New Year's question: What have you changed your mind about?

This year I was asked to contribute to the Edge Annual Question over at edge.com, the brainchild of third culture impresario John Brockman. Others contributors this year include Alan Alda, Chris Anderson, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Freeman Dyson, Brian Eno, Howard Gardner, Rebecca Goldstein, Daniel Goleman, Steven Pinker, and J. Craig Venter. Brockman's published anthologies of previous years' answers are What Do You Believe is True Even Though You Cannot Prove It?, What Is Your Dangerous Idea?, and What Are You Optimistic About?

The question this year: What Have You Changed Your Mind About? My answer, entitled "What Matters," begins with a confession of a dark secret from my past:

As a teenager growing up in the rural American Midwest, I played in a Christian rock band. We wrote worship songs, with texts on religious themes, and experienced the jubilation and transport of the music as a visitation by the Holy Spirit. Then one day, as my faith was beginning to waiver, I wrote a song with an explicitly nonreligious theme . . . .

Find out what happens. Kudos to the good people at edge.com for continuing to ask the right questions.