Mgeddie, I love your take on things!

A while back, I got into a weeks-long talk with a very unpleasant (personality-wise) agnostic who strung me along on objections about God and religion. Finally I asked him point-blank that if I was sufficiently well-read and a fast enough thinker to answer the questions he machine-gunned me with, would he be willing to change his mind? And he told me no.

I shudder to think that such manipulation, cowardice, and baiting of a person (maybe for self-amusement or self-confirmation) runs so rampant in our society today. How many people - even Christians - pour a world's worth of importance into superficial traits and first impressions? How many of us rely on the first emotion or thought we have rather than the context we gain after the first 15 minutes? I am not immune to that either. But I think we'd be much better off if people at least tried to explore things deeper, instead of hearing a witty sound bite and thinking the talk is over.

I think people just don't want to deal with deep issues. They want to stay "entertained" and keep everything at a surface level. Thus the appeal of the derisive, put down form of humor that is currently in vogue. People with deep convictions are made a side show until their message gets lost.

Also, no one believes "facts" anymore. Kids have been taught to disregard written history because it was written from a western male perspective and therefore slanted. Biblical texts were written by the Church and not authentic. Historians only reported what they wanted to and left out stuff that did not fit their personal bias. Etc, etc. Current writers being "found out" passing fiction as fact only reinforces this bias.

However, no one wants to do the hard work to actually check out this current bias against the written record because with our current 15 minute attention span, it takes too long to do.