We are looking at the Impeachment trial as existential confrontation between two ways of viewing reality: the fundamentalist view that fixes reality in the Story of Reality versus a view that has no story. Creative Design, reality based in a story, versus Evolution, reality based in change and verified evidence. The world according to Trump versus the world according to verified evidence, or Just the Facts. Story versus Facts. Democracy and the world as we know it is on trial here.

In the Middle Ages science and religion were mixed like a martini. One single world view held all possible views of reality, of what’s real. Alchemy was the science, Scholasticism was the theology, and the Bible was the reference for all verification of knowledge and exploration.

The 16th century broke the dome and let verification by evidence challenge assumed idea of the structure of reality. Descartes separated science from religion, giving religion the subjective meaning realm and science the objective realm of knowledge.

But the success of the Objective science in predicting future and controlling nature let to it being the dominant view of the modern world, and the subjective view and Consciousness became a ghost in the machine. Now that dome of the world as a machine is breaking up, and once again we are in transition for a new world view that contains both how and why, facts and meaning.

The problem is our classical logic which says truth must be either this or that but cannot be this/that. That is ambiguous, and logic and science hates ambiguity. That is the realm of art.

But religion as a subjective truth began to, had to, compete with science for validation on the objective logical field since that is the only field in the modern world. Then we get the quest for historical factual validation of the Bible, like the location of Noah’s ark. the Bible can only be true if it is factually and logically validated, like you validate a scientific theory.

The Theist references all knowledge on the Idea of an external personal god that exists separate from the cosmos, from experience, from Me. That Idea is the fixed center of reality and allows a coherent Idea or view of reality to be lived in. This external Idea of the unmoved mover is a projection of our own fixed sense of self. They both rise together, God and Me. Remove one, remove the other. Siamese twins.

The atheist just says I’m not that. Both the Theist and atheist rise together as a relationship. Siamese twins.

The true religious mind is driven to transcend and resolve Theism/Atheism…and in my view, that’s Zen.

The quest is to transcend duality, but no matter what Idea you arrive at is it always going to be This and not That, and that is duality. Duality is the Operating system of consciousness, and logic is its alchemy: The One is always chopping into two so consciousness always remains as the crucible in which life is experience.

But consciousness is a modern god. Other cultures do not worship it. Our being is greater than the little mahout riding on the elephant.

Consciousness solves the dilemma temporarily by projecting the One that has no second as God. We imagine the resolution to our own dilemma and chase it in time, which is duality.

Trump is the personification of this pitfall. His Story of reality trumps facts. Tump regresses to the Middle Ages to stabilized the impermanence of the quickly changing modern world. Trump believing in his Story of Trump stabilized the world and makes change subordinate to his Story. That tower is coming down before our eyes..