This is a video I own in DVD version. It is now able to be viewed on-line. It's a succinct and potent presentation narrated by Brian Flemming, a former fundamentalist. Flemming pulls no punches while he examines believers and the origins of belief. On the cover of the DVD, Flemming…
As I have mentioned a time or two before, I used to be Christian. I wasn't just Christian, I was a fundamentalist. I spoke in tongues ("praying in the spirit" we called it), I attended services 4-5 times a week and sometimes entire weekends were spent in services. I've helped…
How do people who believe the Bible to be inerrant reconcile the Old Testmament version of God with the New Testament's version? They don't often try. Rather, they cherry pick. They tell the Noah story by focusing on God's "saving" of Noah's family, rather than firmly acknowledging God's decision to commit cold senseless genocide…
In Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes (1982), Frans de Waal discusses reconciliation, but he's not talking about human beings who are making up after fighting. Rather, de Waal is describing the reconciliation he has observed in communities of chimpanzees: Sometimes the maneuver is fairly obvious. Within a minute…
Sometimes we get it, sometimes we don’t. We’re only human, after all. In my life journey I have beliefs that sometimes conflict with observable reality. The issue, then, is whether to conform my beliefs to observable reality. Too often, I don’t. I assemble the facts and weigh them, often discarding compelling proofs that what I hold are mythical beliefs. But we all do this.
I will cite an example: my belief in the fundamental goodness of human beings.
I didn’t begin to drive until I was 40. I had lived in St. Louis 35 years before that and my friends either didn’t know or didn’t care that I didn’t drive (to be honest, I had occasionally operated a car but, only in emergency situations where my lack of skills was outweighed by other more pressing concerns). I also lived or spent time in Washington, D.C., New York City and Boston, where there’s real public transportation. But here in St. Louis I used public transit. Or I rode a bike, ran or walked, if traveling less than two miles. For most of that period I got around St. Louis (and the rest of the country) by hitchhiking. After high school, I hitched around the country and stayed in various places–I’d call home collect to let my family know I was alive. My most frequently traveled routes were between home and Colorado and home and Chicago.
