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... Read more
I really want to thank everyone for the tone of the replies so far. Some of the comment threads elsewhere on the internet have gotten a little unpleasant, but over here, it looks like the regular readers are taking this with mostly civil anger. Which is a totally reasonable response. If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know I have a lot more respect for people who do pick fights when the stakes are high... Read more
Now that the news has gone up on some of the other atheist blogs, some people in those threads who haven’t really read this blog before are kind of understandably flabbergasted. What bothers me though, are the some of the “I can’t imagine why she would do something so stupid” or “this is totally incomprehensible, there’s nothing she could have found compelling” comments. The folks writing those posts are speculating about what could have caused this, since it wasn’t data,... Read more
I really appreciate all the warm messages of support that I’m getting in the announcement post from this morning, but I’m concerned that the critical comments are going to get buried, so I’m using this post to highlight the ones I’ve responded to so far. If I haven’t gotten to yours yet, and still haven’t in a few days, feel free to still ping and remind me. I may be waiting because I’ve got a post lined up that responds... Read more
Update: I’m starting to work through the comments section and respond here. For several years, a lot of my friends have been telling me I had an inconsistent and unsustainable philosophy. “A virtue ethicist atheist whose transhumanism seems to be rooted in dualism? Who won’t shut up about moral lapses as wounds to the soul and keeps trying to convince us it’s better to be sinned against than sinning? Who has started talking about mortifying her pride and keeps pulling... Read more
I have a somewhat lengthy post lined up for tomorrow, so, for today, just an amusing story. A group of my friends are playing Dungeons and Dragons, and recently fessed up that I feature in the backstory of one of the villainous characters. One of my friends is playing as a pyromaniac fallen paladin (in DnD, a Paladin is a lawful good character class that are holy knights, consecrated to a particular god in the DnD pantheon). But why is... Read more
Gilbert of The Last Conformer was one of the two all-around winners of this year’s Ideological Turing Test, and now he’s got two posts up laying out his approach to passing for an atheist and winkling out impersonators in both rounds. I really enjoy the behind the scenes looks everyone is giving us with these follow-up essays. So, without further ado: Gilbert’s writing strategy: My strategy was a compromise. From my honest answers I subtracted the parts that wouldn’t fly... Read more
Jacob of The Thoughtful Atheist and Matt of Soul Sprawl have both written up their thoughts on playing in the Ideological Turing Test. Jacob (entries A12 and C1) – Ideological Turing Test Complete! … you failed First, a brief description of my strategy: for my Athiest entry, I tried to describe reality as I see it if Atheism is true. I can’t really be upset that most people found it not very compelling- I don’t find it very compelling myself.... Read more
— 1 — The Turing Test answers have been revealed, but there’s more analysis (and thus, more graphs!) to come over the weekend. Statistical fun times will pause on Monday, though, for a special announcement. — 2 — It’s been a while since I mentioned my overcoming-gnostic-hatred-of-the-physical-through-cooking project, but it is still ongoing. This week I made the Easy Little Bread recipe from 101 Cookbooks and it was indeed both easy and little. I didn’t have any rolled oats, so... Read more
There’s more quantitative Turing analysis to come, but, in the meantime, you may want to check out two posts Eve Tushnet has written on her experience reading the entries and writing her own. Ideological Turing Test Results–Sin makes me stupid! This is a thing where atheists and Christians attempt to answer questions both from their own POV/beliefs and from the “other side.” The stated objective, per Leah, is to give “a nice way to see how well both sides understand... Read more
Unequally Yoked
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