Thoughts of a Freethinker

I often write about one of my favorite books on religion, Professor Steven Prothero's book, God is Not One.  Prothero starts with the assumption Christianity, and all other religions in the world, are about what followers THINK their faith is about. Often that is different than what leaders or theologians in a faith claim it is about. Recently, I came across an academic definition of how the explain this difference. It is called, among other things, "lived experience." That is, what does a faith mean to the people living or experiencing it? The academic I've encountered spends time in China talking to Christians about how they view their faith and what they think it is about. His message is Christianity in China includes a broad variety of beliefs and interpretations and should not be seen as uniform .  Pundits within the faith are often fishing for good news. For example, one comes across some church that says it has seen in increase in it youth numbers. Or, there wa...

If one wants to understand the right-wing religion of today, was the prohibition era. The star character of prohibition was Carry Nation. The Fargo Forum reprinted coverage of Nation's visit to Mitchell, South Dakota, around 1900. She gave a fire breathing speech about the evils of taverns and alcohol to a big crowd. She counted nine saloons in Mitchal that needed to be destroyed by women with axes.  Alcohol and the saloons that sold it were seen by Nation, and her entourage, as the sources of all sin and evil of that time. Drunkenness, broken homes, absent from work, illnesses and you name it were caused by taverns. She saw the Republican Party as the source of this sin and preached it be taken down. There was already a prohibition political party but she had no use for its efforts to pass laws against booze. Direct action was her thing. Her reputation as an axe swinging weapon of mass destruction preceded her arrival in Mitchell, SD. Local law enforcement pledged to be on guard. ...

  If the term "morality" is about religion, religion is coming back. Not long ago, I searched the New York Times for articles about religion. Religion was mostly absent. Religion seemed one of those things that had once been popular, some had tried to keep in play, but its time had passed. Some may remember that Obama tried to use his faith to illustrate that he identified with those who were in it. His effort fell flat and he stopped bringing it up. The Obamas resigned from their church in Chicago, the preacher was obnoxious, and did not join another.  In recent years, the Times has brought back religion in a big way. Columnists who discuss it are given top billing. It's sort of strange that the NY Times is about "news" and these time worn arguments about what is true and not true in the imaginations of people is again considered "news." Of course, it was "news" when Pres. W. Bush said his invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq had Biblical justi...

Only a few of us really old people know about the Bay of Pigs. A short version of the story is a small group of U.S. military invaded Cuba with the ultimate goal of over-throwing the Castro government. The invasion turned out to be almost a joke with tiny and poor Cuban defeating the great power, the U.S.A. While the bombing of Iran and Iran's reaction is yet to fully play out, the short-term conclusion is it has been a failure. Yes, many of its military assets have been destroyed. A country with money, meaning oil, and a well-educated population can rebuild anything that has been bombed.  It's worth recalling the hubris and politics that led up to the Bay of Pigs. My own way of summarizing it is that national politics of the time made communism into a much bigger threat than it turned out to be. This miscalculation drove the notion, "We need to do something about Cuba." One can read how many different ideas were floated and rejected but the over-arching thing was som...

When voters talk about politicians, some will say, "I hired you. Do a better job." I hear this every once in a while and got to wondering how those who voted for Trump evaluate him now. If our country was one giant Human Resources Department, what would an evaluation of Trump look like? Of course, voters have many different reasons for their choices. The conventional wisdom of pundits has been the "Christian" demographic voted for Trump because he had appointed anti-abortion judges during his first term. He reminded anti-abortion voters of that often when he ran in 2024. One has to assume he received lots of votes from the anti-abortion demographic. There is also a slightly different demographic that is usually called fundamentalist Christian. We all know he refers to them often. There is a blue-collar rural demographic that went big for Trump. Of those who voted for Trump because of his anti-abortion judicial appointments or because he seemed more like fundamentali...

It's not news to readers here that the Population Bomb sold three million copies and has been one of the most talked about and controversial books of its century. What remains unresolved, in some quarters, is its importance. Its author Paul Ehrlich died recently.  The link, written be a prominent figure in the Southern Baptist Convention, blows off Ehrlich because Ehrlich did not understand God created the world to be enjoyed by humans. We humans are instructed by the Bible to exploit the earth at our pleasure. Thus, as I would interpret this Baptist, if humans want to destroy the earth by producing more humans that the earth can support, they have the green light from God to do this. I didn't read the entire post to see if he mentions the parts of the Bible that preach stewardship of resources.  The more serious criticisms, if you can call them criticisms, comes from Ehrlich's timetable. He took historic data and projected it forward. For many reasons, the timetable of eve...