The Bolton Book

 After reading John Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened,” I’ve concluded (1) he considers himself to have been the ablest person in the Trump administration, (2) that every negative thing we’ve seen and heard from and about our president is true, and then some, (3) that he, Bolton, never met a pact or a treaty he liked, and (4) his unwillingness to testify at the impeachment hearings was because he considered them to be “impeachment malpractice,” even though his book reveals that the charges against Trump in the Ukraine matter were true. 

Bolton maintains that Trump was acquitted by the Senate not because of the well-established belief that the Republicans were going to acquit Trump no matter what arguments were presented, but because of the “partisan approach” to the impeachment by House Democrats. Without his customary venom, he mentions the fact that the Republican majority allowed no witnesses to testify, but that, if subpoenaed, he would have testified. Translation: He knew he wouldn’t have to testify. 

The book makes clear not only the horrors of the Trump administration but that Bolton, who even calls himself a “hard-liner,” is a dangerous person to be in government during the nuclear age. 

I didn’t enjoy what I read. Rather, I came away from it more frightened than before I opened it. I am now reading “RAGE,” Bob Woodward’s book based primarily on his extensive interviews with Trump. I’m nearly finished. Stay tuned.

Faith vs Fact

I was surprised to learn that Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is a devout Catholic. According to Bob Woodward, in his book "RAGE," Redfield prays every day. He even prays for Donald Trump. (Oh well, prayer can't hurt.) 

If there's one field of endeavor in which fact, not faith, is the bedrock, it is science. A scientist does not merely wish things into existence, or attribute phenomena to anything other than nature. He or she investigates the rudiments of our world and the universe to uncover their secrets. I'm not suggesting that Redfield's religious beliefs make him any less of a scientist, but when he asks himself the scientist's basic question, "How did this happen?", a recognition that every phenomenon has a cause, he must apply that same scientific standard to the question, "How did God happen?" 

The basis of all science, as we know it, is that nothing can come from nothing. The Bible has a simple answer in its first sentence: "In the beginning God made the heavens and the Earth." Think about the word "beginning." If there's nothing before the beginning, how was it able to begin? That sentence alone should turn off a scientific mind as to the Bible's credibility.

Scientists have tried to address this dilemma for centuries. One theory they've come up with they've labeled the "Big Bang." Someone will have to explain to me how you get a big bang out of nothing. Dynamite has a big bang, but it couldn't do its thing if it weren't composed of nitroglycerin and ammonium nitrate. My unscientific conclusion astounds me: there was no beginning. Yes, there may have been a Big Bang, but only as one of the developments in the universe that occur because of the constant movement and interaction of everything from atoms to giant stars. In short, the only way I can conceive of a beginning in which there was nothing that began it is that there was no beginning, that the entire universe and everything it contained was always there - changing, moving, colliding - and, a bow to Darwin, evolving.

Call me crazy, but if you think I am then you'll have to answer the unknowable: How did God begin?

Yes, the universe and everything in it is awesome. There are those who believe that only a superpower, the likes of which we can't imagine, could create the magnificance we behold. (The painters of the Renaissance gave God a human form, simplifying matters.) But along with the magnificence we also have disease, pestilence, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and all the other misfortunes we are forced to cope with. And in the vastness of space there are stars that explode, "black holes," meteorites that strike moons and planets with devastating force.

Faith may be a motivating force, but it's no substitute for facts, which are the only ingredients in truth.

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