On Politics
Last month I wrote a bit about closely watched judicial elections. The results of the elections on which I wrote are that in Iowa, Justice David Wiggins overcame a challenge to his retention on the court, being reelected with about 55% of the vote.
Gay marriage opponents sought Wiggins' ouster in vengeance for his participation in the unanimous decision establishing gay marriage in that state -- and unlike his fellows who were indeed ousted by such an effort in 2010. This guarantees that at least four of the seven Justices who signed on to the unanimous decision will continue on the court for the next several years, preventing any judicial movement on that issue. Additionally, Wiggins' survival by a decent margin serves as an indicator of a majority of Iowans at at last accepting a normalcy to gay marriage, a trend unlikely to be reversed in the future.
In other closely watched judicial contests, the lone Democrat on the Ohio Supreme Court was ousted. But all three Florida Justices for whom retention was challenged (because they found
Obamacare to be constitutional, and supported restrictions on the
death penalty) were very healthily reelected with around 67% of the vote.
Pandeism Alert!!
I've got a bone to pick with Max Andrews.
Mr. Andrews runs an
apologetics blog,
Sententias.org. One day, he
invited me to write a piece for that blog on the topic of why Pandeism is, in my view, Better than Theism. And so I accommodated him, putting together the most extensive treatment of the topic that I've ever done (short of my cobbled-together draft of a book on the topic), including much material from my E2 essays
Pandeism from First Principles and
Pandeism Fully Accounts and some other things spread across the
Pandeism Index, but incorporating as well a great deal of new material and original argumentation. This was, in the simplest of terms, my opus to date. And it was instantly the most popular piece on his website, drawing comments for and against, including various theistic arguments which I batted down with lengthy retorts.
It was here, but is no more, as one may see.
For, you see, like me, Mr. Andrews mans a Twitter feed, and was up until a few days ago a Twitter follower of mine. And then I tweeted something which he found profoundly offensive, probably because it was profoundly offensive. I tweeted:
FACT: Every time a #Christian cites something in the #Bible as proof of something else in the Bible, a fetus gets aborted.
Naturally, this was intended to shock, as
koan, and so it did. And so Mr. Andrews went on for a bit about how unforgivably offensive it was and criticizing my understanding of the
circular logic which goes into
apologetics, and ignored my point that it was somewhat odd to imagine a deity who would create a world where 5,000 miscarriages happen every single day, at every state of
pregnancy, and yet that such deity would be offended by abortion. And so Mr. Andrews' response to all this was 1) to delete the blog post I had written at his request, and 2) to block me on Twitter. Both of which I was fine with, but he didn't just delete my post; he first tweeted the suggestion that I ought to save it, because he was
going to delete it. But he deleted it before I had any chance to save it -- and then when I pointed that out he allowed that he'd email it to me if I gave him my email address. Which I did. And which he never did.
And, at the end of the day, the thing that doesn't sit right with me is not that he deleted my post, even though it was written at his request and put forth a logic wholly unrelated to the reason he deleted it -- for I have at least fair rudiments of a draft of it saved elsewhere. I have, even, drafts of my responses to the points raised against it by other commenters. But I no longer have the comments which were made by those other commenters, and that sort of stuff is useful to me, as a
Pandeist, to have, so that I can adequately rebut the logical flaws in theistic approaches to Pandeism. And, indeed, it is most unfair to those commenters, whose own work in crafting those rebuttals was dissolved with, really, no consideration whatsoever. I may have brought a response upon myself, but I'd not have reacted like that to a little offense. But then again, I'm not a theist, so I have no deity's ego to feel a bruise for.
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Question of the day:
Who would win in a fight between Spider-Hulk and Bat-Green Lantern?
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In node auditing news:
jessicapierce is
on page 5 of 11.
hamster bong is
on page 3 of 14.
passport is next up.
Blessings, all!!