Especially if you follow the links.

When I was in high school, one of my fellow trumpet players in marching band told me he believed the Bible and believed that the world was created in six literal 24-hour days no more than 10,000 years ago. I said "That's stupid" (or something like that). "Scientists have PROVEN (I emphasized) that the very rocks we're standing on are billions of years old. How can you take the Bible literally?"

I considered myself a Christian. Even a "Bible-believing Christian." But "everybody knows" you can't take the Bible literally.

He handed me an evangelistic "tract."

I hated evangelistic "tracts."

Still do.

I thought they were simplistic, uneducated, and an embarrassment to Christianity.

But this "tract" was by a fellow who earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry from U.C. Berkeley. That stunned me. He pointed out that before you can use a radiometric dating method on a rock, you have to decide in advance how old the rock is. Some radiometric dating methods only go back a few thousand years. Other methods span billions of years, but can't really be used on an artifact that's only a few thousand years old. Before you choose your yardstick, you have to estimate how old the sample is: thousands, or billions of years old.

A "tract" on radiometric dating. That seemed like a contradiction in terms.

But the obvious question was, Why would somebody decide that the world was billions of years old (so that they could use [for example] potassium-argon dating methods rather than carbon dating)? Why not just believe the Bible and use the dating methods that fit with the Bible?

I read hundreds of books seeking the answer to this question. But the answer was not hard to find. Aldous Huxley, grandson of Thomas H. Huxley, who was called "Darwin's Bulldog," answered this way:

I found a zillion pro-evolution philosophers and scientists who said the same thing:

We don't want to be governed by the God of the Bible.
We don't like the God of the Bible.
We want to seize the property and wives of others.
(To put the matter bluntly.)

So they chose to deny what the Bible says about God being our Creator, and impressing upon our consciences "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God."

I chose to believe the Bible rather than people who were engaged in "political and erotic revolt." People like Adolph Hitler and the Marquis de Sade. The people who denied the Bible seemed to me to be threats to a decent and peaceful world.

The Bible is about loving one's enemies, not seizing political power to dominate them. The Bible is about caring for the weak, beating "swords into plowshares," and every man dwelling safely under his own vine & fig tree.

I liked that.

I had cast my lot with the Creationists.

Soon, I cast my lot with the "Christian Reconstructionists," a group more radical than mere creationists, who had actually helped the Creationists get started. Before I graduated from college, I was already writing for an organization in California described by Newsweek magazine as "the think-tank of the Religious Right," an organization credited with helping elect Ronald Reagan in 1980, even though none of the leaders of that organization had voted for Reagan for governor, and were often critical of the Moral Majority. My first article published by that organization was on the evolution/creation controversy.

Around 1977 I had been captivated by the prophet Micah's visualization of every man beating swords into plowshares and dwelling safely under his vine & fig tree. I formed a publishing organization called "Vine & Fig Tree," which finally received tax-exempt status in 1982.

The Vine & Fig Tree Worldview

By this time I realized I was not entirely in agreement with the Reconstructionists. I had become a pacifist and developed a fondness for the anabaptists of the 16th century, a group not well-liked by the Calvinistic Reconstructionists. My opposition to violence led me to oppose the systematic institutionalization of violence known as "the State." I was now an anarchist. I was soon excommunicated from the Reconstructionists.

About this same time I was being politically excommunicated as well. I had been studying law, primarily as a result of wanting to help homeschoolers, whose kids had been taken from them in the days when homeschooling was both illegal and prosecuted by the state (it's still illegal, but not often prosecuted), and had passed the California Bar Exam (said to be the toughest bar exam in the world), but because my allegiance to God was greater than my allegiance to the State, I was denied a license to practice law.

I discovered another movement of anarcho-pacifists: the Catholic Worker. They were not creationists, and I was not Catholic, but we were too busy to argue about it. The four of us rented a 12-room house in a bad part of town, took a couple of rooms upstairs and let the homeless stay in the rest of the rooms. We helped them create résumés, get to job interviews on time, stay clean and sober, and save up first- and last-month's rent for a place of their own. Hundreds of people stayed in our home, and thousands more enjoyed meals in our dining room, the product of prolific "dumpster-diving." We also protested the Military-Industrial Complex at places like North-American Rockwell and Seal Beach Naval Weapons station. That lasted the better part of a decade. None of us were paid a salary.

I left the CW for the Palm Springs area to care for my father, who was dying of lung cancer, and now I'm in the Ozarks to care for my widowed mother.

During the last ten years I have been somewhat lost, trying to figure out how to sell the "Vine & Fig Tree" vision. By "sell" I mean not just "persuade someone to adopt," but "get paid." I've been content to live without an income, but I have no objections to limitless wealth.

One propaganda vehicle is politics: I run for U.S. Congress every two years, speaking at Candidate Forums, Town Halls, and radio and TV. Going up to total strangers and starting a conversation about my fringe religious nut-case ideas is too much for me. I'm a product of public school "socialization"; I'm peer-dependent and don't want to step out of line. I realize my ideas sound wacko at first. Saying, "Hi, I'm a candidate for congress" is an easier way to open doors, and I inevitably get around to "selling" my fringe religious nut-case ideas. But the whole process is not very satisfying. And completely unprofitable.

My original goal of publishing through my non-profit organization has not materialized, chiefly because I don't know how to run a business. And also because, despite my dogmatic adherence to fringe extremist views, deep down I hate personal rejection or social ostracization, which usually comes from people who instantly stereotype me as a clone of some goofy televangelist when they hear I'm a "Christian," and changes a bit (though not necessarily for the better) when they hear I'm an "anarchist."