News, Announcements

In case anybody actually missed them, I apologize for the absence of posts, but the month-long break felt great! I don't know about you, but I prefer feeling refreshed and full of new ideas to write about (as opposed to feeling burnt out and writing about the same old things).

I imagine the new addition to our family – a cute, sweet and healthy baby girl – has certainly contributed her share to my enhanced interest in all things human. So far, many of the clichés I'd heard about parenthood have proven true, while others, not as much so. Either way, I definitely foresee some posts and arguments referencing the parent-child relationship in TWIM's immediate future. I've always felt the parent-child relationship has significant import to (a)theist debate, and it's not an angle you hear argued often.

Although I wish jim would keep going with his Proof of God's Existence series, with minor exceptions, I've refrained from reading my detractors' blogs and arguments entirely. Even still, some remain fixated on occasionally berating me in their posts and threads! Personally, I think that's odd: if I don't think somebody is worth paying attention to, I simply don't pay attention to them, but that's just me.

Of course, none of this is to say I walked completely away from blogging for the past five weeks. In fact, I've actually spent considerable time on blogs that I consider more philosophically lucrative than those I'd been accustomed to spending time on. Professional philosophers with published books – or aspiring professional philosophers who aspire to publish books – make for far better interlocutors (I dislike the word opponent) than armchair bloggers with axes to grind. The contrast is so distinct that I've decided to abide by a new general guideline: allocate far more time to the former than the latter.

As such, I'll be paying some immediate attention to Alonzo Fyfe's desirism and David Staume's The Atheist Afterlife.

My goal in questioning Fyfe's desirism is both to praise the theory for what I consider to be its primary virtues, and to condemn it for what I consider to be its fatal flaws. Though I've not made a post about it yet, I've been studying the theory intermittently for about a year now, and I feel that's sufficient to make an introductory post and some opening arguments.

As far as The Atheist Afterlife is concerned, well.. last year I'd said I was disappointed in David Mills' Atheist Universe, and was looking for a better atheist book to review – and that's exactly what The Atheist Afterlife is: one of the better atheist books. Though we'll start the official review shortly, the synopsis is that I admire Staume's willingness to apply reason where many atheists stubbornly refuse to do so, and in terms of professionalism, his delivery dwarves anything I've read from the so-called "New Atheists" or their lapdogs.

So, that's about it for today. It appears I owe commenters bcproduct and MS Quixote a beer of their choice, and that Chaplain owes us some diapers. Since the latter is probably an unrealistic expectation, I'll be content with a real response to Marianne George.