Today one of those friends, the estimable Mr. Tom Sheepandgoats (who logs on the web as "Sheep and Goats"—what else?—at typepad.com) observed,
This has to be a first. A blogger who has achieved his mission statement [wasn't the goal at one time to find out who you were?] and, having done that, discontinues the blog since it has served its purpose.As I gratefully told Tom,
I hadn't thought of it like that—having achieved my mission—but that could be it! In fact, maybe I'll start thinking of it that way, which is a lot cleaner and more cogent than my fuzzy thoughts about it have been up to now.Who I am—in one aspect at least—was fairly plainly revealed in my post of September 9, "All in or All out." I blogged for only two more weeks before desisting. Personal mission accomplished, reason for blogging fulfilled? Appears so.
Houston, the Eagle has landed.
ReplyDeleteBut....is this journey's end or only a pit stop?
Time will tell.
Hey, Tom, you've employed a mix of metaphors here: celestial navigation, ordinary travel, and car racing. I guess there's something of the first two in my own tale. Celestial for a religious quest, sort of, and the ordinary journeying that every questing person does.
ReplyDeleteBut though I live in North Carolina I don't identify with the South's adolescent preoccupation with the motorway. I wonder whether you actually chose pit stop for its allusion to Dante's locating Satan in the lowest recesses of Hell, its frozen pit? That would square with your own presumed positioning of atheism in the scheme of things. Inversely, this reminds me of the view that if monotheism represents progress from polytheism, then atheism represents yet another advance, in subtracting the final god from the number.
But, as you know, I don't claim that my wanderings have finally ended, even if the place I've now come to is by far the friendliest, most hospitable one I've so far encountered. I'm content for the foreseeable future to look around here and better understand the issues and arguments—Darwinian, memetic, and so on. The experience has so far been intellectually stimulating as well as emotionally satisfying.
HA!
ReplyDeleteMoristotle, you give me far too much credit for being witty.
I'm just sittin here in our trailer's living room in my wife's best folding chair with a oily Dodge Hemi carburetor in my lap and several greasy wrenches on the coffee table. That's what made me think of the "pit stop" analogy.
Besides, I just returned from the pit toilet out back.
"this reminds me of the view that if monotheism represents progress from polytheism, then atheism represents yet another advance, in subtracting the final god from the number."
ReplyDeleteI'm not so sure about this logic. If you substitute other nouns for "god" (such as "wife" or "meal" which many large people eat to many of) the phrase doesn't really hold up.
Tom, it did occur to me to doubt that you were trying to be witty, but by then I'd already been witty for you (so to speak). That is, I'd attributed to you the allusion to Dante and posted my comment. So, what the inferno!
ReplyDeleteI don't think the "view" about the advance from polytheism to monotheism to atheism is an argument, but just another instance of wit. No doubt, for the god-fearing, it was an advance from polytheism to monotheism (fewer gods to fear), but to proceed to atheism would require the god-fearing to find something else to fear (or to give up fear) and probably couldn't be felt as an advance.
And atheism denies not only one god but also many, so the "advance" from polytheism to monotheism didn't achieve much, if anything. The only advance, in the atheist's, view, is from any kind of theism to no theism.
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