Thoughts of a Freethinker

Pope Leo said he wanted the Catholic Church to focus more on poverty and peace and less on sexual sins. Can his denomination handle this?  Leo's strategy is, as many know, is the same as his predecessor, Pope Francis. Francis canned high ranking Bishops who railed too much against abortion and gays. Now Leo has sent out the word clergy are not to make big public fusses over gay marriage, birth control and abortion. This will not detour the right-wing branches of the denomination. They will be conferring and scheming about how to again get the denomination to talk about and rebuke their favorite sins.  For entertainment recently I've been reading various accounts of what happened during the confab last year that elected Leo. At the time there was lots of publicity about prayers and singing that guided the choice of Leo. Since then, columnists have interviewed many participants in an effort the piece together how Leo was the winner. One of the most despicable clergy in recent de...

Binge watching religious sites and news in religion as I admit I do, one sees patterns. Just now I'm watching the Mormons, now knowns as the "Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Saints" and denomination known as Jehova's Witnesses. They are experiencing falling numbers and reacting in the same way.  I'll use the initials, LDS, for Mormons because they have abandoned the word "Mormon." The strange behavior taking place just now involves the word, Mormon. I'll try to explain.  The term "Mormon" became so associated with polygamy the word became toxic. For some reason, the half dozen or so old white lawyers who run the church picked the new name, "Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints." The denomination abandoned the term Mormon. About 20 years ago, a Mormon man with a counselling practice developed a hobby of making video blogs. He named the You Tube video series, "Mormon Stories." Being a Mormon, he was concer...

  Between the years of 1,000 and 1,300 armies from Christian countries walked long distances to invade Islamic countries. They went once and were defeated. Doing something stupid once was not enough. They went twice more and were defeated again. Now, Trump and his Christian whackos are being defeated there again. Christian armies are losing armies.  There is a basic question to ask about all religions; Does religion do more good than bad or more bad than good? If we use loss of life and limb as the measurement, religion is more bad than good. There have been plenty of references to Christianity in bombing Iran by those in the Trump Administration.  The crusades were armies sent long distances from the home base. If the armies survived walking for days they were not in a good condition for a sustained battle. Surely that is mostly why Christians lost. Our bombing is easier but bringing Iran to its knees in surrender is proving to be more than was bargained for. Sending tro...

A Texas medical board has issued disciplinary action against three doctors whose patients died in childbirth. In all three cases, the board said the Texas anti-abortion laws allow a doctor to perform an abortion in a medical emergency. However, if one is performed and a board loaded with anti-abortion Christians decides it was not an emergency and the doctor killed a "baby." The doctor could lose his/her license and maybe be charged with murder.  I wonder how many women died in these same circumstances. I'm guessing few are questioned. Anti-abortion politicians have refused to write the rules so a doctor knows for certain whether or not an abortion is legal. I've read it is possible to write meaningful and accurate rules. The more vague the rules are the more likely doctors will let women die instead of doing abortions. That is what the anti-abortion political operatives intended. What constitutes an abortion the "save the life of the mother" is not a rule ...

I'm so old I remember the first Earth Day in 1970. It was the Vietnam War period and Earth Day was sort of anti-war as well as a way to show the younger generation understood reality better than our parents. What a heady time it was for the environment movement.  All of us have different conclusions on what has happened to concern about the environment since 1970. Cars exhaust is much cleaner. On todays TV I see there were events in this metro area planting trees. So many things about the environment have gotten worse since 1970. Where I live, animal waste and crop herbicides have made the surface water worse. Air quality is worse in some areas but better in some areas of California.  The warming climate was not apparent in 1970. Today we know the impact of man on the planet is not some liberal power scheme but is reality. Even though it is now recognized around the world that the temperature is rising, there still is not an adequate appreciation of how urgent environmental pr...

It started under Clinton. Then W. Bush went all in. It was to off-load humanitarian work from government employees to the private sector. Faith based and non profits contracted with government to do this work and it appeared cheaper. Now we are now seeing it might have been better to leave it with government employees.  In Minneapolis there was a large theft. There was a contract that paid for providing meals. The meals never happened. That has increased interest and study of non profits taking over from public employees. In jail and prison across the U.S. evangelical groups provide Chaplains. Local sheriffs say this calms down inmates and makes the sheriff's job easier. Mixed in is the widely known conclusion inmates have made that buttering up the Chaplain may increase odds of an early out. Pretending to be in the faith is the key. The link tells of efforts by non profits in get new projects. These non profits or religious groups are not interested in making life better for down ...