— 1 — Sign-ups for the Ideological Turing Test are now closed. I’ve emailed all the participants and they’re hard at work on their entries. Because of the number of submissions, I couldn’t contact everyone who signed up to confirm they were not participating. Later today, I’ll have a link to a sample ballot, and I’d appreciate your feedback on any demographic questions you want me to ask. — 2 — Remember last weekend, when I mentioned that JT Eberhard... Read more
Mark Shea is in agreement with Rod Dreher that Obama and the Dems are mounting a serious assault on the religious liberty of military chaplains. Quoth Dreher (quoting the news first): The Obama administration “strongly objects” to provisions in a House defense authorization bill that would prohibit the use of military property for same-sex “marriage or marriage-like” ceremonies, and protect military chaplains from negative repercussions for refusing to perform ceremonies that conflict with their beliefs, according to the Office of... Read more
Patheos blogger Thomas McDonald of God and the Machine is horrified by the FDA’s recommendation to approve Truvada (an antiretroviral cocktail) as preventative treatment for HIV. When people use the prophylactic regime, their chances of contracting HIV are reduced by 50-75%. As far as I can tell, these are the ‘actual use’ numbers. With perfect use, the chance of infection goes down to pretty much zero. This is why, in affluent countries with good health care services, there’s virtually no... Read more
Thanks for all your feedback on picking questions for the Turing Test. This year the slate of questions for Atheists and Christians will be identical. Everyone will answer the following questions: When (if ever) have you deferred to your philosophical or theological system over your intuitions? Are there people whose opinions on morality you trust more than your own? How do you recognize them? How is trusting them different than trusting someone’s opinion on physics? Can you name any works... Read more
JT Eberhard of Freethought Blogs has some as-of-yet unspecified project in the works, and he’s put out a request for help: I need to know what arguments you’ve heard for god’s existence. Which one, in particular, would you like to see me take a swing at? That sounds like a job for… the religiously diverse, scrappy, mostly well behaved commentariat of Unequally Yoked! JT is accepting requests all weekend, but, since he hasn’t described the project, I don’t know exactly what he’s... Read more
— 1 — The Ideological Turing Test for Religion is gearing up for another go round. It’s a contest where Atheists and Christians test how well they understand each other. Contestants try to write from the perspective of the other side, and the readers see if they can tell true from false. We’re finalizing the list of questions this weekend, so please do weigh in on what kinds of prompts would elicit very different responses from atheists and Christians. —... Read more
I want to get these settled so people can sign up to participate in the Ideological Turing Test and start doing their homework. I want to have three to four questions total, and, based on previous comment thread discussions, these two have already made the cut: When (if ever) have you deferred to your philosophical or theological system over your intuitions? Are there people whose opinions on morality you trust more than your own? How do you recognize them? How... Read more
A while ago, Hemant Mehta of Friendly Atheist had a post contrasting atheist deconversion stories with Christian conversion narratives. He thought atheists need to beef up speaking skills to be able to match the intense emotion of Christian “once was lost” stories. A lot of atheists stop believing in god after a long process of introspection. Maybe they read a book or a friend (or, ironically, a pastor) started them down that path, but there usually isn’t a “born again” moment. When... Read more
Whatever your religious affiliation, what’s the first book you’d recommend to someone on the other side to open up a conversation to get them to eventually switch teams? In other words, your pick doesn’t have to be a knock-out punch for your beliefs, it just has to open up a chink you plan to exploit later. (Though if you’ve got a sure-fire book recommendation, for either side, by all means share). I’ve certainly heard both sides cite the Bible. Back when... Read more
In the comments of my last post on evolution and the source of moral law, I had a bit of a back and forth with Matt about whether evolution favors altruism. I want to single out his comments for two reasons. First, I thought he displayed admirable humility in admitting he didn’t have the evidence to back up his intuition. A lack of data didn’t mean he had to give up his opinion (after all, scientists usually aren’t agnostic about... Read more
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