Sorry, Blue-Skye visitor (if, indeed, there are any). I've neglected this website for many months while I got on with other pressing matters (e.g. see www.leverandmulch.co.uk).
Recently I've detected a message being sent from me to me: the Blue-Skye Thinkers website has done its job, which originally was poorly defined but now I can plainly see. It wasn't for you, it was for me. Job done, though as long as people keep thinking, saying and writing daft things there will be plenty to keep me busy.
What was that original purpose? Now that several years have passed and a lot of work is done I realise that Blue-Skye Thinkers essentially consisted of chapters from a dialogue with myself. A few people expressed their support, but nobody joined in and I ploughed on alone. Yet the project grew and grew. I have re-read my first essay (fortunately never posted), in which I tried to make sense of concepts such as truth, belief, atheism etc. and it's awful, truly awful. But it was that poor quality, verbose beginning from which my lust for inquiry expanded, learning accumulated and my thinking developed until I was no longer obliged to be ashamed of my rationalisations and opinions. In fact, later I was able to extract some good bits from essay #1 for recycling.
Having written a significant number of essays exploring Thinking, Science, Religion, Lifestyle, Death and the Paranormal, Quackery and Pseudoscience, I divided them into sections to which I added from time to time as new knowledge, connections and objections to what other people had written became apparent in my brain. When they seemed to be mature, I posted them at www.blue-skye.org.uk and sometimes told people who I thought might be interested what I'd done; but mostly I waited to see if anybody would notice. One friend said, "It's a Blog, what you're doing", and that was all right, but to me, more specifically, it was a growing-up process.
After a couple of years, with vigorous editorial assistance of a trusted academic friend, I sent one essay off to The Freethinker magazine and it was instantly published. I submitted five more, all of which wound up in print. The magazine of the Atheist Alliance International Secular Nation took another two, making seven published essays in a year and a half - and no rejections. After that wonky start, I seem to have got it now. It would be unnecessarily modest not to be quite pleased with that record.
The world is full of people talking tosh and I think it's our duty - assuming we really do know better than they do - to say so as prominently and clearly as possible. To that end I have done my best not to let any nonsense printed in my local paper the West Highland Free Press pass unchallenged. There's plenty of it to keep me occupied! So I've got myself a reputation as a 'Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells', but a lot of the feedback I receive is of the 'well done', agreeing sort, with the occasional whinge from people who don't like what I write because it scares or offends them. They can't say I'm wrong because I tend to concentrate on facts as the basis for my arguments, keeping personal opinion to a minimum. [That reminds me that I have another essay gestating, about offence and how people take it whether it's intentionally provoked or, as is usually the case, not.]
My relationship with the WHFP seems to have reached an awkward point, however. Three consecutive letters have not been published and I'm beginning to think that the editor no longer finds my views palatable, particularly when I highlight shortcomings of the Reformation (e.g. witch burning, heretic torture and charming inventions such as breaking & braiding on the wheel). Our favourite Wee-Free columnist Rev. Prof. Donald Macleod keeps on whingeing it's not fair that Darwin got so much attention in 2009 and then we aren't giving Luther and Calvin a fair crack of the whip as we approach their 'achievment's' 400th anniversary in 2010.
My thought processes no longer feel poorly defined or as lamentably under informed as they used to be, only a few years ago. Now that my understanding of many controversial topics has reached a reasonable state of maturity. Diffidence and self-deprecation with respect to my ideas have been replaced with a refreshing confidence. If I don't understand something, I can soon mug it up within this newly established framework of accumulated wisdom. It feels good. Is that arrogance? I will now joyfully engage in argument with any entrenched dogmatist who says or writes something daft, knowing I can handle myself with dignity, 'standing' on intellectual foundations that feel firm and steadfast, flexible and comfortable.
Early on I was worried that I might be perceived as arrogant if I spoke my mind with an air of authority on topics about which people are sensitive or have fixed opinions (that are not usually their own and therefore terribly shaky), for instance the beliefs that are incompatible with atheism. The Internet enabled me to observe many experienced outspoken critical thinkers in action and they didn't strike me as arrogant, just well read, enthusiastic and confident.
Arrogance is a charge others might level at one but not to speak out for fear of appearing arrogant and resorting to self-imposed, self-effacing timidity stifles self-respect and helps promote obfuscation and ignorance. Well-informed self-confidence might seem to eclipse humility, but if people choose to see that as arrogance when it's actually the result of a flexible thinker's long, honest intellectual journey in pursuit of the truth (bad received 'wisdom' and illogical dogma are not allowed), that's up to them; their problem. People can think what they will, but the truth - reality, that is - is immutable. If you are right, you're right and if they are wrong, they're wrong. If you are wrong and your mind is flexible, you can take corrective action. Of course, I'm always right. ;-)
I no longer need to publish my thoughts on the Internet, privately, for nobody to see. They can be subjected to an editor's scrutiny first. In magazines, that might not be as rigorous as the peer review process applied to scientific papers, but at least somebody checks that they contain coherent arguments and make sense, before anybody else gets to read them. Then lots of eyes and minds give them the once over. If they disagree or something I wrote is crass, they can and do say so in letters and then I have the opportunity to accept correction or continue to argue my corner (well, until the editor ends the correspondence string).
The next stage - and it's been batting around in my brain for months - will be to write the book that is emerging from Blue-Skye Thinkers. I have probably written enough essays to function, rewritten and reorganised, revised and expanded, as chapters. The question is, will anybody want to read them … and will any publisher want to back me?
Although, originally, my reasons for creating Blue-Skye Thinkers were a bit vague, I just got on with it to see what would happen. Now it has done, for me, what I now know I wanted it to do and I can let it go while I move on, forward, to other projects. I won't destroy it, though. It is possible that there is a small audience out there who might like visit what will gradually become a mouldy archive, so I'll leave the site in place and, who knows, I might continue to add to it, if with a little less ardour than formerly. That probably means that the book and DVD recommendations, already deficient because I haven't added many recent good items, will stagnate. Too bad: I've got a life.