Thoughts of a Freethinker

The phrase in the title is attributed to showman PT Barnum. To his dying day, he claims he never said such a thing. I'll take his word for it. That does not diminish the wisdom and insight into human beings everywhere in the world encompassed in the sentence. Recently, the Governor of Massachusetts signed into law a bill allowing late term abortions when a doctor and patient agree this is the best or only alternative to the problem faced at that time. The bill had been passed by a big majority in State's legislature.   During the decades after the Roe decision when abortion was legal in every state, the anti-abortion industry told supporters, "Send us money and we will force abortion back to the states. They we will go state-by-state abolishing abortion in each one until the country returns to the state before Roe when there were no abortions." This position was dishonest in two ways. First, it was intended not to eliminate abortion but to attract funds from the gull...

There is so much discussion of a topic called, "Tiny Houses." Having been a mayor, I know well the problem of finding a spot for lots of small houses. People elected to office will face opposition from voters and use zoning to prevent them from being built. Today where I live there is a proposal that may happen to take a former school building site, land already owned and controlled by the public, tear down the school and build a small neighborhood of tiny homes.  "Tiny home" neighborhoods already exist in the form of recreational vehicle parks. These are usually privately owned and have water and sewer connections. People without much money but with recreational campers move into these places and live there permanently. These are often on the outskirts of cities or in rural areas. Opposition from voters keeps them out of neighborhoods. There are also "trailer parks" that are a bit larger. The idea of small permanent houses located in established city neig...

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...