People assume that because I'm clergy that I'm soft on religion or at least my own beliefs. They do not know how many times my beliefs have changed both before I was clergy or during because of scientific rigour. After my son's death, I almost left. The scientific point of view kept me sane.

a faith without works is an orphan without a home, without family.

We must nurture the lotus of knowledge, not play in the pond with it, and rip it apart like children. We must mature and discuss correctly what we mean by faith, by its definition and by its scientific and poetic effect on the human heart and psychology and the total nature of our humanity.

So, the first things we must do is decide which it is: Asubstantive and hidden thing that produces cultural symptoms or it is the meme “hypothesis” and testable. If it is not falsifiable it cannot meet the criteria of scientific fact, according to the very structure of the scientific methodology itself. This would put it in the latter category of faith-based belief systems

An open mind does not censor truth, it discerns it through recognition, study, doubt, and faith. It recognizes it as complimentary to every truth in existence. When confronted with truth that makes one uncomfortable give yourself time to be open, but also time to acclimatize