Skeptical Faith

Google Image My wife, Amparo, and I recently bought a car, not a new one but a late model. It seemed to make the most economic sense. What didn’t make sense as we were looking at cars, is the baffling number of choices confronting the buyer. “There are over 6,000 car models (generations) sold worldwide, according to Carbrands.org, "with more than 100 car brands producing vehicles. In the U.S. market, there were 257 existing care models in 2009, and this is expected to increase to around 285 by 2023." These are the latest figures I could find. There are undoubtedly more models now. The brand of vehicle we bought offers four crossovers and SUVs, three pickup models, two sport-car models and three “commercial models.” Within the model we bought, there are five price levels, from the S to the Platinum, depending mostly on the “trim.” Huge Variety of Products Although that number of choices doesn’t make sense to me, it obviously does to the majority of car buyers, or the car m...

Google Image I’ve often quoted New York Times columnist David Brooks in these blogs because I find his columns unusually insightful. And, unlike many columnists in that publication and others, he doesn’t come off as arrogant or all knowing. And I often have gotten the impression that he is sincerely seeking God. So, I was especially interested in one of his recent columns entitled, “The Shock of Faith: It’s Nothing Like I Thought It Would Be.” It indicates that he has taken another step – or maybe many more steps – on his long road to God. “When I was an agnostic,” he writes, “I thought faith was primarily about belief. Being religious was about having a settled conviction that God existed and knowing that the stories in the Bible were true. I looked for books and arguments that would convince me that God was either real or not real.” Not a "Believer" Brooks’ religious background was a mixture of occasional Jewish and Christian connections. He sometimes engaged in the f...