Why I am not a Feminist

Over the past decade, many men in the secular movement have made a point of identifying as Feminists to show their support for women’s rights.

Responding to Painful Internet Prose with Writing Advice

I recently received the following comment on my Facebook page. I’ve received so many atrociously structured comments like this over the years that I finally just broke down and literally responded with writing advice.

Attacking Evidentialism without Presenting an Alternative

I recently received a comment from one of my subscribers whose Christian friend gave a rebuttal to Evidentialism. In the rebuttal, I noticed a pattern that I’ve seen among many critics: attacking Evidentialism without presenting a viable epistemological alternative. So I have decided to post a general answer to this approach.

Evidentialist Answers to Some Existential Questions

Our local atheist group, the KU Society of Open-Minded Atheists & Agnostics (SOMA) was recently contacted by a student doing a project for a senior Apologetics class. For his project, he asked various existential questions from people with various worldviews, including secular worldviews. Since I felt I could answer his questions fairly quickly, I volunteered to answer.

I thought my answers might be useful to other people, so I am posting them here. These existential questions clearly come from a Christian worldview and I addressed this in my answers, where appropriate.

Evidence for Negative Effects from Social Taboo Humor

In my previous post, I made an argument for the distinction between real bigotry from non-egalitarians and satirical bigotry from (at the very least self-professed) egalitarians. I think that distinction still stands and is an important one to make. At the end of my blog, I highlighted the responsibility of the defenders of egalitarianism to provide an argument (and preferably evidence) for why social taboo humor specifically is harmful rather than just labeling it as “misogyny” without qualification.

After several hours of discussion, a feminist provided evidence for why social taboo humor is harmful. At the very least, this evidence should be acknowledged and addressed by people who wish to invoke social taboo humor. The papers are referenced below.

Is It Bigotry When It Is Satire?

Recently, I’ve been following the concerns of Rebecca Watson about an incident on r/atheism and the subsequent commentary from Greta Christina and JT Eberhard.

Personally, I fully support all forms of egalitarianism, whether for race, sex, or sexual orientation. And I know that these bloggers do too. I couldn’t be more on the side of their cause.

Yet, as I read these blogs, I see them freely throwing around labels like “misogyny”, “racist”, “sexist”, and “bigoted”, without any reference to the terms “satire”, “sarcasm”, or “trolling”. And that concerns me.

Watson’s Experience: Empathy Needed for Accuracy

I don’t normally directly participate in social conflicts between individuals because I feel the issues are so transient that they rapidly lose relevance and long-term usefulness. But I have been both externally encouraged and internally provoked to share my opinion on the Rebecca Watson issue, so here goes.