Thoughts of a Freethinker

There are few women who have unimaginable wealth neither seek nor are given wide publicity. A study of their foundations and what is known of their interests, however, reveal forces of change.  A couple of the best know women who are big players in philanthropic generosity are Malinda French Gates and McKenzie Scott. Their wealth came from Microsoft and Amazon respectively. Looking at the list of places they have given money one can see social change at work. A lot of money goes for women's health and promoting opportunities for low-income people. While we can't say for certain these patterns are different than they would have been for men, I think most would agree their interests and patterns are different than most ultra wealthy men. I've always been interested to know if there are "back channel" donations and, if so, where they go. Specifically, I've wondered if there are private donations from billionaire women to funds that pay for poor young women to tra...

I try not to bore readers with stories of being the mayor of the largest city in a small state. It was so long ago, who cares? Today, however, I will mention that several times individuals made appointments to see me for the specific purpose of praying for me.  As I recall, the visits had a pattern. The visitor thought he/she was the only person who had pondered the need to come in and pray for me. It was like the weight of my own salvation was their individual responsibility. They saw themselves at the center of events that would determine my ultimate fate in eternity. The visits would begin with visitors thanking me for the appointment and me thanking them for coming in. Eventually, I would try the line, "And what would you like to visit about today?" That would bring up the sins I was committing or were going on in the community that I should stop. Of course, my liberal views on abortion and gay rights were relevant. There was a legal porn store, shows at the city-owned au...

A woman in New York State was told her five-year-old son was required to be vaccinated. The mother refused, not on the basis of evidence about the effectiveness of vaccinations, but on a religious theory. Vaccinations, she told the court, violate God's plan.  God made humans to be separate from animals. Vaccinations take fluids of animals and mixes them with the blood of humans. Because God set humans aside and made them different from animals this violated the woman's religious rights.  This is a peculiar religious theory. First, humans were originally animals and then became something else through evolution. Second, humans have eaten animals since day one. To eat animals, even eating them raw, does not seem to violate her rule. I wonder if the woman has ever eaten a rare steak. Drinking milk from animals or eating their eggs doesn't seem to violate God's rules. On a hot day, a human who rides a horse bareback sweats, so does the horse. This mixing of fluids outside th...

A columnist noted that 9/11 sparked a craving for revenge. We started down a path of Afghanistan, Iraq and now Iran. Now, our prices are going higher. We have a President who is bat$hit and a Congress running for cover. The link says we need to refocus on the "common good." Yes, but what is that? Every politician including Presidents thinks it can master the concept of the "common good." The best example I can think of that represented what a majority of voters agreed was the common good was World War II. There were dissenters but Germany and Japan were generally seen as villains and the country's interests were served by armed force. Korea worked OK but ultimately the "common good" was redefined from eliminating North Korea to drawing a line on a map and saying the common good is served by the North staying on its side. That's where it was before the war started. Then came Vietnam where Democrats and Republicans both preached the common good of de...

Is prejudice in human brains there because of evolution? That is, was it helpful for survival somewhere deep in history? Or is it there because it is the easiest explanation for some problem? Whatever, it seems like it has always been there and is something we all should work harder to eliminate.  Christianity, at least some people who self-identify as Christians, can be the first to point fingers and hate. The faith was used to justify slavery, segregation and condemnation of interracial marriage. Certainly, Christianity did not invent this. From what we know of "prehistory", this kind of thinking was in the human brain before Christianity arrived. Some in the faith just glopped on to it. I know atheists who buy into myths about people different than themselves. A portion of humans enjoy myths that point figures of hate at people who are different.  One group facing prejudice today in the U.S. are people of the Islamic faith. Islam has been practiced in this country since it...

Evidence keeps piling up about the unreliable claims made about the Bible. As it slips in importance and believability, its defenders get more aggressive in their claims . The link runs through the old series of arguments. The ancients, it says, gave their writing to scribes who copied and recopied it by the thousands. All of the surviving copies written by scribes agree on a few things telling us the entire faith is mostly in agreement.   This is not really true. The writing in the Bible does not agree across the book. There were new ideas over the time the Bible was written. It is not necessary to know much about the Bible because it says so many different things and is interpreted in so many ways. Some of the various messages in the Bible are from interpretations from one language into another. This is often complicated by changes in the languages themselves from ancient times to the present.  There have been best sellers in recent decades written about Alexander Hamil...