I'm leaving DU tonight (or, this morning rather). I don't know how long I will be gone or if I will eventually come back - I guess that's not really up to me. I wanted to post this here, in R/T, because this is where most of who I would consider my friends on DU are - both theist and atheist alike. These are the people who I most want to bid farewell to.
I'm not leaving because I'm fed up. On the contrary, I still enjoy conversations here as much as I did when I started. I've learned quite a bit from hanging around in here, and I know that because I feel must less intelligent than I did when I joined. Odd the paradoxes of life. I'm not leaving because I'm no longer interested in politics or talking about theology - those are both still very much my interests. I'm leaving because of some pretty big problems in my life that I have to deal with. I've posted about those problems
elsewhere. So what it's come down to is that I just need to step away from all of it.
But enough about me. On my better days, what I always hoped to bring to the discussions here was a sense that we all share a common ground - believers and non-believers alike. I've written about it, and tried to express as honestly as I have been able what I think that common ground is. I don't think I made a whole lot of impact on a whole lot of people while I was here, so that's just the message I want to leave on.
At the end of the day I don't think it matters whether or not you believed in the right god, or any at all for that matter. It doesn't matter what you think is going to happen when we die, and it doesn't matter what church you go to. All of those things are inconsequential, insofar as being able to relate to others. We all basically want the same things for ourselves - to be happy, healthy, and secure. We all are basically afraid of the same things, too. The differences, the lines that we all like to draw in the sand are pretty much illusions. At the end of the day, regardless of what you believe or do not believe, we're all human beings. As such, we kind of like to hold onto those differences and use those to define ourselves when, instead, we could be seeking out the similarities and using those instead.
Okay, I'll stop waxing philosophic. Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to talk to me this past year and a bit. Thanks for showing me something new and worthwhile. I wish you all the best in your lives.