So, then, what is this website for?

This blog was supposed to be about religion. I'd wanted to argue for it in the context of the modern world and from a rationalist - maybe, rather, pragmatist - point of view.

I'd wanted to say: you can be modern and religious, too. You can be a scientist and go to church. Religion has things that are good for us, and we should not dismiss them out of hand. I'd wanted to make William James' point that religion is a good, a benefit to human life, because it concerns itself with "the more eternal things," and that we should take this to heart and explore it from a modernist point of view.

This is what I still believe. But religion is also a weapon, and it's being used against me right now. So how can I argue any of this any longer?

I can, I suppose, even though I can't subject myself to the abuses any longer. I've learned an important lesson over the years, and that is that a person has always to be open to new thought, new ideas, and the best (the only?) way to keep oneself open is through contradiction. (Imagine that I'm saying that now! From De Caussade, and something I wanted to actually do psychology research in: "God instructs the heart not by means of ideas, but by pains and contradictions.")

Through placing oneself at the edge, at the borders where all the wars are, and going through the pain of the conflict. You do learn this way. And I have learned. Maybe that's what I actually feel now, in fact: that the current endless round-and-round about homosexuality is old news and no longer profitable to me. It is simply a dead end, and it's time for something new. Maybe this pain is the birthing of that, whatever it is.

So I suppose I can still still use this blog, instead of shutting it down. I want to talk, anyway, about science, and mathematics, and research in biology and psychology. Perhaps I'll go back to school and really do that research I mentioned above. I want to still talk about religion as a force, even if I'm not personally involved. (Of course, I have to be involved in spiritual things in some way, even if only in A.A.) I want to talk about "The Theory of Everything," maybe, and I guess I still can. Maybe things will get interesting, in fact. I've been trying to write about my own religious conversion and have found the results stilted and very uneven; maybe there's a reason, and maybe Christianity as it exists right now is simply not right for me, not enough....