Thoughts of a Freethinker

It's hard to believe how often "demonic influences" and "spiritual warfare" are mentioned in the Christian press these days. Of course, it's always been there to one degree or another. The late Pope Francis said "Satan exists." It's scary to think of the myth there are invisible beings and forces causing certain events are thought to be real by people who might be able to harm the innocent. To me, anyone entrusted with providing information and ideas to the public should help guide TO the truth, not away from it. There are so many examples of myths that took over people's minds in history and resulted in many deaths. One of the most famous was witchcraft. Salem, MA is the city that holds the title as the witch city in the U.S. Several years ago I visited Salem and read the excellent museum explaining the phenomenon. Witch hunting took place in Europe and came here with Europeans. In Salem, it was a social and economic system. While there we...

  Over the long period I have written this blog interest in religion in general has gone up and then down. Just now it seems like it is ascending. The New York Times, for years, had no little to no discussion of religion. Then it added Ross Doubthat. Then is added David French. Now it has added a newsletter one can subscribe to. According to the link , there is big money now in sites offering paid subscribers the opportunity to chat about feelings toward the unseen and unknown.   I'll admit to being a bit presumptuous here, but I think I know why there is such an interest in paid sites that just chat with people about their troubles. It's the same reason most every newspaper still in existence still has a love-lorn, Ann Landers type, column. It's why TV news that show tears of those interviewed are the ones that sell the ads that pay for the news. All of this, plus all religion since the beginning of humans, is because many, maybe most, of us humans carry uncertainty or w...

Today various news outlets and pundits are treating the latest assassination of a political figure as a great turning point in U.S. history. The implication on the right is this will galvanize the majority to turn against the left. On the left the hope is this will galvanize the majority to regulate guns and other precautions. One thing seems to be emerging, it is not going to play out like 9/11 of the assassination of JFK. The public is growing weary of discussing such an issue and moves on more quickly than it has done in the past. I know readers recall the period when airplanes were being hijacked and/or blown up. Precautions are now in place that I'm sure make this more difficult. Could it be, also, that the practice is simply less attractive to politically motivated criminals around the world than it once was? I never hear these days of foiled attempts to hijack airplanes. It makes me think it has lost its limelight and therefore its appeal. I don't claim to be an expert i...

The myth that having an abortion harms a woman's mental health has been around for several decades. It was even repeated by a Supreme Court judge who sided with abortion rights. If the person repeating the lie knows no better, we can give them a partial pass. But when a source is referred to, and the source does not corroborate the lie, that is inexcusable. This happens every year on Christian Post and appears there today. The basic story is that women who have had abortions are more likely to use mental health services. This long-standing bit of statistics has been reported for years and continues to be seen in statistics. One of the important professional studies which looked into this was the Turnaway Study. It found women who had used mental health services before and abortion used them more often after their abortions. Makes perfect sense.  It is clear the authors of the link have not read the study they discuss. The study points out the widely known statistics that women who ...

A dufus Catholic priest has been in the news recently claiming God gave us our rights. It isn't just right wing priests who say such stuff. I heard Gorden Robertson, Pat's son, say the same thing several years ago on the 700 Club. When it comes to the "rights" such whackos are referring to, I suppose it is the "right" for protesters to block abortion clinics and close them through mob rule. It might include the "right" of Christian school administrators to require teachers to read from the Bible and pray to the Christian god every day. Right wing Christian rights are always about taking rights from others. A public official has been standing up to the priest and challenging the notion the rights of Christians to do whatever they want was given to Christians by God. Our Constitution, and court cases, talked specifically about the rights of individuals, rights not to be taken away by governments. A 1943 court case said, "The purpose of the Bill ...

A retired professor of religion is especially annoyed at other Christians who have the view, "All religions have some good in them" or "All religions are basically the same." Christians are the only ones right about morals, sin and the hereafter he seems to say. He urges Christians to stop saying good things about other faiths.  Certainly, there are branches of the major faiths that are criminal. Just now, there are reports of Hindus killing Christians in India. This, however, does not make Hinduism a worse religion. It just means there are criminals among those in the faith. One of the things that really gets the link author angry is ridicule of Christianity that is occurring in Europe and in the U.S. That something so deeply felt by believers should be ridiculed by others is wrong he believes.  Yet, he seems to justify that those who do not believe in invisible beings, life when we're dead, the dead coming back to life and the revelations received only by beli...