Civil Commotion

I can clearly remember the very early days of the AIDS epidemic, when the loonies were going around saying that the virus was God’s punishment for homosexuality. That was crazy then, and it’s crazy now, but at least it could be linked to individual behavior. Now, you and babes-in-arms and even your dog who doesn’t know bupkus about Original Sin might be drowned because you live in a wicked state.

Well, I hate to say it — but that’s Biblical. Remember Noah?

Say what you like: Christianity perverts the ability to think morally.

Ho-ho. I happen to have definite, first-hand knowledge of what happens when developers go messing with civil engineering design — and We, the People, don’t need that: The developer declares bankruptcy and folds the day after the last unit closes, and everything falls apart a year later. And, puh-leeze — we already know about The Donald’s negotiating skills.

Almost immediately after the election of Donald Trump, I wrote that there would be no room in the Trump administration for genuine-article professionals. Now, apparently, that’s starting to sink-in throughout the civil service as data-sharing Web sites go down, research is curtailed, and anti-science amateurs take charge.

WASHINGTON — Across the vast federal bureaucracy, Donald J. Trump’s arrival in the White House has spread anxiety, frustration, fear and resistance among many of the two million nonpolitical civil servants who say they work for the public, not a particular president.

At the Environmental Protection Agency, a group of scientists strategized this past week about how to slow-walk President Trump’s environmental orders without being fired.

What do you know? That’s exactly what I predicted.

Imagine this wholly plausible scenario: Ben Carson, Creationist nutjob who believes that the pyramids were built to serve as granaries, is nominated for Secretary of Education; he is much-discussed as a likely nominee for that job, and weenies like Paul Ryan will doubtless urge his swift confirmation. Carson reads some law or other as granting him authority to withhold federal educational funding from states which don’t teach creationism as an alternative scientific explanation of human existence, and piously adds that to do so will uplift the country’s morals.

He has said he believes exactly those thngs, and millions of Trump voters agree with him. This could actually happen.

What is an honorable mid-level science professional serving in the Department of Education supposed to do in that case? Disgrace himself by attempting to implement such a policy, condemning a generation of American schoolchildren to appalling ignorance and sweeping the floors of the Chinese-owned factory on the midnight shift?

S-a-a-a-y that he is trying to implement the policy and look busy-busy-busy while underhandedly subverting it?

I can sympathize with the perspective, the sense of desperation, that would cause them to do that — but they shouldn’t.

• It is a dishonorable and unethical thing to do. If you draw a paycheck, you do the work.

• It is psychologically harmful, which will inevitably manifest itself throughout their lives and relationships.

And the big one:

• Let the public see the meaning and consequence of the anti-intellectualism of the loony right, and their own negligent attitude toward the duties of citizenship. They will vote in 2018, and they will consign once-for-all the alt-right nutjobs and their backward-looking ambitions to the dumpster where they belong.

… by Jeri Massi, a second installment of her Secret Radio series.

In a story that is often comic and often stark with the realities of coming to terms with life outside of her religion’s insularity and secrecy, Grace encounters kind friends everywhere: a courteous and warm hearted rationalist who makes her his protege, a former actress now living in obscurity who rescues her from danger, an African American Christian who gently reveals to her the decades of racism in Fundamentalism.

I haven’t read it, and tend to be wary of instruction/message novels (even John Steinbeck can get under my skin), but Jeri is a good writer, a real hero of the fight against clergy abuse, and clear-headed about the evils of fundamentalism, so go take a look.

The Christian understands that Christianity itself is based upon the understanding that truth is not only real but is knowable by divine revelation. And furthermore, we understand that Christianity consists of essential truth claims. If they are not true, then Christianity offers no hope.

Albert Mohler

EVERY national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet; as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.

Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all.

As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into the subject, offer some observations on the word ‘revelation.’ Revelation when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man.

No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and, consequently, they are not obliged to believe it.

Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason