I really enjoyed your summary of this lengthy debate. It reminds me in some sense of discussions at family Thanksgivings between my dad, a professor of physics, my mom, a PhD in zoology turned UCC minister, and my uncle, a Presbyterian minister and student of Reinhold Niebuhr.

I am very interested in the connection between worldviews, science, politics, and history. I am currently working on a piece on the rhetorical similarities between Biden and Trump where each of them are coming from Manichean world views where the two parties see the other as the "evil threat."

Niebuhr's Children of Light and Children of darkness provides a healthy corrective to each extreme.

"Our modern civilization, on the other hand, was ushered in on a wave of boundless social optimism. Modern secularism is divided into many schools. But all the various schools agreed in rejecting the Christian doctrine of original sin. It is not possible to explain the subtleties or to measure the profundity of this doctrine in this connection. But it is necessary to point out that the doctrine makes an important contribution to any adequate social and political theory the lack of which has robbed bourgeois theory of real wisdom; for it emphasizes a fact which every page of human history attests. Through it one may understand that no matter how wide the perspectives which the human mind may reach, how broad the loyalties which the human imagination may conceive, how universal the community which human statecraft may organize, or how pure the aspirations of the saintliest idealists may be, there is no level of human moral or social achievement in which there is not some corruption of inordinate self-love"

I find it so interesting that writing at the height of World War II, Noebuhr identifies the West's key problem as abandonment of the doctrine of original sin. The democracies were both too naive about the threat of Naziism and too convinced of their own goodness.

I'm convinced that self-righteousness has robbed progressives, moderate Democrats, never Trump Republicans, and the Trumpocrats from seeing the flaws in their own world views and appreciating useful insights in the perspectives of others.

I want to clarify that I am not advocating for a "moral equivalency" here. Vote Trump out of office as decisively as possible, his policies are a grave threat to the future of the planet, democracy, and the peace of the world.

As a final note, if you have not read Ken Wilber on these points or considered Richard Rohr's daily devotionals and recent Universal Christ, they can be very helpful as a way of preserving a science affirming and at times transcending faith.