Why, Hello!

Wel­come to ‘Con­tem­pla­tions Along the Way’, my exper­i­ment in blog­ging, which I began in the sum­mer of 2009. I use this blog as an exer­cise in writ­ing, as a way to prac­tice (writ­ing) as well as to bet­ter famil­iar­ize myself with the sub­jects of my writ­ing. I tend to write on top­ics which are philo­soph­i­cal or reli­gious in nature, such as such as: post­mod­ernism, foun­da­tion­al­ism, clas­si­cal the­ol­ogy, the ‘New Athe­ists’ and objec­tions to faith, etc., how­ever, I am no expert. As I write about these things and learn more about them, I invite you to learn along with me; leave a com­ment, dis­agree, sug­gest new avenues or ways of think­ing. For more infor­ma­tion about who I am you can head over to my About me. Or if you’re inter­ested in what I’ve writ­ten recently, you can go to my blog or check the mid­dle col­umn on the front page (for an excerpt).

For those who have been fol­low­ing for a while, you might ask your­self ‘why the change’ (and quite rightly). The answer is that I want to change my focus, not in terms of con­tent but in terms of the expec­ta­tions usu­ally asso­ci­ated with blog­ging (i.e. pro­duc­ing new and ‘excit­ing’ mate­r­ial con­stantly). The real­ity is I find this atti­tude unre­al­is­tic given the focus of my writ­ing. The­ol­ogy, as with phi­los­o­phy, requires a good deal of think­ing, and that requires time. The other ‘issue’ is that I find I lack con­fi­dence, so very often I feel that when I do write, I write in a super­fi­cial or unin­formed way (even if it’s not the case, but you’d be hard pressed to con­vince me oth­er­wise). Allow­ing myself that ‘extra time’ is one of those ways I build con­fi­dence, I hope you’ll understand.

It’s also the case that I wasn’t very happy with the tra­di­tional blog lay­out — I wanted to find a way to ‘show­case’ some of the more sub­stan­tial posts I’ve writ­ten (and will write), as well as fea­ture such things as book reviews. On a tra­di­tional blog these ‘arti­cles’ would have been eas­ily swept away, found only through search­ing. That (harsh) real­ity didn’t seem to coin­cide with my desire of hav­ing peo­ple read the things I write, hence the change.

Other than that, there’s not much else you need to know. If you like, you can con­tact me through the ‘Con­tact’ link above (and using the form or the email address pro­vided). There is also an ‘Archives’ link (though I’m not sure how use­ful it is, I have it any­way). As with most blogs, I allow peo­ple the abil­ity to com­ment. Unlike the major­ity of Word­Press blogs I’ve encoun­tered, I allow the abil­ity to edit com­ments up to 30 min­utes after they’ve been posted, I also allow peo­ple to ‘request dele­tion’ of that com­ment. Keep this in mind in case you see a typo or haven’t thought of some­thing — you can always edit your post.

That said, wel­come to ‘Con­tem­pla­tions Along the Way’.