I have this feeling...

[adderslj]

...that I should start using this again, rather than just using it as a cross-post dump from Vox.

Where has this come from? Well, largely from researching this post. I realised that I sort of missed Livejournal. Vox, my new bloggy girlfriend, has turned my eye with all her fasy, ajax-y Web 2.0 goodness, and the fact that many people I know in the flesh are on it now. But LJ allowed a different kind of conversation, one that I do miss.

What else has been keeping me away? Well, things like this, this and this tend to bother me (I'm sorry Matt, but if you genuinely believe that, you're showing the same ignorance and prejudice that you often accuse religious folk of showing).  I don't have time or enough available attention in my life to deal with pointless drama or wilful ignorance.

On the other hand, there are lots of people on here whom I genuinely care about, and with whom I can have interesting debates about different subjects that are genuinely thought-provoking.

Perhaps I need to do some friend page weeding to put me at a point where LJ is an attractive place to me again.

Not really sure where I'm going with this, just musing aloud...

Comments

[magentamom.livejournal.com]

One of the more common arguments I have with atheists comes from their belief that "Oh, if not for belief in a god or gods, we'd all be better off."

It seems to me that something of the sort is hard-wired in the brain. It's there with socialization and language and art. The concepts all seem to have emerged at the same time. A god or gods is universal to human culture. There isn't one that has sprung up without.

So, whether humanity senses "God" because He exists or because there is some part of our psyche that develops the concept at a certain stage, the idea seems inherent to human development. To imagine a humanity that developed without that sort of belief seems to me to imagine something that is apart from humanity. We might grow beyond the need to believe, but as individuals, as cultures and as humanity, we've all gone through those stages.

I dated an atheist for a time, and we had the argument often. I explained that for me there were two interpretations of the culturally universal concept of god or gods. One was that there was definitely something that we all sense. The other was that we made it all up. Given that we can hardly get people to agree on proven and nearly indisputable principles, well, I know where I come down.