Thoughts of a Freethinker

There was a fascinating opinion in a Federal Appeals court in Florida signaling some hope for freedom of speech. The MAGA Florida legislature and Governor passed a law state universities cannot teach "woke" ideas. Readers know this is both specific issues like our history, racial equality, trans and will include in the future whatever and whomever conservative politics decides to demonize next. The law was challenged by a group of students and faculty. It ended up in the Federal Court of Appeals in that district. A Trump appointee wrote the majority opinion that the Florida legislature cannot dictate which ideas and acceptable and which not. A majority overruled the law. I suppose the Supreme Court could hear this case, not sure. If there is one thread that can hold together this democracy it is free speech. Conservatives have the bonkers notion that "free speech" is private education from childhood to adulthood. A dissenting view in the Florida decision was that a ...

The question asked repeated by skeptics of Christianity is, "If God loves us, when does he allow children to suffer in pain and die? Why does he allow so much suffering everywhere?" The columnist answered that today. God makes us suffer, he said, so we "surrender." When things are most painful and hopeless we will get on our knees and petition God for help. People who are healthy and wealth are worse off according to the link.  When a child suffers is that child made better by getting on knees and "surrendering" to an imaginary god? When God sent Noah's flood did a million people come to God just before he downed them? The link seems to me like an ad marketeers came up with after the company faced a dilemma. The dilemma was the company had a product to sell that was inferior in quality and too high in price. The company asked to ad company to produce an ad that said, "Buy our inferior over-priced product because you will feel better after you help...

In the years I've been writing this blog many Christian pundits have confidently posted in comments why I'm an atheist. All the reasons they have given are ones I have seen in other posts on other sites. The ones that come to mind are that a.) I want to sin without punishment, b.) I had a bad experience in a church, c.) I have not read the Bible, d.) I fell under the influence of Satan, e.) I do not understand the consequences of sin in eternity, f.) I am under the influence of liberals like Obama and Biden, g.) I am going through a temporary period that will be followed by belief when death approaches, h.) there must be a h.) but I'm bored with his list. All of these explanations are wrong. I simply could not believe the tenets of the Christian faith nor any other. The more interesting observation about the list, however, is that every explanation as to why I do not believe had one thing in common: Not believing is my fault. Anyone who does not believe has something wrong ...

When congress left Washington without a vote on the budget, an old bill defunding visits to women's clinics expired. This means the funding restarts . Anti-abortion groups are steaming mad. Anti-abortionists have always tried to demonize Planned Parenthood. It was as if Planned Parenthood was the reason there are abortions. The reason there are abortions, of course, it because women want them. If it weren't Planned Parenthood running clinics it would be someone else. In fact there are groups right now that would step up if the market needed them. One of the things that has always annoyed anti-abortion is that Planned Parenthood provides medical services to poor women. Anti-abortion assumes that revenue from these services funds abortions. So far as I know this is not true. It is just another preoccupation anti-abortion needs to get over. Republicans in Congress went on break without reauthorization of the bill that harmed Planned Parenthood and poor women. It is obvious most of...

In what borders of parody, Trump railed against "communists" at Mr. Rushmore. None of the four faces in Mt. Rushmore were against communists nor against government. All were responsible for some government expansion. Washington gave the green light to the government growth of Alexander Hamilton. Before the, Washington chaired the Constitutional Convention establishing a stronger federal government over interstate commerce. Lincoln decided all states must knuckle under, so he defeated the South.  In the link's report of his speech, Trump hints that immigrants are communists. Pope Leo gave an address recently where he admonished the continents of Europe and America to welcome the newcomer. This is the opposite of Trump who likes to hint immigrants are not the right race, creed or loyalty. I'll admit it's creative to bring back "communists" as the villain. Trump noted the original Russian version of communism saw Christianity as an enemy of Communism and wo...

There has been news recently that personality Tucker Carlson will "help" build a third political party. My observation of talk show hosts, and it's not true of all of them, is they like to make sweeping generalizations and leave out the details. Sometimes the details are facts, sometimes intellectual content. In Tucker's case it seems both. There is a huge third party already. It has been growing. It is called "swing voters," "independent voters" and "undecided voters." Every election cycle, networks and columnists feature pieces with the lead-in, "Let's to into real America and find out what voters are thinking." They interview a few people then feature one or two from every perspective. We never learn what "the public" is thinking. Invariably a person or two will say something like, "I'm very particular about who I vote for. Neither party has put up a candidate good enough for me." Such self-importa...