Thoughts of a Freethinker

In the past few months I've read three recently published books about China. Perhaps some readers have been to China. I have not. We have friends, a couple from China who were our students, that offered to host us on a trip there. That would have been wonderful but the time when we could do that has passed.  All of the three books were written by Chinese people. The first one explained how a person from the U.S. might understand the economic system. He wrote that China is like the U.S, would be if we took the presidents of the largest companies in the country and assigned them the highest posts in government. If we did that, without our kind of elections, he said, we would be China. Bill Gates would have the budget of the Federal Government to build the U.S. tech industry. The trucking exec for government truck policy, the road contractor, car manufacturer, housing, etc. Each industry chases its own growth without a broader view. This is why China has hundreds of skyscrapers that a...

Christian sites keep reporting on the rise in abortions. Those of us who comment on these sites point out that all the money going to anti-abortion groups and to politicians like Trump who say they working to end abortions is wasted. While Christian sites have staff that do investigative reporting, I've never seen an article that talks about the total amount donated and that it has accomplished nothing. I would think liberal politicians in liberal states might score political points by bashing these unproductive anti-abortion groups. Perhaps some of this will play out in the upcoming midterm elections. As Trump falls into deeper holes of mistakes, it is a good time to remember how much chest beating there was from anti-abortion about his election. "He would not be in office were it not for us" was repeated often. Now, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, an anti-abortion group, grapples in his weekly column for something good to say about Trump. All of us who foll...

Many pundits say Wisconsin will vote for Democrats in the midterm and next Presidential election. Wisconsin has a variety of industry but its rural areas have lots of dairy . Half the labor is done by immigrants. Almost 3/4th of the milk is produced by this immigrant-dominated labor pool.   I have no idea how many micro economies in the U.S. depend on immigrants to stay afloat. Just scanning the news one can see there are lots of them. To some degree, I suppose, businesses do not publicize this problem because they don't want to be raided and arrested.   It doesn't seem like immigrants, legal or illegal, are a huge problem. Most of the jobs they take on are not desirable to U.S. born people. School districts have to deal with large numbers of children without English language skills. They have been doing this for a long time. People living "underground" need medical services and with no insurance this is a problem. There has to be a solution to this.  All of thi...

While history has had an endless stream of atheists, all with something good to say and all getting their fair share of publicity, I can't think of a new one since Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. This is the era of the video. I came across Promise Backlund , a You Tube creator.    She describes herself as a former believer but now calls herself an atheist. She has been on other platforms doing atheist videos for a while but now is tackling You Tube. I gather making videos is her full-time work.  While the non belief demographic of the U.S. has been growing steadily, an attractive, persuasive and hard working personality would help move it along. You Tube creators often say it take a hour of work for each minute of video so be to produce 10 or 20 minutes is a project. Ms. Backlund has been posting lots of material.  The video I linked is one in which she describes the strange practices of her former life as a Christian. I found the video to be entertaining. But the Ch...

Countless drawings, inscriptions and objects, as well as the Bible, tell us ancient religion was about plants, animals, stars, the moon and the sun. Plus, pictures and objects had life and powers. The Moses story was about his anger that the "golden calf" was worshipped. It's obvious that if there actually was an Exodus, some people in his group worshipped the "golden calf" instead the god Moses worshipped. The Old Testament, written for the Israels, scolded them for putting other gods in front of the Big Guy.  When every aspect of their lives, their food and danger from animals or other tribes, came from places or reasons they did not know, they believed some god was the source. For each food or danger a different god was in charge. So, for the growing and cropping season it was the crop god. The hunting season a different one. Battles yet another. Each god required a ritual.  These observable events and the sun, rain and stars that each required a god to influ...

  I binge-watch too much of Mormon Stories Podcast  because there are discussions of religion I don't see other places. I'm watching an episode now interviewing an anthropologist who goes over all the territory I've traveled before but in an engaging way . At the risk of misquoting or misstating, he says this: 1. All religions from prehistory were verbal. Nothing was written except surviving drawings. 2. All religions were based on the interplay between growing food, mostly corn, and the sun. The sun, the plants and the animals held spiritual powers.  3. Religions were passed down to the next generation by learning rituals which were practiced at various periods of sunshine. The sun, sky and crops held all religious ideas, they were the "Bible." Religions were not about prayers and scripture, they were about rituals. 4. The written word did not come along until about 6,000 BCE. Any claims of written or recorded text before then could not have happened.  5. All rel...