Somehow it's better, I suspect, for a president to talk to God than to talk to pollsters.

From a very interesting article on the president's faith. I'm personally fascinated by the schism in American Christianity, with the Liberal Protestant Churches wholly on the side of the negedists and sinking inexorably into anti-Americanism/anti-semitism, and the fundamentalist churches fallling all over themselves to condemn terrorism and embrace Isael. (I dissent from the idea that this is based purely on religious reasons. I've met too many Christians who support Israel for non-Apocalyptic reasons, such as the fact that they can go freely to Jerusalem under Israel, something they couldn't do when it was under Jordanian rule.) Clearly the culture war in America at large is mirrored in American Christianity and, apparently, negedism is losing its battle with reality there too.

Which gets me wondering about where I stand on this whole God issue. I generally consider myself a secular Jewish mystic, for what its worth. I'm pretty much down with one of the early forms of Kabbalism, which theorized that there was a dualistic spiritual world divided between Good and Evil. I certainly don't consider Good and Evil mere terms of reference, but rather forces at work in the world which are as real as the Earth's revolution or the act of breathing. Of course, I'm semi-agnostic about all of this, but this is the religious POV I think makes the most sense. I do think that there seems to be an underlying order to the world that's very difficult to explain as being purely the result of random occurrences, although I despise the pseudo-science of Creationism or Intelligent Design Theory. I don't think religion operates along the same rules as science, and doesn't have to prove itself according to scientific principles. Basically, all religions are mystical at heart. They aren't systemic philosophies, but much closer to works of art.