One of the things I love about being a person of reason is that embracing reason over faith often encourages people to admit their mistakes and to change their position on various issues. For starters, most atheists once believed in a deity and have changed their position based on new information. All of science is based on the principle that we don’t have all the answers and that some of the answers we do have might not be completely correct or maybe totally wrong.
With that said, I remember going to the movie theater and watching the film, Jesus Camp with Brian Sapient of the Rational Response Squad. After watching it, Brian and I did a joint podcast discussing the film. Early in our podcast we were discussing a kid named Levi who appeared in the film. Because Levi was very charismatic and confident it made sense for the filmmakers to focus on him and make him one of the main characters.
I predicted that Levi would lose his faith and become an atheist when he gets older. Brian vehemently disagreed. He thought that Levi was indoctrinated so much that he wouldn’t stand a chance. I pointed out that it was because he had been so shelters, that when he gets out there on his own and starts asking questions, he would easily break free of all this bullshit.
We did this podcast in 2006 and now it is 2014 and I just watched a clip of Morgan Spurlock’s 2012 interview with Levi. Interestingly enough, we actually mentioned Spurlock in our podcast that night, not knowing that he would later interview Levi. Here is that interview:
http://youtu.be/qYpcZZh6ilY
Needless to say, I was wrong! After watching this video, I looked Levi up on the Facebook and even now he is still a fundamentalist Christian. So Brian was correct and I was wrong. However, we do live in the interweb age so things can change. In our joint podcast, I mentioned my Christian friend Tom who wrote a column on my old website called, “The Religious Middle.” Tom has since de-converted.
That the great part about embracing reason over faith, it often encourages people to admit their mistakes and to change their position on various issues. We just have to get more faithful people to think reasonably about their beliefs.
I am currently reaching out to Levi to see if I can get an interview with him about his beliefs. Maybe we can start a friendly dialog.
Related articles
- An Atheist Visits Church To Speak About Atheism (skepticink.com)
- Review: ‘God’s Not Dead’ (examiner.com)
- Response: ‘5 Lies Atheist Tell’ (examiner.com)
- Why there is no such thing as a good Christian (examiner.com)
