Ok, so the fact that it took me the entire day on Saturday to write my coming out post should have tipped me off that it was going to be hard to respond quickly and efficiently to some of the follow-up questions you guys have. I’m making a list here of the most common posts people seem to want so I can focus on them. The second list is some of the posts I want to write that are going to get interspersed in with the more meaty ones about conversion so I can stay sane and you won’t lack for discussion of medical ethics and statistics. The second list is more for me, so the only comments on this post should be mentioning a topic you think I haven’t listed that should be high priority or mentioning a facet of a topic I have listed that you want to make sure I cover. There should definitely not be any simply “Yay” or “Grrr” messages in this thread, since that will make it harder for me to scan through and find the content-y posts. Here’s the top five, as far as I can tell:
- Wait, so who the heck are you? – Basically a clipshow post that lets new readers have a better sense of some things I think now or beliefs I abandoned
- How’d you get from “Morality loves me” to Catholicism? – Why did my change of heart re: God lead me to this particular God and structure. (This may get split into “Why not Deism?” and “Ok, but even granting that, why the heck Catholicism?”)
- But isn’t Catholicism awful? How bad does it’s actions have to be before it self-disqualifies? – I think the title kinda says it all, but I’m disappointed that almost no one’s brought up the Cadaver Synod.
- So how much of this do you agree with now? What are you gonna do about it? – People have been bringing up the metaphysical (transubstantiation), ethical (queer folks like me), and structural (hierarchy). I can’t cover everything, but I’ll do bits that will hopefully give you a broader sense of how I’m approaching this stuff.
- Isn’t it awfully weird to be blogging this? How is this going to work? – Not as much as you’d think, but let’s chat.
Here are some things you’ll be hearing about whether you ask for them or not:
- the most thought-provoking blogs that critiqued my post
- vaccine-ethics in Pakistan
- transhumanism and extreme body modification
- gender and the Olympics
- the rest of the Turing Test stats
- talking about soteriology and epistemology by talking about math
- prayer hijinks caused by loving math too much
I’m not going to make any promises about how I mix list one and list two. But I will be trying to get to both at a pace that isn’t too torturous for you or for me.