When Donald Trump did his recent photo-op holding up a Bible in front of St. Johns Episcopal Church, across from the White House, he was pandering to the theocrats in the religious right who were essential in putting him in the White House.
Not to be outdone, Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Trump's likely Democrat competitor for the White House, Joe Biden, were quick to provide a biblical response in an effort to win favor with the religious left and in an attempt to win people over from the religious right.
Pelosi popped up in the Capitol clutching a Bible, ironically in front of a bust of the Deist George Washington. She said Trump should be a healer instead of a divider and pointed out how Trump had federal police use teargas and rubber bullets to chase a crowd of peaceful demonstrators, who were demonstrating against the murder by a police officer of George Floyd, out of Lafayette Square Park. This cleared the way for Trump to walk to his photo-op at the church. Pelosi read from Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. She probably didn't know that the anonymous author of Ecclesiastes had written at Ecclesiastes 10:19-20 verses that included "money answereth all things" and "Curse not the king, no not in thy thought; and curse not the rich ..."
Biden gave a speech in which he said if Trump opened the Bible he would learn something. Statements like these are based on the false assumption that the Bible only promotes love and peace. It ignores the majority of the Bible that promotes the idea of God being a genocidal maniac giving commands to the ancient Jews to commit genocide against their neighbors and to show no mercy. For just one example of ungodly cruelty promoted in the Bible, read chapter 31 of Numbers. It's a detailed account of Jewish genocide against the Midianite people and has Moses, in verses 17 and 18, ordering the Israelite army to:
... kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
Jesus, who if he really did exist as a mere Jewish mortal, falsely believed the cruel and ungodly Hebrew Bible was the Word of God. According to the anonymous author of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus showed this religious violence streak when he said at Matthew 10:34:
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
Perhaps it is better if Trump does not open the Bible.
The most concerning thing about this Bible battle going on in Washington is the fact that it is going on. It is a reality. This is the 21st century. The Bible has been proven false countless times by science, which is the application of our innate God-given reason on the laws and designs in Nature, put there by the Designer/God. Having the most powerful people on the planet, especially in a nuclear age, proudly holding up and promoting a nonsensical, violence promoting, ancient and ungodly book as if it had real value is dangerous beyond words. We need to heed the advice of Albert Einstein who warned us:
The world that we have made as a result of the level of thinking that we have done so far, has created problems we cannot solve at the level of thinking at which we created them . . . . We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humankind is to survive.
Deism is by far the very best way to develop that new manner of thinking our survival depends upon. This is because Deism can connect with sincere people in the rank and file of the religious right because Deism is belief in God. This is important common ground. Since Deism promote reason, Deism can help these people free themselves from the fear-based superstitions of the Bible by letting them know that God gave them their innate reason and not any of the "revealed" religions or "holy" books. Deism teaches the only Word of God is Nature and the Universe itself. Thomas Paine was correct when, in The Age of Reason, he wrote that we need a revolution in religion based on our innate God-given reason and Deism.
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