Thoughts of a Freethinker

Devout Muslims get on their knees several times a day to pray. Some Christians have prescribed prayers with specific words. The Muslim prayers, so I understand, are about being humble. The prescribed Christian prayers are petitions to be humble, not among other people, but to the invisible god(s). I got to thinking about what is included in prayers when I came across a Christian's complaints about changes made by denomination officials in the official versions of these prescribed prayers.  The prescribed prayers in the link to be recited during various rituals summarize the Christian faith. Prayers are to admit sin and beg for forgiveness. This, of course, is the Christian marketing program. First, call out some behaviors as sins. These may not be harmful behaviors, but they are part of making the size of the market larger. Then the faith cleverly places itself between danger from committing the sins and a happy forever. What a deal. There should be a law that every church has a si...

The conservative Christian site I review tells often of Christians prosecuted in countries dominated by either Islam or Hinduism. Once in a while there is an interesting case involving Christianity where one doesn't expect it. There is one going on in Finland. It is about a public official and Catholic Bishop. The case is headlined as Christian persecution. What it is about, however, is picking out a group in Finish society and demonizing them. The group, as we might predict, is gay and trans. The public official and Bishop were fined for expressing the old saw that the Bible only finds two genders thus finding trans not Christians. In the U.S. we experience cycles of hatred and discrimination and, eventually, try to correct. There was a time in the South when a real Christian opposed ending slavery and later opposed ending segregation. After all, God put different races on different continents with the intention they not mix. Certainly, they were not to marry and produce mixed rac...

I think it is good news that the current Lt. Governor of Texas said in a recent speech the Democratic candidate for the Senate, 34 year old seminary student James Talerico, is going to hell. Readers following this election know the Lt. Gov. was referring to Talerico's public statements the Bible does not condemn either gays or abortion.  It is hilarious when someone other than a current god tells us what the god is going to do when someone else dies. Is he certain he knows what that god's judgment of himself is going to be? Apparently, he knows the god's thinking on both Talarico and himself.  Have any of you readers had someone tell you that you are bound for hell. I have had people tell me this about myself more times than I can count over a few decades. Maybe it happened before this, but one period when I heard it often was after an event in 1984. The Fargo, ND newspaper ran the article that told of the Lesbian and Gay Pride Proclamation I wrote as Mayor and signed way b...

I've bored readers here before with the difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics. I keep returning to the difference because of an inability to see the world in other ways. Macroeconomics is in the news constantly, unemployment numbers, inflation and average incomes. The actual world, however, is run by the less discussed microeconomic decisions each of us makes every day, every hour. Anti-abortion people think abortion is a macroeconomic issue when it is actually a micro one. Humans have been making life and death microeconomic decisions since they arrived on earth. We are here because our ancestors made good micro decisions, including abortion and euthanasia. Early humans, and perhaps remote tribes today, lived in small clans. The decisions they made were for the survival of their group alone, not for societies across their region. They were microeconomies. From generations of experience, they knew how much food was available to them each year and the amount of labor ...

Let's run through just a few of the "Commanders in Chief" who were really big in solving disagreements by sending armies to destroy the enemy. They all practiced a version of the old command, "Nuke 'em."  President W. Bush was in office when the 9/11 attack happened. He could have said, "This is what happens when religion, like Islam, takes over a government. The impulse is to destroy others. Let's not be that country." Then, he could have isolated those countries, put economic pressure on them and prevented any more attacks. Instead, it was send in troops and shoot up and bomb the country. After that it was bomb and shoot up Iraq, even though Iraq had not harmed the U.S. The killing went on for years and was never completely resolved. We pulled out of Afghanistan without a victory. Israel's Netanyahu said his country needed to destroy it's enemies. Off to war he went. Now, he is unhappy Trump is pulling out of Iran and leaving Iran...

Today a religious professor posted on a conservative Christian site an essay claiming it is not the faith that is obsessed with sex but society at large. He gives lots of examples and then claims the Bible is merely responding to the sins of society. Several commenters chimed in saying this is ridiculous.  One commenter said the Bible's reference to sex is mostly about women as property. Certainly, there is plenty of that.  To me, the current obsession parts of the faith have with homosexuality, abortion and church-approved marriage is about control. The faith drew up a set of rules about sex. Then it named itself as the judge and jury of sin. Like all sin, the rules are modified constantly as time moves along. I can't think of any reason the Catholic denomination came up with the idea a fertilized egg is a "human being" and that birth control is a sin other than the need to expand the population of Catholics. Absolutely these are self serving rules involving sex. For...