Disambiguating Faith: Faith There's A God vs. Faith In God

March 13, 2012 By 28 Comments

Recently I posted a brief overview of my “Disambiguating Faith” series in which I root out each equivocation used to justify faith one by one. In the overview I defined faith over the course of several paragraphs with links to previous posts in the series. But the core of my definition was as follows: Faith [...]

Filed Under: Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Faith, Faith Tagged With: , , , , , 28 Comments

Faith In A Comprehensive Nutshell (With Links)

March 4, 2012 By 8 Comments

Every now and then it is valuable to recap. In the comments section of another post this morning I was asked for a definition of faith. For a couple of years I wrote a long series of posts called “Disambiguating Faith” in which I meticulously distinguished the vice of faith that makes it problematic in [...]

Filed Under: Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Faith, Faith 8 Comments

Thoughts and Questions About Obama

December 11, 2011 By 8 Comments

Before Obama, America had not elected as president a legislator, either a congressperson or a senator, for decades. We have consistently preferred governors, vice presidents, and generals. Now in electing Obama we have a legislator, law professor, and grass roots organizer. We have someone whose skills are building consensus, managing intricate relationships with allies and enemies, [...]

Filed Under: 2008 Presidential Race, 2008 Presidential Race, Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Examining Conceptions of God's Attributes, Goodness, Knowability, and Existence, Faith, Faith, God, God, Philosophy Of Religion, Politics, Politics, Problem of Evil 8 Comments

The "Moral Argument" For Free Will Is A Morally Troubling, Hypocritical, Faith Position

September 9, 2011 By 25 Comments

Many who believe that we have free will are what philosophers call “libertarians”. These are not necessarily libertarians in the political sense but in a metaphysical sense. Libertarians conceive of free will as incompatible with determinism. Their notion is that to the extent that our actions are determined by forces or factors which are beyond [...]

Filed Under: Autonomy, Autonomy, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Ethics, Ethics, Faith, Faith, Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, My Theory of Morality's Rational Foundations and Nature, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy Tagged With: , , , , 25 Comments

What I Think About Faith And Religion

September 2, 2011 By 12 Comments

Yesterday, I wrote a post to orient readers to my views on how values can be matters of fact. This afternoon I wrote 6 more such posts, delineating my positions on a number of other key topics which can serve as introductions and reference guides (with links) to my thinking. They are on the topics of the [...]

Filed Under: Atheism, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Faith, Faith, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism 12 Comments

Disambiguating Faith: What About The Good Things People Call "Faith"? (Or "Why I Take Such A Strong Semantic Stand Against The Word Faith")

August 5, 2011 By 9 Comments

Goeff has an interesting reply to my post about how faith poisons religion.  In that post I talked about how religion is a vehicle for many people to get many good things.  Then I put the blame on faith for making it so religion does an inadequate job of providing those goods the best it [...]

Filed Under: Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Faith, Faith, Featured 9 Comments

Disambiguating Faith: How Religious Beliefs Become Specifically *Faith* Beliefs

August 5, 2011 By 4 Comments

Faith is the deliberate will to believe, in advance of all future evidence and investigation, what one perceives to be either unsupported by evidence or even outright undermined by evidence. In this way faith is essentially a matter of will and not just belief.  Simply having a belief that is unsupported or undermined by evidence [...]

Filed Under: Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Faith, Faith, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Philosophy Of Religion, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religion Tagged With: 4 Comments

Disambiguating Faith: How Faith Poisons Religion

August 4, 2011 By 8 Comments

There are many wonderful parts of life that billions of people experience through a religious framework, at least partially to their benefit. Spiritual experiences mean a lot to many people and many people interpret their spiritual experience within the symbols, concepts, rituals, metaphysics, and community of their religious group. Rituals enrich people’s lives by giving [...]

Filed Under: Atheism, Atheism, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Ethics, Ethics, Evidence, Evidence, Faith, Faith, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Vices, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Religion, Skepticism, Skepticism 8 Comments

Disambiguating Faith: How Just Opposing Faith, In Principle, Means You Actually Don't Have Faith, In Practice

August 2, 2011 By 7 Comments

Eric writes: Popular atheism in America celebrates versions of naturalism, materialism, empiricism, and so on, that are often based on weak arguments or even on no arguments at all. Popular atheism in America is already faith – and I’m sympathetic to the Christians who refer to it as such. Unfortunately, popular atheism is often just as [...]

Filed Under: Atheism, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Faith, Faith, Featured, Religion, Religion 7 Comments

Contra-Steinhart: Why We Should Not Identify As "Evolutionists"

July 31, 2011 By 5 Comments

While I agree with Eric Steinhart’s claims that atheists need to take metaphysics seriously and while I would be open to considering evolutionary models for answering metaphysical, ethical, and cosmological questions if they are promising, below I am going to briefly surmise several serious reservations I have to Eric’s suggestions that we ditch the term [...]

Filed Under: Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Biology, Biology, Cosmology, Cosmology, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Evolution, Evolution, Faith, Faith, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Science, Secularism 5 Comments