Leaderboard

Peirce is not pleasurable to read because he writes like the academic scientist he was 120 years ago. "Fixation of Belief" is his treatment of how and why we come to believe. I stumbled across it in my quest to find out why we believe anything at all. This quest became exceedingly urgent in the wake of "taking the class," domestic political fever, and the global pandemic. He presents four methods we use in fixing our beliefs or resolving doubt. In ascending order, weakest to strongest: 1. Tenacity. If a doubt arises about X, take a particular position on X, constantly reiterate that position to yourself in a way that you begin to believe X, then shut out anything that might cause you to doubt X. [David Agler] 2. Authority. Victor said it, that settles it, I believe it. 3. Agreeable to Reason (a priori). We simply think through whatever doubt we have until we happen upon a belief that seems right to us. [David Agler] 4. Science. The scientific method. For more on critical thinking, doubt, belief and curiosity, check out Anthony Magnabosco's fascinating channel about street epistemology. https://youtube.com/c/AnthonyMagnabosco210

I do believe the Jesus Movement was a revival of God. Before Jimmy Dopp passed, I had been studying the "movement" and Lonnie Frisbee. He was the man God used. I don't care what he was or wasn't, he won thousands, he had a true ministry. But I wanted to know more. I wanted to talk to true men of God, those on par with (or maybe not totally) the Apostles of the first century. I believe we had some of those people still living, who had been a part of this revival and I wanted to talk to some of them before they passed. Excath was nice enough to arrange a phone call and an introduction to Jimmy Dopp for me. I got in the Word in Rye, NY under the Heefners - my first hearing of the Word was Steve preaching in Tim Bishop's living room and I was electrified - why had no one told me this before???!!! I was a high school Junior. This is just background. Anyway, I had been musing about the great apostles and men of the 1st century, true men of God who were given extrordinary apostolic power to preach the Word of God and Christ to the known world. After learning about Lonnie I had to know more. My brother-in-law from California knew Lonnie but couldn't tell me much. After Exci connected me with Jimmy, we had several, for me, life changing conversations. We'd talk until the early hours of the morning or until he fell asleep. We connected and we had amazing conversations. He told me of the House of Acts back then and how Lonnie had a little basement room. You had to go through the living room to get to the stairs that led to Lonnie's room. He said in the evening they'd be sitting there and kids would start walking through the living room, nodding good evening and just keep going, Lonnie would preach to 30, 40, 50 kids at a time and after it was over, would come upstairs and say, 30 people born again tonight! or 25 people, whatever the number, the man had a true ministry. They witnessed to everyone in the Haight including Charlie (Manson) who they eventually had to kick out - LOL to Jimi Hendrix. The Word spread like wildfire, then on to the rest of the country. VP read an article about this movement and hightailed it to SF. He played the PFAL for Lonnie and I believe it was a person named Chuck Wise who was an older man who was a leader in the movement and worked with Lonnie and other "main players" in the movement. Lonnie and Chuck said they would not be a part of it, but VP did get Heefners and others and invited the to the farm. The rest is history for The Way. VP was able to co-op a small section of this movement. The rest didn't follow him. This is all what JIm told me. He was there. He also hosted VP. Also, while during the day the wives did things together, VP had Jimmy take him down to the porno movie houses in the Tenderloin district. Jim thought this was very weird, but VP soon went back to Ohio and he didn't think too much about it. I do believe the Jesus Movement was a true revival. Those of us still living have hopefully tried to teach our children and grandchildren. As long as we live, I do not think we will see another revival like that in our lifetimes. That's enough for tonight.