The title of this blog is deliberately provocative. It's meant to make you think about how it might be true yet self-contradictory on the surface. This blog is about God and belief, and about why we believe the things that we do. It is also about a spiritual journey. Mine, of course, but by reading and commenting you are taking part in it and perhaps, if I'm doing it well, I can help you take a step or two of your own.
It is also meant to be a place for respectful discourse on these things. There will be contentious issues discussed here: Christianity and atheism, as the title implies, but also evolution and science, abortion and crime, politics and the role of believers in the political process. I will say things that some readers may take exception to.
And that's okay. There will be arguments and disagreements, and some of them will be long-running. But it's all too easy for a discussion about strongly-held beliefs to degenerate into name-calling and name-calling and accusations of idiocy. That will not be tolerated here. I encourage readers to comment and put forth their thoughts and ideas, elaborately if necessary. But be polite.
I may as well stake out some positions to start with. I am not, by the strict definition of the term, an atheist, although I have sympathy for some atheist positions and am familiar with atheist thought and argument. Nor am I, strictly speaking, a Christian as some would define it, but I have a deep interest in the Bible and Christian history. I can't claim to have read the whole Bible, but I've read a fair bit of it. I was brought up by non-denominational, non-churchgoing believers, but spent my early years in Catholic grammar school. I can't say that I enjoyed that experience, but I can't say that it was spiritually stifling, either. Since then I have listened, talked and read a great deal about both religion and science.
I am trying to avoid oversimplifying in the hopes of elaborating at a later time, but I have at times called myself an "agnostic deist." I'll let you work out what that means for yourselves for the moment; a big part of what this blog is about is what it means to me. I do have a firm moral stance, although I won't promise that it lines up with anybody else's in particular.
I plan to post roughly weekly, and with my own content rather than news articles of interest; you may find some of the latter on my Goggle+ feed. Keep reading.
