I awoke today to an overcast sky on my way to spin class at our local rec center. For the uninitiated, a spin class is a boot-camp style workout where the participants mount bikes that don't work (according to the ordinary definition of a bike) but have a nob that the user turns to add tension to the wheel mechanism and thus more pain to their experience. Meanwhile a fitness nazi yells into a microphone at those who are unable to talk back for fear of 'oatmealing'.

I thought this was a good topic to bring to bleat.ca because as people draw conclusions and write them down here on the site, others might take offense, or perhaps they might just want to play devil's advocate. Here's what I (and many others) have observed...

Email, forum, or text message based discussions often run the risk of being misinterpreted. Someone offers their opinion on a subject and all of a sudden someone else blasts them and tells them how wrong they are. Next thing you know there's name calling and all the rest.

So here's the thing. Maybe there is no eternal punishment. What if we take John 3:16 literally.

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.: - John 3:16

As some of you already know, we at bleat.ca have become the host for the GENEralities blog run by Gene Packwood. Gene was in need of a better home for his blog so he could do more in the way of customization and all that jazz. We had the space and thought this could be a good way of further extending our community.

So we welcome GENEralities and all of it's readers to the Bleat webspace. It's work in progress, but we hope it will become something of a resource over time.

Sorry for those of you who can and found bleat.ca down and out over the bas 12 hours or so. We wanted to upgrade to the latest version of the engine that we are running.

The upgrade is complete now, so all should be back to normal EXCEPT you may have noticed the new look. It's a default theme for now, but we will add to it as time goes on.

The idea is to use this look instead of the other one because this is more generic. As the site developes into something with and identity, so will the theme for the site.

It is the understanding and philosophy of the moderators of this site that to ask tough questions as well as to draw challenging conclusions about God and religion does not consitute disbelief or faithlessness.

We often challenge ideas about the way things are. The purpose for this is multi-facetted.

First, we recognize that by examining an idea by challenging it or trying to disprove it can sometimes serve to reveal truth about the idea. The exposition of the idea makes us understand it better.