File Under 'Grey Matter'

My husband and I were both raised in strong Christian families and we were both heavily involved in our respective churches.

When we first met (at a conservative denominational private school) we were very, very Christian.

Nineteen years later, when we caught up for a casual coffee, we were very, very atheist.

Somewhere along the way we both concluded that our deeply entrenched core beliefs were wrong.

As an incurable over-analyser I find it fascinating to observe the different ways this conclusion has affected us and how it has shaped our interests.

While we both tend to ask similar questions and gravitate toward similar reading material (and it's not uncommon for one book to need two bookmarks because we're trying to read it at the same time), for him it has been more about learning the historical facts. What really happened? How was the Bible actually compiled? What events caused the religion to develop the way it did? How does it compare to other myths and religions?

For me, however, it has been more about learning the mental processes behind belief. How do our minds interpret our surroundings? What subtle (or not so subtle) influences shape our thoughts? How can a person hold two conflicting beliefs at once? In what ways does our brain deceive us?

A small selection of books from my shelf.
See if you can detect a theme.

One of the simplest ways to demonstrate why we can't always rely on our brains to tell us the truth is through illusion. And one of the more confounding illusions involves a shaded checkerboard. I first saw this in Kathryn Schulz's book, Being Wrong, but this morning Sam Harris linked to an excellent recreation of it on YouTube:

How cool is that?

The mind is an incredible thing, and at times it can be incredibly wrong. Fallibility isn't curable, but learning the facts and understanding the process certainly makes it intriguing.