Thoughts of a Freethinker

                 ] Thomas Paine was an influential figure in U.S. history for sure. He championed democracy. But he did not want religion in government. While he was known to be the author of many of the Federalist Papers urging a vote to ratify the Constitution, which included endorsement of Christianity, he later was an influential atheist. He published some of the best known and most quoted atheist statements.  This year, the 250th birthday of the founding of our country, there are the usual claims our "founding fathers" were Christians and advocated a "Christian nation." But then the name Thomas Paine comes up. They have nothing good to say about Paine but go on to laud the "founding fathers." Paine, an atheist, was a founding father.  Perhaps it doesn't matter whether Paine liked, or disliked, Christianity when he campaigned for ratification. If he disliked it and was doing a wink-wink while writing the Federalist Papers, today...

The anti-abortion industry thinks it can continue to collect money from the gullible public forever by promising to end all abortion. They are claiming that if the Trump Administration says it will enforce a decades old law the government will be start opening mail to see if it contains abortion meds and women will not be able to get the products. The Trump Administration has not agreed to do this, but crazy things can happen.  If the Post Office were to start opening mail there would be a national outrage. Abortion rights might flood the mails with suspicious but empty mailings to use up Post Office time. It would also open the door, it seems to me, to delivering abortion meds through non postal channels. Every reader knows of these which include the giant Amazon and taxi-type rides to food delivery. These do not include new ideas that could come along out of the innovative abortion rights itself. We have to remember why the anti-abortion industry is pushing the unrealistic propos...

Women are dropping out of the faith rapidly. Men between 18 and 25 are dropping out but it is claimed there has been an uptick in young single men attending church. Men run the faith for the most part. Rules and beliefs come largely, in some branches exclusively, from men, not women. Those Christians who analyze the faith recognize that women are not treated as equals in the church while treated as equals everywhere else in their lives. Yet, the idea persists that women got their wrong ideas from the women's lib and Me-Too movements.  The idea that women should be treated as equals in the faith did not come from "women's lib" or the "me-too" political activities. It came from parents telling their daughters they can do whatever they have a passion to do. If it is to be the boss, that's what girls will do when they grow into women. That's what boys have always done, why not girls?  It is really hard to understand religious leaders, men and women, who ...

No doubt there were influential people demanding "Christian Nation" when the U.S. was formed. There have been people drumming it up ever since. Now, Trump has a wink-wink day of prayer scheduled. Yet, the largest "denomination" in the U.S. today is "No Religious Affiliation." Christan numbers are falling. Trump's tongue-in-cheek political trick will not make a "Christian Nation" nor will all the other tricksters doing similar mischief. It seems recently there have been posts everyday banging the drum that 250 years ago founders intended a one religion country. This notion is all the more ridiculous when we learn several of those who helped write the documents and later form its government knew precisely how to form a "Christian nation." They knew because they came from colonies that declared an official religion. I read recently some of these founders did not like what they had experienced with a state religion. Overriding this was ...

There are various ways to explain how and why Christianity became so successful. The most common explanation of nonbelievers is the Roman Dictator, Constantine, converted and that's why there is Christianity. Believers, however, say "Paul" traveled around starting churches and the faith spread from that. The "Paul" story was claimed to have happened shortly after the alleged death of Jesus. That is, it started about 50 CE.   Writing and doubts about "Paul" were present in the 1800's when Dutch scholars of that time did not believe a "Paul" wrote any part of the Bible. It is obvious, scholars wrote, the writing was not that of actual letters and it was written between the years 150 CE and 200 CE, not 100+ years earlier. The writing was done, the Dutch concluded, by trained writers who used the letter genre to market the faith. The "letters" were a technique popular around the year 200 CE used by many to persuade the public to ado...

A Catholic writer pointed out something about cultural change and current events I had not noticed. He notes the irony that as Catholic numbers continue their inevitable decline, fewer marriages, baptisms and mass attendance, only one religious figure remains in the news. It is the Pope. There is no Jerry Falwell or prominent Protestant of any stripe quoted or in play. Even as it gets smaller and has less money the Catholic denomination's influence as a moral commentator has gone up.  The link points out the long history of the prominence of Episcopalism. Certainly this high church version of Protestantism has had a long and successful history in politics. Many readers are too young to have known the period when leaders like Eisenhower were Episcopalians. There have been other Protestant celebrities, Bishop John Shelby Spong for example, but so far as I can tell none are in the media regularly today on issues related to governance. From what little I understand about Catholicism, t...