*Hi* - It's only me

Cold. Had to sit downstairs, near the stove, and write this with a BIRO, (sharp intakes of breath from the kids) Seems to me for the girls, blogging is the new knitting. When I was young most good girls spent half the day knitting. Clickety click, the needles a blur, reading a book and the knitting pattern, setting the table for tea all at the same time. The scarf would grow and grow, follow her around the room out the door down to the shop and back. At 11 o'clock it would come into its own. Down to the pub she would go, remind her old man that supper was getting cold and he would follow it to his front door which, to him otherwise looked like any other front door.

Now if you girls are not chatting up some middle-aged wierdo with an avatar like the Venus de Milo (mylissa told me) you are sharing your wisdom and secrets with the connected world on line. And wonderful it is too. I was born 45 years too early - I'll need more than an avatar to get into this game.

Stealth 2000's discussion is going well. But it's a pity you have to be so polite. It is my 'umble opinion that no believer can help his\her beliefs any more than I can help my disbelief. I am a born-again atheist, and it was quite a painful delivery; loyalty to my mum, a devout believer, was evtually overcome by reason and respect for the open mind. The point is, I had no choice - I could not believe.

Any religion will succeed if enough innocent children can be trained to believe in its ideas at an early age. Of course, dear reader your religious beliefs are correct, but what about the millions of young minds locked into absurd and cruell systems that, for instance, teach that women are men's possessions? Or that they can be mutilated to ensure no pleasure from intercourse is ever possible? Unless you are born-again as an adult, and possibly sectionable (certifiable), you have most likely reached your beliefs because they were forced into your mind from an age when you could NOT question what your parent(s) asked you to believe.

If I believe anything, it is that EVIDENCE should inform our beliefs; feelings can inform our 'faith' and be respected as an important contributor to our whole being. But I use the word 'faith' to mean trust in something we cannot say is true, cannot be proved, but we feel is right. I hear some of you crying "There's more to Life and Nature than is shown by evidence" Of course there is but leave it where it is - in the world of mystery - being studied - whatever, but not the stuff of truth.