Thoughts of a Freethinker

There are several disciplines in universities that have roughly the same mission. It is to destroy myths. Maybe it is more accurate to say their mission is to study what people believe to be true and raise doubt when it shows up. The disciplines I'm thinking of are those I'm most familiar with, humanities (history, literature, etc), social sciences (sociology, psychology, economics, etc.) and others. The sciences also attack myths with new discoveries.   Challenging myths also happens outside academia. In fact, it is everywhere--we all do it all the time. There was a popular TV show, "Myth Busters." I think the general public has been forced into "myth busting" by an increase in advertising and messaging. We have to have our game face on all the time to keep our money and health.  This is why I think many studies about "belief in God" or "why people are dropping out of Christianity" miss the boat. One of many every week discusses again wo...

Every few years, civilizations older than the ones we knew about previously are uncovered. The result often is that what we thought was true about the thread of humans through time changes. Old ideas about human history go into bin called myth and new truths emerge.  This topic reminds me of an eccentric old man who used to drop into the Mayor's office to chat. His primary interest was what he called "ancient times." Ancient to him were stories from the new and old testament. These were not, of course, "ancient" but recent compared to other known sources of information. Stuff in the New Testament is dated something around 2,000 to 5,000 years ago. As discussed here often, the Bible stories have few artifacts to verify its stories.  Recently, the ruins of a complex in Turkey was unearthed that date to around 9,000 years ago. That dates historical evidence twice as far back as the Bible. Ironically, the evidence tells us more about people then then does the Bible....

When a doctor circles M or F on a birth certificate, religious conservatives cheer and pass laws this restricts where to person later can compete in sports. When the gender is M that person must be prohibited from ever participating in women's sports. The opposite switch does not seem to be of interest.  Returning to Michelle Obama having a white ancestor some generations back on both her mother and father's side reminds us there has not been a clear line between white and black people for hundreds of years. This did not stop religious conservatives with an economic or political interest in maintaining separation of the races from claiming a clear separation existed. They did it aggressively.  The same lines are drawn by the same religious conservatives today about gender. The doctor's decision shown on the birth decision does not recognize some humans carry part of two different genders. Science has not yet spent much time finding variations in how much of each gender indi...

I've known so many people from Iran I don't know the number. Like people everywhere, they are different from each other and, in some cases, did not like each other. I enjoyed knowing each of them and would like to visit Iran to see it for myself.   As we all know, the country has been under religious leadership for at least a couple of decades. Obama it seems was the only one of our Presidents who took the time to learn about its leadership, what it wanted to accomplish and how to fit what those leaders wanted and fit that in with the rest of the world. Some other countries in the  Middle East, along with political Israel, did not like it that Obama treated the leaders of Iran as legitimate and as a force that was going to remain in place for the feasible future. By the standards of practicality and reasonableness, Obama's approach was a success.  From Iran's point of view, they had an unsuccessful experience with Obama. There were still trade sanctions. They kept th...

I could not resist clicking the title on Chistian Post, "The Single Thing Causing Inflation." What a disappointment. The economics of Trump, Jesus and the Republican Party are not worth one's time.  The "single cause", according to a retired professor of conservative Christian theology, is the supply of money. This old theory, made famous by the late Milton Friedman, was never universally popular and was debunked by actual experience as the years went by.  Without going too far into the weeds, Friedman's theory was that the Federal Reserve should grow bank account balances at the rate the population and economy grew. This, he thought, would stop the rise in prices and wages. What few understood was that the theory assumed the rate or speed money flowed through the economy would remain constant. This did not happen. As time passed, inflation happened when the supply of money declined and visa versa.  The link's theology professor is mostly concerned about...

One of the most exciting and interesting political events are those where a candidate comes out of nowhere with are less money than the competition and wins. In the sports metaphor, it's the skinny kid at the end of the bench who comes in and wins the game. In Michigan yesterday, a Muslim with a tiny amount of money upset a more traditional Democrat to run for the U.S. House. The winner in one of the Michigan House districts is Abdul El-Sayed. He is a former state health official and talked of universal health care and several other liberal positions. My own instinct, like many others, is to be pessimistic about strong liberal positions and think more moderate candidates and ideas will appeal to independent voters. I'm no longer so certain that is correct, however. We have to remember there is always a set of voters who go to the polls to vote against someone or something. Not all of those voters care about the views of the one they cast for, they just want to cast against the...