Presentation at Friendly House titled “Fiddling, or Being Willing to Advocate for Unpopular Positions: a look at a key root of the fact/alternative fact phenomenon.“ Doug Matheson considers what happens when we give ourselves permission to believe whatever we want to believe, and then expect to be respected. Matheson grew up a missionary kid in India. He spent more than a decade trying to reconcile evidence with his beliefs. When he was 37, he “encountered the straw that broke the camel’s back” and then quietly left the faith.