Thoughts of a Freethinker

When the new sheriff arrived in the Vatican, that was Pope Francis, some things changed. The changes continue with Pope Leo. There is a rule , "Don't be weird. Don't even sound weird." Francis $hit-canned a Bishop who talked to the press about sinful women who have abortions. Now Leo says Bishops cannot say UFOs are demonic. The Bishop that told this to the press was relieved of duties, even though he said repeatedly it was his view and not that of the denomination. Bishops are not to appear like they are whacko. That is, they are not to go further than the whacko of one cell human beings, dead people jumping up and you know the rest.  It must be hard for old-line priests and bishops to have spent their careers repeating far out and weird stuff like demons coming from outer space and having folks in the pews listen respectfully then be told they are nuts. There is deprograming for most of us, not Catholic clergy. We can see how hard it is to hold together a giant inst...

My academic field, economics, is thought to date back to publication of The Wealth of Nations written by Adam Smith in 1776. It was a break-through from religion, though Adam Smith was a religious, because clergy in the Western world for a thousand years or so had preached all of one's life was a gift from God. Smith said, no, wealth of nations came from individuals producing more than they consume. If humans divide up the work that is there to be done and each individual becomes specialized and more productive then trades his output with another specialist both will have more. Add them together the nation has more.  Smith basic idea of the individual was expanded to the individual firm by Alfred Marshal in 1890. The same principle applied, that a nation because better off when individuals and firms seek to gain for themselves. This dominated economics until the Great Depression and John Maynord Keynes. Keynes' idea was prosperity and the standard of living of the public could ...

Just when one thinks we cannot go further into the land of crazy, we hear from a Catholic "authority" on exorcism. He exorcises demons from people and says he thinks UFO's are demonic. A few years ago the late Pope Francis said the devil is real.  So, we have here an important person in the Catholic denomination who believes people with some kind of mental problem are possessed with demons. On top of that, objects are flying about which are also demons. If one looks up the term auditory hallucinations, hearing voices, one learns it is an illness. There are protocols for treating it.  In the case of invisible demons, or gods, there is not a matching diagnosis. It seems to me that seeing invisible things in the mind are not all that different than hearing voices that do not exist. Perhaps they are not exactly the same. Yet, to me, they don't seem completely different.  Seeing invisible demons, or hearing imaginary voices, is not harmful until those who affected start re...

June is Pride Month across the U.S., maybe around the world. Parents who consider themselves very Christian but have a gay child think they have an impossible dilemma. It is, of course, that their faith paints gay/trans as the sin at the top of the Sin Leader Board but the child tells them, "It's who I am. There is nothing you or I can do to change me" while their faith condemns and scolds. It was interesting to read a Christian post telling other Christian parents accept their GLBT children. Parents, she writes, can accept their gay/trans child and hold on to their faith. During the years I held a position in the national organization, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, I heard so many stories told by parents who thought their world had ended when then learned of a gay child. Later they realized a lot of their angst was about themselves, not their child. It was, "What will others think of me when they learn about him(her)?" Often there was a preacher pus...

A devout Mormon, now known as LDS, has done surveys about why people leave that denomination. He found the explanations people gave for leaving are very different than the reasons assigned to them by those still in the faith. What he found sounds just like what I have seen among people across Christianity. When Christian pundits talk about atheists, they most often attribute atheism to a desire to "sin." This, of course, requires the atheist to believe there is such a thing as "sin." In my experience atheists who were in the faith, not all of them were in it, simply stopped believing in the concepts of invisible gods, an invisible author of the Bible or that spokespersons for the faith, priests and preachers, have more insight into such matters than the average person.  The author of the link, a practicing and office holding LDS, swamped the internet asking both practicing Mormons and ex Mormons what they thought about the other. This was not a study up to the stand...

There is a rule in the affairs of nations (well not a rule actually, I just made it up) that when religion and politics conflict with each other, no one can predict the outcome. That conflict is going on, not only in the U.S., in many places around the world. One is China. A story about a Christian preacher, a Chinese citizen, who is in jail for preaching Christianity is a case in point.  Catholics wanted bishops in China appointed the same way they are appointed everywhere else in the world. That is by the Pope and Vatican. The Chinese government decided the majority of Bishops in the Chinese Catholic Church would be appointed by the ruling government. Bishops need to be loyal supporters of the People's Party. It's obvious that if Christian numbers do rise in China it will be a version of the faith different from that in other areas of the world. Add to that a world-wide loss of interest by people under 25 years of age and we have the Great Wall stopping large growth of Christ...