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This semester I have been teaching Philosophy of Religion using John Shook’s superbly thorough, systematic, incisive, and critical summation of the arguments for and against the existence of God, The God Debates: A 21st Century Guide for Atheists and Believers (and Everyone in Between). The book is impressive enough that I would give it the [...]
Archive for the ‘Metaphysics’ Category
John Shook: Proving God’s Existence Is Impossible
November 17th, 2011 
Daniel Fincke 
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, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion 
14 Comments »Defending Philosophy 1: A Reply To Dr. Coyne
October 29th, 2011 Daniel Fincke A little Nietzsche to set the tone: Of the friend Our faith in others betrays wherein we would dearly like to have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer. And often with our love we only want to leap over envy. And often we attack and make an enemy in order [...]
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, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Historical Philosophy, Historical Philosophy, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Science, Science, Science 94 Comments »“Not Everything In Life Is Logical”
October 24th, 2011 Daniel Fincke When we rationalists, naturalists, and other assorted atheists insist that no one should form beliefs that disregard logic and evidence, the defenders of faith often tell us that “Not everything in life is logical”, or use some variant of this phrase. What might they mean by this? Where is their confusion exactly and how best [...]
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, Astronomy, Astronomy, Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Biology, Biology, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Evolution, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Physics, Physics, Rationalism, Religion, Religion and Science, Science, Science, Secularism, Technology, Technology 
Tags: "Not Everything In Life Is Logical", Logic, Naturalism 17 Comments »Documentary with Stephen Hawking about Whether God Created the Universe
October 22nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Your Thoughts?
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, Atheism, Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Physics, Physics, Religion, Religion and Science, Science, Science 2 Comments »A Debate About The Wisdom of Trying To Deconvert People
October 20th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Jaime: So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how best to debate the existence of God with religious believers… Kelly: Why would you do that? Jaime: Do what? Kelly: Debate the existence of God with religious believers. What’s the point in that? Jaime: What do you mean, “what’s the point?” We live in the [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, 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, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Authority, Authority, Autonomy, Autonomy, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Benedict XVI, Religion, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church, Secularism Tags: Debate With Believers, Deconverting, Why Debate Believers? 14 Comments »Take Philosophy Seriously (Tip 7 of 10 For Reaching Out To Religious Believers)
October 8th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Top Ten Tips For Reaching Out To Religious Believers 1. Don’t Call Religious Believers Stupid. 2. Make Believers Stay on Topic During Debates. 3. Don’t Tell Religious Believers What They “Really Believe”. 4. Clarify What Kinds of Evidence Warrant What Kinds of Beliefs. 5. Help Break The Spell Of Religious Reverence. 6. Don’t Demonize Religious [...]
The Facts About Intrinsic and Instrumental Goods and The Cultural Construction of Intrinsic Goods
September 23rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke In this post I want to say something which many would find radical and would assume is impossible and clearly false: I want to say that it can be a fact whether something is intrinsically good in some particular respect, for some particular being. A major part of this requires that I distinguish another kind of [...]
What It Means To Me To Be Free
September 13th, 2011 Daniel Fincke I think that in some meaningful ways, human beings are free. In a couple of previous posts and in subsequent comments in their comments sections, I have been arguing for the ways that we are not free in a libertarian sense, i.e., our actions are not “undetermined” by forces outside our fundamental control. We are [...]
Posted in Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Ethics, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Mind Tags: Free Will, Libertarian Free Will, Mind, Mind/Body, Self, Soft Determinism, Soft Determinism's Free Will 5 Comments »What I Think About The Existence of God
September 2nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke In my “What I Think About” series, I am providing a compendium for my blogging up until now on key issues in atheism, philosophy of religion, and moral philosophy. In each post, I provide a short summary of my key positions and then offer links to the posts where I argue in greater depth for [...]
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 »Some Explanations for Our Universe
August 5th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart The following is a quick-and-dirty survey of the current literature on explanations of our universe: It is widely thought that our universe is highly unusual. It has certain features that make it lovely. Note that the term “lovely” is merely a term of art. It has no connotations beyond designating that our [...]
On the Dangers of Inflation
August 3rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart It’s been great to get feedback from so many readers! I appreciate the time and effort you’ve taken here. One shared concern is that I’m trying to compel people to believe some abstruse doctrine. I’m not — at least not yet! All I’ve said so far is that an atheist has no [...]
An Atheistic Evolutionary Metaphysics
August 2nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart Here’s an argument for an evolutionary metaphysics: (1) Our universe is very complex and congenial (it is lawful; it starts in a low entropy state; its laws are finely tuned for the planetary evolution of life, etc.). (2) Anything that is very complex and congenial requires an explanation. (3) The best explanations [...]
Disambiguating Faith: Naturalism, Materialism, Empiricism, And Wrong, Weak, And Unsupported Beliefs Are All Not Necessarily Faith Positions
August 2nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Here at Camels With Hammers Eric Steinhart recently accused popular atheism with being guilty of faith in versions of naturalism, materialism, and empiricism on the grounds that their particular positions are “based on weak arguments or no arguments at all”. But believing a position based on a weak argument is not the same thing as believing [...]
An Example of Atheist Faith
August 2nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart Here’s a nice statement of atheistic faith by Carl Sagan: “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” (1980: 1). Such a statement is as faith-based as any statement in the Bible or in Christian theology. After all, it’s just a mirror-image of the statement that God [...]
Evolutionary Metaphysics is not Faith
August 1st, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart I’ve advanced this thesis in some previous posts: every question that used to be answered by appealing to God can be answered better by appealing to some form of evolution. It’s hard for me to understand why that slogan would be a matter of faith. The fact that some thesis is speculative [...]
Why Atheists are Obligated to Hold Positive Speculative Beliefs
July 26th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart Many atheists come to atheism through skepticism. And sometimes that skepticism is radical. It’s hostile to anything that doesn’t meet the alleged standards of our best science. It’s hostile to any theory that is merely speculative. Of course, to be consistent, these radical skeptics ought to apply their skepticism to themselves. If [...]
On Evolutionary Atheism
July 25th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart Here’s a nice way to deny theism by offering a positive alternative: Every question that used to be answered by appealing to God can be answered by appealing to some form of evolution. I doubt that any theists would agree with that statement. And it’s worth stressing that biological evolution by natural [...]
Monotheism and Polytheism
July 12th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart Monotheists believe in one God. Most Christians, despite various problems with the Trinity, say they believe that there is exactly one God. But why do they say this? The main arguments for the existence of God are all compatible with the existence of many Gods. They are all compatible with polytheism. Consider [...]
The History of the Singularity
July 6th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart Many philosophers portray the cosmic process as an ascending curve of positivity. As time goes forward, the quantities of intelligence, power, or value are always increasing. These progressive philosophies have sometimes been religious and sometimes secular. Secular versions of progress have sometimes been political and sometimes technological. Technological versions have sometimes invoked [...]
It's Atheism, Not Adeism
June 26th, 2011 Daniel Fincke As I have expressed a number of times in the past, I am a gnostic atheist. I am an atheist in the sense that I neither believe in nor worship, appease, pray to, or in any other way imagine myself to interact with personal gods. Simply lacking such belief and refraining from related practices is [...]
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, Featured, God, God, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion Tags: Agnostic Atheist, Agnosticism, Deism, Gnostic Atheist 12 Comments »Uploading and Religion: Criticism of Stross
June 23rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart Charlie Stross, author of the highly-praised novel Accelerando, has written an interesting skeptical article on the technological singularity. The article makes many good points — except when it comes to “religion”. When it comes to “religion”, specifically religion and mind-uploading, what he says is remarkably silly. Here it is: Uploading … is [...]
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