Thoughts of a Freethinker

I learned today there are many "micro churches", home churches that pop up when a group of people is fed up with the church they are going to they start meeting by themselves. Apparently the groups, at least to some extent, find each other online and hold conferences. According to the link these groups avoid much talking about theology. They realize everyone has their own deal and going very deep into "what the Bible means" will exclude those who know even better "what the Bible means" so it's go lite on that topic.  Predictably, the comments that followed the link wrote of the "ignorance" of lay people and the need for knowledgeable denominational officials to decide "what the Bible means" and give proper instruction to those of lesser knowledge. On the few occasions when I've gotten into the back pages of denominations or watched videos debating what is going on inside there are the inevitable conflicts about theology. Leave t...

Like every holiday of memorable event, some Christian operatives are trying to tie the faith to Father's Day. They are doing it with the 250th, marriage, births, deaths and whatever and wherever they can.  Father's Day is an interesting one because the Bible is full of men with many wives and countless children. Some of the great males in the Bible would not have been able to name all the children he fathered. A Christian site made a valiant effort to paint some Biblical characters as fine father figures. From what one reads, there is an increase in church attendance of single young men, not married fathers. Women are leaving the faith more rapidly than men. Perhaps there is the thinking by some in Christian management positions its future is in men, not women, and marketing should emphasize men. Of course, the faith has emphasized men with male-only clergy in many parts. If ever there was a place where men are important just by being born male, it is in the Catholic, Missouri ...

Devout Muslims get on their knees several times a day to pray. Some Christians have prescribed prayers with specific words. The Muslim prayers, so I understand, are about being humble. The prescribed Christian prayers are petitions to be humble, not among other people, but to the invisible god(s). I got to thinking about what is included in prayers when I came across a Christian's complaints about changes made by denomination officials in the official versions of these prescribed prayers.  The prescribed prayers in the link to be recited during various rituals summarize the Christian faith. Prayers are to admit sin and beg for forgiveness. This, of course, is the Christian marketing program. First, call out some behaviors as sins. These may not be harmful behaviors, but they are part of making the size of the market larger. Then the faith cleverly places itself between danger from committing the sins and a happy forever. What a deal. There should be a law that every church has a si...

The conservative Christian site I review tells often of Christians prosecuted in countries dominated by either Islam or Hinduism. Once in a while there is an interesting case involving Christianity where one doesn't expect it. There is one going on in Finland. It is about a public official and Catholic Bishop. The case is headlined as Christian persecution. What it is about, however, is picking out a group in Finish society and demonizing them. The group, as we might predict, is gay and trans. The public official and Bishop were fined for expressing the old saw that the Bible only finds two genders thus finding trans not Christians. In the U.S. we experience cycles of hatred and discrimination and, eventually, try to correct. There was a time in the South when a real Christian opposed ending slavery and later opposed ending segregation. After all, God put different races on different continents with the intention they not mix. Certainly, they were not to marry and produce mixed rac...

I think it is good news that the current Lt. Governor of Texas said in a recent speech the Democratic candidate for the Senate, 34 year old seminary student James Talerico, is going to hell. Readers following this election know the Lt. Gov. was referring to Talerico's public statements the Bible does not condemn either gays or abortion.  It is hilarious when someone other than a current god tells us what the god is going to do when someone else dies. Is he certain he knows what that god's judgment of himself is going to be? Apparently, he knows the god's thinking on both Talarico and himself.  Have any of you readers had someone tell you that you are bound for hell. I have had people tell me this about myself more times than I can count over a few decades. Maybe it happened before this, but one period when I heard it often was after an event in 1984. The Fargo, ND newspaper ran the article that told of the Lesbian and Gay Pride Proclamation I wrote as Mayor and signed way b...

I've bored readers here before with the difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics. I keep returning to the difference because of an inability to see the world in other ways. Macroeconomics is in the news constantly, unemployment numbers, inflation and average incomes. The actual world, however, is run by the less discussed microeconomic decisions each of us makes every day, every hour. Anti-abortion people think abortion is a macroeconomic issue when it is actually a micro one. Humans have been making life and death microeconomic decisions since they arrived on earth. We are here because our ancestors made good micro decisions, including abortion and euthanasia. Early humans, and perhaps remote tribes today, lived in small clans. The decisions they made were for the survival of their group alone, not for societies across their region. They were microeconomies. From generations of experience, they knew how much food was available to them each year and the amount of labor ...