Warning: The following post makes many use of "I", "I've", and "I'm". It's about me, and not about you.

I've been keeping an up-to-date online commentary ("blog!") since 2002, and have had a personal web site for many years before then. Before archive.org started keeping tabs on me, even. In all that time, I'm fairly certain that I've not written anything with religion as its subject. In truth, other than letters home during my two years as an LDS missionary living in the Dominican Republic, I'm pretty sure I've not written anything on the subject, other than times when something religious also has political consequences, and where I tend to take a strict libertarian slant. For someone who likes to speak his mind, I appear to have have precious little to say on this topic. It's not because I fear the polarizing effect of such a subject. Heck, I've been writing for over three years that the Iraq war was a really, really bad idea. That didn't make me any friends. So why have I avoided religion?

For one, I'm a mormon. In spite of mormonism's claim to have everything necessary for mankind to be saved and happy, I don't feel like my knowledge of religion itself extends far enough to be able to talk intelligently about deep religious issues, and certainly not enough to make real theological arguments. (Of course, you could argue that it is the nature of religion to not know, and that I'm missing the point. I will not make that argument, however.) And since religion seems like a terribly personal thing to me — or at least something that should be a personal thing — blogging the subject doesn't seem to do it much justice. I've read somewhere that 99% of devoutly religious people in the world subscribe to the same set of beliefs as their parents. Offhand I don't know how to interpret that statistic, but it does make me hesitant to take any real stance on the finer points of my religion, or yours.

Also, I haven't had a lot to say on the subject, because I haven't had strong feelings on it. I've been a religious person for most of my life, defining "religious" as someone who goes to church and participates. But I've also always been a skeptic on the stronger notions of spirituality, and of religious experience taken at face value. I view my own religion (that's abstract, personal religion, not the sect) on a more practical level, not unlike how I view other activities in my life that help me in various ways. That's not a denial of veracity or any one set of beliefs, it's just how I see things. I'm something of an existentialist, in case you didn't know, in large part because it fits my world view. I see most value as being tied to personal benefit, and most ideas strike me as more subjective than they get credit for being. Speaking generally, religion in my own life gives me emotional and social benefits; it teaches my kids many ideas that I think are important, both theologically and psychologically. Even something as plain as putting on a nice shirt and tie, having to sit quiet and still in a worship service once a week — to me, builds "character", for lack of a better word. I know how old-fashioned that sounds. In other words, I would make a poor apologist for religion generally, and for my own specifically. The absent-minded defense lawyer who isn't sure whether his client really did it? That's me with church, and you don't want me in your corner of the ecclesiastical debate ring.

So why the wishy-washy, dislaimer-ish explanation? The "religion vs. science" issue is getting all kinds of new publicity, and I want to record some thoughts about it. Religion has also received renewed examination in my own personal life over the past few years, and that has given me some ideas that I think are worth writing. And before I launch in to those, I thought I'd explain why I haven't before.