Thoughts of a Freethinker

For several years there have been occasional news pieces about the growth of Norse paganism in Norway, Sweden and Finland. I assumed these stories were not about large numbers of people. The numbers are still not known but enough money and commitment have been made to construct at least one cemetery and temple. It is a most interesting development .   It seems logical there would develop an interest in some kind of undefined and mysterious belief. Polling shows a huge disconnect to Christianity and organized religion. Out of those who no longer identify as Christian (or other major religion) there have to be hundreds of thousands, maybe some millions, who are agnostics. That it, they believe there may well be "something" out there but we don't know what it is. As theologian Bart Ehrman explained recently, he is an atheist about the Christian God. Since no one can prove no other god exists any where he is agnostic about that. Maybe most "nones" would follow this ...

We know there have been many gods humans have held in their imaginations over the last several hundred thousand years. How many surviving stories are there about beings that are similar to the tale of Jesus? According to a site being passed around today there were a large number.  Let's run through the deeds and traits of god heroes preceding Jesus that were worked into the Jesus story. There were other virgin births, raising others and themselves from being dead, had twelve disciples, was a carpenter, was not believed in his time, son of god and Old Testament snakes. Room was made for all of these in the Jesus tale. I keep coming back to the number of hours each day people spent in the dark during both pre history and early history. Entertaining each other was and remains an art form. Early in my years of writing this blog I recall someone explaining the manner in which each Bible story unfolds. Each story in the Bible starts the same way a modern play, movie, novel or TV series s...

Christianity calls the time of the Old Testament and the supposed time of Jesus as "ancient." There were of course 300,000 years of human experience before the Jews and Christians. This could be a hundred or so generations of human experience. Experience in our own time suggest every conceivable gender definition ever experienced in human history took place over those generations.  On February 2 each year gay and trans people from across Italy come to the Naples area where the variety of genders is celebrated by a Priest. This is to acknowledge and accept all people into the faith.  This I-dare-you-to-stop-me kind of event is a staple of civil rights from early one. Martin Luther King dared to walk down a highway in the center of hatred-land. The world looked on with nerves on edge. The forces opposing him were hapless.  In several places in Europe Catholic clergy are treating gay people with respect, contrary to church teaching. The Catholic hierarchy seems like the hapl...

When I was first a mayor I blind-sided by new worlds, interests people have and beliefs they carry, I did not know existed. An early one was letters from across the country telling me the meaning of certain numbers. These were people who had studied numbers all of their lives and assigned meaning to them. The Mayor's job was part time, so I was also a professor. I told one of my colleagues about this. He happened to know all about this world of people who held beliefs about numbers and explained some of it to me.  I was reminded of this experience when I read today the Shiite Muslims in Iran have declared a period of mourning over the death of their religious leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. The period of mourning is for a specific number of days, 40. Readers know how long it rained after Noah built his ark, 40 days and 40 nights. Remembering a little more about the Bible we recall Jesus fasted to in the wilderness, talking to God, for 40 days. Moses spent 40 days on the mountain talkin...

How many claims from the Bible can you think of that are ridiculous? My ancient brain can only keep in mind a few at one time. There is raising the dead, walking on water, loaves and fishes, water into wine, flooding the entire world, the all-knowing and many others. Some believers will say the biggest fish stories are in the Old Testament. But, no, the New Testament also has some doozies. The tall tales begin right away in the New Testament, in its first book, Mathew. My favorite passage from Mathew is about what happened when Jesus was killed. It says the earth shook. It shook so hard graves opened up and long dead people walked out of these graves. Here, the author senses any reader may have some doubts. These doubts may have been expressed when the tale was told after dark as part of evening entertainment when light, like fires, was too expensive. Perhaps a wise-acre child said, "I doubt that." The story-telling entertainer might have replied, "The formerly dead peop...

I wonder if those in the public who give money to the anti-abortion industry will ever wake up and smell the coffee. That is, will they ever come to realize the numbers of abortions is going up and the money they send to these slick prolife operators is money down the drain.  The link presents a more sophisticated appeal for money than some others. This woman admits there is no future in anti-abortion for prosecuting women for murder. She then selects parts of the Bible to point out that using the commandment, "Thou Salt Not Murder" does not apply to women who pay clinics for abortions. That anti-abortion politics is split over this is not good, she writes.  She then rifts into the vague notion that has been used by the Catholic hierarchy for many decades, "Blame the providers." Never do the Catholic officials acknowledge "the providers" are a bench so deep you cannot see the end from here. It starts with politicians. They make abortions legal. Add to that...