Fairness First

People often ask,  "If god exists why does he allow so much evil in the world.  The standard religious apologetic  is that god has to allow man to do evil  otherwise man wouldn't have free will and would just be an automaton.  This apologetic makes the false assumption that free will is absolute when it most certainly is not. I cannot free will myself to walk through walls, appear on Mars and return, look like Jessica Alba, stop feeling pain, and so on but no one would deny that I have free will despite those restrictions on it. By the same token, assuming god exists, he could prevent us from doing evil and we would still have free will to decide who we love, which job we take, what kind of house to live in, what to eat, what kind of car to drive, and so on. Not being able to do evil would not stop us from having limited free will just as we do now. The idea that god allows evil to exist so that humans can have free will is obviously bunk, a cheap, false excuse to

 Many people have jumped to the conclusion that the 2020 election polls were way off the mark. The polls prior to the election showed Biden with an average of an 8 to 10 point lead.  When the actual vote count came in (81 million Biden, 74 million Trump) Biden had won the popular vote by 4.5%.   The truth is that the polls were correct and show how effective the massive and multi-pronged Republican voter suppression effort was.  Republicans prevented millions of votes for Joe Biden from being cast, counted, or delivered by a Post Office they handcuffed. Republicans passed several dozen laws to make it more difficult to vote.  Voter ID is one of those ways.  Many Democratic leaning black and low income voters don't have a car or a driver's license and so have no photo ID.  Getting it can be difficult, especially given that many older black people don't have a birth certificate.  Getting the photo ID can require many trips to government offices with long waits in line on diff

TERFs or Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists are women who oppose allowing transwomen to use the women's public bathroom or being allowed into women's shelters or changerooms. I had never encountered a TERF until I came across Sastra in a Friendly Atheist thread.  Sastra was covertly aggressive and reluctant to admit all her positions such as  transwomen in public bathrooms but I eventually got it out of her.  She disingenuously claimed to support transwomen like me but opposes allowing us to do the things that make it possible for us to live as women.  I had a long and interesting conversation with Sastra.  Did I change her mind?  I think a little bit. I believe I got the better of Sastra on this exchange although she may have checked out before reading my last comment which made points that would have been useful to bring up earlier.  Please have a look.  Anri  Sastra • 2 years ago: Not having experienced being trans, how do you know your body is what makes you recognize

About a month ago  Disqus user Mary with a Jesus avatar was trolling people on Joe My God.  I was a bit late to that, but and decided to engage him/her thinking I would get the best of them, which I certainly did.  I planned to send links to people to show how to handle such a troll but unfortunately when I went to do so all Mary's comments had been deleted.  I've done my best to recreate her/his comments to the best of my recollection here.  His/her comments weren't as short as what I've written though.  This took place over about a month as it frequently took Mary 2 or 3 days to respond so my memory is pretty general on what she/he said.  Here's the  original  thread, not that I suggest you try to follow the mixed up comments there: https://www.joemygod.com/2020/03/gop-idaho-gov-signs-two-anti-trans-bills-into-law/ By adhering to the concept of fairness and morality based on not harming others I think I short circuited this troll's narrative and he/she and

Someone on Joe My God mused that the way conservatives were acting with this pandemic made it seem that they want to die. I believe it is a natural psychological tendency of conservatives to want to be more willing to die in order to benefit their tribe. Our psychology evolved on the tribal basis, with tribal survival being the natural selector of genes such that our natural psychological tendency is to try to benefit our own group.  The problem is now in our modern technological society humanity globally. Research shows conservatives are more prone to this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxxylK6fR81rckQxWi1hVFFRUDg/view and that is in my opinion why we see more conservatives in armed forces and police forces - these are people psychologically primed to give their lives in defence of ideas, people, or their tribe. These are people who are willing to sacrifice themselves and others for an idea, good or bad.  These days they are behaving to the detriment of all,  prime examples b