Thoughts of a Freethinker

The Bible is full of dreams and visions. The difference between dreams and actual events was not clear then and is not clear to many believers today. The mythical "Paul" of the Bible have visions of talking with Jesus long after Jesus was dead. To this day it is assumed often in the faith that Paul actually spoke to Jesus. While one can understand the ancients had a view that dreams were some kind of communication with some other world, we would not think it lives on today. We would be wrong . I remember a few year back watching a panel discussion on a religious site. Benny Hinn, the fake healing preacher, was on the panel. The discussion morphed into what each was hearing from God. Benny went on for several minutes about seeing Jesus while in bed. He thought he might have been asleep and it was a dream but felt it had some serious meaning. He asked Jesus questions but Jesus did not answer. Benny was perplexed because he was certain the visit meant something important but he ...

Just now Pope Leo is in Spain. He will be there for several days. According to a press article he will address several human rights issues. He will also visit youth groups in an effort to stop the trend of youth leaving Catholicism and Christianity in general. In one of his early stops, it was clear his operatives were looking for optics that made his visit look exciting. Several thousand kids were given white smocks to make a photo impression of a huge event. The Popes speech apparently was not about being a Catholic, but "returning" to the denomination. He said it should not be relegated to a museum. Leo knows the numbers. They are declining. The Pope points to the history of Catholicism in Spain. Certainly, it's been there for a long time. Before, Catholicism, however, there was something else. No doubt every region had its own god and myths. To be accurate, the Pope should urge going back into history, but not too far back. Just go back, he should say, to when Catholi...

The effect of prayer will go on forever so one wonders why discuss it? The link asks that question. You will not learn anything from the link except that believers like to pray and it makes them feel they are doing something even though there is no evidence prayer actually does anything. Many decades ago when I was a mayor of the largest city in ND, Fargo, people from outside the city regularly made appointments to talk to me. Some came to talk about money and business. Others came to talk about state politics. A popular topic was religion. I was surprised about that. The link made me remember my intercessory prayer experience. I may have written about it here before so skip the rest of this post if that's the case. A preacher from a couple of hours away made an appointment and spent his half hour telling me of the times he had done intercessory prayer and saved the lives of other politicians. One was the Governor at the time, Allen Olson, who said at the time the preacher was pray...

There will be no dog tags or tombstones listing "Atheist". Gone is training of military Chaplains in a host of religions that exist in the U.S. and which troops have listed on their personal military resume. Atheist will now be called "No Religion." Various earth-type religions or ones from the tropics will be lumped together. If you are a troubled member of the armed forces and desire to confine your emotional state to an understanding member of your clergy, you may have to soldier on alone.  Readers know there has been an explosion in the number of religions people now identify with. There are news ones every year so we can expect this will continue. I suppose there remains a view in conventional wisdom the military needs to provide clergy to troops. We know, also, the origin of the practice came from Christianity. The expansion of religions has tossed the old model of a Chaplain for everyone's faith out the window.  One can understand that providing trained c...

When the new sheriff arrived in the Vatican, that was Pope Francis, some things changed. The changes continue with Pope Leo. There is a rule , "Don't be weird. Don't even sound weird." Francis $hit-canned a Bishop who talked to the press about sinful women who have abortions. Now Leo says Bishops cannot say UFOs are demonic. The Bishop that told this to the press was relieved of duties, even though he said repeatedly it was his view and not that of the denomination. Bishops are not to appear like they are whacko. That is, they are not to go further than the whacko of one cell human beings, dead people jumping up and you know the rest.  It must be hard for old-line priests and bishops to have spent their careers repeating far out and weird stuff like demons coming from outer space and having folks in the pews listen respectfully then be told they are nuts. There is deprograming for most of us, not Catholic clergy. We can see how hard it is to hold together a giant inst...

My academic field, economics, is thought to date back to publication of The Wealth of Nations written by Adam Smith in 1776. It was a break-through from religion, though Adam Smith was a religious, because clergy in the Western world for a thousand years or so had preached all of one's life was a gift from God. Smith said, no, wealth of nations came from individuals producing more than they consume. If humans divide up the work that is there to be done and each individual becomes specialized and more productive then trades his output with another specialist both will have more. Add them together the nation has more.  Smith basic idea of the individual was expanded to the individual firm by Alfred Marshal in 1890. The same principle applied, that a nation because better off when individuals and firms seek to gain for themselves. This dominated economics until the Great Depression and John Maynord Keynes. Keynes' idea was prosperity and the standard of living of the public could ...