Religion of Rob

Yours truly, from Big Dave

I started writing the Blue Heron Blast in March of 2008, I believe that we are now in our eighteenth year. It has operated fairly consistently over that time, with normal ebbs and flows. 2025 is charting to be my least productive yearly literary output ever, for reasons previously discussed.

There have been 13,623 posts to date, not including this one, 16,324 comments and we are now quickly closing in on ten million views, currently charting at 9,190,946. I am pleased to note that my analytic tools show that people are finally starting to read my short stories, which now consistently rank as the most read posts.

My best friend Big Dave decided to do some GPT analysis of my writing, I believe through Chat GPT and then Claude and Anthropic . He asked about my written feelings regarding religion and this is what the AI machine intelligence came up with. I wasn't able to download his file so I took screenshots and the reading will be a bit patchy so please bear with me.

Although I am pretty wary of AI I have to say that the program did a good job scrubbing the blog and accurately encapsulating my thoughts and philosophy regarding religion. I could nitpick one or two things but how do you argue with machine intelligence? My god. People may not understand me so well but this machine has me pegged in a nutshell, at least theologically speaking. And I was pleased to see that the Machine Mind did not view me as a threat, at least not yet anyway.

I told Dave that the AI sort of glossed over my Jewish components and he ran it again with a different engine, delivering this:

The Religion of Rob: A 300-Word Overview

Based on the Blue Heron Blast blog posts, Rob's religious worldview emerges as complex and conflicted, shaped by Jewish cultural identity while maintaining a deeply skeptical stance toward organized religion.

Rob demonstrates clear Jewish cultural connections, attending family bat mitzvahs in Toronto and seeking grief counseling through Jewish Family Services after his brother's death. However, his relationship with faith appears fraught with cynicism. He describes religious tribalism with stark language: "Love the tribe, just hate the bullshit. God loves the conquerors, smites the infidels, like wiping up ants with a wet paper towel at a picnic." This suggests someone culturally Jewish but theologically disillusioned.

His spiritual sensibilities manifest more subtly through an openness to mystical experiences rather than institutional belief. When discussing his brother's death, Rob acknowledges seeing potential signs—like a screech owl appearing near his door the night he learned of the passing—while carefully qualifying his skepticism: "I am not a huge believer in signs, so easy to get caught up in indulgent self deception. But that doesn't mean I am going to stop watching and listening."

This tension between skepticism and spiritual curiosity defines Rob's religious perspective. He maintains cultural and familial Jewish obligations while rejecting what he sees as organized religion's violence and tribalism. His worldview appears shaped by personal loss—having lost three siblings—leading to both grief counseling and a search for meaning beyond traditional religious frameworks.

Rob's "religion" seems to be one of aesthetic appreciation, human connection, and guarded openness to mystery. He finds meaning in art, food, family relationships, and careful observation of the natural world, while maintaining deep suspicion of religious certainty and institutional power. His is a post-traditional spirituality—culturally rooted but intellectually liberated from dogmatic belief systems.

Not bad. 

Dave also ran an AI program analyzing my feelings regarding art, something I will share another day. Too much cutting and pasting for one evening.

Peace be with you, Pilgrims. And I really like the part about the well made sandwich, glad that came through.