When I created this blog back in 2008 (so long?) I titled it Comics, Beer, and Shakespeare because I figured that's primarily what I would be writing about. While I certainly wrote about those things, and the order of the topics reflects the number of times I wrote about those topics, I wound up writing about all sorts of things. There are probably more posts about religion and skepticism than anything else.
About five years ago, I wrote a post entitled "Atheism is getting boring" as I was starting to feel like there really wasn't much more to say about the topic. Turns out I found more things to write about - quite a bit more, and I don't think that I revisited the same territory. I found myself having some thing to say about the arguments of apologists, for instance. I also found myself writing a few blog posts going over various logical fallacies - many of which are used by apologists. Some of the ones which I am most proud of didn't involve me debunking religious claims or making a case for atheism so much as attempting to communicate exactly what atheism is and how Christians and atheists can better understand one another.
Once again, I find myself losing interest in writing about religion. Right now, I'm starting to wrap up Richard Carrier's book, On the Historicity of Jesus - Why We Might Have Reason to Doubt. Carrier is a mythicist when it comes to Jesus, which means that he doesn't think that there's enough reason to declare Jesus to be a historical figure, much less a divine one. I was pretty skeptical about this, as I've read books by John Dominic Crossan, and I even wrote a review on my blog about Reza Aslan's Zealot. Crossan's works were pretty influential on me when I first started admitting to myself that I was an atheist. I was able to find some meaning in the Jesus story without having to accept any of the supernatural elements of it. After all, there was this historical person behind the whole thing, and if you scraped away the dogma, you had something pretty cool.
As of now, I'm not so sure. And just as Carrier never definitively says that there was no historical Jesus, I don't say that either. However, I'm jumping ship and I'm willing to say that we definitely have reason to doubt. Not only is it likely that there was never a historical Jesus, but even if there was, what he has become in the New Testament (and other traditions) is so far removed from anything that ever existed in reality.
And with this book, I kinda feel like I'm done. I'm usually reading something or other, and I've got a long queue of audiobooks from Audible that I want to get. However, I'm just not interested in any more books about atheism (haven't read one of those in a while, actually) nor any books about searching for who Jesus really was. I genuinely feel done, and I'm currently listening to Pete Townshend's autobiography, and I just finished Jim Gaffigan's latest book. I'm more interested in supplementing my comic book reading with stories from musicians and comedians. I think that I'd only want to pick up another book about Jesus if there was some radical new information about him; otherwise, I feel done.
I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do now. I might just write about what I want to write about and keep it on this blog. Part of me wants to start a new one and just focus on comic books. I'm still interested in skepticism, so maybe I'll have a blog just about that. Yeah, I still like beer, but I don't have much to say about it. Shakespeare? I think that I've covered much of what I have to say for a while.
I guess what I want to do is to have a blog that has a narrower focus. Why not do more than one narrow-focused blog? Maybe one day, but I don't have the time nor energy to write several blogs right now. I think that comics might just be the way to go - that, or skepticism.
We'll see. If you read my blog, expect some changes. Or not. I don't know.
About five years ago, I wrote a post entitled "Atheism is getting boring" as I was starting to feel like there really wasn't much more to say about the topic. Turns out I found more things to write about - quite a bit more, and I don't think that I revisited the same territory. I found myself having some thing to say about the arguments of apologists, for instance. I also found myself writing a few blog posts going over various logical fallacies - many of which are used by apologists. Some of the ones which I am most proud of didn't involve me debunking religious claims or making a case for atheism so much as attempting to communicate exactly what atheism is and how Christians and atheists can better understand one another.
Once again, I find myself losing interest in writing about religion. Right now, I'm starting to wrap up Richard Carrier's book, On the Historicity of Jesus - Why We Might Have Reason to Doubt. Carrier is a mythicist when it comes to Jesus, which means that he doesn't think that there's enough reason to declare Jesus to be a historical figure, much less a divine one. I was pretty skeptical about this, as I've read books by John Dominic Crossan, and I even wrote a review on my blog about Reza Aslan's Zealot. Crossan's works were pretty influential on me when I first started admitting to myself that I was an atheist. I was able to find some meaning in the Jesus story without having to accept any of the supernatural elements of it. After all, there was this historical person behind the whole thing, and if you scraped away the dogma, you had something pretty cool.
As of now, I'm not so sure. And just as Carrier never definitively says that there was no historical Jesus, I don't say that either. However, I'm jumping ship and I'm willing to say that we definitely have reason to doubt. Not only is it likely that there was never a historical Jesus, but even if there was, what he has become in the New Testament (and other traditions) is so far removed from anything that ever existed in reality.
And with this book, I kinda feel like I'm done. I'm usually reading something or other, and I've got a long queue of audiobooks from Audible that I want to get. However, I'm just not interested in any more books about atheism (haven't read one of those in a while, actually) nor any books about searching for who Jesus really was. I genuinely feel done, and I'm currently listening to Pete Townshend's autobiography, and I just finished Jim Gaffigan's latest book. I'm more interested in supplementing my comic book reading with stories from musicians and comedians. I think that I'd only want to pick up another book about Jesus if there was some radical new information about him; otherwise, I feel done.
I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do now. I might just write about what I want to write about and keep it on this blog. Part of me wants to start a new one and just focus on comic books. I'm still interested in skepticism, so maybe I'll have a blog just about that. Yeah, I still like beer, but I don't have much to say about it. Shakespeare? I think that I've covered much of what I have to say for a while.
I guess what I want to do is to have a blog that has a narrower focus. Why not do more than one narrow-focused blog? Maybe one day, but I don't have the time nor energy to write several blogs right now. I think that comics might just be the way to go - that, or skepticism.
We'll see. If you read my blog, expect some changes. Or not. I don't know.
1 comment:
I've enjoyed reading your blog Lance. However, I completely understand about being out of words for religion and atheism. The arguing gets tiresome and I'm not sure there's much else to say on the subject. You don't seem "militant" which to me seems what keeps many of the activist atheists going. I can tell you that having ongoing intelligent dialog was very important to my road down the unbeliever path. I'm glad there were those (you included) that persevered with writing and logically defending reason and skepticism. I'd remind you that there are obviously many others just beginning their walk down this road and being able to hear about others' similar journeys sure helps. Only you can decide if you want to fill that role and put out the effort. I appreciate your words.
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