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The relationship between faith and science or reason, for me, is more like the Asian philosophers see it -faith or intuition guides the choice of what to study and how to act on the findings of science. Reality is what it is and rather than trying to conform it to a belief (or disbelieveit), our understanding of creation changes as we know more and more.



Faith and politics, however, has resisted any tidy summation. I've been especially confused as to the seeming paradox that right wing ideology is tied up so closely with both Christianity and Islam (as well as many other faiths throughout history). Both religions preach peace and love for those less fortunate, yet small bands of "Muslims", trying to enforce strictly conservative and authoritative rule feel justified in terrorizing innocent people to get their way. I'm not saying in any way that today's fundamental Christians are violent terrorists. Certainly the militia groups allied with the Tea Party are racists, arming for some imagined socialist takeover, but as most Muslims are peaceful, so are the rank and file Tea Partiers. (And we have our nut cases too!)



My confusion comes from seeing the pro wealth side of today's fundamental Christians (Al Franken's "Supply Side Jesus"). Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple -he did not invite them in to give wealth building seminars or suggest that his followers emulate them or that people should sacrifice so the wealthiest could accumulate all the wealth they wanted. Yet that is the situation today in America. Factually, the wealthy, even in the midst of this great recession continue to get richer. For decades the trend has been thus, while real wages for the middle class have been flat since the 80s. Factually, Trickle Down did not work. Even more curiously, any factual accounting of GOP voting in Congress shows that it always confers benefit to the wealthiest people and corporations, whether explicitly stated or not. How does this jibe with the basic tenets of Christianity? GOP ideology has been successfully grafted onto fundamentalist Christian faith and, for the life of me, I cannot see how that makes any sense.

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