The Unspoken

"Prelude to Atheism" might also be described as "Prelude to Science."

Although many other topics were explored, the overarching subject was always about the general dilemma of atheism and religion.

The narrator (not always a representation of the author) is a person slowly coming around to concepts of reason and science. In the process, many apprehensions towards that end, from various angles, are brought up.

One of these apprehensions dealt with the notion of autonomy and the unspoken. At the time I was constructing the rhetoric of the piece, I had deeply wallowed in concerns about objectivity versus subjectivity. ie:

• what do rationalists/skeptics believe about private truth?
• in the context of guilt and accusations, how do people articulate concepts of personal truth and accounting?
• where is the discourse of forgiveness and benefit-of-the-doubt in any given discussion about guilt and skepticism?
• where is the concept of innocent until proven guilty?
• if a person is to adopt the discourse of skepticism, then 
• where does a person exercise faith in humanity?
• where is the discourse for meaningful personal relationships of trust?
• where is the value of deep personal feelings?

Coming from a Mormon (LDS) upbringing, the notion of deeply felt personal testimony, and the value of personal testimony had been drilled into me. I drew heavily from a new dilemma that I was being confronted with as an author - I was in terror at the idea that internal feelings no longer mattered. It felt to me that in order to become a skeptic, that I was also being asked to lose my identity and value as a person.

The topic of autonomy and the unspoken observations and feelings of the individual became the most central theme of my writing. After all, if an individual's feelings no longer matter, then what is morality or goodness or any of it worth? What is an ethical discussion outside of people's deeper feelings?

A good portion of what I recorded was about brainstorming a series of basic questions around essential assumptions concerning lies and truth. As such, many of the notes I recorded were about situations and scenarios that I never intended to occur, and never foresaw occurring, but were merely notes to myself about people and places and perspectives that I could differentiate at some future point to understand the notes I was taking.

This is a disclaimer to anybody who might have heard my recordings. There are false perspectives shared that are not truly my own (consistent with the theme I was exploring). There are untruths that are presented as examples to myself of different nuances of lies and truths that might later be applied to the development of artificial intelligence's rules about personally deciphering truths and lies in others as well.

'The unspoken' came to mean, not only forthright obvious discussions of the author, but also of what the author (me) was leaving out. It was intended for me to decipher at some future point.