Challenging people's beliefs really pisses them off.

Yet if we don't challenge their beliefs, where do we go from here? What's wrong with the world is Belief Systems - or BS for short. There's no exception for what you believe in. All beliefs are pretty much guaranteed to be wrong.

So if your doctor gets annoyed when you challenge what he tells you - find yourself another doctor. The same thing applies to scientists. People who are just telling you facts don't get annoyed when you don't believe them. They just try harder to explain.

There are few people as smart as Richard Feynman, the guy who did much of the math on which particle physics is based. He was most interested in how to explain things to people. He got really annoyed with people who tried to push their BS. There's no better refutation that what he said:
"You can't know that. I know how hard it is to know anything. I know how much hard work it takes to know anything. I know you haven't done the work."

If you believe something, at least ask yourself, "Do I believe this gladly because I want it to be true? Or do I admit it reluctantly because I've eliminated every other possibility?"

Just to put the cat among the pigeons, Jesus never said that God was his real Dad. His opponents made out he claimed that - and it suits His followers to think he meant that. What are the first two words of The Lord's Prayer?

I have to be brave enough to declare my own view, at the risk of alienating viewers who won't agree with me. The only record of a searching interview between Jesus and an intelligent interlocutor was with Pontius Pilate, who asked him all the right questions and concluded, "I find no fault with this man". Those words, to me, are the most reliable evidence and most likely to be true. When challenged, Jesus made no claim to being anything more than a man.

Happy 91st birthday, Lawrence. The beat goes on. The photo is only a couple of years old, taken at the San Francisco International Poetry Festival.

"Christ in the House of His Parents", 1850, was by Sir John Everett Millais.

"Christ of St John on the Cross",1951, was by Salvador Dali.