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.

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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.

Messiah Complex

Like many others throughout history and in modern times, possibly including Jesus himself, for 4 days, I thought I was the Messiah.

amy2x:

You either have a mental illness if you thought you were the Messiah or you were stoned.

Moving the Backpack

The malfunctioning Simulacrum, “guiding” me to put my backpack on a specific part of the bench I was sitting at.

Andre Augustine:

Hey Evid3nc3. Love the series so far. I’m now looking at the Losing God chapter in which you spoke about doing random things like putting you backpack on a specific part of the bench…

What was that about? I don’t get it.

Why Do You Hate God?

amy2x:

What’s your family think about your hate of God?