America is struggling to become post-Christian. I don’t know how it will turn out, given the propensity of the fundamentalist wing of the current American society are pushing real hard for their daughters to have a dozen babies.

This struggle for society’s ideological change works all the way up through the highest of ivory towers.

The more reading I do on early Christianity, the more I realize that many of the publishing scholars, at least American, not so much German, in this field are still giving deference to stories of magic.

Even indirectly - e.g., some scholars will eschew miracles but then take the apostle Paul on his word, when his (5 or 7 legitimate) letters are filled with things like visions, prophecies, etc.

It’s hard to change a society.

I bet most American scholars do not believe that an angel came to Mohammed and revealed the substance of the Quran, and even fewer will accept that an angel came to Joseph Smith and showed him the Book of Mormon.

Yet somehow these scholars use Paul’s words as some sort of historical guideline, when the story as it goes is clear that Paul claims he never saw “Jesus” when said character was alive, but only in a revelation.

This is not off topic of our SCOTUS politics.

Kavanaugh is very much the plant of fundamentalists, as was Gorsuch. This is part of their hopes to instill a theocracy. This they believe is their calling.