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Predictions for the End of the World

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I’m still elated that we dodged an end-times bullet last week. The earth should be a smoking cinder by now, at least according to a couple of prophecies, but God stayed his savage hand. Or maybe he doesn’t exist at all, and these end-times predictions are all nonsense.
The much-edited parchment above shows just some of the Christian end-times predictions that have come and gone in the last 2000 years, and it’s already out of date.
At the top, it takes us back to the mother of all failed predictions:

Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God (Mark 9:1, Matt. 16:28, Luke 9:27).

Apologists will argue that the prediction actually did come true because seeing “the kingdom of God” turns out to be not as big a deal as you might imagine. It’s the destruction of the Temple, for example, or it’s some sort of new age. But if that prediction was fulfilled, where is the prediction of the second coming of Jesus? A single prediction can’t be both fulfilled in the first century and also unfulfilled by an any-day-now second coming.
More to the point, it’s harder to handwave away the stars falling from the sky and the other cosmic calamities (Mark 13:24–31) and the comparison of the end times with Noah’s flood, where the unworthy are swept away unexpectedly and the master “will cut [them] to pieces and assign [them] a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 24:36–51).
It’s been close to 2000 years since those “standing here” reportedly heard those words. Whoops!

Faith is just gullibility dressed up in its Sunday best.
— machineintelligence

The artwork above was created by the talented Kyle Hepworth, who also did the cover of my Cross Examined.

A Defense of Boy Scouts

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Since the Boy Scouts of America changed its policy yesterday to allow openly gay members, there have been many attacks against the new policy. I’d like to offer a defense by responding to a CNN article titled, “Why my family is quitting the Boy Scouts.”
It begins with an introduction of the author.

John Stemberger is an Eagle Scout and president of On My Honor, a coalition … united in their support of Scouting’s timeless values and their opposition to open homosexuality in the Scouts.

I’m also an Eagle Scout. Patrol Leader. Order of the Arrow. Philmont. Scouting was a big part in my life and, more importantly, a big part of my father’s life. My grandfather died when my father was three, and to a young man growing up fatherless in New York City, Scouting was fundamental in shaping who my father became. I’m an Eagle Scout because he was, too. I understand how important Scouting can be to someone.
Mr. Stemberger doesn’t pull any punches in his critique of the new policy.

This organization that has stood the test of time will probably be destroyed now that they have decided to admit openly gay boys as Scouts.

Why? Was marriage destroyed when they let black folks and white folks marry each other? Change happens, and organizations adapt.

The BSA [Boy Scouts of America] membership application did not ask about sexual orientation, and there has never been a witch hunt in the BSA to find or remove its gay members.

The Boy Scout Law demands that a Boy Scout be trustworthy. A “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy simply isn’t honest.
Stemberger seems to imagine Boy Scouts as an immutable organization, built perfect a century ago with no need to change today. But it has evolved as society has evolved. For example, its rule on race in the early days was that local scouting organizations should follow the local school district’s policies, which meant that troops were racially segregated if the local school system was segregated.
But now it’s not. Sometimes change is good.

The policy fails to respect or revere the religious beliefs, values and theology of the vast majority of Christian churches, which charter more than 70% of all Scouting units.

What if a church had a racist policy for leadership—should that be respected when picking a scoutmaster? What if a church rejected conventional medicine in favor of prayer—should that be respected when a boy is injured on a hike?
Religion isn’t a trump card in a society governed by a secular constitution. “However free the exercise of religion may be, it must be subordinate to the criminal laws of the country” (1890 Supreme Court case Davis v. Beason).

The new policy also leaves all Scouting units with no options and no legal protection if they refuse to allow open homosexuality among the boys of their units.

Troops would also be without legal protection if they wanted to discriminate based on race. Does that trouble you as well?

Most important, the new policy robs parents of Boy Scouts, like me, of the sole authority to raise issues of sex and sexuality with their kids.

I hate to tell you, but the issues of sex and sexuality will be raised among teenage kids whether you like it or not.
You do know that these open homosexuals are attending public school with other kids, right? Of course parents have the right to steer their boys on the path that they think is best, but unless your kids are in solitary confinement, don’t imagine that they won’t be exposed to—and even seek out—information on sex from other teens. If you’re concerned about misinformation, talk to your kids early and often about sex.
And what do you fear will now be discussed around the campfire? Sex? It can’t be news to you that sex has always been a topic of interest with teenage boys.

[My wife and I] are concerned for the safety and security of our boys, as are many other parents who are considering leaving as well.

Safety? Is homosexual rape what this is all about? I’m pretty sure that the new policy doesn’t condone that. And I can’t imagine that you think that rape would be any worse after the new policy, when gays can be out, than before the policy, when gays were closeted. I suspect that there have always been gay boys in scouting.

I love the Boy Scouts and want my boys to enjoy the same great experiences as I and millions of others have had over the years. That’s why I regret that Thursday’s vote refused to keep sex and politics out of the Boy Scouts and stand firm for those timeless principles.

What timeless principles?
Slavery used to be legal, polygamy used to be legal, racial discrimination used to be legal. Now, not so much. Society changes. Don’t you applaud at least some of society’s changes?
The Scout Law says that a Scout is brave. The oath from which your organization takes its name includes this obligation: “To help other people at all times.” How about showing a little of that bravery and commitment to doing the right thing?
Maybe instead of digging in your heels, you could see how our future leaders could learn from this. We can’t go back to the fifties and encourage an end to Jim Crow laws, but we’re right in the middle of another civil rights issue. We have a small opportunity to nudge society in a better direction. Why shield your boys from that? How about instead give them front-row seats to social change, a change that  surely won’t be society’s last?

The truth of the matter is that
you always know the right thing to do.
The hard part is doing it.
— General H. Norman Schwarzkopf

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Response to Attack on My Naysayer Argument

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The Sistene Chapel image without God looks betterStrange Notions is a new web site that aims to be “the central place of dialogue between Catholics and atheists.” I was invited to submit one of my posts, the first atheist contribution, I hear. I applaud that goal, and I am honored to have been be asked.
I offered my “10 Reasons to Just Say Nay to the Naysayer Hypothesis.” A day later, Fr. Dwight Longenecker, author of the Patheos blog Standing on my Head, wrote a reply. Strange Notions is a Catholic site where the Catholic gets the last word, so I will respond to Dwight here.
You’re welcome to read my post about the naysayer hypothesis for full details, but let me summarize it here.
The Christian argument
Many apologists say that Christianity surviving its early years is a testament to its truth. If the gospel story (written or oral) circulating in the years after the death of Jesus wasn’t true, there would’ve been people who would’ve objected. They would’ve said, “Hold on—I was there, and that’s not what happened.” These eyewitnesses would’ve been able to shut down a false story. An eyewitness account would’ve been much more credible than that of someone who simply passed on a story.
Rejection of the naysayer hypothesis
Let’s imagine that. Let’s imagine that Jesus was an ordinary rabbi and that there were eyewitnesses of him not being a miracle worker. The apologist claims that Christianity would’ve been squashed. And let’s be clear here, they can’t be content with a lukewarm, “Well, naysayers might have shut down Christianity.” That’s hardly a foundation on which to build the remarkable claim that God created everything and that Jesus was his emissary on earth who was raised from the dead.
I argue that this naysayer hypothesis is false. That is, we can easily imagine naysayers in the early years of Christianity and the religion surviving just fine. There’s much more in that post, but briefly: the handful of people who followed Jesus closely enough to know that he didn’t do any miracles would’ve been unable to spend their lives stamping out the brush fires of Christianity popping up throughout the eastern Mediterranean. They wouldn’t have even been a part of the Greek-speaking Christian community to know about the error. And why imagine that they would’ve cared enough to devote any meaningful time to eradicating Christianity?
Since rumors take on a life of their own today (it took over two years for the fraction of Americans who believed that Saddam Hussein had something to do with the 9/11 attacks to drop below 50 percent), why imagine that the poorer communication of the ancient world would’ve stopped false rumors any better?
My response to a response
One more bit of housekeeping before we get to the response. Here are the facts that I think Dwight and I share.
1. The gospels and epistles exist. We can agree on what each English translation says.
2. These books were written in the first century, and Christianity is a first-century movement.
Dwight seems to have additional starting assumptions, but I can’t think of any that I’d share with him. In particular, I don’t take as fact that anything in these writings is true. And that’s only prudent—we accept that the epic of Gilgamesh exists, but we don’t immediately take its claims as history. You want to claim that Gilgamesh is actual history? Or the Iliad? Or the Bible? I’ll listen to your argument, but remember our starting point: that these books exist and their age, nothing more.
Dwight makes clear that my problem is

basic false assumptions, rooted in some very elementary ignorance of the facts of New Testament scholarship, historical scholarship, and what actually happened. Of course, if false, these assumptions make [Bob’s] conclusions irrelevant.

With that scolding ringing in our ears, let’s soldier on.

We don’t ask if there were any naysayers around to disprove the gospels from 70 AD onward. We ask whether there were any naysayers around when the gospel was hot and fresh when the apostles were preaching—first in Jerusalem and then around the Empire.

That’s a good point. For simplicity, I imagined just naysayers and the gospels, but yes, the fuller hypothesis imagines naysayers right at the beginning. This touches on points 2 and 3 in my argument, but it does nothing to refute the overall argument.
Next, he spends a surprising amount of time arguing about the date of the gospels.

He repeats the tired old idea that they must date from after 70 AD. The only reason for this dating is the modernist scholar’s assumption that Jesus could not have prophesied the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, which happened in 70 AD. Why? Simply because prophecies of the future are impossible. Why? Because they say so.

I’ve heard this argument many times from conservative scholars. He sees Acts written before 65 AD, and Luke before that, and Mark before that. As far as I can tell, however, this isn’t the scholarly consensus.
But this is a red herring. I don’t much care when you date the gospels. My concerns still stand: you have decades of oral history before the gospels were written, then centuries of turmoil within the Christian community before our earliest full copies in the fourth century. That’s not much firm ground on which to build Christianity’s incredible claims.
Dwight then argues that there were naysayers, but that they were ineffective.

Let’s look at the facts: when the gospel was hot and fresh in Jerusalem in the days after the Resurrection there were plenty of people there who knew Jesus, knew what had happened, and were ready to dispute with the disciples.

Yes, it’s a fact that that’s what the story says. No, that doesn’t make it history.
Dwight talks about the bit in Matthew where the Jewish leaders say that disciples must have stolen the body, but why imagine that that story circulated days after the death of Jesus? All we know is that it appeared in a gospel decades after the death of Jesus. And I’m still scratching my head trying to understand Dwight’s point. Why imagine that the naysayers would be motivated to stamp out this false teaching? Why imagine that “That’s nonsense!” would stamp out a religion? Has it ever?
Let me propose an alternative explanation that explains the facts nicely without having to conjure up a supernatural claim. Jesus was a charismatic rabbi. Maybe supernatural stories were told about him during his lifetime, maybe not. Paul writes his epistles two decades after the death of Jesus, within which the gospel story is very minimal (I’ve written about the gospel of Paul here). Like a transplanted species that thrives, Christianity adapts and takes on elements of its new Greek environment, a culture full of supernatural stories. The Jesus stories grow with the retelling, and the gospels are snapshots at different places and times within the eastern Mediterranean.

Our point is not that there were no naysayers but that there were plenty and that they still couldn’t disprove what the apostles were saying.

(It’s not that Dorothy had no obstacles to returning to Kansas but that she had plenty and that she and her friends still overcame them.)
It’s a story. Both the Wizard of Oz and the gospel are stories. Yes, the gospel trots out naysayers and then says that the church withstood the attack. Show that the gospel is actually history, and then that argument will be compelling. Until then, not so much.
Conclusion
Let me try to summarize Dwight’s rebuttal:
1. The action started right after the crucifixion, not at the writing of the gospel. You’re right, but that doesn’t affect the argument.
2. You dated the gospels wrong. I doubt it, but let’s use your dates.
3. The gospel story documents that naysayers existed who, despite their best efforts, could do nothing to defeat Christianity. So what? This means nothing until you show that the gospel story is history.
Dwight concludes by comparing me to someone explaining why there are no lunar landing deniers in NASA.

You may come up with ten astounding reasons why there are no lunar landing deniers at NASA, but it might just be because there was a lunar landing and the people at NASA—along with most other people—accept the simple facts of what really happened.

Yeah. We should accept the simple fact that Jesus was raised from the dead by the omnipotent creator of the universe (an Iron Age polytheistic deity) who demanded a human sacrifice to assuage his sense of injustice that humans are imperfect, like he made them to be.
Or not.

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run
by smart people who are putting us on
or by imbeciles who really mean it.
— Mark Twain

The Childish Faith of John Lennox (2 of 2)

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its' ok for a child to have a childish faith; not so much an Oxford mathematicianThis is a two-part critique of an interview with Oxford professor John Lennox on the topic of the Problem of Evil. Read part 1 here.
Let’s continue with Lennox’s comments in bold, followed by my responses.
There is no logical incompatibility between evil and a God who is all powerful and all loving. God could have his reasons.
Yes, if you presuppose God, you can rationalize that he must have reasons that we just don’t understand. But that’s backwards from how anyone approaches a remarkable truth claim. Instead, we start with what we know (evil exists) and work forward to the best explanation (it doesn’t look like an omnipotent and all-loving God does). No seeker of the truth would start with the presupposition that God exists.
From the atheist’s standpoint, the vast majority of humans will never receive justice. The human heart rebels against the idea that there is no justice.
(What’s the deal with retribution with so many Christians? Life’s just unfair; you can’t just let it go at that?)
Imagine that everyone has a karmic bank account. The best among us leave life with a net positive, and the worst have a net negative. What evidence is there that after death we meet the Celestial Bank Manager to take our surplus or answer for the deficit? And why imagine that Christianity’s idea that all deserve infinite torment in hell is any less unfair than no supernatural audit at all?
Natural evil is sometimes manmade. Desertification can be caused by thoughtless farming practices. Earthquakes are made worse by people building in earthquake zones.
It’s hard to have God involved with and concerned about life here on earth and yet so uninvolved so that he’s not responsible for anything. This attempt to let God off the hook is embarrassing. He can’t speak for himself?
Lennox visited New Zealand just after the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. Yes, earthquakes are devastating, but tectonic movement is essential for life.
(Well, maybe life as we know it, but not life.)
Sure, we can find silver linings in disasters, and we must realize that many aspects of nature (fire, storms, earthquakes, etc.) can cause good and bad effects. Earthquake magnitudes follow a power law distribution, but what is that to God? It would be child’s play for him to clip all earthquake magnitudes at (say) 5.0. He could distribute the energy in a magnitude 8.0 earthquake over thousands of magnitude 5.0 earthquakes.
And why is it always the atheist who has to point out the amazing things that an omnipotent god could do?
“The problem of pain, suffering, and evil must be answered not just by theists but also by atheists. There are no simple answers.”
Sh*t happens. Nature doesn’t care. There is no celestial rule maker who shares our sense of right and wrong.
Simple enough for you?
Lennox had cardiac surgery that saved his life. Yes, he thanks God for that, but in that same year, his 22-year-old niece died from a brain tumor just a few weeks after diagnosis. Can God have intervened with Lennox but deliberately didn’t with the niece? He must be consistent.
Good for you for trying to be consistent, saying that it was the same God behind both medical issues. Let me propose a simpler explanation: there is no God, and medical science is what actually saved Lennox. Now there is no difficulty juggling a God that loves people but lets these disasters happen.
“What has atheism to say to my niece? Absolutely nothing. It’s hope-less. It’s got to say that that’s just how life is.”
Christianity offers empty hope and atheism doesn’t? Okay, I can live with that, but I have no use for a “hope” grounded on little more than wishful thinking. (But I understand that life can be very difficult. I appreciate that some people may drop the need for evidence to embrace this hope. I’m in no position to criticize. My complaint is only with the Christian who says that the evidence points to God.)
This reminds me of a podcast discussing a father who had lost a son, about 20 years of age. Anyone can sympathize with this tragedy, but the father had another problem: his son had not been “saved,” so the father’s theology placed the son in torment in hell. That’s a problem caused by Christianity. From an atheist’s standpoint, this problem simply doesn’t exist.
“Any hope at all is infinitely better than what atheism offers because it offers nothing—simply death and that’s the end.”
So you’ve got no use for evidence then? A Pastafarian afterlife with a beer volcano is more hopeful than the atheist nothing, so therefore it’s worth believing in? I would’ve expected a lot more from an Oxford professor than this childish faith.
This contribution from Lennox reminds me of Nobel prizewinner Linus Pauling’s ill-advised vitamin C megadosing or Nobel prizewinner William Shockley’s dabbling in eugenics and race politics.
Lennox is entitled to weigh in on Christianity and atheism just like anyone is. But his well-earned stature within mathematics does nothing to argue that his arguments are any better formed than any others.
What a waste of a brilliant mind. Maybe he should stick with mathematics.

Anything is possible,
but the historian wants to know
what is probable.
— F. C. Baur

Photo credit: Crazybananas

The Childish Faith of John Lennox

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Not a great defense of Christianity (apologetics)Childish? Childlike? You tell me.
I’ll admit to being a bit awed by an Oxford mathematics professor weighing in on Christianity. John Lennox makes a good impression. He’s a clean-shaven Irish Santa Claus with three doctorates. A nice guy with a formidable intellect and much practice as a public speaker—that’s an impressive package.
I heard him speak in Seattle a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, I wasn’t much impressed then … but perhaps I missed something. I recently listened to an hour-long interview, mostly on the Problem of Evil, which only solidified my unfavorable opinion.
I summarize his argument in bold below. Let me encourage both Christian and atheist readers to pause with each salvo to see what they think. Is the Christian point a strong one? What is the best atheist response? Is there something missing from either side here?
Atheists whine about the Crusades and the Inquisition, but why don’t they take seriously the violence and harm caused by atheist regimes like those of Stalin and Mao?
Because the atheism was a consequence of the actual problem, that these regimes were dictatorships. Stalin was an atheist because he was a dictator. He wasn’t a dictator because he was an atheist!
Atheism was central to the Soviet Union’s policy. After all, Marx said that religion was the opium of the people.  
Sure, atheism was central. Churches had to be shut down because they competed for power. Atheism was simply a consequence of the dictatorship; Stalin didn’t do damage in the name of atheism.
As for “religion is the opium of the people,” that was a compliment! Opium is medicine, remember? Here is Marx in context:

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Marx wasn’t saying that religion dulled the senses of people; rather, he was saying that in a society with terrible conditions, it provides solace. His complaint was simply that religion could do no more than address a symptom, leaving the underlying problem untouched.
Atheists complain about the evil that God allows, but by what standard do they judge something as evil? If there is no god, good and evil are just a matter of opinion. There’s no rational justification for moral concepts if you abolish God.
I don’t reject the idea of morality and evil; I reject the idea of absolute morality or evil. Look in the dictionary—the definitions don’t assume absolute or objective grounding. Imagine that morality is absolute if you want, but don’t pretend that the dictionary backs you up.
We all believe in absolute values; we all acknowledge a standard outside ourselves. Atheists prove this when they argue for right and wrong. For example, we all agree that baby torture is wrong.
We don’t have absolute values; we have shared values. That’s not surprising since we’re all the same species. We agree that baby torture is wrong because we have the same moral instinct.
Atheists can be moral, but they can’t justify morality.
The natural explanation explains what we see without relying on anything supernatural. Morality has an instinctive part (from evolution) and a social part (from society).
The instinctive part explains the certainty we have about fundamental moral rights and wrongs and explains why these are shared across societies. We even see elements of morality in other primates.
The social part changes with time and place. For example, slavery is obviously wrong in the West now, but it wasn’t a problem in centuries past. Some aspects of morality vary greatly by society—honor, for example.
Atheists can’t explain where absolute morals come from.
Agreed. Neither can you. I keep hearing this confusion of shared morals with absolute morals. And I keep seeing no evidence for the remarkable claim that morality is grounded outside humans.
By rejecting God, in what sense has the atheist solved the Problem of Evil?
Do you not know what the Problem of Evil is? It asks: How can an all-good God allow evil? Drop the idea of a god, and the problem vanishes. Completely.
But evil and pain haven’t gone away.
Yes, that’s true. You’ve got a fundamental contradiction with the Problem of Evil that attacks the very foundation of your religion, but from an atheist standpoint, there is no problem.
Note that you’ve also gotten rid of all hope.
How childish are you? You care about solace but not truth? I don’t know about you, but I’m looking for the truth. The pleasantness of a doctrine doesn’t change how I evaluate its truth. “The simple believe anything, but the prudent give thought to their steps” (Proverbs 14:15). Don’t we want to be prudent?
Sure, God could’ve made us so we wouldn’t do bad things, but we’d be robots without free will.
So you think God is a champion of free will? When victims of murder or rape have their free will violated, God doesn’t step in to do anything about it. Why then imagine that he’s deliberately not acting so that the free will of the criminal is allowed?
Is there free will in heaven? There must be if free will is so important. Then why isn’t heaven full of evil just like the earth is? Perhaps the beings in heaven are enlightened, and they know how to use free will properly. They would simply not be tempted to do bad things.
If this enlightenment is the instruction manual to make free will work, why didn’t God give it to us?
(Read part 2 here.)

The universe we observe has
precisely the properties we should expect
if there is, at bottom,
no design, no purpose, no evil and no good,
nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
— Richard Dawkins

Photo credit: JohnLennox.org

A Biblical Foundation for American Freedoms?

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I have no problem with someone admiring the Ten Commandments from a Christian standpoint. It’s an important part of the Old Testament story. The problem is when that admiration moves the Ten Commandments from holding sway in the religious domain to being relevant in society, public policy, laws, and the like. Consider this critique for example: “Has there ever been a more perfect and concise moral code than the one Moses brought down from the mountain?” (I respond here.)
The Ten Commandments and biblical governance in general are at odds with the things that Americans value about America.
What do the Ten Commandments say?
Let’s ignore the confusion about what the Ten Commandments say and use the Exodus 20 version. The first four commandments (no other gods, no blasphemy, no artwork, keep the Sabbath holy) are in violation of our freedom of religion (or atheism) and our freedom of speech. God punishes “the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation”—also unthinkable in modern secular society.
Commandments 6, 8, and 9 (no murder, no stealing, no lying) are indeed laws in America, though we never needed the Ten Commandments to inform us of the importance of such laws. Indeed, the Egyptian Papyrus of Ani (1250 BCE) and the Code of Hammurabi (1772 BCE) show that biblical morality didn’t break much new ground.
Commandments 5 and 10 (honor your parents, no coveting) can be great advice. But surely we wouldn’t demand a blanket respect of abusive parents who didn’t deserve the honor. And where is the boundary between corrosive coveting and capitalism?
Another difference with the Constitution is that the penalty for breaking the Ten Commandments is death—not just for murder but also for worshiping another god or blasphemy. And this isn’t something that the Christian can dismiss as no longer relevant: “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever” (1 Peter 1:24–5).
What does the Constitution say?
Contrast biblical law with the rights given to us by the U.S. Constitution. As you read the highlights below, consider how most of these vital elements of government and society are either opposed to what the Bible says or uninteresting from the Bible’s standpoint.

  • The Constitution gives us democracy and representative government, separation of powers, and a limited executive branch.
  • The First Amendment: freedom of religion, speech, press, and assembly, and the right to petition.
  • Fourth Amendment: protection from unreasonable search and seizure.
  • Fifth: right of due process, protection from self-incrimination and double jeopardy, limits on eminent domain.
  • Sixth: speedy and public trial, impartial jury, rights to confront witnesses and to counsel.
  • Seventh: trial by jury.
  • Eighth: prohibition of excessive bail or cruel and unusual punishment.
  • Thirteenth: slavery prohibited.
  • Fourteenth: equal protection.

Historical revisionists enjoy assigning credit for some of these constitutional ideas to the Bible. Can they be serious?
Democracy, limited government, freedom of religion and speech, right to a jury trial, prohibition against slavery—not only did these not come from the Bible, but most of them conflict with the Bible. In fact, the very reason that the Ten Commandments (and any other religious document) are welcome in the United States is because of the Constitution’s protection of religion.
How do we know that these fundamental rights didn’t come from Christianity? Because when Christianity was in charge, society didn’t have them! Of course, that doesn’t mean that the Bible’s definition of a working society was wrong, just that it’s different from that defined by the Constitution (history revisionists like David Barton, take note).
Those who laud the Ten Commandments as the most sublime wisdom ever written must keep in mind that the U.S. Constitution takes us in a very different direction. An incompatible direction. And, I submit, a far better direction.

Science doesn’t know everything.
Religion doesn’t know anything.
— Aron Ra

Photo credit: Dana Simpson