Thoughts of a Freethinker

A group of liberal Baptist preachers recently formed a group , not a denomination, to push back against Christian Nationalists. Many of the preachers serve mostly black churches. They are almost missionaries in a foreign country.  Religious conservatives often crow about the loss of numbers in denominations like Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Lutherans. It is true their numbers have dropped dramatically. Numbers in conservative denominations like Catholics and Southern Baptists have dropped dramatically as well. What is unknown is where the numbers will be ten or twenty years from now. I find the You Tube channel "Mormon Stories Podcast" so interesting I watch it too much. There, former Mormons tell of their loss of trust in the information provided about the origin of the denomination, The tale of Joseph Smith finding tablets telling him to start the denomination is so blatantly stolen from Moses' stone ten commandments it is laughable. All to the polygamy in the denom...

I would guess that pleas for money to fund Christian missionaries have been very successful over the last 100 years. My late uncle was a missionary. Some denominations, like Southern Baptists, have cut back funds for missionaries but keep the program alive. Missionaries are usually married men with children. How this affects their families was discussed recently by a woman on a Christian site.  The wife of the male missionary is required to fit into the society targeted by the faith. If there is a language and cultural barrier, this is not always easy. Perhaps most children make such adjustments more easily than adults, but when the missionary assignment ends, children must reenter a society they are not familiar with, The link author asks believers to help children returning from assignment make new friends and become acquainted with a society that in now foreign to them.  To an outsider, all of this seems very pointless. Societies around the world have religious views that c...

There was a fascinating opinion in a Federal Appeals court in Florida signaling some hope for freedom of speech. The MAGA Florida legislature and Governor passed a law state universities cannot teach "woke" ideas. Readers know this is both specific issues like our history, racial equality, trans and will include in the future whatever and whomever conservative politics decides to demonize next. The law was challenged by a group of students and faculty. It ended up in the Federal Court of Appeals in that district. A Trump appointee wrote the majority opinion that the Florida legislature cannot dictate which ideas and acceptable and which not. A majority overruled the law. I suppose the Supreme Court could hear this case, not sure. If there is one thread that can hold together this democracy it is free speech. Conservatives have the bonkers notion that "free speech" is private education from childhood to adulthood. A dissenting view in the Florida decision was that a ...

The question asked repeated by skeptics of Christianity is, "If God loves us, when does he allow children to suffer in pain and die? Why does he allow so much suffering everywhere?" The columnist answered that today. God makes us suffer, he said, so we "surrender." When things are most painful and hopeless we will get on our knees and petition God for help. People who are healthy and wealth are worse off according to the link.  When a child suffers is that child made better by getting on knees and "surrendering" to an imaginary god? When God sent Noah's flood did a million people come to God just before he downed them? The link seems to me like an ad marketeers came up with after the company faced a dilemma. The dilemma was the company had a product to sell that was inferior in quality and too high in price. The company asked to ad company to produce an ad that said, "Buy our inferior over-priced product because you will feel better after you help...

In the years I've been writing this blog many Christian pundits have confidently posted in comments why I'm an atheist. All the reasons they have given are ones I have seen in other posts on other sites. The ones that come to mind are that a.) I want to sin without punishment, b.) I had a bad experience in a church, c.) I have not read the Bible, d.) I fell under the influence of Satan, e.) I do not understand the consequences of sin in eternity, f.) I am under the influence of liberals like Obama and Biden, g.) I am going through a temporary period that will be followed by belief when death approaches, h.) there must be a h.) but I'm bored with his list. All of these explanations are wrong. I simply could not believe the tenets of the Christian faith nor any other. The more interesting observation about the list, however, is that every explanation as to why I do not believe had one thing in common: Not believing is my fault. Anyone who does not believe has something wrong ...

When congress left Washington without a vote on the budget, an old bill defunding visits to women's clinics expired. This means the funding restarts . Anti-abortion groups are steaming mad. Anti-abortionists have always tried to demonize Planned Parenthood. It was as if Planned Parenthood was the reason there are abortions. The reason there are abortions, of course, it because women want them. If it weren't Planned Parenthood running clinics it would be someone else. In fact there are groups right now that would step up if the market needed them. One of the things that has always annoyed anti-abortion is that Planned Parenthood provides medical services to poor women. Anti-abortion assumes that revenue from these services funds abortions. So far as I know this is not true. It is just another preoccupation anti-abortion needs to get over. Republicans in Congress went on break without reauthorization of the bill that harmed Planned Parenthood and poor women. It is obvious most of...