Thoughts of a Freethinker

An appointment to an institute that gets grants and publishes research about Asia would ordinarily be of no interest to outsiders. At the research university, Notre Dame however, the appointment of a new head of this small subsidiary is making headlines. The prominent professor from within Notre Dame has spoken publicly in favor of abortion rights. I recall from back when conservative air-head, Benedict, was Pope. The hammer was down on abortion in every corner of the Catholic denomination. He made certain everyone knew the bishop of the local diocese where a university (or Catholic hospital) was the ultimate authority in charge of that institution. During that period there were examples of Bishops inserting themselves into higher education and medicine. Apparently, things changed somewhat with Pope Francis. I've looked up the profile of the Bishop of the South Bend diocese, and he looks like a guy who will not be poking his nose into the internal business of Notre Dame. It may hav...

The country of South Korea has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. If this continues the population of the country eventually will be much smaller. Koreans today of child-bearing age know all about this. They know that if the population becomes too small it will be difficult for its government to operate and for its military to defend it. Merging, or being invaded by, with some other country may be inevitable. So why don't Koreans of child-bearing age "do the patriotic thing" and have and raise more children. The answer has to be that it's not in the interests of young people, especially women, to have children. They just don't want them. Restaurants find that customers complain if there are noisy children.  What can Korea do about this? Really, not much. There have taken a few measures but none have many any difference. Anti-abortion groups, like the author of the link works for, are shouting the U.S. "needs more babies." The U. S. eventually co...

I'm reading a book with a long title, Spellbound; How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump  (2025) by Professor Molly Worthen.  Later perhaps I'll reach the part about Trump and write about it then. What I've read so far is her definition of who and what is charisma and where it showed up during the first part of our 250 year history. Certainly it appeared in politics, George Washington for example. But it also appeared many times in religion. She relied of paper records of preachers, what was in newspapers, so there were no doubt countless other preachers who held audiences in the palm of their hands and took advantage of that.     She limits her study to individuals who started and maintained movements. Mostly these are people in religion and politics. As a general overview, she ponders why some individuals are so persuasive they cause others to follow them, often against their own best interest. People with charisma who persuade ...

What does the inside of Trump 's mind look like? Anyone can see it by following what little we know about his tariff "deals."  A consistent position of the Republican Party for many decades has been that the market is the best mechanism for deciding prices of things, who has a job and what people and businesses spend their money on. The worst thing, the Party has said, is for government to make these decisions. With tariffs , however, Republicans has decided market forces should be replaced by government. And, not just government in general. Trump has become what we used to refer to as the " Federal Government ." The New York Times  published a great article attempting to answer the question, "Who still pays tariff, who does not and why?" The answer is the large corporations with lobbyists who can get into the While House , sometimes talking to the President himself, can get tariffs on goods they buy from other countries reduced or eliminated. Small ...

An academic in religion who is also a preacher has posted using a word I had not encountered, apatheism. Even my spell check did not recognize the word. It refers, of course, to people who do not care if there is or is not a god nor care about the narrative the surrounds religion.  Another academic/preacher who write on religious pages has described his experience of taking on, probably as an unpaid volunteer, the pastorship of three churches that were almost closed and trying to keep them open as long as possible. He wrote about the common experience of pastors who notice people stop coming to church but do not show up in other churches. They are not against church life; they just lost interest.  I asked one of my adult granddaughters, who grew up going to Sunday school and then was confirmed, why she no longer goes to church. She said, "I just could not see a place for me." This may fall into the category of apatheism. The link author, who dislikes apatheism, wrote that it ...

A family member passed along a video by a woman who works with people frightened about leaving Christianity or becoming acquainted with other paths like Paganism. She is Brittney Hartley who refers to her approach as nononsense spirituality.  In one of her videos she explains why VP JD Vance and other prominent Catholics talk on and on about the failing birth rate. They point to South Korea which seems to be headed to a population so small the country may have to change or be absorbed.  Hartley points out that secular people treat the low birth rate as the choices of individuals and that human existence on earth most likely happened by a series of somewhat random events. That being the case, humans might, in a million or so years, experience another series of random events that eliminate us from earth. It is not a threat to anyone or any current set of people. Many people in the religious right, however, consider themselves so indispensable it is imperative they do not die. Ch...