Thoughts of a Freethinker

It's common for religious conservatives to say there is no such thing as homosexuality, bisexuality or those who transition in self identification from one gender to another. It is not possible because, they say, God made only males and females. It turns out all the gender variations that occur among humans happens elsewhere in nature. There are creatures that are half one and half the other. And, why wouldn't there be. Everyone who has been around animals knows they are born with a variety of characteristics. There is a reason, however, some religious minds are closed to the notion that humans can be born with the physiology of one gender but mentally are certain they are of the opposite gender. The reason is this set of Christians (and other religions) just don't like these people. They don't like them in the same way some people don't like those of other races or even creeds. It comes from somewhere we don't understand but the hatred is there. Per...

One of the things that has always interested me about the Bible is its reference to speech. It is clear, at least in the Old Testament, that speech is not just something we use to order pizza but is something that had mysterious and magical attributes. How our speech and hearing differs from animals is why the ancients must have thought it magical. In the Bible is says first there was the word and the word was God. Everyone can guess what that means exactly but it seems like some magical word created God. I have heard there are places in the Bible that tell readers what words to use in prayers. I was watching Pat Robertson's TV show a while back when his son, Gordon, instructed viewers as to exactly what words to use when praying. These magical words in English are all the more foolish when one recognizes the authors wrote in a different language. Further, translating the words used in another language back in ancient times into today's English is problematic. Anthropo...

Both the Catholics and Southern Baptists have been rocked by sexual abuse scandals. Where I live the paper's headline today is about a relatively small diocese near here which admitted 28 priests are believed to have committed this abuse. At the same time, Christian denominations are claiming to be the institutions of the highest moral character, that we should all pay close attention to what they have to say. As one priest long ago said , to be the moral authority the church must have higher virtue than all others around it. To me, the term virtue includes giving up something big to benefit others. In the Catholic church this once was the clergy who gave up money, family and intimacy in order to serve their public. In the Bible Jesus is said to have suffered death temporarily to offset the sins of his flock. In a book written long ago by President John F. Kennedy ( Profiles in Courage ) there are historical examples of people in politics who put their political careers i...

The newly elected and controversial congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, gave a beautiful retort to President Trump's press spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee. Huckabee had said we should leave climate change up to a higher power. She was referring, of course, to God. Huckabee made the same mistake many enthusiastic Christians make. She assumes she had read the Bible more than others. It turns out often that believers have read over and over the parts of the Bible they like and know little about the parts they do not like. Ocasio-Cortez said in a tweet that in Genesis Chapters one and two God says seven times that the creation is good and he commands all people to serve and protect it. In Leviticus God mandates the land which sustains us shall be respected. It seems obvious that if man is putting too much carbon into the air and damaging the creation God is displeased. But, I know Huckabee can find quotes from the Bible to support polluting land, sea and air. As I recall, Go...

The newest book portraying what goes on inside the Vatican may turn out to be bigger than recent revelations about child abuse clergy. It is a book about gays at high levels inside the Vatican. The book is by a gay author from France. He interviewed dozens of officials inside the Vatican and traveled around the world interviewing priests. The book was finished a year ago but was not released until a couple of days ago after translations into several languages was complete. I've read several reviews, both positive and negative. My impression is the author does not like the long-standing taboo against gays in the Catholic clergy. It is said he treats opponents of gays badly and often concludes they are closeted gays themselves. One of the overriding theories by critics is that anti gay clergy in the Vatican are also anti Frances. Thus, the entire book, this theory says, it an attempt by supporters of Francis to smear his opponents. Leaving aside both supporters and critics ...

It's amusing to see Republicans, and some Democrats, labeling certain Democrats who are running for the Presidency as "Socialists." Trump is doggedly pushing government into places it has not been before. It remains to be seen exactly how the foolish trade war will be resolved. What is certain is that the harm it does to both the U.S. and China. My own speculation is that farm prices which have fallen since the trade war began will tip states in the Middle West that brought Trump his victory when he lost the majority of voters. When politicians talk of problems the country, state or local regions are experiencing, they are smart to blame some group or issue that is "not in the room."  That is, they blame some group or place that is vague or far removed from the problem. My friends, former Senators Dorgan and Conrad, always blamed "Wall Street" for problems in North Dakota. It was a little dishonest of them since we never learned exactly what r...

I've alluded before to the growth of witchcraft in the U.S. Coming soon is the first national convention of the branch of witchcraft that calls itself Christian. Reading an interview with one of the leaders, it seems perfectly logical Christianity and witchcraft would be seen as fellow travelers. Perhaps they are not identical but they have some identical characteristics. It starts, as always, with a group who reads the Bible and believes themselves to understand it better than any other group. As an economist I can say with certainty there is a surplus of people who claim to be superior in understanding the Bible. There is a shortage of information about what the ancient authors themselves said they meant when they wrote. The quantity of the latter is close to zero. So, why would witches believe there was a Jesus and continue to believe in him? Because the claim is made he had magical and/or spiritual powers, those claimed also by witches. The leader goes on to quote scrip...

In his book, God is Not One , Professor Stephen Prothero provides a one sentence summary of various world religions. These summaries are not stated in documents but what the practitioners of these religions talk and think about. Christianity in this sense, he wrote, is about sin. Sin has painted the Catholic, and others such as Southern Baptists, into a corner. In the past, Catholic Bishops considered child sexual abuse by a priest to be a sin instead of a crime. This meant the Bishop was to forgive the sin. As Jesus was alleged to have said, "Go and sin no more." These sinners were just transferred from one parish to another to commit more child abuse sins and were again forgiven. Eventually, victims and the press explained to clergy these "sins" are crimes. The reactions by some clergy was astonishment, "You mean some sins and are also crimes? Someone else will have to take care of the crime business. We only know about the sin business." Compl...

We in the U.S., especially those of us of European ancestry, like to think of ourselves as successful. Our ancestors came from Europe and defeated the natives to settle the Americas. While it is true our long history of travel and warfare gave us an advantage over natives on these continents and allowed our culture and Christianity to prevail, another factor not discussed very much is disease. It was simply fortuitous the natives had no immunity to our diseases. If our ancestors acquired diseases here they had no immunity the tables would be reversed and today this may not be a "Christian nation." A new article about the invasion of Mexico by Cortes highlights the role of small pox in his success. The white Spaniards had immunity but the Aztecs did not. The population of Aztec people dropped dramatically. They lost the will to fight the Cortes army and the country became Christian. A priest accompanying Cortes wrote that there were so many Aztec deaths many corpses were...

When the controversy about sex abuse and homosexuality among priests subsides, there is another ready to take center stage. This is priests who have fathered children. There are so many children around the world fathered by priests the Vatican has a formal policy about it. Within the bureaucracy, those fathered by priests are called "children of the ordained." There is a written policy which is applied, but the Vatican will not release it to the public. The Vatican no doubt knows approximately how many children its male clergy have fathered. It will keep this data a secret because of its preoccupation with hiding bad publicity. There are various websites subscribed to by children of priests. The best know one has over 75,000 subscribers in 175 countries. I would not be surprised if there are 100,000 living children fathered by priests. There are conflicting views about what should happen to a "celibate" priest known to have fathered a child. One view is th...

Different interpretations of the Bible are almost endless. We have hundreds, maybe thousands, of branches of the faith. There are a few interpretations that were and remain harmful to our society. They are ones that jumped from the faith into government and affected society at large. Harm has come from them. Slavery was one of them. High on the list of justifications for slavery was that important characters referred to in the Bible had slaves. Even the Ten Commandments refers to slavery without criticism. Using religious justification was so effective slavery survived for a hundred years in the U.S. It is say to think there were three to four generations of people who were held as slaves before the Civil War. Currently, same sex relations are viewed by some as a Christian taboo. Some Christians treat religious condemnation of homosexuality as self evident. They site Bible verses and claim these are clearly religious condemnations. This is far from the truth but it has result...

An interesting thing to observe to plot the current culture are comic books. Many might scoff at comic books as a source of anything meaningful. That would be a mistake. Artists, writers and business people who produce them are tuned into the most subtle of the culture's direction. A comic book writer who is Christian has a view of Jesus  different from that of orthodox Christians. His view is Jesus was a person of influence who was to use that power for the good of human kind, not just for forgiving sins and getting individuals to a heaven. The author has written other books where he criticizes orthodox Christianity. He says Christians often wrongly interpret Jesus and his followers as the winning team which was not the point of Jesus. In the comic book series, "Second Coming", the author presents what he believes is a plausible Jesus story. God was disappointed with Jesus so had him killed and locked him away in the beyond. Eventually, God saw a super hero, somet...

Outside of the Vatican, the most influential Catholic group in the world has been the U.S. Catholic Bishops. They meet, hammer our positions and try to move the Vatican and Popes in their direction. With sexual abuse among their members Catholic Bishops are losing their clout. Rising in influence are U.S. nonprofits owned by very wealthy right wing Catholics. These groups hold conferences, have public relations offices, write position drafts for the Vatican and try to present themselves as the Catholic Church. They complete with the Bishops for influence. These right wing Catholic nonprofits pay for Bishops to travel, pay the maintenance of Vatican buildings and make big contributions to the Vatican. The relationship of these wealthy Catholic groups with the Vatican is not unlike wealthy industry lobby groups and Congress. Not surprisingly, these wealthy donors to their nonprofits equate Catholicism with low taxes on the wealthy and fewer regulations on corporations. This is,...

I just finished reading the most comprehensive review of the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. Mostly is results from interviews with the person who knows more about it than anyone, Sean O'Malley, a Cardinal who has been assigned to deal with it around the world. O'Malley explained Bishops are largely independent operators and things are handled differently in different dioceses. There are a few Bishops that refuse to handle the crisis in a way the helps resolve it. Several Bishops, for example have released names of priests suspected of being abusers. Some, like Tim Dollan of the New York Diocese, refuses to do so. Within the Vatican, a large part of the bureaucracy still thinks their main mission is protecting the clergy and themselves. They think abuse is a U.S. problem and is the problem of isolated diocese. By thinking in this was they have decided it is not an important problem for the world Catholic Church. One of O'Malley's frustrations has been t...

We have all been entertained, and frustrated at times no doubt, by watching political theater. The older we are the more times we've seen the political tide turn. I'm old so I've seen more than most people alive today. Jimmy Carter is a Southerner and was a Southern Baptist. When he first ran he was endorsed by conservative religious leaders. When he expressed tolerance for abortion and other issues conservative pundits turned against him. He lost reelection. Today the Catholic Diocese in New Jersey was another of the states to release a list of clergy with credible charges of sex abuse. There are 200 names on the list and critics say the list is incomplete. Add to this list revelations of the Protestant Southern Baptist convention. What is going on represents a political tide change. For hundreds of years, politicians saw it in their interest to smile and praise everything Christian. Now Attorneys General in several states see political advantage in demanding tra...

Sin has always been a moving target. What was a sin yesterday has evaporated today. In today's  secular world, sin is seen something "bad" in a secular but not religious sense. An article by a Christian pundit lamented at how sinful President Trump is. But, voting for him was less of a sin than voting for Hillary Clinton. He did not mention Clinton is much more religious than Trump. In the end, sin was something to talk endlessly about, but mold to fit the circumstances. All this while claiming, of course, that the faith never changes. I have talked here in the past about what I call the "Sin Leader Board." This came from watching golf tournaments where there is a "Leader Board." In the case of sin, what is on the Leader Board at any point in history is determined by cultural values of the time. While I was not old enough to experience the Prohibition era, the sin highest on the Leader Board must have been alcohol. I have read alcohol was bl...

Kim Davis, the county clerk in Kentucky, has had her 15 minutes of fame. She turned down a gay couple's effort to get a marriage license after her state had made gay marriage legal. The couple sued and got their license. Kim Davis was defeated in the next election. Now, the couple has successfully sued Davis to recover the legal fees they paid to get their legal marriage license. Davis owes $225,000. This is sweet. Another part of the fun is Kentucky's Republican Governor Matt Bevin. When Kim Davis was in the news world wide refusing to issue the marriage license to the gay couple, Governor Bevin could not praise her enough. She is such an inspiration he said. Now, however, he does not want Kentucky taxpayers to pony up the fees owed by Davis. So he through his State Government attorneys is going after her. "Religious Liberty" is good, he seems to think, but not worth spending money on. The Governor may also recognize the quirky Davis is not a poster child ...

Now the two largest Christian denominations, Catholics and the Southern Baptist Convention, are in the headlines with cases of sexual abuse . Both have pledged to stop this behavior. I doubt either can. Catholics and Southern Baptists are organized in opposite ways. Catholics are a top down organization with a powerful Pope. Southern Baptists have only some centralized functions. There is a strong aversion to top down religious authority. Statistically, both religious groups are huge and it expected raw numbers of abuse would be high. This would be the case even if the percentages of clergy committing abuse was low. Nevertheless, any group that makes its living condemning the sin of others deserves bad press when even some of their own do not live up to the standards they condemn in others. My own theory, however, is that Catholics and Southern Baptists have something in common that attracts the worst kind of men and tempts them to the worst kind of behavior. Both are male dom...

This has been seen before, but making the rounds on the net today is a picture of a bird in someone's backyard, a Cardinal, which has both male and female plumage. How could this be when the Bible says God created only males and females? A bit different is the topic of homosexuality in nature, that is in animals. Over 450 different species have been observed in homosexual behavior. So, we would have to conclude that if there is a God, it would have created not just male and female but other varieties of gender as well. The Bible would be flat out wrong. I know this will not detour some believers. They are sure both both God and the book he guided or wrote by guiding the hands of ancient writers could not possibly be wrong on this issue. This issue is very important to those who do not like homosexuals. Plenty of Christians continue to believe what those during slavery and segregation believed. This is that God put different races on different continents because he did n...

I've always been fascinated with the native peoples of Central and South America. Their knowledge and technology are becoming more apparent . Yet, in North America we seem to know more about the Middle East and the Bible than about the people that lived on our own continents. The Mayans, Incas and Aztecs has vast knowledge and skills. Some of them employed full time star gazers who plotted movements of stars and planets. They organized their societies to build complicated and quite massive infrastructure. Their written language and mathematics was on a par with that from other parts of the world before the beginning of the common era. These societies did not have metal. There did not seem to be a need for it so the experimentation that happened elsewhere did not happen in the Americas. But, luck was not on the side of America's native peoples. Their written documents were either mostly destroyed or did not survive the damp climates. The dry Middle East was luckier with...

I'm certain the most common prayer is "Please give me (something)." Singer Janis Joplin had it right in her parody of Christianity lyrics, "Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz. My friends all drive Porches I must make amends." Prayers to an invisible god and letters to an invisible Santa Claus seem identical to me. Both are about self. This past week I visited the State Capital building close to where I now live in Iowa. I went there to watch an atheist deliver a humanist invocation to begin the daily work or the Iowa Senate. She read a statement of hope that all lawmakers will make every citizen feel he/she is part of the state's political and governmental affairs. She did a nice job. There was some concern before hand about the reaction of Senators. That is because a few years ago a Wiccan led an Invocation. Several Senators stood up and turned their backs. Outside the chambers some religious people held a rally expressing their condemnation...

For years England's Parliament has opened with a Church of England prayer. Legislation has been introduced to end the practice. There are probably many reasons for ending prayers. The most common reason given by politicians is that the practice of prayer is for individuals not for government. This has been stated for hundreds of years both in the U.S. and England. One wonders why it is just now becoming popular? Prayers at public meetings wastes time in two ways. First, no one knows whether any god or spiritual force hears prayers. I do not think they serve any purpose but custom. The second way they waste time is we argue about them. If all prayers at public meetings were just stopped the argument would be over. Maybe the current experience in England is sort of a payback. Why the system of government in our country was being hammered out, one thing most agreed was we did not want to be another England with its royalty. This was to be a country designed for the commo...

The term "Religious Trauma Syndrome " is not found in medical manuals. Yet, it is something talked about more today than ever before. It refers, approximately, to people who lose their sense of self worth and purpose because they have become convinced by their faith they do not measure up. Gay people, for example, are often told they are hopeless sinners unless the become heterosexual. When they cannot, despair can overtake them. The suicide rate among gays is higher than among the general population. Problems with religion are so common there are professionals whose practice is made of such clients. Attempts are made to separate people from feelings of low self worth. When one person or group is controlling of others this can require professional help as well. I wish it were noted more often that religion can be both helpful and harmful. That most religious people find it helpful does not erase the need for caution. Christianity, after all, promises to lift what mo...

The God I refer to here is the one Jews and Christians worship. I must include the disclaimer that I, myself, have doubts this god or any other one exists or ever existed. Often those who comment here have said, "God hates abortion." The Heidi Group in Texas claims, "God loves the unborn." If the Bible was God inspired or God-breathed then the Bible remains God's view on things. To determine God's view on abortion we should read the God-breathed writing. All through the Old Testament, 18 times, God performed abortions. He not only performed them but relished and enjoyed doing them. I'll mention just a few. "I will murder unborn children in their mothers' wombs, as well as living children, for Israel's sinful deeds and wickedness. (Hos. 9:10-16) "I will rip open pregnant mothers-to-be and dash the unborn to the ground for Smaria's sin of worshipping other gods." (Hos. 13:16) "I massacred all people living in th...

There are a few other skeptics who, like me, write blogs that engage Christian people. I think most blogs by atheists are aimed at other atheists. Writing blogs that many Christians read is more interesting to me. Recently, an atheist with a large and hostile Christian audience listed the common reactions. Her experience is a little different than mine. Mine have followed a pattern that fits the area where the blogs appear. If you don't believe in God, why do you write about him so much. I think it is necessary to write about God because religion pushes its way into so much of our lives. If I never heard of people who believe in God it would never occur to me to write about it. Quit bashing religious people. I do point out flaws in religious thinking. This is important because the faith so often portrays itself as the ultimate in moral values and wisdom. Critical examination of the faith's tenets shows this is a questionable assumption to say the least. You atheists ...

Conservative Catholic, Ross Douthat, (New York Times) sees the move in New York State that made abortions legal up until birth as a signal the influence of the Catholic Church in heavily Catholic New York is on the wan e. Arch Bishop Tim Doland tried to criticize Governor Como but it flopped. Others have said Governor Como should be excommunicated. He more or less laughed. I have discussed before that falling numbers will weaken the Christian clout against gays and abortion. Others have said that, no, the numbers are still too big. Politicians will be forced to knuckle under. This does not seem to be the case. Instead, corruption, cultural change and divisions in the faith have delivered right wing Christianity into the hands of its enemies. I can recall the period when President Clinton was having an affair with his staff member, Monica. Former politician and now radio host, Bill Bennett complained to the President, "Mr. President, we're trying to raise kids out here...

Perhaps there are a few hundred scholars around the world trying to determine why humans do not  behave as violently as chimpanzees. Chimpanzees are known for picking out members of their own clan and killing them. Sometimes females kill the babies of others in their group. For the relatively short period Christianity has been popular around the world, a simple explanation has been given for the level of civil order achieved by humans. It is that humans know they must  behave they will spend eternity in hell. Without this hammer over their heads chaos would reign. Bad behavior is known as "sin." If human-like creatures have existed for about 300,000 years and the Judaeo/Christian religions for only 5,000 years, what kept humans from chaos during the other hundreds of thousands of years? We know dogs were once wolves and are now domesticated. How did humans become domesticated without the threat of hell? Recently, a retired anthropologist reflected on the recent books ...

This past week the religious press was full of outrage over a law passed in the State of New York Legislature and signed by the Governor making abortion legal up to the time of birth. It was as if there was a requirement to express rage. All of this outrage was political posturing from writers who make a living by attracting readers. There were already six states that allowed abortions up to birth and there is even another about to do so, Rhode Island. The New York story was much to do about nothing. I've read stories written by women who had abortions shortly before birth. In each case, the women had made the decision long before to give birth and were looking forward to the experience. Then serious complications arose that made this expensive and somewhat complicated procedure necessary. The complications were different each time. Opponents of abortion always, I mean always, portray the sinful women who undergo late abortions as party-seeking people livin...