The Bible needs to be kept far away from our politics

Christian liberals, and atheists who know some scripture, like to cite certain verses it in their arguments with the religious right. But, really, dueling Bible quotes have no place in modern day politics and law.

Everyone cherry-picks Bible verses according to his or her taste. When I was young and was still going to my very liberal church, certain passages from the Bible were read often, and there were some places we never went. I think that that's the same in all churches, but that other churches choose other passages to emphasize. Certainly, if you read widely in the Bible, you'll find that there is plenty of material that supports the beliefs of right-wing Christians. We liberals ignore those parts, but they are there: the Bible contains plenty of support, even in the New Testament, for slavery and the subjugation of women, to give two examples.

The Bible is a document that is thousands of years old. Whatever you believe or don't believe about Moses and Jesus, they were men of their time. The morality of the Bible, as a whole, is in fact monstrous by today's standards. Modern morality is an improvement on it.

I will repeat that: our morality is superior to that described in the Bible. Religion is not the basis for morality. Religion is simply the enforcer of whatever morality some powerful people want us to follow.

It is a shame that, instead of deciding right and wrong in and for our own time, some people still want us to look for answers in a book that was written by people who did not know most of the things we know now. We need to have confidence in our own ability to determine what is moral and what isn't.

Arguments from the Bible, no matter which side they are in support of, should be irrelevant.

Religion is an obstacle to understanding

"Science is the record of dead religions." - Oscar Wilde

I think that religion was humankind's first attempt at science. Faced with life in a hazardous world that seemed unpredictable and unfair, early humans tried to work out just what was going on. They posited spirits behind everything they couldn't explain. Some religions moved from many gods to one, but what all the religions had in common was the belief in some supernatural intelligence whose will it was that caused things to happen.

You can see these beliefs playing out in the Old Testament. God was behind any sort of disaster, whether it was famine or disease or man's inhumanity to man. The unpredictability of good and bad fortune created the idea of a capricious god who was constantly angry. Were there ways to placate this malevolent being? The Old Testament is full of prescriptions for keeping God happy, keeping the blessings coming, and minimizing misfortune. If we behave just so, we'll stay on God's good side.

The problem with this whole system is that, no matter how a person behaves, good and bad things happen to him or her anyway. There seems to be no connection between our behavior and our lot in life. This has necessitated the creation of a very complicated deity. We insist that "God is love." We insist that God is all good, all powerful, and all knowing. (Why that should be the case is mysterious, given the evidence that all three of those things can't be true if there is evil in the world. Is our insistence that God is good simply our attempt not to trigger his wrath?)

In any case, this approach to life is full of problems. Our loved ones get sick. We pray. Our loved ones stay sick, or perhaps get well. If the disease gets worse, and our loved ones suffer and die, it leaves us wondering why our prayers didn't work. Perhaps we have offended God in some way. We change our behavior, but no matter how devout we are, the results of our prayers are about the same as before. Perhaps our belief isn't strong enough. When we have done everything we can think of to change our ways, and the success of our prayers doesn't improve, then we fall back God's ultimate loophole: our prayers have been presumptuous. We have not been humble enough. God's will be done. God is off the hook, and when our prayers are not answered, we still believe because we have given God this out.

Perhaps the religious approach to understanding life is a mistake. When we step back and look at the world, it does seem unpredictable. Bad things happen to good people. I think that the whole problem with the religious world view is the very act of assigning an intelligence and a will behind things that happen. Positing a being who wills things to happen, who has some "plan" that is beyond our grasp, only makes the world harder to understand than it should be. It adds an unnecessary layer of complication where it is not needed. And, for those who truly believe that their sins, or the sins of others, are the cause of disasters, the religious view of life heaps an extra layer of guilt and suffering on top of the suffering from the disaster itself.

Science, meanwhile, has led to improvements in our lives: the curing of once deadly diseases, for example. Modern medicine's success rate is measurable. If you get cancer, depending on what kind it is and how soon you detect it, a doctor can give you a good idea of how likely you are to get better, and then you can take the steps necessary to improve your chances of living longer.

Science makes no claim of omnipotence. A good doctor or a good scientist will tell you, "Here's what we know about the world right now." You always know where you are, for better or worse.

Through the scientific method, we have discovered that the solving of our problems is facilitated when we drop the idea that there is any will or intelligence behind the way the world works. Progress is not dependent on figuring out what God wants. The interference of evangelists and their associated politicians in making decisions about our lives is, in fact, a hindrance rather than a help. The world is much simpler and easier to understand without a supreme being. The "problem of evil" that religious believers have struggled with for thousands of years is no longer a problem if there is no all-good, all-powerful God. We understand chance. Religious believers missed the memo that has been available to all for many years now.

Fusion GPS testimony--wow

Little bits of information stick in the mind and make one wonder, and it's hard to put those bits together and figure out what they mean, to get the big picture.

A few days after Trump's inauguration, I mentioned my realization that, at least since the Reagan era, elements of the Republican party seemed to actually yearn for an authoritarian regime, even as they pretended love of the Constitution and democracy. Before the 2016 election, one would hear the occasional Republican politician praising Vladimir Putin's "strength," seeming to wish for a similar leader in the USA.

Some thought that the Republican legislators were protecting Donald Trump so that they could get their tax heist passed, but they continue to protect him and to try to discredit anyone who tries to investigate his danger to the country and the rule of law. And, indeed, Trump chafes at the Constitution's restrictions on his power, complaining that our founding document is "archaic."

Then, suddenly, something is revealed that ties these things together. Dianne Feinstein has unilaterally released GPS Fusion founder Glenn Simpson's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, despite the refusal of the committee's Republican members to do so. The contents of that testimony are overwhelming.

You will have heard that the Republicans have been trying to look into Fusion GPS's bank records in order to discredit them, and somehow to make it appear that they are in Russia's employ. It's another piece in the Republican pattern of punishing the whistleblower.

Indeed, the whole thrust of Republican questioning of Simpson was an attempt to investigate Fusion GPS, instead of paying any attention to their explosive information on Trump's connections to the Kremlin, and Russian and Italian organized crime figures.

Luckily, our democracy is still functioning at a level where Democrats are also allowed to question witnesses. A picture emerges of a Republican Party up to its neck in Russia ties and corruption. If we are able to root out the corruption before it consolidates its power, Senator Feinstein will have saved our democracy.

Meanwhile, you may have heard another bit of information: that there is a move under way to convene a new Constitutional Convention. What combination of authoritarian and theocratic rule that might result is terrifying. Don't let it happen. These are serious times that demand serious leaders and strong resistance. Eternal vigilance, if you will.