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PZ Myers fisks Nicholas Wade’s review of Richard Dawkins’s The Greatest Show on Earth, in which Wade gets pedantic about a distinction between facts and theories which only shows his own ignorance about how the two relate to each other. Along the way Wade badly invokes the philosophy of science. First off Myers quotes Stephen [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Richard Dawkins’
On Facts, Theories, And The Philosophy Of Science
October 9th, 2009 
Daniel Fincke Why Do Atheism Rates Correlate With Education Levels?
October 9th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Carlo Strenger argues the case that the statistical correlation between increased education and increased rates of atheism is not a coincidence or a matter of conformity for the sake of status among intellectuals: Nick Spencer shows that there is indeed a correlation between educational level and atheism. In the US this phenomenon is far more [...]
Richard Dawkins’s Speech Awarding Bill Maher
October 5th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Here’s the video of Dawkins balancing honoring Bill Maher with recognizing his disagreements with Maher’s views on medicine. And then going on to give a solid speech about both the virtues of Maher’s work and the religulousness exposed in Maher’s film. Warning, there’s an annoying ringing sound and some bizarre burbling noises throughout the video. [...]
Maher And Dawkins During The AAI
October 3rd, 2009 Daniel Fincke Last night, Bill Maher received an award named for Richard Dawkins and before arriving at the awards show to accept the award, he was on TV live with Dawkins while the conference watched. And, btw, in this video, Thomas Friedman has a remark that I think is one of the most insightful you’ll hear about [...]
The Atheist Bus Campaign
September 30th, 2009 Daniel Fincke This video is 8 months old and while the news isn’t as current, but there are great little discussions the bus ad’s genesis,the strategy in choosing its message, charges against atheists of militancy, and, finally, the question of why the religious so frequently take offense. Your Thoughts?
The Atheism Tapes: Richard Dawkins Interviewed By Jonathan Miller
September 24th, 2009 Daniel Fincke An interview from the time of the beginning of the Iraq war. He talks about the connection between religion and people’s tendency to personify evil and personify good and religion and whether such religious thinking is partly to blame for Bush’s and Blair’s judgments. Dawkins discusses how at 9 the plurality of religions initially led [...]
Posted in Atheism, Evolution, Videos 
Tags: Darwinism, Jonathan Miller, Richard Dawkins 
No Comments »And They Say The Atheists Are Angry…
September 23rd, 2009 Daniel Fincke There are a million Richard Dawkins interviews out there and in the next few weeks it looks like we’ll be seeing a million more with the release of The Greatest Show On Earth. This one is worth highlighting simply because the interviewer shows an astonishing hostility to the very idea that Dawkins would dare reject [...]
Daily Hilarity: The Dog Delusion
September 21st, 2009 Daniel Fincke (J-Walk Blog) Richard Dawkins’s hotly anticipated The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution hits shelves tomorrow! Happy reading everybody! Your Thoughts?
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 »Judge This: Is It Wrong To Rip The Creationist Introduction Out Of Ray Comfort’s Propaganda Version Of The Origin Of Species?
September 18th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Creationist Ray Comfort has put together a version of The Origin of Species which contains an introduction (which you can read here) which falsely blames Nazism on Darwin, promotes creationist pseudoscience, and lies about the scientific credibility of evolution. Yesterday I relayed a video in which Kirk Cameron touts plans to distribute 50,000 copies of [...]
‘Nuff Said Award Winner: A Daily Dish Reader
September 17th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Karen Armstrong has recently written a book defending an apophatic God against both atheists and religious literalists. Recently she and Richard Dawkins were both asked by the Wall Street Journal to write essays on where evolution leaves God. In reply to Andrew Sullivan’s accommodationism, which came out in his discussions of this debate, one of [...]
Posted in 'Nuff Said, Andrew Sullivan, Atheism, God, New Atheism, Religion Tags: Accommodationism, Karen Armstrong, Richard Dawkins 1 Comment »Dawkins Discusses Evolution On Al-Jazeera English
September 17th, 2009 Daniel Fincke via AtheistMediaBlog. Your Thoughts?
Posted in Biology, Evolution, Religion and Science, Science, Videos Tags: Richard Dawkins No Comments »Are The New Atheists The New Prophets?
September 14th, 2009 Daniel Fincke PZ Myers, a prominent “New Atheist” reports on his being designated a prophet: Michael Dowd, the peculiar author of Thank God for Evolution, has a strange podcast up that promotes the New Atheists because they are the new prophets — we’re telling it like it is, and religious folks need more of that. He also urges people [...]
Posted in Atheism, New Atheism, PZ Myers, Religion Tags: Michael Dowd, Pharyngula, Richard Dawkins, Thank God For Evolution No Comments »Top 10 Favorite Atheist/Rationalist YouTube Channels
September 12th, 2009 Daniel Fincke This last three months I’ve spent blogging, I’ve learned my away around the atheist internet and been delighted by how many wonderful resources there are, between websites, blogs, videos, discussion forums, etc. And not only the videos but some of the video channels run by extraordinarily creative or at least patiently argumentative creators of original [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Comedy, Creationism, Cultural Secularism, Education, Hilarious, Mr. Deity, News Discussion, Parody, Pat Condell, Political Secularism, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion, Satire, Secularism, Videos Tags: 10 Ten Rationalist Video Channels, Derren Brown, Edward Current, GoGreen18, Laci Green, Non Stamp Collector, Qualia Soup, Richard Dawkins, RichardDawkins.net, The Atheist Experience, Thunderf00t, Top 10 Atheist Video Channels, Top 10 Lists, Top 10 YouTube Videos, Youtube, ZJemptv 19 Comments »Richard Dawkins Introduces The Greatest Show On Earth
September 3rd, 2009 Daniel Fincke He says his other books have been about evolution but have assumed its truth. This book is about the evidence for evolution: Credit to Too Many Tribbles for a great scoop. Your Thoughts?
Dennett On Evolution
September 2nd, 2009 Daniel Fincke This is a terrific video in which Dennett and Dawkins get further into the weeds discussing the dynamics of evolution, responsibility, how you can make living things out of dead stuff and conscious ones out of unconscious ones, the wonder of natural processes, the idea that we have souls—but they’re made of neurons, and many [...]
Posted in Biology, Daniel Dennett, Evolution, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Teleology, Teleology Tags: Charles Darwin, Meaning, Mind, Richard Dawkins No Comments »The Responsibility Of Religious Leaders For The Ignorance Of Religious Laypeople
August 25th, 2009 Daniel Fincke A teaser excerpt from Richard Dawkins’s upcoming defense of evolution is up online. His boldest claim—evolution deniers are as bad as Holocaust deniers. This book is necessary. I shall be using the name “historydeniers” for those people who deny evolution: who believe the world’s age is measured in thousands of years rather than thousands of [...]
Dawkins’s Dream: To Persuade Muslim World Of Evolution
August 22nd, 2009 Daniel Fincke Via RichardDawkins.net, comes this piece from The Guardian: None of Professor Dawkins’ books, on evolution as well as religion, has ever been translated into Arabic, and his work has been heavily censored in Turkey. In an interview with The Times, he said that popularising evolution in the Islamic world, where creationist beliefs are strong, was [...]
Not “I’ll Pray For You” But “I Love You”
August 21st, 2009 Daniel Fincke Joe Bob Briggs from The Wittenburg Door visited a convention of atheists last year. The Wittenburg Door is primarily a satire magazine written by Evangelicals with a sense of humor and perspective which I remember fondly from my teen years. So, writing for a “with it” sort of Evangelical publication, Briggs’s barbs at the atheists [...]
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 [...]
When Should A Scientist’s Faith Disqualify Him From Scientific Institutional Authority?
August 18th, 2009 Daniel Fincke In reply to this post addressing previous objections that Wandering Internet Commentator made to me, WIC returns volley (sentences in italics are quotes he has taken from my previous post to him): I anticipated creationists figuring in your reply. The problem is, though, I’m not really sure they’re the best example of religion ‘polluting’ the [...]
Posted in Creationism, Ethics, Evolution, Featured, Francis Collins, New Atheism, Philosophy, PZ Myers, Religion and Science Tags: "The Language of God", Academic Specializations, Bill Clinton, David Heddle, Ethics and Darwinism, Expertise, NIH, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Wendy Wright No Comments »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 »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 »On “Concern-Troll Apologists”
August 11th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Daylight Atheism exposes a disingenuous tactic for addressing atheists: Concern trolling is defined as masquerading as an ally or a friend in order to offer your enemies “helpful advice” that, if taken, would hurt and undermine them. For example, take this condescending report by Zoe Brennan of the U.K. Daily Mail on the summer camp [...]
“Sexpelled: No Intercourse Allowed”
August 7th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Via Dread Tomato Addiction comes this brilliant looking follow up to Ben Stein’s Expelled. RichardDawkins.net explains more about the controversy. A taste: the team has moved on to promoting other theories that they feel are being suppressed by the scientific community. Sexpelled: No Intercourse Allowed tells of how Sex Theory has thrived unchallenged in the [...]
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