Philosophy of Religion - Meta-Discussion Following Extreme Hibernation

The Official Line is that I've been hibernating, in case you wanted to know. And yes, I know that the -hiber- part of the word hibernating gives the unmistakable clue that it takes place in the winter, and it's now well and truly into spring, at least in my part of the world.

I guess I'm just a late riser.

Hope you all didn't miss me too much. And if you did, well, your waiting is now at an end. I'm writing again. As to how long I'll continue to write... that's, as they say, in the lap of the gods.

Speaking of which, and as it's almost Easter Day, I thought I would have another go at a religious theme for a blog post.

I have to say that I approach this task with a deal of trepidation, because the last time I tried this, I found myself in the centre of a massive storm debate on BlogCatalog where there was lots of ranting and raving (not, I hasten to add, by me) and accusation piled on accusation etc etc between the proponents of Creationism on the one side, and those of Evolution on the other. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing was about the extent of it, if memory serves.

Anyway, what happened was that the discussion got so huge and ponderous and rather personal amongst some of the combatants, that the moderators at BlogCatalog lost patience with the whole business and zapped the entire thread into instant oblivion! Such is the internet. Now you see it, now you don't.

Of course, this led to some people posting on other threads about how the hosts were abusing their power, suppressing free speech etc etc but by this time everyone was more or less played out and exhausted so they didn't really get anywhere with their protests.

If I remember rightly, it all started with me writing a re-hash of the Ontological Argument of St Anselm or some such old philosopher of the Middle Ages,and posting the question, "Does God Exist?" A fair question you would have thought, but apparently too emotive for modern minds to wrestle with and at the same time avoid the kind of explosions which can bring an entire community to the brink of civil strife.

You might have imagined it to be such an impossibly and hopelessly dull subject, completely disconnected with anything much in the real world (or should I say, the "real" world) that nobody much would have been tempted to join it, at least with any great degree of enthusiasm. But apparently this was not the case, and a more exciting and indeed violent debate could hardly have been wished for.

Until its sudden destruction. A metaphor for our times, perhaps?

But I digress.