The Republican War on America

The Republican War on America     Oct. 19, 2025  Dr. Roger Ray 

click here to see the video

I woke to the news one day last month that Russia had carried out their largest ever drone attack on Ukraine while I was sleeping. Five people were killed, and dozens were injured in this insane war which has been going on for more than 3 years without any end in sight. I have spoken and written about this illegal war and the many war crimes committed by Russia over the past years but what struck me on this fall Monday morning was that the death toll was about the same as the domestic death toll in just one of America’s most violent cities.

 

There were five people killed and eighteen wounded in shootings in Chicago over the weekend. And folks, in spite of how Trump has targeted Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. for his dog and pony show military invasions, these are not the most violent cities in America. Across the nation, more than 300 people are shot every day, about 125 of those people will die. And even if you estimate that half of those deaths were suicides you still have 15,000 Americans being murdered every year – not by foreign invasion – not by drones flying across our borders with Mexico or Canada – this is a domestic war, a civil war, with a casualty count that goes up every single year. 

 

I am horrified by the daily reports of the Russian war on Ukraine, as well as by the way that Israel has carried out its war on Gaza for two years, but because our domestic war on ourselves has been a relentless constant in our lives, we refuse to be shocked by the senseless bloodshed that takes place in our own cities, neighborhoods, and homes. 

 

We have passively come to accept this as being normal but, please, hear me, THIS IS NOT NORMAL! This doesn’t happen in any other country. Listen, my career as a public speaker is coming to an end this year. I have very few opportunities left for me speak truth to power, but I can’t hang up my microphone without one more time begging you to not accept Amreica’s gun related death toll to be anything approximating normal. It is a moral flaw that continues only because of public apathy. 

Even if you take out suicides and accidental shootings, the United States has 32 times the rate of gun murders as Great Britian and France. Japan has so few that they don’t even register and we have six times as many as our gun loving neighbor to the north. Other developed democracies have gun laws that work and still, we have refused to even consider taking the steps taken in other western democracies. This is not normal, it is not acceptable, it is, in fact, inexplicable…. Trust me, I have been questioned repeatedly on this topic when I have given lectures around Great Britian . . . America’s gun laws are a travesty that cannot be excused or explained in any rational way.

A clear majority of Americans favor more strict gun laws but that fact points to a weakness in our democracy. 

We do not have a majority rule democracy. Our system of government allows for political donations can give a minority an exaggerated amount of influence in how laws are written. The NRA is nowhere near as powerful as they were before their recent financial scandals but they still swing a heavy bat in elections and gun manufacturers and, if I may say it this way, the gun loving lunatic fringe continue to have disproportionate influence. 

 

Still, after all of these years, why can’t the majority of Americans not have their way in this matter? Our 24 hour news cycle tends to give our voting public a very short memory. We tend to care about what is in the news today and to forget about what was in the news last week. 

So, it is most likely that we will take action in the wake of a mass murder that dominates the news. Now, it must be said that the overwhelming majority of gun murders in the country are not mass murders but, as I observed in the opening of this message, individual murders in major cities may add up to five or ten per city every weekend but those incidents get lost in the background noise of a country awash in weapons and violence.

But consider our reaction to the most horrific mass murders in the country. The largest to date was the 2017 attack on the Harvest music festival in Las Vegas. A lone gunman, from the vantage point of 32^ndfloor hotel room. The heavily armed murderer fired semi-automatic weapons enhanced by a simple device called a “bump stock” which allowed him to fire thousands of rounds in mere minutes. 60 people were killed, more than 800 were wounded. It was a random, senseless act of violence which inspired people to demand action. As always, there were those who wanted to restrict access to semi-automatic rifles, to large capacity ammunition clips, but, in the end, the response was a very tepid outlawing of the bump stock . . . not much more than a symbolic gesture but, at least, it was something. It went into effect in December of 2018 but it was ruled as being unconstitutional by rogue and irresponsible Supreme Court in 2024. 

 

Don’t beat yourself up about it if you didn’t know that the bump stock ban had been overturned. That’s how the news cycle works. Seven years after the largest mass shooting in American history, the story no longer merited airtime when the Republican majority Supreme Court did what they almost always do. . . . they rule in favor of political money and against democracy. . . if that seems strong, I invite you to prove me wrong. 

 

There was no federal reaction to the Pulse Nightclub shooting but in the state of Florida there were several attempts at enacting state gun law reform, all of which were defeated by Republican majorities. 

 

In 1981, Jim Brady, the press secretary for President Ronald Regan, was shot during an assassination attempt against the president. Brady survived but was permanently paralyzed. He and his wife took this tragedy and turned it into their lifelong cause to limit access to lethal weapons which, after a dozen years and multiple failures, the Brady Bill was finally signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1993. The bill included a background check, a five day waiting period between purchase and possession, and a ban on assault rifles. It is still partially in force but the ban on assault rifles was written to sunset in 10 years and, of course, it was allowed to sunset. Also, the five day waiting period was dropped when we developed an instant police background check method so, at least there is still that. However, that only applies to gun sellers. If you are selling a gun at a swap meet or gun show, it doesn’t apply. 

 

A few years ago I was seated at a table in a coffee shop next to three young lawyers who were bemoaning their lack of paying clients in their law practice. One of them volunteered that he made much more money selling AR-15s on line than he did from practicing law. That is, he could buy an AR-15 because he could pass the police background check and sell it to someone who could not pass a police background check online for more than the retail price. This is, of course, illegal but evidently difficult to regulate. Which, of course, makes the Brady Bill effectively moot and it makes me wonder what they are teaching in law school these days. 

 

Cities like New York and Chicago have strict gun laws but, unfortunately, American cities are not surrounded by a moat or a boarder wall so their laws are almost entirely ineffective. What has been proven to work in Australia, France, Great Britian, and most of the western world, are gun laws that restrict the kind of guns that can be sold, the volume of ammunition, and the means of storage. It might be impossible to get the United States down to a Japan or England rate of gun deaths measured on your fingers but we should certainly be able to get it down under 10,000 a year. 

 

We have between 45,000 and 48,000 deaths from gun shot wounds every year. My own experience breaks down similar to our national averages. In my 45 years in ministry, I have lost 5 church members to guns. Two were instances of domestic violence, and 3 were suicides. Statistically, you are most likely to die from a self inflicted wound and the second most likely person to kill you is your spouse. Which makes you wonder about the people who think they are keeping guns for self defense. The real reason America has such a tragic record of gun violence is not because we are inherently more violent, it certainly isn’t because of kids playing video games, it isn’t violent movies, or that we have more mental health issues than other western democracies. 

 

It is because we are a nation awash in guns. We have about 300 million people in this country but we have about 500 million guns, which means most people can have more than one but the truth is that half of us don’t have any so the other half of us are stock piling guns like we’re expecting a zombie apocalypse. 

 

Here in Florida, where I live, it is best to assume that any body of water, small or large, probably has an alligator in it, and it is safe to assume that any rude driver who is yelling and shaking a fist at you, also probably has a loaded gun handy. You don’t know how anything with a small reptilian brain is going to act and I’m not specifically talking about alligators. 

 

The latest twist on gun violence has been the Republican reaction to the tragic murder of one of their podcast influencers, Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk was an entirely uneducated young man who got a lot of attention and made millions of dollars by saying very controversial and, I’ll say it, astonishingly stupid things. But he should not have been murdered. The fact that he was murdered shouldn’t result in statues being raised in his honor nor having city streets named for him. He was a right wing racist, misogynist, and homophobe and dying from bullet doesn’t make him a hero. It makes him a victim of our national disease of gun violence.

 

But Republicans have tried to portray his death as the result of left wing fanaticism and encouragement of political violence. That is simply not true. There are three times as many right wing lunatics committing political violence as there are left wingers and the people who encourage such violence often live in or work in the White House, so let’s get real. 

 

It’s not video games, movies, LGBTQ activists, transphobic pod casters, or political jargon that is getting people killed, it is 500 million guns in a nation of 300 million people. There will always be people who have mental health issues, personal grievance, or some revenge or attention motive, that is true in every culture, religion, and race in the world. Our problem is an almost entirely unrestricted access to very lethal weapons which can be fire accurately at rather great distances at a speed which causes horrific and lethal damage. 

 

And folks, this is not a both sides are guilty issue. I may have only 5 sermons left in my 45 year long career and I want to say this clearly and I hope that you remember it: If it had been up to Democrats, our gun laws in the USA would be like the gun laws that work in every other western democracy. The idiocy of our gun laws is 100% the responsibility of elected Republicans in both state and federal positions. The only way for America to come to some sanity about gun laws is to stop electing Republicans. Nothing else will work.

 

Now, I have a lot of issues with Democrats, and I would hate to see one party become dominant for long. I would love to see Republicans change to become more patriotic and sane representatives, but right now, The Republican Party is waging war on the American people and they are killing about 50,000 people every year and wounding another 100,000 and that has to stop. 

 

Look, the number of people killed in Gaza each of the past two years is about the same as the number of Americans who died from gunshot wounds in America’s Republican war on Americans. No one would dispute the fact that Israel has been carrying out a War against the Gaza strip for the past two years, right? Those 45,000 people were not dying of Covid every year. It was a war. And in the United States, Republican with their crazy and irresponsible laws have cause the same number of deaths among Americans. It is a war. So stop voting for the jerks who are killing us. 

 

This is so obvious that I shouldn’t have to say it, and you certainly can’t say it is a controversial thing to say unless you thing that 45,000 Americans need to die every year to defend the gun fetish of unstable and dangerous people. 

 

Let’s make America great again by allowing our school children to grow up, and allowing church goers, movie goers, and mall shoppers to make it home safely.

Let the Mystery Be

Let the Mystery Be    Oct. 5, 2025

Dr. Roger Ray    click here to see the video

More than 30 years the pop singer, Iris DeMent released a catchy tune and somewhat labored rhyme scheme that introduced the very profound dimension of theological mystery. She sings:

Everybody is wondering what and where they all came from
Everybody is worrying 'bout
Where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done
But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me
I think I'll just let the mystery be

Many church members and listeners through the years have been shocked to learn that I don’t believe in life after death, not in heaven, hell, souls, reincarnation, or final judgement. It was a huge disappointment to my mother and, I suspect, to many of you. There is just no evidence and therefore, I see no reason to invest myself in believing in something that sounds so important but which, in the end, has too little substance to even cast a shadow. I’m all about evidence based faith.

 

But DeMent takes a more agnostic stance. Nobody knows and because nobody can know if there is or there isn’t an afterlife, she chooses to just let the mystery be. I like that but I will confess that is hard for me. I like having answers. I like having a method of discovery. But she sings, “I think I’ll just let the mystery be.”

 

I am a newly wed. It is official now. My bride has been granted a visa and permanent status, and we have begun the long journey towards applying for her citizenship in the USA. During the past year I have spent three months visiting her in Thailand. We did all of the tourist stuff but as we got more eager and more anxious about getting her visa granted, we spent more and more time going to various temples to do what Thai people call “making merit.” They don’t simply go to temple the way that we think of going to church, in the rather curious form of Buddhism common in Thailand, they go to Temple to make merit and they make merit by making offerings to the monks who live there and to images of the Buddha as well as certain famous late monks, and other gods, whose favor, they believe, will result in good luck for them. 

 

My wife would assure you that it works because, after all she did get her visa. That’s proof enough for her even though the offerings, kneeling, and various merit earning gestures we went through seem to be rather far removed from the American immigration service procedures to me but, I’m learning to take Iris DeMent’s posture of just letting the mystery be. 

There was one moment in a temple that stands out in my memory, when we visited the small and rather impoverished temple where Hui’s parents’ ashes are interred. We presented the monks with gifts of clothing, food, and personal care items and then we knelt while an older monk led us in prayer. These memorized prayers are recited in Sanskrit, which is even more difficult than Thai to my ears but during this long recitation, I noticed that my fiancé was praying right along with the monk. She knew the exact Sanskrit words to the prayer that the monk was reciting. 

 

When the ceremony was over and we were alone again, I remarked to Hui, “I had no idea that you could speak Sanskrit!” She replied, “Oh, I don’t know what a word of it means, this is just a prayer we recited every day at school, and I have never forgotten it.” I pressed her, asking, “What does it mean? What is the translation of the prayer?” She replied, without a hint of curiosity, “I have no idea.”

 

Being who I am, I was tempted to start googling for answers, for a translation, but I saw that this is just one of the things about an oriental and occidental relationship. I want to mine for answers but for Hui, and evidently, for most of her peers, the prayer was a part of the mysterious universe of their unique Buddhist faith. I realized that she was content to simply let the mystery be. Thai Buddhism looked initially to me to be a religion based on good luck charms but, it appears, there is something much more, something deeper, a quiet faith that isn’t based on knowing the answers, on understanding, or dissecting. 

 

I still like my way better, but I have no need to persuade her to approach faith the way that I do. Which is a good thing because, it is apparent, she hasn’t the slightest interest in embracing my way of being religious.

 

 

We have a hard time with mystics in the modern era. Well, if we are honest about it, we have always had a majority who were more inclined to ignore or ridicule mystics. I will never forget a lecture that I heard M. Scott Peck deliver many years ago in which he said that it is evident that St. Joan of Arc was a schizophrenic who heard the voices of long dead French saints, but Peck added, “it would be a mistake to assume that she was simply a schizophrenic.” She was schizophrenic and a great spiritual mystic.

 

Christians tend to read their New Testaments as if every line of every little book in it carried equal weight and credibility. Clearly, that is not true. We could wish that Jesus had written something himself, something that we could compare with what was written about him, but, alas, he did not. But when it comes to the famous self-appointed Apostle Paul, that is an entirely different matter. The New Testament contains several letters which Paul authored, in his own hand. And it contains several letters written by well-meaning followers that they tried to insist had been written by Paul, and then there is the voluminous Acts of the Apostles, written long after the Apostles it chronicles were dead. 

 

The difference between how Paul tells his own story, and how others tell Paul’s story is as different as daylight and dark. Bear with me, please, to give you an amazing example: In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul is trying to impress his readers with his importance and he describes his conversion experience in this way:  I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. ³ And I know that such a person—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows— ⁴ was caught up into paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.

 

Let me try to rescue that from some of the verbiage. Paul is describing a mystical experience in which he doesn’t know if it was something that happened to him physically or if it was a vision. He felt that he was in the presence of God, but he cannot tell us what he saw or heard, only what he felt. Since he doesn’t describe anything at all, there are no paintings of this life changing event, it isn’t portrayed in sculpture or even in modern movies. It is a foggy event for which we do not have a mental image.

 

But if you haunt art museums as I do, you will have seen many depictions of the conversion of St. Paul but they are not based on what Paul said about himself. They are based on what someone who never met Paul, wrote about Paul 50 years after he was dead. In Acts Paul’s conversion is described this way:

³ Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. ⁴ He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” ⁵ He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. ⁶ But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.”

This version has a street address; there are voices and visions and based on this account you can find many works of art. The author of Acts gives us a movie script from which artists have allowed their own imaginations to run wild…. I will point out that there is no horse in the text but most of the paintings involve a horse . . . it makes for a better story.

 

This is how religion often operates. The birth of the faith is usually rooted in either practical moral teaching or a profound mystical experience, but the instinct of later generations is to turn a mystery into a movie script. 

 

I have taught world religions in college for many semesters and our text books always try to describe each religion by a set of beliefs. When I have taught Buddhism, I start with the four noble truths and the eight-fold path. I can’t be that far wrong, that’s how Buddhism was taught to me at Harvard by very famous professors. But in one of my early conversations with Hui, I discovered that even though she and her friends are life-long Buddhists, they have never heard of the 4 noble truths and the eight-fold path, and, what’s more, they showed no interest in finding out about them. That have an experience of Buddhism that is not based on memorization or what we call “the darhma” the “teachings of Buddha.” 

Christianity, by the time of the Council of Nicaea, was determined that Christianity, to be a religion, had to be defined and their definition was the Nicaean Creed which was later shortened into the Apostles’ Creed which most of you know if you grew up Catholic, or Methodist, or Episcopal, or Presbyterian. It distilled the profound and life changing experience of faith into a paragraph long statement of beliefs. 

 

Again, if I may beg your indulgence for another few minutes: the text of the Apostle’s Creed is this:

I believe in God,
the Father almighty,
Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died and was buried;
he descended into hell;
on the third day he rose again from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty;
from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.

Amen.

This paragraph is recited in churches all over the world as a succinct statement of what the Christian religion is. Please notice that it contains not one word of what Jesus taught. Nothing about loving your enemies, forgiving those who have offended you, praying for those who have persecuted you. There is nothing in the Apostles’ Creed about love, about compassion, just stuff about what you are supposed to believe, most of which is clearly not even true. This, I submit, is the work of theologians. Jesus taught a message of radical compassion. If he taught a religion, it was a religion of love but a few hundred years later, the church, in conjunction with the government, turned the Christian religion into a set of beliefs that were supposed to ward off the flames of hell and get you into heaven. Total rubbish. 

 

Jesus taught his followers to be good people, not self-serving religious hypocrites. Theologians took away all of the mystery by trying to explain everything and distill it down to a kind of divine transaction suggesting that if you can make yourself believe a series of totally absurd things that you can go to an imaginary heaven when you die. No thanks! I think we would all be better off if we just let the mystery be.

 

When I have taught courses in world religions, it was easy for me to teach each religion based on a list of beliefs until I came to the chapter on Christianity and then I realized that the author’s attempt at describing Christianity by listing beliefs didn’t even come close to describing the faith I had observed for years. Even when I was a Christian pastor, that list of beliefs in the Bible as the word of God, a final judgement, the divinity of Jesus…. I didn’t believe those things! 

The textbook wanted to distill religion into beliefs when it would have been more helpful to ask, what do Buddhists and Hindus, Muslims and Jews, and Christians do. How does the mystery of your faith get lived out?

 

I will close with a personal observation. This is my wedding ring, at least this is how it looks in the Jewler’s shop in France where a spike in tariffs have kept it from being shipped but I’ll not say more about that today. It is inscribed with the most treasured and ancient of Sanskrit Buddhist mantras. It ways, “om, mani, padme, hum.” A mantra recited by Buddhists the world over. Literally translated, it says, “Hail to the jewel in the lotus.”

 

Now, you may reasonably wonder why anyone would recite a mantra that praises the bud of a water lily. Again, on the surface, it makes no sense at all. As with most mysteries, you have to allow yourself to go deeper than the surface meaning. 

 

The lotus is a symbol of renewal, as the flower closes and submerges only to re-emerge the next day, over and over. It appears to grow without being rooted in the soil, having life in itself. This will be a stretch for westerners but the lotus is also associated with the wisdom and enlightenment of the Buddha.

 

The ancients believed that reciting this mantra helped to foster a spirit of compassion and to dispel evil thoughts. I don’t know if wearing a ring with this mantra will help me to recite it more often or if reciting it will really help to make me a better man, a better husband, a useful soul in my golden years but I hope so, at least I am willing to embrace the mystery and to just let it be. 

 

I would be the last person to suggest that being spiritual means that you will just accept and believe any silly thing. I am deeply rooted in evidence-based faith but, every coin has two sides. Think, for sure, reason, use critical thinking skills, but do not abandon an appreciation for and a certain amazement in the face of mystery. 

 

How Do We Know What (we think) We Know?

How Do We Know What (we think) We Know?  

  September 21, 2025        Dr. Roger Ray

click here to see the video

One of my favorite segments in Bill Maher’s “Real Time” shows is when he does his, “I don’t know it for a fact, I just know it is true” routine. Maher will say something like, “I don’t know it for a fact that Elon Musk is going to grow a moustache just to own the libs; I just know it is true.”

Or,  “I don’t know for a fact that RFK, Jr. did something weird with the body of the dog that Kristi Noem shot; I just know it’s true.”

 

Sadly, Bill Maher’s schtick is making fun of a real phenomenon which is just too common in our public discourse. People find it exciting to speculate aloud that those vapor trails we see behind high flying jets are really mind control drugs being dropped on the population or that the covid vaccine contains a tiny GPS that will allow Bill Gates to track you to the local drug den or strip club. People will say it, then repeat it with conviction, and then it is picked up by talk radio hosts, and finally it is repeated by Donald Trump on Truth Social and the next thing you know our president is telling us that it true because a lot of people are saying it. 

 

It is embarrassing that so many adults are willing to believe the most preposterous things, so much so, that a lot of us have become so cynical that we tend to not believe anything at all . . . we can reasonably assume that politicians, political parties, the news media, university professors, and the people you meet on dating sites are all liars with some barely concealed ulterior motive to trick you or manipulate you. I am much more cynical than I once was, less trusting, more suspicious . . . 20 years ago I almost always voted for whatever amendment was on the ballot, assuming that my state legislators surely know what they are doing and if they wrote up the amendment, we must need it. Experience has taught me to go to the other extreme, almost always voting no unless I have had the time to research the proposal and find that it is a good amendment. In the past few elections, I have probably voted against bridges and paved roads just out of a reflexive mistrust of state government.

 

But here is the good news, fairly reliable knowledge is not impossible. We can never be absolutely certain of much, but we can reasonably attain reliable knowledge about most of the things that affect us, though we’ll probably always have some things that we believe that we can’t prove, but we just know that they are true. For example, I have no idea whether Jeffy Epstein committed suicide in prison, I just know that the obvious coverup and official attempts at distraction make me think that he really did have incriminating evidence on a lot of powerful people, especially Donald Trump, such that I find it more plausible to believe that he was murdered rather than believe that he committed suicide, during a brief and unexplained interruption in the recording of security cameras in a prison. I don’t know for a fact that he was murdered, I just know that it is true.

A man with a long history of pedophilia and con jobs is certainly a malignant narcissist and they are unlikely to ever commit suicide, especially when they have the goods on presidents and royalty and billionaires. Still, even though a malignant narcissist is unlikely to take their own life, it isn’t hard to imagine a malignant narcissist killing someone to hide a dirty secret. You do the math. And by malignant narcissist, I mean Donald Trump. But, I’ve moved on.

There is actually a dimension of philosophy, born in the writings of Aristotle, that is devoted to how we know what we know. It is called “epistemology,” which may sound a bit daunting but, honestly, at least on the surface, it isn’t that tough. 

You may think that you don’t know what the term “epistemology” means but even the uninitiated are familiar with Rene Descartes’ most famous maxim: “I think, therefore, I am,” the famous “cogito ergo sum.” In Descartes’ Meditations he sets out to doubt everything, all of the way down to his own existence. How, after all, do any of us know that we actually exist. Many people seem to think that when they watched the Matrix that it was more of a documentary than a science fiction film. 

 

But even if we are captured in the Matrix, with a fake world being projected into our minds, still, the fact that we are aware of our own thinking is singular proof that, at least in some form, we must exist.

 

In epistemology, there are two kinds of knowing, knowing like Descartes’ Cogito is called a posterioriknowledge because it is derived from experience. All of science is predicated on this kind of knowing. The scientific method seeks to articulate facts based on observation, repetition, and analysis. The other kind of knowing is called a priori or knowledge we have before or even without experience. A new born baby knows to root for a nipple without ever having taken the class in breast feeding. 

Which is rather less impressive when you consider the construction and engineering skill of the southern masked weaver of Africa, which constructs its intricate nests out of wide strips of grass, reeds, and/or palm blades. Birds just know how to make the nest that is unique to its species, except for the dull thug birds who take other nests or just lay their eggs in another female’s nest. Still, they are born with a survival instinct which is noteworthy even if it isn’t laudable.

 

There are things we at least think we know without experience. Things that are either somehow revealed to us or revealed to someone else whom we are inclined to believe. All religions tend to fall under the category of, “I don’t know it for a fact, I just know that it is true.”

 

Religions have traditionally valued belief without evidence while science places little or no value on belief without evidence. 

Personally, I favor an evidence based faith, something I wrote about in longer form in my 2014 book, Progressive Faith and Practice.  

 

People often assure themselves and others that God has spoken to them or revealed something to them miraculously. Science dismisses such a priori evidence because it cannot be repeated, observed, or analyzed. It doesn’t mean that it isn’t true, it just means that you cannot know if it is true or not. Many people believe in ghosts because, they say, they saw one but their personal experience doesn’t pass the test of critical thinking because the experience cannot be repeated, observed, or tested. If your experience cannot be repeated, observed, and tested then, it is your belief to keep if you want but it shouldn’t be a belief to anyone else.

 

All of the Quran are sayings that Muhamad claimed were revealed to him by the angel Gabriel but no one else saw Gabriel or heard his voice. Hence all of Islam is based on the a priori conviction of Muhamad and if you are not disposed to give Muhamad that kind of credibility, the whole thing falls apart. This can be said of other world religions as well. I have received many a blank stare from someone who quoted Buddha to me when I tell them that no one wrote down any of the teachings of Buddha until Buddha had been dead for more than 400 years. That stretches credibility a good deal farther than I am willing to go. There is no historical evidence for the teachings of Buddha, there is just Buddhist tradition. It may be very helpful, very insightful, very valuable . . . but it is highly unlikely that it came from Buddha.

 

That is not to say that there is not a lot of wonderful things in the Buddhist dharma, the Muslim Quran, or the Christian Bible, it is just that none of it is supported by anything we can rationally call evidence. As existentialists often do, we just sometimes say, “It pleases me to think so,” and we leave it at that. A priori knowledge isn’t bad, just look at the nest of the southern masked weaver. I don’t know how the knowledge of how to make that nest is passed along, but, clearly, it is passed along.

 

We know from physics that everything in the world, all matter of all sorts, was created by the energy of exploding stars. Everything from earthworms to air planes is made up of the same 12 particles of matter which are held together by the same 4 forces of nature. For many years I frequently pointed out that the hundred pound Ficus tree in my living room was made of exactly the same stuff as my 100 pound daughter and yet, existentially, I knew that the two were not the same, certainly not the same value to me. I liked my Ficus tree which I kept for nearly 40 years, but I love my daughter more than I love anything, to include my own life. 

 

I don’t know that I love my daughter based on a medical test or something I can see in a microscope. I know it because I feel it, and it is as real to me as the light and heat from the sun, but I cannot prove it to you in any scientific way. Both kinds of knowledge have value and have a place in our thoughts, but critical thinking demands evidence about most things in life. 

 

What has become dangerous in our time is how “it pleases me to think so” has come to take the place of real evidence and analysis. Has, for example, Donald Trump really stopped 10 wars in the past few months? Could he find the countries in question on a map? Could he even name them? Does he think that he has stopped the wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip because he has told the parties to stop fighting? 

 

Are cities with black Democrat mayors really more dangerous than cities with white Republican mayors, even if these Republican run cities have murder and crime rates that are 4 times higher than the Democrat managed cities where he wants to send in the Army? It pleases Trump to think so, and it pleases the racists in his base, but that doesn’t make it so. Facts are, after all, stubborn things.

 

Most politicians lie, at least some of the time, but what is dangerous in our time is the unprecedented way in which Trump tries to bend reality to his whims. He literally tried to convince people that they were in danger from a hurricane because he drew, with a sharpie, and a weather map to extend the threat posed by the hurricane. In his second administration, he has just cut funding to the actual weather scientists who help to forecast dangerous weather. Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He claimed that the country's jobs reports "are being produced by Biden appointee" and were therefore suspect. She gave him a factual report with numbers that made Trump look bad so he fired the researcher who brought him bad news.

 

Good government depends on good factual information but everything Trump says is on par with your delusional aunt who talks to ghosts. The Trump administration’s plan for implementing his fascist take down of American democracy has been to “flood the field” with so many conspiracy theories, lies, propaganda, and crazy executive orders that the media can’t keep up and the voting public will just get so disgusted that they stop paying attention. This “flood the field” technique is working for them. 

 

Those of us who try to respond to the constant drum beat of idiotic claims, misinformation, and crimes are labeled as having “Trump Derangement Syndrome” suggesting that the problem is that we hate Trump so much that we are against everything that he says and does. This is just another way of evading the central fact that our president is an uneducated, low IQ, fascist who is the greatest threat to democracy since Hitler. We’re not deranged; we’re devoted to reality even though this reality is increasingly nightmarish.

 

Folks, the moon landing happened. The earth is not flat. There are no mind control drugs in the vapor trails left behind jets. Tariffs cause inflation, and can cause a major economic meltdown. The Trump “big beautiful bill” cut millions of people off of access to healthcare in order to give huge tax breaks to the richest 1% who do not need a tax break. Russia started the war with Ukraine and giving Russia Ukrainian land will only guarantee that Russia will invade other neighbors to take more territory. One need only watch the sycophantic exercise of every cabinet meeting to realize that Trump wants to be a dictator and he is appointing people to posts who are so stupid and loyal that he has no one to stop him from becoming a dictator. 

And these things, my friends, I will tell you that I do know for a fact and I hope that you also realize that they are true and that you will act on them.

 

“Just War Theory in 2025”

“Just War Theory in 2025”              September 7, 2025    Dr. Roger Ray 

click here to see the video

In 1971 I rode my gold colored Huffy, three speed, sting ray bike to the Plaza Theater just off the square in Glasgow, KY to see the movie, The Legend of Billy Jack. It was a poorly done movie, but it had a big impact on me. It was the Nixon years, at the height of the war in Vietnam, and this movie ticked all the right buttons for me. It was anti-war and it introduced me to the concept of pacifism and, as a young man, it was helpful that it did so with a lot of exciting karate fights because, pacifists usually end up needing to be defended by someone who isn’t a pacifist. 

 

As an adult pastor, I have been decidedly opposed to war. I have often said that I would like to be a pacifist, but I recognize that our heavily armed world often requires a show of strength to avoid constant invasions and genocides. Still, I can remember saying in many sermons over the past 45 years that I am so anti-war that I am already against the next war, wherever it will be. 

 

We don’t know who first said it but there is a very old proverb that says, “The first casualty in any war is the truth.” From the time of wars with swords and spears all of the way up to our nuclear age, governments have used wars to distract and unite their population. Sometimes they steal land or resources in a war but that is not usually what causes it. The value of a war is often just a way to distract a population from their suffering or some political controversy and to unite them around a common enemy…. Often an absurd caricature of an enemy, built on lies and propaganda. 

In late August, my charming wife, Sunan, was finally able to move from Bangkok to our home in Florida. This has been a great source of joy for both of us and, honestly some relief to get her away from Thai television. You see, we have spent months together in Thailand, but when I have been back in the USA, we talk morning and night on the phone. She has been unemployed for the past few months, living in a house with three of her brothers in a rural province where watching TV was a primary form of entertainment. The state controlled news in Thailand contains only what the King wants it to contain and that is always praise for the king’s generosity to various charities . . . . and I am no longer allowed to ask where the king gets all of that money that he gives away . . . and no small amount of thrilling news about how bad the government of Cambodia is. 

 

There has been a dispute over the ownership of two ancient temples on the boarder of Thailand and Cambodia for a century. Sometimes, when one side or the other needs a propaganda distraction, it becomes a regional shooting war. Both temples are Hindu, neither are in use. I won’t butcher the pronunciation of their names, but the larger one’s name translates to “In Honor of the Great Chicken.” Both were built by the ancient Khmer Empire which is arguably a bit more Cambodian than it is Thai. The international court in the Hague ruled 60 years ago that the temples belonged to Cambodia. . . a decision which does not get reported on Thai TV.

 

All that they say on Thai TV is that Cambodia shot first. . . I have heard this so much from my sweet, 90 lbs, 57 year old wife that I have been afraid that she was going to join the commandos and go fight the Cambodian army. I shouldn’t make light of this, and I absolutely should not tell Sunan that she is being manipulated by the king’s propaganda . . . saying that once appears to have been quite sufficient. 

 

It isn’t like the USA hasn’t done this several times. Most of us can remember that when a security fumble in Lebanon resulted in the bombing deaths of more than 200 American service men, Reagan almost immediately ordered the invasion of the tiny Caribbean Island of Grenada, which Reagan said was being overrun by godless communists. In a classic “wag the dog move,” the invasion was ordered so quickly that our Marines didn’t have the time to find the right island. They invaded the wrong island, had to run back to their ships, and get a better navigator. 

 

This wasn’t about saving a few dozen American medical students on the island from godless communists, it was about saving Reagan from NBC, CBS, and ABC news anchors. And so it goes. Governments use war to distract and unite their subjects.

 

While I cannot rationally claim to be opposed to all wars, I still hold fast to the belief that virtually all real wars are the result of failed diplomacy. We cannot maintain peace by just refusing to fight but we can usually avoid a fight if we manage foreign affairs in a way that resolves legitimate problems without bloodshed. Some problems are easy to see coming and are preventable, but no one has a crystal ball. 

Most of us watched the build up of Russian soldiers on the border with Ukraine as a political bluff on Putin’s part. Even President Zelenski apparently believed that they would not invade. In fact, other than Joe Biden, I can’t remember anyone saying that it was really going to happen, but it happened and now I believe that it would be a tragic mistake to allow Putin to gain land or power out of this illegal war. The western world has supported Ukraine enough to keep it from falling but not enough to actually defeat Russia in what is becoming a war of attrition.

 

Folks, if I had my way, I would admit Ukraine to NATO today and pull together a united NATO army and push the Russian army back to Moscow and then demilitarize Russia because, clearly, Russia cannot be trusted. But then, I only listen to pro-Ukrainian news and Russians only listen to Kremlin propaganda. Evidently, Donald Trump mostly listens to Kremlin propaganda because he has often said that Ukraine started the war, by somehow manipulating the Russian armies into invading. 

 

Regardless of the degree to which Trump is a Russian asset, this is a real war with serious consequences. I am pacifist adjacent, but I believe that the world needs to pull Russia’s nuclear teeth, ground their Airforce, sink their navy, and disarm their army because nothing less will make the world safe. That may show how little I really know about international diplomacy, but we did it to Iraq and Iraq didn’t really do anything to deserve it. Russia is not a civilized player on the world stage.

 

This is not a comprehensive philosophy of Just War and, I still like St. Augustine’s take on this matter as well. But I offer these three points:

The primary tests of a just war have to do with having an obtainable goal that will result in fewer deaths than might reasonably lost if military action is not taken, and there needs to be a way to end the war that results in lasting peace. 

 

When Germany was defeated in World War II, we left them enough of a military to defend their borders but made certain that they could not menace their neighbors again. 70 years later, we often ask Germany to spend more on their defense, but it took a few generations for us to get to a point where we trusted Germany to play with matches again. I would love for Russia, Iran, and even North Korea to join the world of grown up, trustworthy nations but they are not there right now. Typically, the profit motive makes nations behave better than religion or military threat but places like North Korea have proven that they can endure a lot of poverty while never feeling compelled to play by sane international standards. 

 

I say all of this to work my way around to talking about the war between Israel and, well, the people of Gaza and other local neighborhoods that harbor enemies who feel justified in their not infrequent missile attacks. 

 

Like every other liberal in the world, I am horrified by the suffering in Gaza, the starvation, the violence, and the endless military strikes by Israel in the past 2 years. I am sympathetic with the call for a two state solution, giving Palestinians a peaceful path towards a meaningful existence which includes, prosperity, education, productivity, and a prospect of a happy life. It is not difficult to hate Bebe Netanyahu. Many political commentators in the USA just flatly say that he keeps up the war in Gaza, as well as strikes in Iran, Syria, and the West Bank, just in order to stay in office and stay out of prison. Maybe that is true, but take Netanyahu out of the picture and what do you have left?

 

How do the Palestinians and the Israelis get to an end of hostilities that produces lasting peace? Again, the first casualty in any war is the truth. The Israeli media does not show pictures of starving babies in Gaza. They do not report on the deaths, the homelessness, the shifting of the population from one place to another in an endless and exhausting attempt at rooting out all Hamas militants. Sure, Israel isn’t like countries like Russia or Thailand where the news is filtered. They have access to outside news sources but it shouldn’t surprise you that most Israelis don’t access those news sources.

 

Americans have the information superhighway on our cell phones all of the time but still, the majority of traffic on the internet is pornography and cat videos. Religion is no longer the opiate of the people. Now it is Tic Tok.  

 

In Israel, they don’t see the horrors in the lives of the Palestinians, they hear about their hostages who have yet to be returned to them. Do you remember how the War in Gaza started? In the fall of 2023, there had been a cease fire in place when Hamas attacked, killing 1200 Israelis and taking 251 hostages. 378 of those killed were ironically attending the Supernova peace concert. These were mostly young peace advocates who wanted to establish peace between Israel and her neighbors. Many of the young women were raped and sexually tortured. Most of the rape victims were killed in the process of the rape. One woman had nails driven into her pelvis. Another had a knife shoved into her vagina. 

 

The attack was brutal and senseless. Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are about equally divided between those who supported the attack and those who opposed it. However, many of the hostages taken on that horrible day have been housed in the homes of Palestinians and of the hostages rescued in these past 2 years, none were rescued because Gaza residents helped them or turned them over. The western media would have us to believe that there is a clear bright line between Hamas and the Palestinian residents of Gaza but reality is much more murky than that. 

 

Of the 2 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, almost all of them were taught from early childhood that God wants them to kill Jews. Palestinians have, over the past three generations, become aid dependent. Nearly half of the population is unemployed, living solely on foreign aid. Many who are employed are employed by charities sent to offer aid to the poor of the Gaza Strip. 

 

What would it man to establish an independent state of Palestine if there are no jobs, no economy, no prospect of a self-supporting state? From an Israeli perspective, they see a vicious game of propaganda being played in which Hamas brutally attacks Israel. Israel retaliates. Gazans cry “foul” and beg for public attention and international aid. They then use that aid to arm themselves for the next time they will attack Israel. Is it any wonder that they are not crazy about just opening the borders to aid trucks. Where does this end? How does it end?

I have said repeatedly through the years that the Western world was wrong to take Palestinian land to create a Jewish homeland at the end of World War II. It was a horrible decision and it set up conditions for a constant state of war between Israel and her neighbors. What virtually every Palestinian wants more than anything in the world is for the Jews to go away. The phrase, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” means that they want to drive the Jews out of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. 

 

It was wrong for European settlers to move Native Americans off of the Eastern seaboard but we can’t just push residents of New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia into the Atlantic and give the land back to them. It was wrong for Americans to take Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and California from Mexico at the point of a rifle, but can we just give the southwest back to Mexico now? OK, I’d be willing to give them Texas but we’re keeping Colorado. 

 

We gave certain Native tribes large tracks of land to be reserved for them to preserve their culture but you can bet that if the Standing Rock Sioux started firing missiles into neighboring cities, I don’t think Americans would stand for it. If the Cherokee in Oklahoma went into Tulsa and murdered over a thousand people and took 251 hostages that they would then rape, starve, torture, and keep in underground tunnels for a couple of years, things wouldn’t be going as well as they are in Oklahoma. 

 

An Israeli officer in Jerusalem told me about 40 years ago, if the Palestinians would lay down their arms, they would be living in peace by nightfall. If the Israelis laid down their arms, they would all be dead by nightfall. That is hyperbole but it is closer to the truth than most of my liberal friends are currently willing to acknowledge.

 

Of course Palestinians deserve a homeland, but they don’t get to push the Jews into the sea to get that sliver of real estate. I am, in principle, in favor of a two state solution but the created Palestinian state has to sincerely and honestly accept Israel’s right to exist, and in spite of 80 years of rhetoric, we are nowhere near the point of saying that the population of Gaza is capable of doing that. 

 

Reporters in the west keep calling on Israel to stop the fighting. There is a simple way to do that, immediately: release the hostages who are, to this day, being raped, starved, tortured, and held in unlit tunnels in Gaza. If you can’t understand why Israel is not willing to end the war in Gaza while these hostages are still being held and tortured, then maybe you are not using your empathy skills very well. Egypt or Jordan could take in these Palestinians but they don’t want to. Do they like keeping a couple of million unemployed angry Arabs on Israel’s doorstep? 

 

If we use our influence to force a ceasefire in Gaza, open the borders to as much aid as donor nations want to send, how long will it be before the next October 7^th? What would prevent it? I’m all for peace between Israel and her neighbors and I am well aware that there have been plenty of Zionist offenses on Israel’s side as well. But where is a workable peace? 

How do you convince Israel to just lay down their defenses and live beside a neighbor whose dream it has been since childhood to carry out a genocide against the Jews? Sure, the 2020 Abraham Accords offered a framework for peace between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan but what about Palestine and Syria? Arab nations will not sign an accord while Israel is fighting in Gaza and Israel isn’t going to sleep next to a militarized Gaza. 

 

I want the war in Gaza to end as much as anyone, but I want it to end in a way that doesn’t just set Israel up for another invasion. The answer to that dilemma, to the best of my knowledge, is not currently under discussion in western media or Middle Eastern media. We have to learn to speak a common language of peace, because hate speech is keeping us in an absurdly vicious cycle of violence.

 

There are no simple answers here but that shouldn’t keep us from looking for a complex answer that has a chance of working.