First post: raison d'etre

I have been a participant of several message boards centering around the evolution/creationism issue; the main one being evcforum, from where I have imported my Chiroptera identity. While mainly interested in evolutionary theory and the creationist objections to it, the discussions understandably go into religion, philosophy, and social policy. I have found these discussions extremely interesting. I have learned many things that I didn't know before, and I have found very interesting and new ways of thinking about the things that I did know about. I have also found the discussions fruitful in that they have helped clarify the way that I think about the issues even when no new knowledge was gained; the experiments in the various arguments have helped me to be a more careful thinker and explainer.

The reason that I am starting this blog is to be able to save longer essays on these issues on a handy online forum. Many times I have written a long reply to some issue of which I was rather proud, only to have great difficulty in finding it again when I wanted to refer back to it (if, indeed, I was able to find it again). Also, I find myself essentially repeating the same long replies over and over again as the same issues come up again and again on different message boards, or even on the same message board as new arrivals try to propose the same points that have already been covered. I'm thinking that having one place where I can place the a well-written exposition once and for all, and then summarize and link to it when I want to repeat the same points again will be helpful, I think.

The other issue is that I often find interesting articles in the news or posts on other blogs and message boards which get me thinking about some issue. Often, it is not possible or appropriate to impose my musings in those venues, and so it might be useful to post my thoughts here. That way, if a future discussion comes up where these ideas might be relevant, then I won't have to try to remember how I had worked out the issue.

So does the world need a new blog for these types of topics? That depends on the purpose of the blog. Certainly very little on this blog will be new or original; in fact, I will probably end up cribbing the good points that I find elsewhere. But as I have already said, what I am really trying to do is set up a storage facility for longer essays that contain what I feel are points that come up over and over again to be used elsewhere. Nonetheless, should anyone stumble on this blog and feel the need to comment on something, their opinions will be welcome.