Thoughts of a Freethinker

If watching political theater is entertainment rather than frustration, watching Trump's Republican Party is as good as it gets. In many aspects, Trump and his Republican Congress have decided government needs to run the economy, as least the parts where there are lots of votes, and this old business of Capitalism needs to be buried in the sands of time.  This is happening in so many places it's hard to recall them all. We can start with the Federal Government buying a huge stake in Intel, the U. S. chip maker. According to something I read, the Federal Government is buying up shares in many companies each week. Does Trump, or others who do his bidding, think they are so brilliant they will be able to make these companies profit powerhouses? Or, do they think they can make manufacturing companies so successful they will hurt China?  A faction of the GOP is opposed to this expansion of "socialism" but of course they don't use that word. Socialism and "Communis...

The original film was called "The Passion of the Christ" cost $30 million to produce and grossed $300 million at the box office. Gibson, whose estimated net worth is $425 million, is making a sequel which should be named "The Passion of Profit." In the link , Gibson says dead people coming back to life is not all that unusual. He said 17 events of this have been "verified by historians." His task, he says, is making this one believable to skeptics. This will be all the more difficult if there are historians, like New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman who don't think the coming back to life story ever happened.  Believeability would be higher if one person had seen Jesus come back to life and wrote the he or she had seen this happen. No one, even in the Bible, claimed to have seen Jesus come back to life. Many religions have stories of the hero dying and coming back to life. Bill Moyers' several hours of interviews with the famous author Professor Josep...

Years ago on this blog I made up what I call the "Sin Leader Board." The "Leader Board", as many readers know, is used in golf events to list those golfers who are ahead. I thought of the "Sin Leader Board" as a metaphor for the way Christian leaders, especially conservative ones, exploit the fictitious idea of sin to build support for their particular churches and pastor celebrities. Whatever "sin" seems most egregious, most outside contemporary thinking at any particular moment in history, is moved up on the "Sin Leader Board" and becomes the sin that brings in more money than former sins that now are ignored.  Around 1918 a group was able to blame bars and consumption of alcohol as the cause of all societal problems at the time. Prohibition lasted from 1920 to 1933. Husbands who drank at taverns after work ruined families. Men who missed work were automatically men who drank alcohol. Taverns were evil places and a few were physically...

The phrase in the title is attributed to showman PT Barnum. To his dying day, he claims he never said such a thing. I'll take his word for it. That does not diminish the wisdom and insight into human beings everywhere in the world encompassed in the sentence. Recently, the Governor of Massachusetts signed into law a bill allowing late term abortions when a doctor and patient agree this is the best or only alternative to the problem faced at that time. The bill had been passed by a big majority in State's legislature.   During the decades after the Roe decision when abortion was legal in every state, the anti-abortion industry told supporters, "Send us money and we will force abortion back to the states. They we will go state-by-state abolishing abortion in each one until the country returns to the state before Roe when there were no abortions." This position was dishonest in two ways. First, it was intended not to eliminate abortion but to attract funds from the gull...

There is so much discussion of a topic called, "Tiny Houses." Having been a mayor, I know well the problem of finding a spot for lots of small houses. People elected to office will face opposition from voters and use zoning to prevent them from being built. Today where I live there is a proposal that may happen to take a former school building site, land already owned and controlled by the public, tear down the school and build a small neighborhood of tiny homes.  "Tiny home" neighborhoods already exist in the form of recreational vehicle parks. These are usually privately owned and have water and sewer connections. People without much money but with recreational campers move into these places and live there permanently. These are often on the outskirts of cities or in rural areas. Opposition from voters keeps them out of neighborhoods. There are also "trailer parks" that are a bit larger. The idea of small permanent houses located in established city neig...

There are several disciplines in universities that have roughly the same mission. It is to destroy myths. Maybe it is more accurate to say their mission is to study what people believe to be true and raise doubt when it shows up. The disciplines I'm thinking of are those I'm most familiar with, humanities (history, literature, etc), social sciences (sociology, psychology, economics, etc.) and others. The sciences also attack myths with new discoveries.   Challenging myths also happens outside academia. In fact, it is everywhere--we all do it all the time. There was a popular TV show, "Myth Busters." I think the general public has been forced into "myth busting" by an increase in advertising and messaging. We have to have our game face on all the time to keep our money and health.  This is why I think many studies about "belief in God" or "why people are dropping out of Christianity" miss the boat. One of many every week discusses again wo...