At a crossroad...

The original reason I started this blog was that I wanted to make all my arguments against religion without the inconvenience of directly attacking single persons or small group of people to their face. Despite the perception of people who have seen me on the sauce, I'm actually a pretty non-confrontational guy, but I enjoy a good argument. The problem with anti-religious arguments are that they almost always become confrontational because you are telling people that they have based their entire reality on a childish fairy tale. There's really no way to go about that delicately.

Unfortunately, I have grown tired of making these arguments. There are maybe two dozen arguments that are used in one form or another to dismantle any argument for religion. And they don't get anyone anywhere, because as any argumentative atheists knows, religion is self-reinforced against reason. Even when a religious person begins to doubt their beliefs, they are taught that the doubt brings them closer to God, ala Mother Theresa.

In essence, what I'm saying is that I have found structured, impersonal argument rarely if ever changes the mind of the religious. And quite frankly, I get sick of making the same arguments over and over when they seem so obvious to me that I shouldn't even have to make them once.

So I'm not sure I want to continue writing anything that tries to convince theists that there is no god, because I have had much more success making these arguments in person. And I have plenty of passionately religious people in my life to last me a lifetime of argumentation. So as far as "deconverting" goes, I'm going to focus on my own family and friends for the time being.

That said, I want to continue blogging, but want to go in a different direction. I want to go into non-religious areas that can only be truly explored once the shackles of religion have been thrown off. Because ultimately that's what my anger and frustration with religion boils down to: it stops us from advancing and exploring the reality of the universe, specifically our own nature and what it means to be human. What really irks me about religious doctrine is that it claims to be the ultimate authority of truth, based on absolutely no good evidence. There's a good chance that the universe is much stranger (and much more wondrous) than we can currently imagine, but our societies are built on a religious foundation that actively hinders exploration of that strange-as-hell universe.

Of course, for humanity to truly explore these wonders as a whole we must get rid of religion. But I doubt I'll be around when religion is gone, and I don't want to completely miss out on the fun. There are plenty of people in the atheist blogdome to fight religion, and I will continue to do so as a commentator and in (yikes!) "real" life. But there are enough rational voices out there to begin the exploration (indeed, it has already begun) of the universe, reality and beyond. I want to throw my hat in that ring.

I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to go about this; I will probably start a completely new blog. I'm sure I will still deal with religious issues that arise in the news and in my personal life, but I want to shift my focus to more non-religious topics. I also want to discuss issues that are generally connected to religion (like morality, death and consciousness) without mentioning religion at all. It will probably take me a week or two to figure out what the hell I'm doing, but when I figure it out, I will post it here.