As usual Penn spoke at great length and was completely captivating. I found his take on how to judge entertainers particularly interesting. His idea is that the best entertainers have both complete passion and complete talent. From there it goes down in varying degrees of both until you get to the worst entertainers with no talent and no passion. There was also a great story about going to see a Dean Martin show in the 80s. I highly recommend the podcast. It both entertained and challenged me.
The challenge was what Penn said about people that don't want to discuss religion out of respect for others. To quote as best as I could get by listening to the podcast several times.
“It's really true in religious discussions. I believe the people that say we won't talk about religion. We wont' talk about this. I have my feelings you have yours. We'll be respectful. What they are really saying is don't bust me I won't bust you. If you really care about the truth ... What we call tolerance is actually just the fear of being proven wrong.”
The last thing I would want is for that to be true about me. I have always chased after the truth. My faith in Christ came at the end of a very long road. I did not believe at the first alter call I heard, or because it would get me a girl. I actually married a Christian when I was still very much an atheist practicing Buddhism. I would not change my beliefs for her or any reason other than discovering a truth that was not included in my world view. Even at my moment of deepest need for Christ when I called out to him unable to function sitting on the floor during my first nervous breakdown I did not become a Christian. It was several months later after I resolved some intellectual issues I had with Christianity.
Now that I have settled the big questions do I avoid conversations so my answers aren't challenged? I don't think so, but I certainly don't broadcast that I am a Christian to the world. Sure I write about it in this blog, but I keep a pretty low profile in my daily life. If you watched me go about my day would you even know that I am a Christian? I may not be hiding my light under a bowl, but its certainly not on a stand for everyone to see (Matthew 5:15). I've talked about this before here.
So I am issuing - mostly to myself - what I call the Penn Jillette Challenge. To live your life out loud and always pursue the truth. We may disagree what that truth is but does that really matter? There is nothing wrong with disagreeing. The human experience is complicated and I can see where two intelligent people could come to different conclusions. One of us is wrong, and it could be me. We will never figure that out if we don't discuss it though.
2 comments:
I like logic. I can't arrive at a Christian God through logic. Enlighten me.
I love logic. I taught logic at Tech for 3 years. Quine based rules logic. possible worlds logic. Kripke logic. Good stuff. I used to think logic was the most powerful thing. Then someone gave me the example "say your in a bar, and you logically tell the biker dude that you are his superior. Your basis is completely logically sound. He then bashes your face in. Logic loses to emotion." Logic is valuable, but does not always form action....sometimes we have to understand and navigate around emotion. MJ
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