I have been contemplating the reasons for this. There was a time when I wrote a few articles a week. But in this past year it seems to have gone from a slow flow, to a drip, to off.
Here are some of my thoughts:
To be honest, that topic is growing old. I still feel a need to resist religion when it encroaches into politics and the public square in inappropriate ways, but the topic itself for me is becoming boring. I have tried to go back and read some of the liberal Christian authors I have enjoyed over the years, but within a few paragraphs I hear Stan Marsh's voice in my head - "Don't care, don't care, don't care...".
I have other outlets
A lot of my early blog writing was driven by a need to give voice to all of the questions that were rolling around inside my head. As much as churches and religious leaders claim to be open to questions, they are not. They are happy to patiently explain to you where you are wrong, but when you want to take it further... they are done (here is a perfect example). So, when I wanted to wrestle religious issues... there were few to none in my life whom I could talk to.... so I wrote.Today, I have a core of friends who are happy and willing to wrestle with any idea. There were a few of us who started meeting Sunday mornings for coffee (since we did not do church anymore) and we joked that we were having "Coffee Church". The name stuck and it grew into a regular meeting of Atheists, Agnostics, Humanists, liberal theists, and religious folks on the boarders of their denominations. Voices and thoughts are considered and respected in an arena where the endpoint has not already been pre-determined. I now wrestle these thoughts out with friends over wine and cheese, rather than by myself with a keyboard.
Laziness and time
My family has moved into a time of life where I seem to have less free time than I used to (somehow this seems counter intuitive). When I have a free hour, I would usually rather catch up on a show or read... or call some friends and open a bottle of wine. In addition, a fleeting thought can be shared quickly on Facebook... and probably get more response. People do not read or respond to blogs like they used to, so the desire to invest in a post is less.
So how bout' you... has your reading or writing of blogs decreased? To what do you attribute it? Do you think this is a growing trend?
3 comments:
I've had a similar experience as you, Andrew. I feel less of a need to vent as I've become more and more of an 'out' atheist. I've told a few people who in turn told me that they have become atheists as well. Believers I know have become used to the idea, and see that I'm not radically different than I was before. So, the desire to react and spill has decreased. I still listen to atheist podcasts and follow atheists on Twitter, but life is balancing out as I begin to enjoy godlessness without focusing on it as much. Like you, I still want to be a voice against religious injustice, though.
Your Coffee Church sounds like my Mac Church (we meet at McDonald's for breakfast), my best friend and I.
You know I idly thought about this the other day for no particular reason - I thought to myself "how long will Mr Hackman go on blogging about religion when he no longer believes?".
The reason I thought about this (because I don't spend a great deal of my life thinking about your blog) is because I've been wondering a bit lately about post-Christianity and discussing it with some of the post-Christians in my life. My sense is that once a person decides to be an atheist this is not the end point, any more than deciding to be a Christian is the end point. Atheism is the denial of a worldview, rather than a worldview in itself.
But of course every atheist has a worldview, just like every other person does. How does a person recently shifted from religion to atheism go about constructing their new worldview? How hard or easy is it? How much of their former faith is carried over into their new worldview? Apart from their attitude to religion, what else changes?
Of course I'm not expecting you to answer all these questions - I just find them fascinating.
I'm still blogging at a rate of roughly one post a week although busy work life etc does get in the way, but I spend less time reading other blogs than I used to. I think my brain is a bit overloaded with stimuli and I can't take in all that much.
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