#559: Does an Israeli Third Temple Movement Justify Killing 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza?

    By Rudy Barnes, Jr., August 16, 2025

The short answer is No!  International law makes such carnage a war crime.  But that’s the cost so far for Netanyahu’s IDF to prepare the way for the Third Temple.  It would also require tearing down the Dome of the Rock Mosque currently on the Temple Mount before the Third Temple can be rebuilt in its place as God’s sacred home for Jews.

If and when the Third Temple is built, Mosaic Law will be restored as God’s law for Jews, including sacrificial rites.  The destruction of the Dome of the Rock Mosque will undoubtedly cause much religious controversy, if not violence but the restoration of the Third Temple represents the goal of many, but not all, orthodox Jews, including Prime Minister Netanyahu.

That has been the goal of most orthodox Jews since the destruction of the second temple by the Romans in 70 AD.  Many American Christians, including President Biden, have professed to be Zionists, and many Jews understand that replacing the Dome of the Rock Mosque with a Third Temple will likely generate religious violence.

 MIke Huckabee is a Baptist minister and former governor of Arkansas who has been the 29th U.S. ambassador to Israel since April 21, 2025.  As a conservative diplomat and political commentator, Huckabee is sympathetic to the Third Temple movement, but over 60,000 Palestinian casualties and crowds of starving Palestinians in Gaza have made Israel a pariah nation, with support for Netanyahu’s messianic goals waning.

The mix of religion and political issues in the Third Temple movement is likely to generate serious political debate in America, and American support is essential for the success of Netanyahu’s Third Temple Movement.  The threat of a holy war will likely deter Israelis from going forward with any site work on the Temple Mount for now, 

The evidence is clear.  The Third Temple Movement in Israel does not justify Israel’s IDF turning Gaza into a wasteland awaiting Jewish occupation, while creating a hunger crisis among young Palestinians in Gaza.  It’s time for the world to see Netanyahu for what he is:  A Jewish demagogue corrupting the Holy Land. 

 “How did we get here, where a Jewish democratic state, descended in part from the Holocaust, is engaged in a policy of starvation in a war with Hamas that has become the longest and most deadly war between Israelis and Palestinians in Israel’s history, and shows no sign of ending?  Thomas L. Friedman has observed that it pits the worst, most fanatical and amoral government in Israel’s history against the worst, most fanatical, murderous organization in Palestinian history.”

      

Notes:

Netanyahu has said that “Israel wants to hand over control of Gaza to unnamed “Arab forces” after Hamas defeat,” but so far there are no takers to provide those forces.  The Israeli cabinet signed off on Netanyahu’s latest proposal for the Israeli military to take over Gaza City, but has stipulated that the Palestinian Authority not administer postwar Gaza. See Arab Forces Running Gaza? Netanyhu’s Goal leaves many questions.

On Israel facing growing condemnation over military expansion in Gaza, see https://apnews.com/article/gaza-israel-palestinians-war-hamas-hostages-ceasefire-85dd158efed9eeab482d434e36bf130a.

          

On Arab Forces’ Running Gaza? Netanyahu’s Goal Leaves Many Questions. See  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/09/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-arab-forces-postwar.html.

On How Netanyahu Played Trump for a Fool in Gaza, see https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/opinion/gaza-netanyahu-trump-israel-starvation.html.

  

For American Democracy, the End of the Trump Regime Can Be a New Beginning

Rudy Barnes, Jr., August 2, 2025

Hope that a Constitutional democracy can one day rise “phoenix like” as an altruistic democracy from the wreckage of the immoral Trump regime is possible, but not a certainty.  As a pastor, I frequently used The Hymn of Promise to promote the hope, though faith, that the death of loved ones is not the end but a new spiritual beginning.  The S.C. motto, While I breathe I hope, is a secular version of that hope.

In ancient folklore the majestic Phoenix symbolizes the hope that something good can rise out of its ashes: “Ancient legend paints a picture of a magical bird, radiant and shimmering, which lives for several hundred years before it dies by bursting into flames. It is then reborn from the ashes, to start a new, long life. So powerful is the symbolism that it is a motif and image that is still used commonly today in popular culture and folklore.”

Like European colonial regimes of the 18th and 19th centuries.  Religion is not necessary, but altruistic morality is essential to the political legitimacy needed for a viable democracy; and former colonial regimes in Europe have demonstrated that even morally corrupt democracies can be redeemed from slavery and immorality.

Over its corrupt 2,000 year history, the church has failed to be a good steward of altruistic morality in democracy.  In America white Christians elected Trump twice as their President.  Thomas Jefferson was a Deist and a Founding Father of America who considered the teachings of Jesus “the most sublime moral code ever designed by man.”  Jesus was a universalist.  He was not even a Christian, but a maverick Jew.

The universal teachings of Jesus are summarized in the greatest commandment to love God and our neighbors of other races and religions as we love ourselves.  It’s taken from the Hebrew Bible, was taught by Jesus, and has been accepted by many Muslims as a common word of faith.  Sadly most Jews, Christians and Muslims have ignored the moral imperative to provide for the common good.

Can people in the world’s democracies subordinate their greed, materialism and hedonism to provide for the common good?  History teaches that human depravity has trumped altruistic morality in all of the world’s democracies; but in America the sacrifice of health care and social security to provide tax relief for the wealthy by Trump and his Republican Party could change political priorities.

It’s highly unlikely that the Trump regime will support altruistic moral policies that can save America from itself.  Changes in America’s moral priorities to provide for the common good will require a dramatic change in America’s current politics, and that won’t happen unless and until voters elect new political leaders who reverse Trump’s current immoral politics in the national elections of 2026 and 2028.  Those elections are the only polls that will count.       

Notes:

The Hymn of Promise by Natalie Sleeth is at page 707 of the United Methodist Hymnal:

In the bulb there is a flower, in the seed an apple tree; In cocoons, a hidden promise; butterflies will soon be free! In the cold and snow of winter there’s a spring that waits to be, Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

There’s a song in every silence, seeking word and melody;  there’s a dawn in every darkness, bringing hope to you and me. From the past will come the future, what it holds a mystery, Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

In our end is our beginning , in our time infinity; In our doubt there is believing, in our life eternity. In our death, a resurrection, at the last a victory, Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see

On the folklore legend of the Phoenix rising from its ashes, see Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(mythology).

On the dismal state of American politics with a looming crisis on social security and health care, see Warren Buffett’s longtime Social Security warning is coming to fruition, with retirees facing drastic cuts based on Trump’s “big and beautiful bill” giving tax breaks to the wealthy, see https://fortune.com/2025/07/28/when-will-social-security-run-out-insolvent-warren-buffett-crfb.

Musings on the Limits of Power and the End of American Exceptionalism

By Rudy Barnes, Jr., July 26, 2025

Andrew Bacevich acknowledged the limits of national power and the end of American exceptionalism in his 2009 book, The Limits of Power.  Like Bacevich, I’m a retired Army officer who has recognized the limits of national power and the requirements of military legitimacy, and how they were ignored in the Viet Nam war and subsequent American military interventions.

Since WWII America has been considered the undisputed standard of libertarian democracy and its essential moral requirements.  But after Americans elected Donald Trump President in 2016 and 2024, Trump has corrupted America’s moral exceptionalism and political legitimacy as described by Margaret McMillan and David Brooks and cited below in the Notes.

Religion is considered the source of the moral standards of legitimacy, and Christianity is the dominant religion in America.  Thomas Jefferson considered the teachings of Jesus “the most sublime moral code ever developed by man.”  While Trump’s narcissistic morality is the antithesis of the altruistic teachings of Jesus, most white Christians voted for Trump.

The church has proven that it cannot or will not be a moral steward of democracy.  That leaves the Constitution as the standard of legitimacy for American democracy, and voters in America have twice voted for a President committed to reshaping the Constitution to expand his executive powers and to reduce the checks and balances of Congress.

Until Trump was elected, promoting democracy seemed a worthy priority of U.S. foreign policy  But Russia and Israel are both putative democracies, and Putin’s unprovoked attacks in Ukraine and Netanyahu’s IDF killing of over 50,000 Palestinians in Israel and Gaza require shifting priorities to protecting human rights rather than supporting demagogues in democracies.

Trump has seriously compromised the effectiveness of American power both at home and overseas, but American voters can reset those priorities after Trump leaves office.  If Trump doesn’t comply with Constitutional term limits, then enforcing those term limits and opposing demagogues like Putin and Netanyahu should be America’s top foreign policy priority.

American exceptionalism is history, but American voters can and must make sure that its democracy remains consistent with the Constitution.  Americans should make preserving universal human rights and opposing the war crimes of oppressive demagogues like Putin and Netanyahu their top priorities, and relearn the essentials of diplomacy.  

After Trump leaves office, America should conform its foreign policy to the Constitutional standards that once made America a great nation.  In the process Americans may discover that promoting freedom and protecting universal human rights in democracy can be the most dangerous idea in human history.  But better late than never.        

Notes:

Margaret McMillan has described Trump’s handling of America’s international relations as  Making America Alone Again and as American Carnage: A history that offers few parallels for Trump’s repudiation of America’s own alliances.  She has  described it as American Carnage.“ In Trump’s world, mutual trust and respect, so hard to establish and so easy to destroy, do not matter. Yet nations, like individuals, have long memories of past wrongs or defeats, as Trump himself should know. Trust among individuals or nations is hard to measure, but lasting and productive relations cannot exist without it. During the Cold War, negotiations between the Soviet Union and the United States over arms control were tortuous and drawn out because neither side trusted the other. Incidents such as the American pilot Gary Powers’s intercepted U-2 flight over the Soviet Union in 1960 or the Soviet shooting down of the Korean airliner in 1983 were read by the other side as evidence of malign intent. By contrast, although there were certainly tensions between the United States and its allies, each generally assumed their counterparts were acting in good faith, and there was a willingness to discuss tricky matters and search for mutually acceptable solutions that no longer exists today and cannot be easily or quickly rebuilt. The Western alliance could be joining the list of ones that failed. Being the world’s greatest military power is a heavy burden, and partly as a result, the U.S. debt continues to grow to staggering levels.  Ambitious powers, China in particular, are pouring resources into an arms race that gets ever more expensive. And, as has happened many times before, other nations are tempted to abandon the old power for the new or group against it to take advantage of what they see as its decline. If Trump’s current hostility to alliances continues and the administration keeps insulting, belittling, and even economically harming its long-standing partners, the United States is going to find the world an increasingly unfriendly place. Former allies or uncommitted powers may decide that Putin’s Russia is a better bet; others may bypass the United States with new trade arrangements or, as is happening with European nations and Canada, sharing in their own military production, planning, and mutual deterrence, on the assumption that the United States is no longer a dependable ally. The British once called their position in the world “splendid isolation” until they realized the costs were too high. Trump’s United States may find that, in the dangerous twenty-first century, those splendors are overrated.” See Making Americans Alone Again at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/north-america/making-america-alone-again#

Using a similar idiom as that of McMillan, David Brooks has described Trump’s foreign Policy as Winning the Race to the Bottom. Comparing the U.S. positive responses to the USSR’s Sputnik in 1957 with  dramatic technological developments, to Trump’s negative response of building walls of punitive tariffs to current Chinese efforts to outpace U.S. technological dominance in space, See https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/opinion/trump-america-china.html.  

On The Moral Failure of the Church and Democracy in America, see https://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2025/07/musings-on-moral-failure-of-church-and.html.

On Democracy as the Most Dangerous Idea in Human History, see  https://progressivechristianity.org/resource/the-most-dangerous-idea-in-human-history/.

Artificial Intelligence as a Threat to Truth in Higher Education, Politics and Religion

Artificial Intelligence as a Threat to Truth in Higher Education, Politics and Religion

By Rudy Barnes, Jr., July 19, 2025

A.I., or artificial intelligence, began in Hollywood with special effects created for entertainment purposes.  Today AI is taking us beyond truth and even our imagination to where no one has been before, and the consequences could be dire.  Uncontrolled artificial intelligence is an existential threat to truth in higher education, politics and religion.

Most religions claim a monopoly on God’s truth, and politicians like Donald Trump have used distortions of AI to misrepresent the truth.  The greatest danger of AI is the variation of AI known as artificial general intelligence, or AGI.  It’s a form of AI that’s beyond human control and can dictate our concepts of truth.  That’s a frightening existential threat of AGI to truth.

Most of America’s essential services are already controlled by the internet, making their control a matter of national security, and there are new waves of unprincipled hackers available to the highest bidder.  Few have contemplated where continued advances in cybernetics will lead us, but a self-perpetuating artificial intelligence seems to be within the realm of possibility.

There are good and bad sides to AI.  The good side includes internet functions that improve our lives.  The bad side includes manipulating facts with misrepresentations that go beyond human accountability and can control concepts of truth in education, religion and politics; and AGI sounds like a science fiction nightmare.    

In America, every new advance--including AI--is measured by its economic impact.  On the stock market, big tech (Alphabet, Meta, Apple, Amazon, Nvidia and Tesla) have used AI to make exorbitant profits, turning a bear market into a bull market; but there is disagreement over whether AI is good for the economy, or an economic illusion that feeds the greed of investors.     

To prevent AI excesses, laws like slander and libel should be expanded to prohibit misrepresentations of fact in the media (fake news), and even faked conversations over the telephone.  And AI distortions of fact in the media beyond legal prohibitions should be condemned by all religions as immoral distortions of God’s truth.

HIstory confirms that human intelligence is flawed. Edmund Burke was right when he observed that in a democracy people forge our own shackles.  Pogo confirmed that truth when he said, We have met the enemy and it’s us.  If our human imperfections make us our own worst enemy, maybe AI can help us build a better world to save us from ourselves.    

If a form of AGI evolves beyond human control, humans can either ignore it or make it accountable and regain control of their destiny.  Who knows?  After more than 2,000 years, perhaps AI will confirm that the greatest commandment to love God and our neighbors of other races and religions as we love ourselves is God’s universal and eternal truth.  But don’t count on that.  After more than 2,000 years, the world hasn’t yet discerned God’s truth. 

Notes:

On Deepfaking it: How America’s 2024 election collided with an AI boom,  see  https://www.reuters.com/world/us/deepfaking-it-americas-2024-election-collides-with-ai-boom-2023-05-30/?utm.

On Artificial General Intelligence: can we avoid the ultimate existential threat?  “AI is an existential threat because of the unlikelihood that humans in a democracy will be able to control AGI once it appears. AGI may intentionally or, more likely, unintentionally wipe out humanity or lock humans into a perpetual dystopia. Or a malevolent actor or demagogue like Trump could use AGI to enslave the rest of humanity--or even worse. 

Human nature makes AGI too risky for trial and error.  “Since the inception of existential risk research, humanity has lost a lot of its naïve cheerfulness about landmark technological breakthroughs. While few in the past held the Luddite opinion that technological development is universally bad, the opposite view, namely that technological development is universally good, has been mainstream. Existential risk research implies we should reconsider that idea, as it consistently concludes that we run a high risk of extinction due to our own inventions. Instead, we should focus on making risk-gain trade-offs for innovations on a per-technology basis. At the same time, we should use a mix of technology and regulation to enhance safety instead of increasing risk, and AI Safety is a prime example of that. In the past, we used trial-and-error science and technology to manage nature’s challenges. The big question now is: can we use caution, reason, restraint, coordination, and safety-enhancing technology to address the existential risks stemming from our own inventions?” See  OECD Network of Experts on AI (ONE AI) at https://oec./wonk/existential-threat.

 

On how Wall Street has moved a bear market to a bull market in a bear economy, see https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/09/investing/bull-market-artificial-intelligence/index.html.

AI has spawned numerous innovative efforts to capitalize on enticing AI illusions.  One self-made millionaire has recommended ways to use AI to make thousands of dollars a month in passive income--with less than $100.  In selling AI on the internet, greed trumps truth.  See   https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/12/self-made-millionaire-shares-how-to-use-ai-to-make-thousands-of-dollars-a-month-in-passive-income.html.

On the religious dimension of truth, see What Is Truth?

http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2015/08/what-is-truth.html.

    

Musings on the Moral Failure of the Church and Democracy in America

 Musings on the Moral Failure of the Church and Democracy in America

By Rudy Barnes, Jr., July 12, 2025

The standards of legitimacy in America are based on the Constitution as the foundation of our democracy and its laws, with our moral standards and values shaped by our culture.  America is a Constitutional democracy with its people the source of their changing laws, moral standards and values; but unfortunately, American democracy has lost its moral compass.

Thomas Jefferson was a Deist and Founding Father who considered the altruistic teachings of Jesus “the most sublime moral code ever designed by man.”  It’s too easy to blame Donald Trump for America’s moral failure.  The people enabled Trump to dismantle America’s Constitutional democracy, and they elected Trump twice to do just that.

Morality has traditionally been the province of a church that has lost its moral authority and is now in decline.  It has failed to be a moral steward of democracy, and failed to reform its exclusivist doctrine that limits salvation to Christians.  As a retired pastor of the United Methodist Church (UMC), I consider the church a failure as a moral steward of democracy.

The issues dividing the UMC have cultural roots that have split Americans along racial, demographic, moral and theological lines, but those divisions are not being discussed in the church.  My old home church in Columbia, S.C. has declined, but nearby there is a thriving Unitarian Universalist Congregation that does not promote Christianity as the one true faith.

At the end of the 19th century the Methodist Church was America’s largest Protestant congregation.  The UMC was formed in 1968, but United is a misnomer.  Most UMC congregations remain racially segregated, with most Black UMC members voting Democratic and most white UMC members voting Republican in a nation with racially polarized politics.

Donald Trump’s morality is the antithesis of that taught by Jesus; but most white Christians voted for him in 2016 and again in 2024--even after he tried to overturn the 2020 election and praised those who participated in the January 2021 insurrection.  It reminds us how the church has ignored the moral imperative of the greatest commandment to love God and our neighbors, including those of other races and religions, as we love ourselves.

The UMC has now split over sexual preferences, allowing its congregations to choose whether to remain in the UMC or to join other denominations more compatible with their moral preferences.  But in the disaffiliation process the UMC never considered doctrinal changes to promote the altruistic teachings of Jesus that could have ameliorated UMC disaffections.

   

For America’s pluralistic democracy and the UMC to survive they must be reconciled as stewards of democracy that promote the common good.  Jefferson understood that; but the church has continued to ignore the universal moral imperatives taught by Jesus.  The choice is ours.  Can the church save itself and democracy from human depravity in religion and politics?            

Notes:

A breakup of UMC churches over L.G.B.T.Q. issues has caused more than a quarter of UMC churches to defect, and the defections continue.  “At issue for Methodists is the question of sexual preference for ordaining and marrying L.G.B.T.Q. people, a topic that has splintered many Protestant denominations and which Methodists have been debating for years. In 2019, Methodist leaders opened a window for any congregations to leave over “reasons of conscience,” in most cases allowing them to take their property and assets with them in a clean break if they received approval to depart by Dec. 31, 2023. Many conservative congregations have done just that. “It’s the biggest denominational schism ever,” said Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University. There were eight million Methodists in the United States in 2020, according to the U.S. Religion Census. Between large-scale departures and the broader trend of decline, Dr. Burge said that number could drop by half in a decade. The exodus marks a calamitous decline for the broader tradition of mainline Protestantism, which once dominated the American religious, social and cultural landscape. …Remaining congregations and leaders are taking stock of their losses, and looking ahead to a future in which the denomination’s footprint in the United States may continue to shrink (even as it grows overseas, especially in Africa). In Texas, a historic stronghold for United Methodists, more than 40 percent of churches have left.  “It’s significant, and it’s been at a high cost,” said Thomas Bickerton, who is president of the denomination’s Council of Bishops. More than 7,500 congregations have left since 2019, a number that he said was slightly higher than leaders expected when they extended the offer. Next year, Methodists plan to vote on what will likely be their lowest quarterly budget in 40 years. Officially, the United Methodist Church still forbids same-sex marriage and does not allow “self-avowed, practicing” gay people to serve as ministers. But in recent years, some leaders began defying official restrictions on the practices, and the church now has a number of openly gay clergy and two gay bishops. Many anticipate that church law could change — and spur more departures.” See  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/18/us/the-united-methodist-church-schism.html.

On the relevance of Thomas Jefferson’s Jesus in the 21st century, see https://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2019/05/musings-on-relevance-of-jeffersons.html.

Alex Detocqueville was a French aristocrat and intellectual who visited America in 1831 and observed a mutual relationship between democracy and Christianity on morality that was critical to both.  Detocqueville observed that America’s many Christian sects shared a “Christian morality” that produced common standards of political legitimacy that defined what is right, and imbued American politics with its moral authority.  On the views of both Thomas Jefferson and Alexis de Tocqueville on the moral values of religion in American politics, see Religion, Moral Authority and Conflicting Concepts of Legitimacy at http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2017/07/religion-moral-authority-and.html. See also Musings of a Maverick Methodist on a Universal and Altruistic Jesus, August 19, 2023, at http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2023/08/musings-of-maverick-methodist-on.html.