Disambiguating Belief

August 8, 2010 By 3 Comments

Ophelia Benson counters a common and deeply misleading equivocation (one I counter often, but most specifically addressed here and here): Belief is about truth; it equates to”it is true that X”. It is thus cognitive rather than emotive. It seems odd to me to ask if it would be better to believe the things I [...]

Filed Under: Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Faith, Faith, Philosophy Tagged With: , 3 Comments

Disambiguating Faith: Why Faith Is Unethical (Or “In Defense Of The Ethical Obligation To Always Proportion Belief To Evidence”)

June 21, 2010 By 3 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, I argued that there was a real distinction between “lacking a belief in any God or gods” on the one hand and “believing there is no God (or gods)” on the other hand.  Primarily I saw the heart of the distinction as resting with the difference between on the one [...]

Filed Under: Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Authority, Autonomy, Contemporary Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Disambiguating Faith, Duty, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Evidence, Faith, Featured, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Law, Morality, My Theory of Morality's Rational Foundations and Nature, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Political Secularism, Politics, Rationalism, Religion, Religious Extremism, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Skepticism, Teleology, Virtues, Why I Am Not A Christian Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Distinguishing The Atheist Agnostic, The Theist Gnostic, The Atheist Gnostic, and The Theist Agnostic

October 8, 2009 By 22 Comments

Peter Brietbart defines and schematizes distinctions between different kinds of atheists, theists, agnostics, and gnostics which have been growing in popularity in recent years.  Rather than misleadingly defining atheists as exclusively those who claim to know there are no gods, theists as those who claim to know there is a god (or gods) and agnostics [...]

Filed Under: Atheism, Epistemology, Faith, Featured, God, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , 22 Comments

Some Preliminary Conceptual Distinctions Related To Belief And (Dis)Belief

October 7, 2009 By 4 Comments

Spootmeister, a Camels With Hammers reader whose advice on videos has led to many a great find that we have been able to feature here, has finally produced his first video on atheism and theism.  It’s an interesting video in which he tries to make several key distinctions between types of beliefs and types of [...]

Filed Under: Atheism, Epistemology, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Philosophy, Videos Tagged With: , , , , 4 Comments