Thoughts of a Freethinker

I often read about Christian groups who go to jails and hold services or their version of counseling sessions. Sheriffs who run county jails compliment these Christian groups saying inmates who take part are often easier to control. There is no evidence that inmates who receive Christian training are any better off for that experience than non Christians. The rate of inmates who have participated in "Christian training" are released and return to jail is no better than those who have not participated. I know there have been overtures made to the Cass County ND Sheriff to allow opportunities for atheist groups to hold meetings in the Cass County Jail. I understand those overtures have not been well received.  In Iowa, one of the State's prisons has developed an active atheist group . This is the Ft. Dodge Correctional Facility.  A member of the Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers Society holds meetings regularly inside the prison. A library with atheist reading mate

In England there are some churches built in the 1300's. How can they keep going when church attendance has fallen to historic lows? The link explains that one continues to function as both a church and community center. It holds four masses a week but houses a restaurant and hosts concerts. The shortfall of donations has been offset by business ventures. When President Bush II approved many kinds of contracts with denominations to provide social services these became profit centers. I suppose the tax exempt status and clergy paid below prevailing wages helped to provide services at a lower cost than traditional private firms. In Canada many years ago, our local scout troop was hosted by a Canadian troop in a downtown Winnipeg church. Originally it was a traditional church building. The church sold its building to a housing developer who tore it down. A large senior citizen housing building replaced the church but the congregation was provided some modern space to gather.

It's fun to speculate about "what if" things had turned our differently. Along with that, it's serious to look at why they did turn out as they are. I'm talking, of course, about religion. In graduate school I became fascinated with the native groups who inhabited parts of what is now Mexico, Central and South America.  According to archaeology digs, the groups we know about existed about the same time as those written about in the Bible. There were at least 200 different peoples. Later the more commonly known empires of the Incas and Aztecs dominated the region. These latter groups, like the Jews, Greeks and Romans of the Bible, were conquered by yet others, the Spanish. While it is obvious people of European heritage and religion came to the Americas and defeated the natives who lived here, it is not obvious why the social structure and religion of Europe and before that the Middle East continues of dominate the minds of people here. If native religion an

There are articles almost daily about the decline of church membership. Those who want to defend the importance of their particular brand of the faith counter do so with survey results saying the majority of respondents still claim to "believe in a god". The majority does not say it believes  specifically in the existence of the Christian God. The problem with these assertions is the assumption a majority supports the hot button issues of anti abortion and anti gay marriage. When the largest group in surveys believes in no particular branch of religion it means there is no central authority passing down judgments of moral issues. It means, it can be said, each person carries his/her own religion is carried about in his/her own head. We don't know which god people believe in. We have no shortage of self appointed "leaders" who tell us they speak for all those that "believe in god." The wider variety of gods the wider the variety of positions on

The question Protestants and secular people are asking Catholics is "Why do you stay in your church (when it has so many scandals)?" So, some of its big thinkers have wondered that themselves and invented an answer, "Because our church is about Christ. Christ is unrelated to the scandals." The link author found this to be a curious answer. He points out that the traditional Catholic argument is that their branch is "the true Church." In fact, they capitalize "Church". They refer to issues of theology as coming from "The Church", not Jesus. Making this argument even more ridiculous is that Jesus is what Protestant churches also claim to be about, making no difference between Catholics and Protestants. This takes away any justification to stay in the Catholic scandal-filled denomination. In the end, most Catholics are Catholics because their parents were Catholics. Their social and sometimes professional circles are made up of C

In the Bible the question is asked why doesn't God show himself? Endless explanations have been given. The link dances all over the floor saying God does not show himself because God decided not to show himself. The writer does the old dance we hear endlessly about tragedies, "Why does God allow these to happen.?" The automatic play-back answer is we cannot know the mind of God. If we cannot know the mind of God how can Christians make this argument over and over: "We cannot understand why God allows tragedies because we cannot know the mind of God. But we do know the mind of God when we say God offers comfort to the survivors." Wait, if we cannot know the mind of God, then we cannot know God is giving comfort to survivors. Maybe God hates the survivors. When one tragedy is sort of forgotten another one comes along. This might be evidence God hates us and will pummel us with tragedies forever more. In fact, that will happen. There have been, and con

So far as I remember, all Presidents of the United State through history have managed to understand world trade. Maybe some came into office campaigning to raise tariffs to "protect American jobs" but they came to realize this was not a sustainable idea and began to promote lower tariffs and more international trade. That was until Trump came along. He has been unable to understand the mechanics of world trade. He makes mistake after mistake and the general public is slowly recognizing the harmful ramifications. In 1776 Adam Smith published the Wealth of Nations.  The reason this book, written by an absent minded professor who stumbled about, has remained the bedrock of economic thinking is that the logical ideas it contained have never been buried by the sands of time. His book was controversial at the time because the topic of economics mostly had been addressed by clergy. The clergy talked of the unjust treatment of the poor, the evil of greed and the righteousne

After blogging for several years I've had my share of discussions about evolution with religious people who scoff at it. "Sure, fish might have some changes over time, but they are still fish like God created.  Fish did not come out of the water and start walking." Another rejection is a theory that the millions of years since some form of life first came along was not long enough for evolution to produce human beings. "Humans had to have been created by God because there was not enough time for them to have come about through evolution." My impression is there has always been a little tension within the explanation of evolution. While adaptation through survival is the mother lode of evolution, many generations are required for adaptation. Yet, it appears that adaptation took place relatively quickly in some cases. Science continues to unravel all this and new discoveries still come along. One is that there is horizontal gene alteration. That is, genes

Today the Catholic Church and a big swath of Protestantism are full of declarations about how the world came to be and how we should live in it. A lot of it is contrary to known science. The most prominent clash between science and the church came with Galileo. While he was not the first to point out the church hierarchy was flat out wrong in its preaching that the sun revolved around the earth instead of the other way around, Galileo was the first to observe it with a telescope. I have read a book or two about how Galileo, a practicing Catholic, tried to present his science to the world without offending the Pope. Eventually, a Pope and the government combined to convict him and he spent years under what we call today, house arrest. That the church believed so strongly the sun revolved around the earth it jailed Galileo should have convinced the public the Pope and his entourage were a pack of know nothings and ignored them forever after. Instead people adopted the strange vie

The Pope announced recently that he has summoned the Presidents of Bishops from countries around to world to a conference where Bishops are to address the problem of sexual abuse. It is scheduled for February, 2019. Maybe the Pope will announce some far reaching reform or maybe Bishops will recommend reforms themselves. So far, the response to the on going abuse cases can be summarized as follows: (1.) All professions have some of this so whats the big deal? (2.) Catholics are the victims of a press that has turned on them. (3.) This problem has been solved by screening of clergy so stop talking about it. (4.) This is a conspiracy to take all the wealth and property the church has accumulated and give it to victims . (5.) Those who committed these crimes were treated by in house experts and are now OK. (6.) We are praying for the victims and could pray more if need be. Perhaps there are others but these are the ones I recall and, of course, I put my own cynical twist to them. W

It was stunning to read a headline on a site devoted to pumping up and selling Christianity. The headline tells us "The Church is Impotent and Irrelevant."  The article's authors just published a book based on this theme. The article goes through the "false positives" the faithful often point to. These are the growth of mega churches and the successful churches in prosperous and growing urban areas. While these kinds of churches continue to be viable the national trend is down. It is the decline of Christianity. The authors then go on to describe a world consumed by sin. There is too much sex, too many drugs, abortions, gay marriage and, well, you know the drill. Their solution to the "impotent and irrelevant" church is to hammer home the evils of sin. Churches and their preachers/priests have become weak kneed in condemning sin. This causes more sin and churches are emptying out because people prefer sin to being flag-waving Christians. The

If you have reservations or doubts about the faith, the faith wants you gone. Whatever you do, don't tell anyone. It is blasphemous . All of these threats started back in Bible. Believers were admonished not to doubt nor question the far fetched stories that remain part of the faith. To doubt the Holy Spirit was the worst of all sins. It has been called the only unpardonable sin. It has been said here and elsewhere countless times the faith is mostly about control. If one sets out to find how many times and places the Bible attempts to control people that intent seem obvious. To believers, however, being told not to doubt is being helpful. After all, the faith tells us, those in authority know the truth and our job is simply to believe them. While we can only speculate about the minds of the wealthy goat herders who wrote the Bible, how defend arguments today is easy to understand. A good and healthy society, we say, is an open one were criticisms and doubts are expressed f

As a young man I became interested in economics because it was what my parents, their friends and my friends all talked about. Eventually, I learned everyone talks about it all the time. By economics, I mean how we make a living and spend what we make. It drowns out most everything else in our lives, including religion. It is said the Bible talks ten times more about money than it talks about sex. It was delightful to come across a body of discussion where scholars compare carefully what it written in the Bible and compare it to what information has been passed down about economic conditions in that part of the world at the time the Bible was written. Not surprisingly, what is in the Bible and what is attributed to Jesus reflects economic conditions and and some political ideology behind economic practices at that time. Not surprisingly also, the Bible shows the rich wanting more and those at the bottom supplying this wealth complaining about the little they receive. This is the

It would be very helpful to children if they were taught that their favorite Sunday school Bible stories came from earlier religions before Christianity existed. What an enlightened country we would have if each Sunday School teacher told its little children, "Today we're going to draw pictures of flood stories. Some of you can draw the Austrailian Kunai flood, others the Huarolchiri flood of Peru, others the Muasi of East Africa and you can draw Noah if you like.  There were more than 500 flood stories." If the teacher was in the Middle West there is a local story in the Native museum near Rapid City. The world was flooded except a native man who floated it out in a canoe. He arrived at a mountain near the Black Hills and all the peoples of the world go back to him. Sunday School teachers could also explain to children at Easter time that there were almost as many stories of heroes coming back to life after being dead as there are flood stories. It seems to be a

When a man kills someone else the excuse sometimes is "I thought he was going to kill me." This is invisible threat of villain is as old as humans. Christians from ancient times have been especially skilled at diverting their own weaknesses and blaming something unseen and unheard. No one has ever seen the "Devil" or "Satan", yet they blame it for all kinds of nasty things. The Pope is now using that ancient myth to cover modern day crimes. If there were a Satan or Devil here is the more likely mischief it would sneak in. It would put into the heads of people that they could control others by claiming some sort of divine credentials. The credential might be the person had heard directly from a god that he was supposed to lead others. Or, Satan could persuade some that Jesus told Peter to build a church on this rock and then those who Satan tricked could trick others into believing this really happened. If the Pope were to reject the work of Satan I

In Ireland, Catholicism was portrayed as a faith filled with predatory clergy. This was eventually followed by the Pennsylvania story. From leaked documents, the next  big  one will be Germany. There is so much talk these days about what the Catholic Church should do. I don't see how anyone can talk about what is to be done without talking about how it came to be. Surely the explanation is pride, power and arrogance. There is a little recognized insight into human behavior that was once explained succinctly by President Bill Clinton. He was asked over and over again, "Why did you have a sex with Monica Lewinsky (and put your career, legacy and family at risk)?" His best answer was, "Because I could." Because he had power over people and thought it would go undetected he thought he could. We all think like that, even when we exceed a little the speed limit. "Because I could" is why we have financial audits and pin numbers, outside review, ov

The link is a lay person's interpretation of Cannon Law. From it we learn Cannon Law was set up with an emphasis on protecting clergy and promoting secrecy. Secrecy is see as a good thing because is bad stories about priests leak out people may question their faith. Questioning faith, then, is seen as a sentence to hell. The Attorney General of Illinois made this observation about Cannon Law: "Because of its structures and because of how it has responded in the past, the Catholic church may in some ways be more ripe for these abuses to happen and fester," says Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.  When a Bishop in the past encountered a priest who violated the rules on celibacy he was given options often to take counseling from someone inside the clergy. One the counseling had been deemed successful the priest went back into the temptations he had dealt with unsuccessfully before. If the priest was a problem or embarrassment he was moved to another parish.

In England, religion has a larger presence in public schools than is has in the U.S. Yet, polling reveals Christian identity is lower, a minority, than it is here. I suppose it is no surprise that when a blue ribbon panel was appointed to study was is taught about religion in schools there the recommendation was that atheism, agnosticism and secularism be included in the large number of topics covered. The survey of religions courses are offered as electives. The number of students electing to take the classes has dropped rapidly in recent years. Still, there is strong support for including religion as an academic discipline. [if religion is taught what is it?? If we don't know what it is, how can we teach it??]

No one with a bent for science denies mass extinctions have occurred on Mother Earth. If they have happened in the past it is logical to expect they will happen in the future. It would be logical to look for reasons these mass extinctions occurred because the next one may involve humans. Some creatures much like humans have existed for about 300,000 years. Only 10,000 years ago what we now call the Red River Valley of the North was a huge glacier. Apparently, some people survived along the east coast of Canada by living off the sea. It seems to me our skill in the written word developed mostly less than 10,000 years ago, more recently the printing press and computer along with religion has distracted us from the most important question facing humans. That question is how can humans survive through the next mass extinction? The link does not claim to know specifically how these mass extinctions happened. But it suggests we need to spend lots of resources figuring out what cause

I encountered a debate within the faith about the faith itself. It is about whether one group in the faith really believes in the resurrection as much as the other. Ironically, the "most sincere" of the two, claiming to be most certain as to the point of the resurrection, is the most liberal politically. The author calls much of current Christianity the "dead orthodoxy." He calls it that because while he believes the life given people is to be one where people "give themselves fully to the work of the Lord" as preached in 1 Cor. 15:58. The resurrection did not happen, he writes, simply for lives that pursue selfish profit or to hammer on gay people and women. It is a life of looking after others and giving of oneself. Of course this "living like Jesus" thingy is regarded with contempt by most of Christianity. The dead orthodoxy is a cross about sin, not doing good works. If the faith talks about topics other than condemning the sin of othe

We know there are no female priests. Several brands of Protestantism also forbid women as clergy. But that is only the beginning of the problem. At the very base of the Christian faith women are considered both worthless and sinful. One of the huge influences in Christianity is Thomas Aquinas. He is from the 1200's and is the one who came up with that "natural law" business that is used for all kinds of selfish purposes. Aquinas had these kind words to say about women, "Every woman is birth-defective, an imperfect male, begotten because her father was ill, weakened or in a state of sin when she was conceived." As for a wife, Aquinas said she is "lower than the slave, wholly in subjection to her husband." A few centuries later, nothing had changed. A 15th century ecclesiastical publication called The Rules of Marriage  said a husband has every right to scold his wife and if that did not work he must "beat her soundly, to punish the body a

The largest democracy in the world, India, has finally turned the corner to become a modern society. After a long period with laws making homosexuality a crime, India's Supreme Court ruled yesterday that engaging in homosexual acts is not a crime. Jubilation was seen immediately in India's largest cities. Gloom spread across religious rural areas. The strongest resistance has come from rural areas where the mysterious Hindu faith is most widely practiced. But the resistance remains in India's political class. Just as in the U.S. politicians lag behind the public in matters of equal rights. It is popular in both countries, even though they have very different religions, to pander to religious groups. Today a conservative Judge is undergoing questions about his qualifications to serve of the Supreme Court. When he answers questions about birth control he falls back to is native political instincts and says birth control medicines cause early abortions. He is so deepl

A priest with a PhD in Sociology recently published as essay on how to move the Catholic Church in a direction away from its current scandals. It is for it clergy to pull back from its self-appointed role as authorities in spiritual matters. I recall a few years ago a Protestant faculty member of an Ivy League seminary saying something similar about his denomination. He said people in the pews now have access to reading material only available in the libraries of universities a few years ago. Those in the pews are now equipped to lecture preachers about theology--the tables have turned. The pastor is now a listener, this faculty member said. The priest in the link writes that it will be hard for Catholic clergy to sit back and listen to lay people when they have spent a life time being told they are the authorities and it is their obligation in instruct these lessers about the faith. Currently, the culture with the clergy is one of authority and protection of that authority.

Millions of people want to believe in Bigfoot. There has never been evidence it exists or has ever existed but belief continues. The answer is kind of simple. There are people who want  to believe in Bigfoot. There are people who enjoy believing in Bigfoot. Those of us who are skeptical of religious dogma find belief in Bigfoot similar to belief in gods. We treat the Christian god the same as the thousands of other gods people have believed in in the past and continue to believe exist. People claim to have seen Bigfoot but these claims have never been substantiated. Similarly, people claim to have talked to God. People claim to have died and approached heaven. These claims are identical to the Bigfoot claims. We don't have good reason to believe they happened. Both Bigfoot and the gods exist in people's minds. They are real to those whose minds hold them but they are not real to other people. There is not necessarily harm in having people believe these beings exist

The biggest problem is declining numbers. When the church negotiates its place in society and politics it needs numbers, period. Without numbers no one will pay any attention. During every generation , however, there were those wringing their hands over the liberals who wanted to relax some rules in order to accommodate changes in the public's thinking. "This is not the real church," they always say. The real church is out there in the minds of the public. When the public changes, the "real church" must and usually does change. Capitalism is a topic always at hand to praise. We can use it discussing the future of Christian denominations as well. The people in the pews pay their hard earned income into the collection plate (or mail it in). They do this because they get something from being a church goer. When they don't like what they see or hear, the money goes elsewhere. Today there is more "church shopping" than ever in history. On to

Once in a while it's fun to think way outside the box. Let's start with today's values and circumstances. Abortions are performed by drug companies and clinics. Many of the clinics are nonprofit national organizations. All manner of hand wringing goes on because abortion has been arbitrarily labeled a "moral" issue. It is a medical issue, a service provided by skilled people. Only religious beliefs have manufactured the notion it is a moral issue. The life of the fetus now competes with what the woman wants to do with her life. I think there could be other competitors to the life of the fetus in the future. The link today discusses new research in extending the life of humans. One source says there are some 70,000 Americans over 100 years old. A scientist predicts that some years from now the first person to live to the age of 150 will be celebrated. The science allowing this will come from medicine or treatments that allow cells of old people to regener

We all know lots of the New Testament writing is attributed to Paul. Thus, Christianity is supposed to be about Christ but those in the faith buy this Paul guy completely. There is so many in the faith vacating its denominations today. A good portion of these people latch onto an emerging part of the faith that focuses only on Jesus. That is, it focuses on what people want to believe Jesus was about. Is abandons most of the Bible. Or, as advocates say, frees Christianity from the Bible. One of the figures in this change lays out what the new Christianity advocates . This author, Ken Giles published a popular book with the controversial title, Jesus Unbound; Liberating the Word of God from the Bible. From a review, I gathered the theology of this movement is that Jesus does not judge people but accepts them as they are. It's a Jesus who mixes with the poor and unwashed and does not hate his enemies. Certainly there are places in the Bible that claim this. Then, there are p