Many a religious person defending her own religious beliefs will argue that a given politically, morally, or intellectually unflattering interpretation of her faith is simply not a true representation of her faith. While the question of who has the right or the adequate means to decisively determine with any rational clarity which competing interpretation of any [...]
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Category Archives: Featured
My Perfectionistic, Egoistic AND Universalistic, Indirect Consequentialism (And Contrasts With Other Kinds)
July 25, 2010 – 2:15 pmA consequentialist assesses the ultimate worth of all the various features of our ethical lives according to whether or not they bring about some specific intrinsic good or goods that the consequentialist judges to be of primary value. All the various valuable features of our lives have their ultimate value with respect to how they [...]
Towards Atheistic Religions (Or Away From Them, Depending On How You Define “Religions”)
July 13, 2010 – 10:24 amIn a rare occurrence, I am being taken to task for giving religion too much credit and atheists too little! Here are the offending paragraphs I wrote on Friday: I would say that various practices called religious, if stripped of all their dogmatism, traditionalism, literalism, and authoritarianism, can and do certainly coexist with and complement science [...]
How Our Morality Realizes Our Humanity
July 11, 2010 – 7:21 pmIn 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 [...]
On God As The Source Of Being But Not Of Evil
July 9, 2010 – 11:15 amIntroduction This post is a long one but an important one for understanding what sophisticated Roman Catholic philosophers have traditionally meant when they have said that “God is good” and that the existence of evil is not to be taken as counter-evidence to their belief in God’s goodness. Very often we atheists are dismissed as [...]
On The Intrinsic Connection Between Being And Goodness
July 8, 2010 – 11:00 amAll things, insofar as they are, have goodness. This is because, for any existent thing whatsoever, to be is necessarily better than not being (regardless of whether a given existent thing consciously acknowledges this or is even capable of thinking about it at all). This goodness is partly a function of the fact that every [...]
Do New Atheists Unjustifiably Shirk Their Burden For Evidence?
July 7, 2010 – 2:16 pmMichael 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, [...]
The Harmony Of Humility And Pride
July 5, 2010 – 8:56 pmPreviously I have argued that pride is the proper identification of the self with whatever excellently expresses, manifests, reflects, results from, or causes one’s own excellence. It is only fitting that we feel that we love and admire that which is good and love and admire it more the better it is and less the [...]
Disambiguating Faith: Implicit Faith
July 5, 2010 – 12:58 pmIn last night’s installment of the “Disambiguating Faith” series, I talked about the difference between, on the one hand, volitionally choosing to believe something that is either not rationally warranted or which is positively refuted by the available evidence, and, on the other hand, simply thinking one has rational warrant for one’s belief and yet [...]
Disambiguating Faith: Defending My Definition Of Faith As “Belief Or Trust Beyond Rational Warrant”
July 5, 2010 – 12:32 amLast week I responded to David Crowther’s argument that we should equally consider all beliefs that are not 100% certain to be “faith beliefs”. I argued that the word “belief” already covers the fact that we are fallible human beings and as such even our most nearly 100% certain propositions about the world are always [...]
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