I just watched an excellent series of videos on youtube I thought others may be interested to see. It's jam packed with all sorts of cultural insights about what it means to believe, from films about disasters to a discussion of the book of Job and the meaninglessness of suffering, to what "unknown knowns" (=ideology) led America into war in Iraq, to why some Jews teach that they themselves were to blame for the holocaust (because it is easier to accept a terrible or disturbing meaning for an event than to accept that it has no meaning at all). He also has a theory about why Americans, Germans and French people all have different toilets. (a bit more speculative that line of thought!) As well as an interesting discussion of the paradox of why people must make an unnecessary apology in order for it to become unnecessary. There is an excellent discussion of predestination in the answer section at the end too: the paradox of how Calvinism could motivate the development of capitalism, and how love must be a free choice for it to be genuinely love, but once it is chosen it seems a necessary choice - we feel we could not do other than love once in the situation.
About creationism he says he dislikes it (to paraphrase) 'not because it is wrong blah blah, I do not care, what I object to is the way it obliterates the gap between religious beliefs and scientific propositions and you treat them both on the same level. Fundamentalists have no problem with science - they love science, they all the time try to prove that there is no gap there.'
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqls4Lva5sg
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6Vidnzy7hCc
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3U0s8j03lts
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=g9R2woA6Cqs
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=pJyHVZIJVAY
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=UC0Kp7zmnuA
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=v2faCb9tqrM
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=X63z_GkGZ0E
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hG8GxajsbA0
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tg_j_TSAas