Thoughts of a Freethinker

There was a headline article in the heugh Iowa paper today about the damage done by Trump's tariffs. Unfortunately, it was mostly about small businesses who import products and not about low farm prices and high farm costs which are even more important. Trump, as readers know, carried states like Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota 60-40. Trump voters in these states need to heed the advice of the late columnist Ann Landers, "Wake up and smell the coffee."  There has been a pattern in U.S. trade policy Since trade policy is largely under the control of U.S. Presidents, it is important they understand the basics. The basics are that countries have unique weather, soil and people that make it advantageous to produce some things and import others. This is counterintuitive because our instinct is to believe it is better if we product stuff ourselves instead of pay others. Republican Presidents come from an ideology that markets generally make better decisions than governments...

For the decade I've been reading Christian sites, books about religion and entertaining myself by writing this blog, I've become convinced the Christian left would survive the downward drift of religion longer than the right. If history repeats itself, neither will last forever. A new unexpected development is  several "mainline" preachers running for high political offices and polling well. While predicting the outcome of elections has been embarrassing for me and many others, I think some of these mainline preachers will win. When they do it will energize, perhaps only a little, the view that Christianity is not exclusively gay bashing, anti women and anti abortion. The term "real Christian" or "genuine Christian" will broaden to include something besides the right wing. One of the pleasant recollections of my many years as a mayor was sitting at head tables of conferences and banquets waiting to give a welcome from the city. Often, a pastor was ...

Where is the line that gives a each divorced parent the same right to child's religious instruction? This case is fascinating .  The mother is a devout member of a Calvery Christian church. The couple has a daughter who is now either a teenager or nearly so. While the article does not reveal much about the charges and counter charges a commenter writes that the father says the mother has taken the girl to church for services several hours a week. The child complained of being frightened by threats of fire and hell for non believers and had physical problems because of that. The father's lawyer had retained a sociologist who studied religions. The sociologist labeled that church a cult. The court's decision was that since the mother's religion is a cult, the father's decisions about the girl's religious instruction must prevail. That is, the court ruled in favor of the father and against the mother. Of the thousands of divorces that happen every year, there must ...

I suppose since the first imaginary god was invented someone advised another person, "I believe in a god. See how happy I am. If you believed in a god, no make that my god, you would be happy too." That advice never stops and I suppose never will. The link provides us with the most recent of a gazillion surveys which show religious people are happier than those without religion. We have to ask about the old correlation versus causation question: If two things happen at the same time, does this mean one caused the other." Maybe happy people are prone to like religion. Or maybe religious people learn they are supposed to say they are happy. I've heard it said, not true so far as I know, that the less one knows the happier he is. Old people like me tend to get a little cranky. One thing I have less and less tolerance for is advice that our country would be better off if more people were Christians. A person cannot be a Christian, Hindu or Jew unless the person believes ...

Tons of stuff is written about "higher education." I put the term in quotes because what it actually refers to is quite imprecise. Changes are killing institutions. Why so many are closing and/or contracting can be explained somewhat by demographics and but even more by economics. Most days, an article is published in a conservative source blaming the problem higher ed is having on "woke." This is the myth that liberals run universities and their goal is to convert students to be liberals in social and economic policies. Since parents and their children are not attending university as much as they did in the past. The example cited often is a recent article about Syracuse University which, while well known, is struggling to survive.  The conservative link should be versed in a conservative understanding of reality. That reality is the marketplace. Buyers of higher ed want the best deal they can find. Sellers of higher ed want to maximize their profit, both the profi...

  We have almost no information about humans from our first existence about 300,000 years ago. Because of this hole in our knowledge, religions fill in with their own self-serving history. They want us to give money and bow down to the history they have invented about the origin of the universe and of humans. The spoken and written word only came along only in the recent part of our 300,000 year history so religions can play their game. Readers know there are some bits of writing that survived or later authors discussed what they had read. But the trail about what humans thought, what they talked about or their intellectual life in general gets thin 10,000 years ago. That is why there is a group of scholars from around the world who have a passion to find and study cave art. Whatever is drawn in a cave, of course, came from the mind of the artist. A drawing is a form of writing and reveals something about the artist and the people he/she hung out with. When I started this blog the ...