Biblically-based thinking can offer comfort, moral grounding, and a sense of meaning. Just like thoughts based on any other holy book. And there ARE others. The Koran. The Torah. The Vedas. Bhagavad Gita. The Tao Te Ching. And many more. All just as valid as the Bible, BTW.

But when the Bible becomes the primary framework for understanding reality, ethics, and public life, as it does in a big part of the United States, and especially in today’s politics, it reveals serious limitations—both intellectual and moral. And we’re seeing it in our public life. This is reason for real concern.

Biblically-based thinking asks modern people to suspend reason in deference to an ancient text written by men who believed the earth was fixed, women were property, illness was punishment, and obedience mattered more than compassion. It’s based on SUBMISSION.  That alone should give us pause.

Its first flaw is authority without accountability. When beliefs are declared “God’s word,” they are placed beyond challenge. Evidence becomes irrelevant. Harm becomes acceptable. And disagreement is recast as moral failure rather than intellectual honesty. This is not faith—it is power protected from scrutiny.

Then there is selective obedience, the quiet hypocrisy at the center of biblical literalism. Adherents obsess over certain verses—usually those that regulate sex, gender, or hierarchy—while ignoring commandments about wealth, forgiveness, humility, and care for the poor. Scripture becomes a weapon aimed outward, never a mirror turned inward.

Biblically-based thinking also freezes morality in time. It treats ancient social norms as eternal truths, even when those norms endorse slavery, subjugation of women, collective punishment, and violence. Progress, in this framework, is framed as decay. Empathy is suspect. Change is heresy.

Worse, it trains people not to think. Questions are discouraged. Doubt is punished. Complexity is flattened into certainty. This intellectual submission is often mistaken for virtue, when it is actually fear—fear of ambiguity, fear of responsibility, fear of standing alone without divine cover.

And history is damning. Biblically based thinking has been used to justify slavery, colonization, forced conversions, the silencing of women, the persecution of LGBTQ+ people, and the refusal of basic rights—all while cloaked in moral righteousness. When harm is sanctified, cruelty doesn’t feel like cruelty anymore. It feels like obedience.

The greatest danger is this: it replaces moral responsibility with moral permission. People stop asking whether something is just, humane, or kind. They ask only whether it is allowed.

A belief system that requires you to turn off your conscience is not a path to truth.

It is a system designed to preserve itself—at any cost. And that’s something we should fear.