Observations

Observations:

Did you ever notice that most of the Liberal Colleges and Universities are located in the wealthy and prosperous East and West Coasts, and the Conservative Christian Colleges and Universities are located in the poorer South and Central states? Wonder if there’s a connection?

Did you ever notice that when the country was governed by tax and spend Liberals from 1940 through 1980, the country has never been so prosperous, even as the top tax rate was over 90%? And when the supply side conservatives came to power in 1980 and started to cut taxes, the country has been struggling ever since? Maybe Friedman and Laffer were wrong, and so was Herbert Hoover? Judging by the broad macroeconomic results, I think Galbraith and Keynes were onto something.

Have you ever noticed that in fundamentalist Christian colleges they read books telling how old the earth is, they listen to professors and preachers expound on the age of the earth, but they never, ever, pick up the scientific tools and go out and actually measure the age of the earth? They only do that at the Liberal colleges.

I was raised in the Seventh-day Adventist church, whose prophet (Ellen G. White), taught that someday Catholics and Protestants would unite and tear down the religious freedom in the USA. She predicted that Sunday would become the national day of worship, and religions who kept other days holy would suffer persecution.

 It was not an especially prescient prediction, looking at history. The USA was exceptional in being the first country to guarantee freedom of religion, and the founders all knew that only eternal vigilance would prevent religion from becoming part of the government again. Every religion, it seems, has an overwhelming desire to impose their dogma on everybody.

I came to doubt that it would happen in my lifetime--the gulf of suspicion and hatred between Protestant and Catholic was so huge. Now I’m having doubts about my doubts. I remember when JFK ran for president this same church was aghast at the thought that the end was near. Some were counting the years from 1844 to 1964 and deciding that span of time related to the text “as it was in the days of Noah.” Yes, he preached 120 years and then the end came! Some were disappointed yet again.

Now the majority of the Supreme Court is Catholic, they are eagerly tearing down the wall of separation between church and state, and Adventists, or at least those members I am still acquainted with, seem to love it. I find their blindness to the potential religious takeover ironic and somewhat amusing.

The first move was to declare a corporation is a person, able to hold religious beliefs and rights. Corporations are a legal construct meant to separate human owners of a business from legal liability for the actions of the business. Not answered by the Supreme Court is if an owner of a company can declare the religious beliefs of the corporation, can plaintiffs sue the owners now because they are no longer a separate entity from the corporation?

Could there be a connection in the future between the text in Revelation about being unable to “buy and sell” and the elevation of corporations to personhood? That was always difficult to understand before, but with corporations being persons, not so much.

Most Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions subordinate women, including my former church. I have been watching for a couple of decades as they wrestle with whether to allow women to be ordained into the ministry. Adventists don’t share the utter contempt for women that the Catholic church displays when they stand by and allow a woman to suffer an agonizing death from an ectopic pregnancy rather than abort the fetus.

But many Protestant religions seem to transfer blame to the woman if she gets pregnant, even if by rape or incest. If she accidentally gets pregnant outside of marriage, there will be no end of judgement and condemnation, and she will be punished by being forced to bear the child. Abortion has become the wedge to insert religion into this once secular, religiously free country.

Actually, not just abortion, but all birth control, as the Justices “clarified” the day after the momentous Hobby Lobby decision. They confirmed the right of any “closely held” corporation with a “deeply felt, sincere belief” to refuse coverage for any form of birth control--the exact Catholic dogma of the five Justices who ruled for the the majority.

The priests of Jesus’ day had no love or compassion for the woman caught in adultery as they brought her to Jesus for condemnation and stoning. Modern day religious leaders still have no love or compassion for the woman who wants to enjoy sex without pregnancy. The only feeling they have for the woman is disgust, as they call her a slut, a whore, a sinner. Nothing has changed except, because of scientific knowledge, they can now transfer the love and mercy they should be showing the woman onto a single cell they arbitrarily define as a human being, even though they can’t see it without a microscope. All the love goes to an ovum, and all the hate goes to the woman. Not much has changed in two thousand years.

Today I read that the Pope has urged his people to stop working on Sunday. In an article by Mark Oppenheimer of The New York Times,
Pope  Francis said, ”More and more people work on Sundays as a consequence of the competitiveness imposed by a consumer society.” In such cases, he concludes, “work ends up dehumanizing people.”

In Catholicism, Pope Francis suggests, the Sabbath actually is supposed to matter — the whole day, not just Mass. For as the catechism teaches, in Paragraph 2185, “On Sundays and other holy days of obligation, the faithful are to refrain from engaging in work or activities that hinder the worship owed to God, the joy proper to the Lord’s Day, the performance of the works of mercy, and the appropriate relaxation of mind and body.”

Who better to carry out the wishes of the Pope than five Catholic Supreme Court Justices and corporations with religious rights to impose on their employees?

Revelation says “even the very elect” will be deceived. I am wondering when the light will dawn as they realize they have helped to bring on the very thing they have been warning against all these years.

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I need to make a correction on the reference to ectopic pregnancy. The case to which I was referring was actually a case of pulmonary hypertension. The link is here for further study:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication_of_Margaret_McBride