Q&A with Leah of Unequally Yoked<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"One of my fellow bloggers in Patheos' atheist portal - Leah of Unequally Yoked - suggested a little while ago that we do side-by-side Q&A posts. I\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2012\/04\/qa-with-leah-of-unequally-yoked.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Q&A with Leah of Unequally Yoked\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of my fellow bloggers in Patheos' atheist portal - Leah of Unequally Yoked - suggested a little while ago that we do side-by-side Q&A posts. I\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2012\/04\/qa-with-leah-of-unequally-yoked.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Love, Joy, Feminism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-04-05T19:02:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-04-05T19:42:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/files\/2011\/11\/Header8.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Libby Anne\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Libby Anne\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2012\/04\/qa-with-leah-of-unequally-yoked.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2012\/04\/qa-with-leah-of-unequally-yoked.html\",\"name\":\"Q&A with Leah of Unequally Yoked\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-04-05T19:02:18+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-04-05T19:42:21+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#\/schema\/person\/fae465c1bbb5cbdf26c9e73bfd1b73d2\"},\"description\":\"One of my fellow bloggers in Patheos' atheist portal - Leah of Unequally Yoked - suggested a little while ago that we do side-by-side Q&A posts. 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{"id":2910,"date":"2012-04-05T15:02:18","date_gmt":"2012-04-05T19:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=2910"},"modified":"2012-04-05T15:42:21","modified_gmt":"2012-04-05T19:42:21","slug":"qa-with-leah-of-unequally-yoked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2012\/04\/qa-with-leah-of-unequally-yoked.html","title":{"rendered":"Q&A with Leah of Unequally Yoked"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

One of my fellow bloggers in Patheos\u2019 atheist portal \u2013 Leah of Unequally Yoked<\/a> \u2013 suggested a little while ago that we do side-by-side Q&A posts. I took her up on the offer, and even let her write the questions (two blog-related, two personal, and two wacky)! Her\u00a0answers are running here on Love, Joy, Feminism and mine are running on Unequally Yoked (click here to read them!<\/a>).<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/p>\n

Q: What\u2019s the target audience for your blog, what do you try to share with them? <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Leah: <\/em>I write for a mixed audience of Christians, atheists, you name it! \u00a0I started writing while I was dating a nice Catholic boy, and I was trying to crowdsource our debates. \u00a0I ended up learning that I\u2019d often been attacking a straw-man version of Christianity (albeit a strawman that some Christians accepted). \u00a0And I didn\u2019t have that coherent an idea of what my philosophy entailed, beside disbelief in god(s). \u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, I talk through a lot of moral thought experiments and questions about how to deal with uncertainty. \u00a0And I try to make it easier for both sides to engage with the best arguments the other side has to offer and skip past some of the confusion. \u00a0Questioning from sharp commenters forced me to refine my ideas and keeps me honest.<\/p>\n

Q: What are a few posts you recommend for a new visitor?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Leah: <\/em>As you might expect, my \u201cAbout<\/a>\u201d page is a good place to start, but you might also be interested in a summary of why I find religious apologetics unconvincing<\/a>, some ranting about the way evolutionary psycology pushes the data<\/a> beyond what they actually describe, and why I think blasphemy for the sake of upsetting people is bad strategy and bad ethics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One kind of unique part of the blog is under my Ideological Turing Test<\/a> tab.\u00a0Last summer I ran a competition where atheists and Christians tried to see if they could imitate each other, which turned out to be a really fun way to check how good we were at imagining how the other side thinks. \u00a0Some of the ways people got caught as impostures were surprising!<\/p>\n

Q: What kind of philosophy do you adhere to? <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Leah: <\/em>I\u2019ve got a lot of Aristotelian sympathies (I\u2019ve been told I have more than are good for an atheist). \u00a0The best word for what I am is probably \u2018Virtue Ethicist<\/a>.\u2019\u00a0 I think about moral choices not in terms of outcomes (consequentialism) or delineated rules (deontology), but in terms of whether the choice reflects the moral character of the person I ought to be. \u00a0Every selfish act doesn\u2019t just harm someone else, it warps my spirit and builds up bad habits.<\/p>\n

Q: What are some of your other interests that don\u2019t make it onto the blog?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Leah: <\/em>Err, well, I tend to subject my blog readers to a lot more costuming mockups and epidemiology factoids than you might expect. \u00a0I\u2019m just out of college and I\u2019ve been having fun finding new ways to learn and keep my mind sharp. \u00a0Currently, I\u2019m taking ASL lessons and I\u2019ve been learning programming through Udacity (http:\/\/www.udacity.com\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Q: If you could timetravel forward 10-15 years, what social or political development would you be most excited to check in on?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Leah: <\/em>I want to see how we end up treating online anonymity. \u00a0There have been a lot of attempts to set up reputation economies where your peers rate your trustworthiness, but none of them have worked very well. \u00a0(One one site, some users formed a protection racket that demanded money in exchange for not downvoting you en masse). \u00a0The online world is more and more enmeshed with the \u2018real\u2019 one, and we\u2019re going to need to find ways to protect anonymous speech, but preserve accountability.<\/p>\n

Q: What text do you wish served as the holy book for a widespread religion?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Leah:<\/em> I feel like the easiest answer is Shakespeare, because there\u2019s so much to draw on and this hypothetical religion would be better able to face new questions. \u00a0And using a corpus of plays would put really interesting questions about identity and authenticity right at the heart of their faith.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"