At left we see illustrated the core problem with the world’s theistic religions, i.e., that adherents are so certain of the rightness of their beliefs that they have no problem destroying the world.

FWIW, I have a friend who takes this even further: he is actively rooting for the apocalypse, and the prospect that all believers in God’s son Jesus will be raptured up to heaven to sit at the right hand of God.

He knows that I don’t believe any of this, but he remains confident that I’ll come around.  As he told me, “God melts even the hardest of hearts.”  He thinks I’m doing the devil’s work with my compassion for others and the effort I put out to achieve a peaceful and sustainable civilization.

We’d be living in tough times even without these fanatics, but religious dogma, especially of this sort, makes it all that much more difficult.

JD Vance and His Certainty Re: God’s Work

We read a great deal about people who think that repairing the damage caused by Trump is going to be quick and easy.

Others are not nearly so sanguine, pointing out that many nations have gone to great lengths to create new trade relationships in their effort to cut the United States off without a penny.

Another question is how the people in other countries have come to regard Americans, as people of extremely low moral character–as crackpots, as racists, as gullible morons, as people incapable of critical thinking.  That’s not going to change overnight, if it changes at all.

The U.S. Post-Trump

A course called “The Problem of God” a requirement for all incoming freshmen at Georgetown University, or at least in was in the late 1970s when I was a grad student there.

Here’s part of the “problem,” at least for me: I wonder how it’s possible that God is so vain that He threatens eternal punishment for those who don’t believe that He exists. Sounds like strange behavior for an omniscient, omnipotent, and loving being.

It’s especially weird when taken in contrast to Socrates and the Buddha, neither of whom could have possibly cared less if people following them or not.

The Problem of God