Four churches claim to have the same head — Nothing in the Bible suggests that John the Baptist had more than one head. Yet four different churches claim to have the skull of John the Baptist as a holy relic. The Bible records that John the Baptist was beheaded on the orders of King Herod. It says that John…

Non-conscious frameworks filter everything — According to schema theory, our minds construct “organized conceptual frameworks” that pull together many different details into unified wholes. We form schema about virtually everything, from physical objects like “car” or “motorcycle” to abstract concepts like “truth” and “justice.” We also develop self-schema, or schema about ourselves. Our various identities…

Dating the mortar beneath the Holy Sepulchre — The Church of the Holy Sepulchre outside Jerusalem claims to house the ancient tomb of Jesus Christ. The Church was destroyed and rebuilt in 1009 A.D., during the Crusades. How could it contain a tomb from 33 A.D., the year Jesus died on the cross? Inside the church, there is…

Or how 9/11 changed everything and nothing — Twenty-two years ago, the 9/11 terror attacks changed everything and nothing about American society; revealed America’s decadence and Americans’ selflessness; and traumatized me without altering my life. Changing everything by changing nothing The attacks changed everything about America’s culture by changing nothing about America’s society. Day-to-day life for 99% of Americans was not significantly altered…

And what we can do about it — I had the opportunity to interview Jon Ward, author of Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Failed a Generation (not an affiliate link). Ward is a political correspondent for Yahoo! News who grew up in a charismatic Evangelical church community, engaged with the “New Calvinist” or “New Reformed” movement…

Certainty without humility is dangerous. If you are truly, utterly, 100% certain of a belief tied to your identity, then what would you not do to defend that belief? How could you ever change your mind in response to new information? How could you ever compromise with people who believe…

How I learned to avoid the seduction of moral equivalence — One of my favorite podcasts is Hidden Brain, hosted by Shankar Vendantam. Each episode explores social science research into human behavior and the hidden and subtle forces influencing it. A recent episode featured psychologist Emily Pronin, whose research explores our tendency to recognize bias in other people but not ourselves. …

Lessons from arguing with my father — The last time my father and I argued about politics, we seethed at each other about supply-side economics in a local Mexican restaurant. He gestured at his plate and said, “We wouldn’t have any of this without the 1%.” Driving home, I pointed out that tax cuts don’t pay for…

What is, or should be, the object of believing? — As a middle-class Christian in America, I was taught certain beliefs about what it means to believe. No one sat me down and said, “Now, Eric, let me teach you what ‘believe’ means and the right way to do it.” …