The Idea Oubliette

140 characters is just not enough to do justice to the people I follow that make my Twitter experience so great. Either that, or I’d have to flood people’s timelines with many, many tweets. That’s just wrong... But if I forgot you, and you feel wronged by it, feel free to chew me out publicly in tweets. If I mess up the links to your twitter pages, I'm sorry. Beatings are encouraged. First and foremost: @ JardinDeSophie because she is my wife and the bestest. I don’t know where I’d be without her. @betagoddess One very special tweep who will be silent forever. I miss my mother. Good people: People who have engaged me in conversation, some of them have helped me through the hardest time of my life. @ ladyloki @ botticellirejct @ mergyeugnau @ bird42 @ ram327 @ WongoWoman @ CS999 @ doodledawne @ KingBobulousIII @ sundaeg1rl @ M20Mermaid @ damarisens @ mr_craig @ JulesHardy @ Noadi @ Angry_Atheist @ happy_atheist @ TheMadderHat @ kpibca @ Smithengarde @ Scr...

When I was around 11 or 12, I started to question the received wisdom that there was a deity. I came to the conclusion that all signs pointed to no. Do I outright, unequivocally and without reservation deny the existence of such an entity? No. However, I don’t see it as a likely scenario, and until I’m presented with hard evidence, I have enough reason to say that there isn’t. Some people take comfort in their religious beliefs, especially their belief in an afterlife. I have no interest in an afterlife, either for myself of my loved ones. In the past five years I’ve lost both my grandmother and mother, both of whom I loved dearly. No amount of belief in an afterlife would soothe my pain. I mourn at the fact that they are lost from my life, right here, right now. I imagine it’s the same even for those who believe that the dead pass on to somewhere else. You can’t escape the fact that their tangible presence is forever gone from your life. Unless you believe in ghosts, but that’s a ...