Beyond Binary Thinking

A psychologist, a philosopher, and an anthropologist walk into a Podcast. We hope to offend entrenched views, air out echo chambers, see if we can tackle familiar controversies, and try and find a third way. Any time someone has trapped their thinking in a false dichotomy (Left vs. Right, Us Vs. Them, Good vs. evil..) then they’re oversimplifying and preventing dialogue by limiting what could be a rich conversation to the equivalent of a wrestling match.

Have you ever heard the story of Christians being fed to the lions for the entertainment of the vomitorium loving Romans?Or heard about American pilgrims, fleeing to the new world to escape religious persecution?These tales have entered our collective understanding of the world, despite being widely refuted by historians as a complete fabrication.

I’m contending that most of what you've been taught about the history of Christianity and Atheism is wrong.

The idea that Christians were either persecuted Martyrs, or that they held back scientific advancement, burnt libraries, and started crusades is nonsense and I’m hoping to take us beyond this example of binary thinking.

It’s easy to pick apart a creationist with a literal reading of the King James version of the Bible. Atheists claim to be enlightened and rational, in comparison to the gullible believers. I find it fascinating that they’ve fallen into the same self-serving biases and made a revisionist history.

I hear divergent creation myths from both Atheists, Christians and Muslims, and I’d like to share the view from modern historians that neither the dark ages, nor the renaissance actually existed and that the narratives we’ve learned about them are wrong.