Religion
MY RELIGIOUS BELIEFS
1. Having a belief does not impact any aspect of life in the universe or of life after death, as your belief acts only upon yourself. Believing something about a divine being such as God (Allah) or Thor or Ramses, or that some human has some relationship with the divine such as messiah, messenger, or prophet, does not in itself have an effect except in your own mind. In concrete terms, this means that a human does not obtain divine favor from simply believing in the actuality of a supreme being or related human such as Jesus Christ or the Prophet or Montezuma. Similarly, I place no divine effect based on other thoughts, such as lust, anger, envy, or jealousy. A person’s religiosity is expressed through actions, with actions including communicating with words, but not through beliefs or thoughts. 2. Complex living things do not complete a breathing/blood-flowing/sentient cycle to then be reincarnated for another life cycle. (Very simple living things, especially those of a single cell, can “reincarnate.”) 3. Religious belief tends to generate and yield more positive than negative feelings for individuals and for groups. However, the mantle of religiosity does not itself bestow anything positive or otherwise indicate goodness. Religion almost always addresses the physical world in one of four approaches. (a) Many societies have come up with a divine that is the cause of the physical world and its periodic changes, and this divine is glorified, sacrificed to, and asked for the delivery of favors (Greeks, Romans, and Scandinavians; Egyptians; Abrahamic religious traditions; most Native American peoples). (b) Some societies have turned to objects of the world itself as possessing divine properties (animistic beliefs or ancestor worship, both central to traditional African systems, as well as to others). (c) Less often, groups have sought instead to have its individuals focus on the personal (Jains and Buddhists in India). (d) Another focus that expresses religiosity is the adoption and adherence to rules for living in the group (Confucianism, Hebrews). I follow (“believe in”) none of these religions. 4. Life of the entire Universe is created by a supreme being, but that being does not operate on life through the being’s decision-making. Thus, that supreme being does not respond to your requests. Life is “controlled” by universally applicable rules of nature that operate without current decisions being made by the creator. Thus, I appear to be a Deist. 5. There is no “Heaven” or “Hell” or other life after physical death, just as there is no reincarnation of one’s essence, nor is there a “soul” that exists outside of a body. Humans have the same soul or divinity as all animals have. We do live on in the memories of others. The gods we or our society believe in are almost always perceived by us humans to be, at least partially, beings in our own likeness. 6. Like with many other characteristics of human life, we are partially born with, and we partially learn, both to be good and kind, and to be cruel and harsh. The birth-with aspect is a matter of chance under the universe’s rules, and the learned portion is acquired through life’s rewards and punishments applied to us. We are not predestined to any god-made result, but we do start with, and live through, different amounts of talents and resources under the operation of life’s rules of nature. Zoroaster, Siddhartha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad were exceptional. 7. I spent my life up to age 45 as a Methodist and later as an Episcopalian, Christian faiths from the Church of England. I renounced my faith as Christian by 2025 after finishing reading and studying all the Christian Bible from beginning to end over a period of a couple of years. I had studied and discussed the Bible extensively for the previous 70 years as well. One this complete reading, I had to admit to myself that both the old and new chapters simply made no sense.- My Religious Beliefs
- Religion is Now Politics
- Colleges with Sports and Religious Tradition
religion is NOW politics Southern Baptists and Catholics, the two largest religious groups in the United States, together have succeeded in temporarily merging religion and politics in this country. That status must in my view be recognized in our laws (national, state, and local) and those laws must be consistent with the First Amendment. It is my conclusion that is not the present situation, as many, many laws favor religious groups and favor certain people's religious inclinations, in conflict with the First Amendment. I suggest, for instance, that the religious rights under the First Amendment and race rights under the Fifteenth Amendment ought legally to be viewed with the same lens. Yet, the current powers-that-be, including firstly the current iteration of the Supreme Court, do not implement those disparate rights under examination through the same lens: being labeled as religious enhances certain tax and other positions, apparently contrary to the First, whereas being labeled as Black apparently adds nothing to voting rights, contrary to the Fifteenth. (For the latter, simply read Louisiana v. Callais, as I do, that the Fourteenth Amendment rights to representation in Congress by the controlling white people was determined to override the specific rights awarded to minority Black people by the Fifteenth. This reading of Callais is made certain through the Court's order in Allen v Caster refusing to implement a lower court decision that, by a finding of intentional discrimination, clearly implicated the Fifteenth.) Religious groups should influence but not control politics.
"St. Augustine described the sinful soul as curved inward, fixated upon and thereby creating an idol of itself, instead of facing outward toward others and toward God. An Augustinian to his core, [Pope] Leo's targets might be described as those forces that keep people bent toward themselves and held apart from one another, [thus] the Church's recent interventions in matters of war, economics, technology, and migration stem from an intimation that civilization itself is likely on the verge of a historic transformation. ... And though it will, if there is any justice, take centuries of atonement to fully reckon with the abuse of children [by clergy of the Catholics and Southern Baptists], the revelations of the Epstein affair suggest that such horrors may not be unique to the clergy, but endemic to how modern power works. All the more reason, then, to chart another course." Jack Hanson (Lecturer, Columbia University), “Radical Reformation,” Harper’s Magazine, August 2026, p. 25, 32. I grew up the son of an ordained Methodist minister and the grandson of a Methodist minister on my mother's side. I was in church leadership as a member of the Council on Ministries (programming) or Administrative Board (administration) of all the several United Methodist churches I attended during 1969 through 1997, and then, after I joined my wife in the Episcopal church in 1998, I have been a member of many committees at both the congregation and dioecian levels. Thus, I have spent my life as an establishment figure in two main-line Protestant churches. [It is probably not by chance that as a descendant of almost exclusively English ancestors I have always been a member of the Church of England (Episcopal) and its direct offshoot (Methodist).] I have read and studied the Bible in its Protestant Christian configuration essentially cover-to-cover (I skipped some Old Testament books), and I have studied the Bible over decades in the familiar format of examining selected verses in depth (exegesis). The cover-to-cover approach now seems to me a necessary process in order to be educated in the Bible rather than being indoctrinated by some specific leader through focus on selected passages. My father's principal lifetime work was as a writer and editor with the Methodist Publishing House in Nashville, at the same time being a minor theologian, a sermon presenter to Methodist and Presbyterian congregations, and a Methodist graduate school lecturer. While I was an undergraduate at Duke, a Methodist affiliated university, at the urging of a Jesuit professor, I gave serious consideration to following his suggestion of applying for a grant to attend one year of divinity school solely as an intellectual (not ordination) goal. So, I have substantial education in Christianity. (I, also, have more than a little formal education in Islam and Buddhism, and some informal education in Judaism.) My current words do, I think, carry that life experience and thought. It seems to me that the political messages of the 1960s supporting the expansion of civil rights to include Blacks were properly delivered by religious leaders in an organized religious context. [In January 1963, the [National Council of Churches] together with the Synagogue Council of America and the National Catholic Welfare Conference, convened the National Conference on Religion and Race, which issued An Appeal to the Conscience of the American People for a moral end to racism. Wikipedia, accessed July 26, 2026.] Those messages to change United States civil law were clearly in alignment with the second of the two core messages of Jesus Christ, to love God and to love your neighbor. See, the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes. The second of the two principles is repetition of older Buddhist and Confucian religious principles, and its later repetition in Islam. (With its principle of the Caste system, Hinduism, the oldest current major religion, however, would seem to be in conflict with the principle to love your neighbor as yourself.) By 1980 both the Southern Baptists (along with other evangelicals) and Catholics rejected their longstanding prior positions on abortion and began preaching for a change in the civil law to prohibit it. This radical change in doctrine was supported not by any message in the New Testament, but on the Jewish general commandment to not kill. The idea to use the religious context to seek change in civil law was nothing new for Catholics but was a complete reversal for the Southern Baptists, who had been principal backers in the eighteenth through twentieth century in the renewed push for continued separation of Church and State as set forth in the Bill of Rights. Being now satisfied with using the pulpit to push for change in the civil law about abortion, Catholics and Southern Baptists (together with other evangelicals) started using the pulpit to rid society of homosexuals, for which they found doctrinal support in especially three passages in the Bible, this time by preaching against changes in the civil law that were sought by homosexuals and their rights' supporters. Whatever arguments there might be for or against, it is a fact that Southern Baptists (and other evangelicals) joined the Catholic Church in using the political forum to push for the spread of their religious sexual doctrines through civil law applicable to all Americans. The 1970s Southern Baptist leadership was in sympathy with almost all political doctrine of the Republican Party (limited government, control of the economy by the winners, control of social life by whites, control of the world by limiting the power of Communists), and so the two groups became one during the 1980s (with the Republican Party in turn adopting the religious doctrines of the Southern Baptists). That status has not yet changed since the 1980s. See, e.g., the past forty years of sermons by Dr. Ed Young of Houston. There should be consequences arising from the adoption by an identifiable religious group of the concomitant status as a political group or as a business. That is, its religious characteristics should not shield a group from treatment also as a political group or a business group. For example, current law treats revenue of a religious group as tax deductible by the revenue providers, but treats revenue of a political group as non-deductible by its revenue providers. For further example, current law, as set out by the Supreme Court, shields an entrepreneur in a religious context (a non-ordained person naming themselves pastor and starting a preaching business) from applicability of the civil law that is applicable to non-religious businesses. The First Amendment sets out separate rights concerning religious matters, press matters, association matters, speech matters, petitioning-the-government matters. Currently, these listed rights seem conflated to me by the Court and by other politics. But, the First Amendment no where in its text purports to deal with rights in the context of property or of commerce. While groups and entities should be able to sue and be sued concerning the First Amendment, that should be limited to enforcing the rights held under it by only natural persons. The Supreme Court's twenty first century extension of free speech from natural persons to entities should be changed back to natural persons only. Likewise, the religious and press rights can, and should be, deemed granted only to natural persons, which rights are also enforceable for individuals by groups and entities.
COLLEGES WITH SPORTS AND RELIGIOUS TRADITION
In the Monday, October 19 online edition appeared an article including the AP Men’s Basketball Top 25. Of those 25, all are public universities except for seven, Duke (ranked 2), St. John’s (13), Miami (FL) (14), Gonzaga (15), USC (21), Vanderbilt (24), and BYU (25). Of these seven, Duke is directly related to the Methodist Church, St. John’s is directly related to the Catholic Church, Gonzaga is directly related to the Order of the Jesuits (a Catholic Order), and Brigham Young is directly related to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In addition, both USC and Vanderbilt have a distant past relationship with the Methodist Church. That leaves Miami as the only one of the 25 with a purely private and secular past and present.
Among the Top 25 that are so-called “research universities,” which include all except St. John’s BYU, and Gonzaga, none requires religious affiliation or study by its students. Other research universities that have big-time athletic success and have some religious affiliation include Notre Dame, Georgetown, Boston College, Northwestern, Syracuse, and all the Ivy League — each now secular but founded as affiliated with a U.S. offshoot of the Church of England (Congregationalist, Anglican, Baptist, and Presbyterian), also do not require religious affiliation or study by its students.
There are private universities that boast big-time athletic success with religious affiliation, but that would not be classed as research universities. There are those (1) that require student personal religious affiliation or study and include Baylor and Liberty, and those (2) that do not require student personal religious affiliation or study, that include several Loyola named universities, Villanova, Fordham, Tulane, TCU, SMU, and Wake Forest.
Finally, there are in fact private research universities that boast big-time athletic success with almost no religious affiliation. In addition to Miami, I find only Stanford and Rice, which is a stretch to be included athletically these days.
Note that, among the current AP Football Top 25, all are public universities except for seven, Miami (1), BYU (2), Notre Dame (4), USC (16), Wake Forest (17), SMU (23), and Northwestern (24). Each of these seven is already discussed above.
Several universities that people often think are public are in fact private. Those include New York University (NYU), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech). Less often, people think of Georgia Tech, Clemson, Purdue, or Auburn as being private, but those are public engineering schools.