Preaching to the Choir?

Does the religious blogosphere just boil down to two armed camps?

It’s safe to say that I am really not very good when it comes to regular updates for this blog.

This isn’t because of a lack of trying; there’s a horde of half-written, unfinished posts lurking somewhere on my hard-drive that will probably never see the light of day anytime soon. Writing for this blog has become increasingly harder and harder since I started, and lately I’ve been pontificating as to why this might be rather than writing for it.

In many ways this blog has been extremely useful for me; it’s helped me better understand my own views regarding religion, scepticism and the various things I ramble about. Researching for posts has led to me discovering things I never knew about before, and putting my thoughts and views down into words has allowed me to develop and express them more fully.

Despite this, however, I have found myself questioning the real purpose of me writing this blog of late.

The religious blogosphere (for lack of a better term) does sometimes feel like it’s divided into two armed camps. On one side we have the non-religious; blogs like mine, or such as Grundy’s Deity Shmeity (someone who’s far better at this blogging shenanigans than I ever will be). It can be said that we’re fairly resolute on our stance towards religion, the supernatural and the divine; after all, we’re confident enough about our non-religious stance to be writing about it.

On the other side we have the religious blogs, the opposite ideological stance. They’re just as resolute in their opinions as their opposites; they too are confident enough in their views to be writing about them. Very often, there’s not much room for debate between these two sides. Particularly given that this is the internet.

Though discussions and arguments often occur, very often they boil down to both sides simply yelling their opinions to the online heavens and not really listening to what the other side is saying. Or else it’s merciless hole-picking, ad hominem attacks (from both sides, it must be stressed) and other unpleasant aspects of debating. We're arguing, sure, but not in the spirit of good debate. No-one's walking away re-thinking stances they might previously have held.

Overall, the whole thing just seems a little silly at times.

The people who visit atheist and agnostic blogs are very often either of the same opinion or of the complete opposite opinion. I can’t imagine it’s very often there is someone undecided surfing such blogs. Thus the whole thing feels a bit like preaching to the choir at points; they either already agree with you or have already made up their minds that you’re wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that writing about religion online is a fundamentally pointless exercise. Very often the opposite is true; as I mentioned I’ve learned a lot about my opinions and views in the few short months since I started this blog. But when I read an article spouting the same doctrines, glance through the comments sections where the same inane back-and-forth is occurring I do sometimes find the whole thing a little frustrating.

Maybe I’m just over-thinking all this.