Monday, April 22, 2013

The next series?

Now that I've finally finished my excessively long series on the cosmological argument, and I'm also writing a cap to my mini-series on causality, I was thinking of whether I should start any new series.  Here are a few possibilities:

1. The ontological argument: This would be along the same lines of the cosmological argument, in that I'd meander through a bunch of pointless quibbles.  I've already written a lot about the ontological argument, which shows that I have stuff to say about it.  But I'll probably just end up saying a lot of stuff I've already said.

2. Some other apologetics argument?  Fine-tuning?  Pascale's Wager?  I'm not sure I would have enough to say about these to fill a series.

3. I could read Mere Christianity (which I've never read) and talk about how terrible it is.  Or maybe some other book!

4. I could reboot one of my really old series about basic physics.  I wrote about quantum mechanics and special relativity, and most of it wasn't very good.  My main goal back then was to explain stuff I had learned in courses, because that's fun.  If I were to reboot these, I'm not sure what my new goal would be.

5. I had a fantasy about what would happen if I suddenly gained a large atheist audience, and had to explain asexuality to them, or if I suddenly gained a large asexual audience and had to explain atheism to them.  What would I write?

Would any of these series sound interesting to you?  Is there anything else you'd like me to write about?

4 comments:

drransom said...

I would be most interested in the last, either way.

miller said...

The idea was to alternate between asexuality and atheism. Or something. Here's a rough outline (which I might completely change later):

1. A fantastic atheism/asexuality primer (explaining the premise)
2. Why I don't trust you (atheists)
3. Yes, I'm one of those atheists
4. A skeptically-minded ace 101
5. No I am not trying to convert you
6. The parallel history of online asexuality
7. The many facets of atheism
8. Getting religious attitudes towards sex wrong
9. Atheist attitudes towards sex

Now that I've written out some of my topic ideas, it looks like the stuff about asexuality is specifically geared towards atheist readers, while the atheist stuff is more generic 101. Hmm...

slightlymetaphysical said...

Aren't most people in the online ace communities atheist? I have an impression that it's a very atheist-aware community (maybe I'm biased by the fact that I'm in a very atheist-aware country). In my imagined construction of 'the typical community ace', I wouldn't have to explain atheism to them, but my mind-picture of 'the typical movement atheist' has a lot to learn about asexuality. Maybe that's why you're having problems with picturing what to tell aces about atheism?

(of course, there's the *completely different* ace demographic that turns up in broader surveys, but I don't really have a picture of 'the typical asexual' yet)

miller said...

Atheists and agnostics made up 41% of the respondents in the 2011 AAW community survey, and another 28% were spiritual or not religious (depending on how you count them).

In my mind, I'm introducing people to movement atheism, which is quite a different thing!