about the spirituality of scientists has sparked some interesting debate in the atheist blogosphere. His new post on the subject explicitly interprets his aims and themes in the piece as essentially saying what I interpreted them to be—to defend the idea that you can have completely sufficient spirituality without [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Morality, Morality, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Rationalism, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Secularism, Spinoza, Spinoza Tags: Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jerry Coyne 9 Comments »My Perspectivist, Teleological Account Of The Relative Values Of Pleasure And Pain
October 7th, 2010 Daniel Fincke With Sam Harris doing the rounds promoting a utilitarianism that seems to take the pleasures of sentient beings to be the good to be maximized, it’s as appropriate a time as ever to flesh out my objections to prioritizing pleasure and pain as the central goods in life. More specifically, you can read my already [...]
Posted in Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Epistemology, Epistemology, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Metaethics, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Teleology, Teleology, Virtues, Virtues Tags: Genealogy of Morals III:12, Nietzsche's Perspectivism, Pain, Perspectival Knowledge, Perspectivism, Pleasure 12 Comments »How Our Morality Realizes Our Humanity
July 11th, 2010 Daniel Fincke In a previous post, I discussed the intrinsic connection between being and goodness and between functional activity and being. I argued, for example that the various components of a heart need to function as a heart to be a heart and similarly that a human being must act morally to realize her humanity. Specifically, I [...]
Posted in Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Duty, Duty, Ethics, Ethics, Featured, Historical Ethics, Historical Ethics, Historical Philosophy, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Love, Love, Metaethics, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Teleology, Teleology, Virtues, Virtues Tags: Aristotle, Empowerment, Existentialism, Functionalism, Power, Teleological Ethics 13 Comments »Why I Think Theistic Religion’s Psychological Grip Can Be Weakened Or Broken
July 10th, 2010 Daniel Fincke In a recent comments section, Gregory Wahl argued to me that religion is so deeply rooted in psychological needs, specifically the longing for immortality, that there is an inherent limitation to the ability of all my philosophical arguments to dissuade the faithful. As this line of reasoning goes, they do not believe for intellectual reasons [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Philosophy Of Religion, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Secularism, Social Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Sciences, Sociology, Sociology Tags: Atheistic Existentialism, Atheistic Nihilism, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalist Nihilism, Healthy-Soul Religion, Jean-Paul Sartre, Nihilism, Nihilistic Existentialism, Sick-Soul Religion, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Values, William James 17 Comments »Sympathy For The Hate-Mailers
June 30th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Barrett Brown, the director of communications for the godless lobby “Enlighten The Vote” and a contributor to skeptic magazines, explains why he deserves all the mean e-mails he gets: In my defense, though, I didn’t choose to be either an atheist or a skeptic; rather, these were simply mindsets I came to adopt around the [...]
Posted in Atheism, Hilarious, New Atheism, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Skepticism, Skepticism Tags: Indigo Children, New Age, Nostradamus No Comments »On The Powers Of Personal And Political Bodies Over Their Apparent Mental Leaders
May 27th, 2010 Daniel Fincke The Peaceful Atheist finds “consciousness-lowering” experiences in which she escapes her aloof and wandering mind to reconnect with her tangible and oft-forgotten body to be greater than her many “consciousness-raising” experiences. She writes: It’s extremely hard for me to escape the internal labyrinth of my mind and focus completely on something external. Often after being [...]
Evolution and Epistemology
May 17th, 2010 Daniel Fincke If our minds take to be true only what evolution has conditioned us to think is true for the sake of fitness for survival, does this mean that our beliefs cannot be genuinely true but only some sort of useful ways of thinking that do not necessarily track how the world actually is? And if [...]
Posted in Atheism, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Evolution, Featured, Nietzsche, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science Tags: "On Deriving and Defending An Axiology of the Will To Power", Alvin Plantinga, Eric Steinhart, Evolution and Truth, John Wilkins, Nietzsche's Perspectivist Theory of Truth, Perspectivism, Theories of Truth No Comments »A Brief Overview Of My Dissertation
November 7th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Nietzsche’s writings on morality are famously provocative and controversial. His criticisms of morality in both theory and practice are so extensive and rhetorically scathing that many philosophers assume that he can offer little or nothing constructive to moral philosophy. Additionally, his glorification of the will to power sounds prima facie like a celebration of excessively [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Autonomy, Contemporary Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Duty, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Featured, Historical Ethics, Historical Philosophy, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Morality, New Atheism, Nietzsche, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Virtues Tags: "On Deriving and Defending An Axiology of the Will To Power", Absolutism, Christian Morality, Consequentialism, Dissertation, Duty, Happiness, Heteronomy, Immoralism, Indirect Consequentialism, Instrumental Goods, Intrinsic Goods, Jonathan Haidt, Kantian Moral Philosophy, Moral Absolutism, Pleasure, Self-Overcoming, Virtue, Will to Power 4 Comments »Reading Nietzsche Post-Modernly
November 6th, 2009 Daniel Fincke This week from Chaos Pet: And find out why Nester is frustrated with time travel here. Your Thoughts?
Posted in Comic Strips, Hilarious, Nietzsche, Philosophy Tags: Chaos Pet, Postmodernism, Thus Spoke Zarathustra No Comments »Happy Birthday Friedrich Nietzsche!
October 15th, 2009 Daniel Fincke You would have been 165 today. It is a shame you didn’t make it past 55 and even a greater shame that your mind didn’t make it past 44. There was still so much to be clarified, developed, and newly discovered.
My Thoughts On Blasphemy Day
September 30th, 2009 Daniel Fincke So today is “Blasphemy Day.” Here’s what it’s about: Blasphemy Day International is an international campaign seeking to establish September 30th as a national day to promote free speech and stand up in a show of solidarity for the freedom to mock and insult religion without fear of murder, violence, and reprisal. It is the [...]
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 Yearning Animal
September 21st, 2009 Daniel Fincke Greta Christina takes down the argument that the desire for God proves there is a God to fulfill it out there to be discovered: Someone (I can’t remember who now) recently pointed out that the “no atheists in foxholes” argument, even if it were true (which it’s not), isn’t an argument for God’s existence. It’s actually [...]
Posted in Arguments for the Existence of God, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Featured, Music, Music Videos, Nietzsche, Psychology, Videos Tags: Atheists In Foxholes, Augustine, Bernard Reginster, David Byrne, God-Shaped Hole, Greta Christina, Happiness, Heaven, Longing, Self-Overcoming, Talking Heads, Will to Power, Yearning No Comments »Also Sprach Zarathustra: School Performance Style
September 21st, 2009 Daniel Fincke Stirring: Your Thoughts?
Posted in Film, Music, Music Videos, Nietzsche, Unintentional Comedy, Videos Tags: Also Sprach Zarathustra, Strauss No Comments »A Little Nietzsche For Kanye
September 14th, 2009 Daniel Fincke One last Kanye thought for the morning, before I return to my work for the day. From Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra part II, section 3, comes his prescription in a nutshell for how to be a Beyonce or a Barack rather than a Kanye or a Wilson: if we learn better to experience joy, we [...]
Posted in Barack Obama, Historical Philosophy, News Discussion, Nietzsche Tags: Beyonce, Joe Wilson, Kanye West, MTV, Taylor Swift, VMA No Comments »Kanye Disses Taylor Swift (On The Pusillanimity Of Joe Wilson And Kanye West Vs. The Magnanimity Of Beyonce Knowles And Barack Obama)
September 13th, 2009 Daniel Fincke So last night, Kanye proved once and for all that he has no class through a single action which demonstrated an unbelievable lack of grace. Taylor Swift looked so demoralized and her speech had been all about feelings of being surprised to be accepted by this particular voting bloc, when he insulted her by implying [...]
Posted in 2008 Presidential Race, Barack Obama, Culture, Ethics, Featured, Music, News Discussion, Nietzsche, Politics, Pop Culture, Racism, Videos, Virtues Tags: Agon, Agonistic Democracy, Barack Obama, Beyonce, Cruelty, Ignobility, Illegal Immigration, Joe Wilson, Kanye West, Magnanimity, MTV, Nobility, Obama’s Health Care Speech, Pettiness, Pusillanimity, Rancor, Ressentiment, Taylor Swift, Vices, Video Music Awards, VMAs, Xenophobia 24 Comments »Logicomix: The Graphic Novelization Of The Life Of Bertrand Russell
September 3rd, 2009 Daniel Fincke That illustration comes from Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth about Bertrand Russell’s real life philosophical adventures. The Independent’s writes: The subject of the newest comic-strip sensation, though, might still raise eyebrows: it’s the story of the quest for the foundation of mathematics, starring and narrated by Bertrand Russell, the British logician, philosopher, mathematician, reformer, pacifist, [...]
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