I started this blog in September 2006.
At the time, I planned to use it write about my writing. In part, I thought it would act as a spur to make me write more because I’d be reporting on my writing progress and I’d be embarrassed to have to report how little I had written. Hence the title and the quote from Trollope at the top. That doesn’t seem to have worked too well. If it had, I’d have written quite a few more books in the last seven and a fraction years than I have.
On the other hand, I came to see the blog as a convenient place to express my opinions about all sorts of things — books, politics, movies, petty annoyances, major annoyances, etc. Of those, the posts that seem to get the most attention are the negative reviews of popular movies. Here I am, trying to set the world right with my insights and wisdom, and the strongest responses I get are hostile ones from people who call me names for trashing a movie they loved. It has been a source of great joy to me. I must make an effort to see more bad popular movies.
But that’s all beside the point.
One topic I don’t blog about (not often, maybe not ever) is atheism or the related topics of religious belief and church-state separation. That’s odd, because atheism has been an extremely important part of my life, and I have strong opinions on separation, strong enough to be offensive to some of my fellow atheists. For example, an essay of mine titled Should Atheists Celebrate Christmas? has earned me more hostile responses from atheists than from theists. (Probably because it’s not so much an attack on the silliness of Christmas as it is upon the silliness of atheists who celebrate it.)
That’s not to say I don’t read atheist blogs. When such blogs started appearing, years ago, I began following them eagerly. The number of such blogs has exploded in recent years, and I haven’t been able to keep up. I still follow the ones I became aware of early on, but I can only sample the others from time to time. Other than following links from blogs, how is one to find the pool to dip into?
A brave blogger named Mojoey has taken up the task. He maintains a blog called The Atheist Blogroll. He vets the blogs he includes, and he removes inactive ones. (This blog, A Blister to My Eye, is now included in his blogroll.) I expect to use his blogroll to discover good blogs to follow. Just not too many, I hope.
I do plan to blog more about atheism, religion, separation, and related topics in the future.
Partly, this is because they are more on my mind than ever as Leonore and I spend more time working on our book about our atheism, which we hope to have done and published before the end of 2014.
Partly it’s because those topics are never far from my mind, no matter what book I’m writing, and I have strong opinions on those topics, and this is my blog, and it’s where I express those strong opinions in strong terms.
I just remembered reading that there will be a flood of big-budget religious movies coming out this year, including one about the Flood. I wasn’t planning to see any of them, but now I think I will — not because I’ll like them, but because I’ll hate them, and it will be a fine opportunity to combine blog posts slamming religion and bad popular movies at one and the same time.
The comments should be fun.
