Hindoos (?)

Charles Darwin was religious as a young man, but later on he wrote: “I had gradually come . . . to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world . . . from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos. . . .”

Maybe the Old Testament God, the God of the Torah, suffers from borderline personality disorder. 

You meet America’s religiosity on long driving trips. I recently drove from Victoria to Santa Rosa in two days, and I heard bits from many Preacher-Confidence men; they were working folks for cash on the radio. 

I know religious people who live good lives and do good works. They help others. I’m not sure what they think God may be, maybe a vague all-encompassing-all, but they are good women and men. 

For others the church is a clubhouse, a place where you meet your friends and business contacts.

Personal identity is a major factor in ethnic churches.

Political religiosity works for politicians like Paul Ryan, who no doubt goes to confession and the next day enacts legislation to harm the poor, ignoring his church and the injunction that sooner shall a camel (or rope) pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man enter heaven. Driven by greed and a lust for power, Ryan prefers to prosper in this life and gamble on his place in the next. Maybe Hell is just a metaphor?