Thoughts of a Freethinker

Actors, athletes and politicians often stand before cameras and carry on about their god and their book, the Bible. It is unusual for any celebrity to use an interview, especially on a conservative site, to bash the foolishness of religion and highlight all the problems it has caused. Scottish actor Brian Cox was interviewed on a podcast call "The Starting Line." He said religion has sold humans a false story and contributed to their stupidity. Religion is contributing to events which could bring an end to humans being able to live on earth. The examples he gave are well known. Religion is at the heart of the killing going on in Gaza and Ukraine. It is deep in the college campus conflicts. How could anyone believe, as was widely believed after World War II, God had given the land now called Israel to the Jews. There is plenty of evidence Jews have lived in the area now called Israel continually since recorded history, but, apparently, so have Arab people of various religions

An amateur philosopher recently reviewed the efforts of the super-rich to find longer lives than the rest of us chumps. I've read the average age of death in the U.S. has been falling just a bit after rising for decade. But branches of science charge ahead with research on longevity. The rich now live longer than the poor. We can expect if there is progress in longevity the rich will live even longer and the poor have even shorter lives. It's entertaining to wonder where Christianity falls in this debate about longevity. According to the tenets of the faith the big prize it offers is death, not life. Everyday somewhere it is repeated that the faith must cling to the Resurrection because without it people cannot be sold the idea their tithe buys a happy life for an eternity. That's a better deal than Trump's "The Art of the Deal." I wonder who is now paying for research on longevity. If the poor will not benefit. If they are paying they are being robbed. It sho

On websites , and I'm sure in private conversations between Christians every day, there is concern about how much "religious freedom" they will have as their numbers decline. The link discusses a case won by a Christian group to allow teachers to pray while on break in front of the school's U.S. flag. The school had incorrectly said its policy of not endorsing any religious view made the flagpole prayers a violation. The school lost in court. The link was about how this prohibition to where and when people can express and show off their religious beliefs will become more common and how terrible that will be.  There was a song in the 1960's called "Walk a Mile in My Shoes." It's an old saying as well. It might be useful for Christians to look at the life of non Christians around them, maybe their close friends and family member, and find out what it is like to not be a Christian. They would learn how it will be when their own numbers get smaller and s

A Catholic pundit who is not clergy wrote a piece recently trying to envision how the denomination can navigate the next decade or two. Apparently, he makes his living writing about the Catholic church. He sees Catholics longing for the past where the loved local priest gave a homely that all is well and the local Bishop wished the priest and all in the diocese well. Now, the link author says, everyone sees a denomination continually wracked by sexual scandal and one closing and selling hundreds of locations. What should be done? The past cannot be reclaimed, he writes. A new Pope is coming and his main task will be cleaning up the denomination's finances and vetting as best as can be done new priests. By doing this, the link author says, people can at least feel comfortable about the present while acknowledging the terrible past.  I looked at the comments for quite a while. It was like eavesdropping on a private conversation. Comments on this, almost exclusively Catholic, site was

Every once in a while, someone posts a comment here or I read the same thinking in a published article. The thinking is that the Bible gave humans "morality" and an atheist society will have none. It is an idea so far-fetched you can't see it from here.  Humans have been here for about 300,000 years. Christianity for 2,000 years. To include Judaism we can add 5,000 or so more years. Whenever humans stopped roaming about finding food and started staying in one place growing their own food the one god showed up. One, instead of several gods, was easier for the rulers. Being the best friend of one god is more efficient than trying to pull that off for several.  So, where did the morality of humans come from before the recent appearance of God and the Bible? As discussed here many times before, the morality of humans came from humans. They learned they could not murder and steal from family and clan members at will and organize into successful families and clans. They needed

Week after week there are articles in the Christian press about the breakup of the United Methodist Church. Anyone following Christian events knows this splintering off in denominations has happened to several others, both with foreign branches and within the U.S. The latest headline was about the Asian Methodist branch cutting itself off from the original organization, the United Methodist Church.  People in the pews have been shoveling out money to fund missionaries for some centuries. There have been two of them in my own family's history. Even though churches marketing themselves as Christian still remain all over the world, the end of missionaries seems not far off. As some younger policy oriented preachers in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod point out frequently the U.S. needs to start new churches and stop its decline more than other countries.  As the Methodist Church breaks up world wide we see the impact of culture. Instead of Western religious culture changing in these