Thoughts of a Freethinker

During the past couple of years, Jehovah Witness has had several dramatic changes and challenges. It has also started reinventing itself into a new money making machine. It has been rocked by sexual scandal. A huge case made national headlines. It was black balled by the Norwegian government. Norway, like much of Europe, collects money people voluntarily pay to denominations and passes it to those denominations. There are 20 some in the country if memory serves. The faith has had a rock solid policy that Jehovah requires shunning of any family member that leaves the faith. Thousands of families have been destroyed by this. The Norwegian government decided this was a form of discrimination and denied collection of funds. The faith quickly reverses its stand on shunning while appealing the ruling. It eventually was reinstated but the retained the new attitude toward shunning. Now, those who spent decades in isolation from their families are bitter for their lost family lives.  The Je...

I read a very long post on a Christian sight written by a retiring professor at Notre Dame. The professor is obviously a devout Catholic and vented his frustration that Notre Dame, which bills it Catholic roots prominently, does mostly nothing to keep the Catholic tradition embedded in the institution. To the contrary, he says nearly everyone from its Presidents to its Deans blow off, even make fun, of the faith. This goes on, he says, even though Notre Dame claims it considers its Catholic founding very important. The retiring prof says institutions, especially those of higher education, should not be different than what they say they are. If it says it's Catholic it should be Catholic. He ignores the fact that in its documents one will find all kinds of goals and aspirations listed. The prof says as many practicing Catholics as possible should be hired. While it must not discriminate, the secular people who have been hired should become familiar with the history and tenets on Cat...

  Looking at the travel plans of Pope Leo, we see no trip to the U.S. is planned this year. When the Pope travels it must be really expensive. I can imagine there are endless hours of disagreement at meetings deciding where and when to spend this money. The last Pope visit was Frances in 2015.  If I was an executive in the Vatican, I would want the Pope going to places where there is a chance to beef up numbers and increase revenue. I suppose there would be some appeal to go places where the publicity would stem loses that are occurring, but those places would be less profitable.  The conventional wisdom on Christian sites is that Christianity is growing in Africa and that is where the faith's future lies. Pope Leo is planning to spend a lot of time in Africa in 2026. It is tempting, I'm sure to go where big crowds turn out and there are converts. These are invariably countries with low education and incomes. When incomes rise, people tend to drift off.  Visiting the...

The Catholic Bishops condemned the video used by Trump of the Obamas portrayed as monkeys. Why cannot they find the same juices to condemn sexist portrayal of women? My prediction is every branch of Christianity, denominations, individual churches and groups of churches that consider women not worthy to hold the office of clergy or higher, will slowly fall into the trash bin of history. This is a solvable problem. Every denomination picks and chooses which parts of passages in the Bible it chooses to believe and follow. I've never heard of a denomination that forbids clothing made of clothe with different materials in the threads. We all know of the ancient food taboos.  But, some the men in the faith cling to the mythical views about the "proper roles" of genders. Of course, a current hot button issue is defining gender. All the stuff about gender can be written off as ancient myth and ignored. When there is self interest at stake, we will see men putting women in second...

Back in the 1990's there was a lot of news about a boycott by the Southern Baptist Convention of Disney theme parks. The main personality in the boycott was a Baptist preacher named Wiley Drake. Drake died this week and it brings back with amusement his determination to get the SBC to "boycott" Disney which it did for several years.  The reason for the boycott and its failure are fun to remember. Wiley Drake was a preacher at a Baptist church four miles from Disney in California. With thousands of gay people in California, some started encouraging their community of attend the Disney park on certain days of the month. They advertised the gay days at Disney. I recall reading that Disney itself never advertised the events but did not discourage them either. They simply welcomed the gay guests.   The other thing that bugged Rev. Drake was that Disney provided spouse benefits to gay couples just as it did to straight ones. This was medical and pension benefits.  It would...

It seems like most places where Christianity is losing ground, things move along slowly. The numbers fall a little each year. Some Christian taboos, but not all, tipped over. Ireland seems like the exception. A few years ago, there was a nation-wide vote to made abortions available. From what one reads in the press, the defeats of the faith, including ridicule, continue s. To preface current Irish events, we need to revisit a topic discussed almost continually for the past few decades. It is about forcing abortion into government and into the politics that ultimately run governments. I can't recall how many times in conversations among my liberal friends someone pointing out that, "If government can stop abortions, government can require abortions. Anti-abortion would be smart to leave politics and government out of its efforts." Ireland is a good example. For decades, abortions were outlawed in Ireland. The Catholic hierarchy called the shots about abortion. It inserted ...