Thoughts of a Freethinker

Has raising a child changed over the last few decades? Everyone knows it is far more expensive. There are tomes published with explain why this has happened.  Economic forces have change many things.  In my Sunday paper today is an article discussing how vast the practice of retired age parents giving financial aid to adult children has become. Nearly half of retired parents with children do this. This reason they do this surely is because their children or grandchildren need this money. That this economic situation exists has to affect the decisions of children and grandchildren as well and the older generation.  The anti-abortion industry tries to blow off the economics of giving birth and raising a child. It never, ever, mentions the lives lost in childbirth. Instead, it blames decisions to have abortions, by pills or surgery, on "abortion clinics," "women who do not want to be held accountable for their sin" and "the culture." I've pointed out befo...

I suppose we're all guilty at one time or another of writing or talking about other groups we're not part of and incorrectly thinking we know all about them. That happens when Christians talk about atheists. Christians say atheists leave religion because atheists want to live in the fast lane called sin and not pay any consequences. Atheists live their lives at the same moral level as Christians. The latest version of this is the Christian Right talking about "socialism" and assuming it is the same as "communism." They use the terms interchangeably. Those who advocate more government services, especially more programs for the poor and public education, are labeled "socialists" even though more government is not the same as socialism.  There have been, I would guess, hundreds of books written about socialism and communism. What those words mean is not precise. In general, socialism means government owns all the "resources of production." T...

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...