An Introduction

This blog was started with the intention of becoming a project for my Religious Studies class in university. I envisioned two characters, Indy and Skip, two sides to a millennial debate, so to speak. Over the course of the semester, as I learned about the topics that were presented in the course, which was on atheism and theism, and primarily on atheism's reaction and existence and thinking as compared to theism, the urge to speak grew stronger and stronger.

To begin, I want to admit to a fairly strong bias. This project is composed of two voices, Indy, short for the Latin indagator or seeker, and Skip, which is simply short for skeptic. I wanted two opposing viewpoints, and I'll be speaking primarily with Indy in mind. Indy will be voicing my thoughts, opinions, conjectures and speculations, while Skip will be voicing my doubts and providing a critical foil with an intention of both clarifying my thought and to prevent it from becoming clouded with dogma. We shall see.

I've been anticipating this chance for a long while, and to be honest, I've procrastinated as well. Ever since I encountered Ayn Rand, the objectivist writer and philosopher premiere, and read Atlas Shrugged, I've struggled against the bold and at times harsh certitude that many atheist philosophers speak, and the point that they bring up are exactly that, pointed. When I was a teenager, Ayn Rand struck to the quick and exposed several flaws in the thinking that I had grown up with as a born-again Evangelical Christian. Time has tempered my opinions, but it hasn't lessened my love for my beliefs, my fellow Christians (most of them, that is, to be brutally honest. There are some that I know that I would hesitate to call Christians), and lastly, my God, whom I've experienced in a personal way that generally obliterates the strongest claim that Naturalism can swing against it.

The last point, the personal experiential view, will come up later in the project, but I wanted to start out with some standard positions and arguement and provide my own thoughts regarding them. I am not a philosopher by training, but I am an English student, and we English students are better than most and critiquing, reading deeply, and articulating our perspectives. I hope I am up to the challenge, and I hope that this provides interesting reading.

Phil Bird, Indagator Veritatis