Thoughts of a Freethinker

A few days ago I blogged about the inevitable coming failure of the sun and that such an event made Biblical predictions about heaven and hell ridiculous. No invisible and divine being can stop the sun from making earth and all the people on it toast. Some critics of my blog jumped all over me with the mention of fire in the Bible. Since fire was mentioned in the Bible it meant those who wrote the Bible understood that the sun would run out of energy they said. I looked up "fire in the Bible" and learned fire was referred to about 40 times. Usually, it said, fire was present when God was angry. Fire was used as threat and punishment for sin. It is quite logical the propagandists who wrote the Bible would use fire to persuade people to conform their thinking to what was wanted at the time. Humans fear fire. As a pastor friend of mine said, "Everything in the Bible was written with a specific audience of that time in mind and was written with a specific goal of pe

I can predict there will be those deep in the faith who will split theological hairs to justify forgiveness. Reality is that some behavior does not jive with forgiveness. I have always thought Steven Prothero's book, God is Not One , contained a wisdom usually overlooked by those deep in theology. Prothero finds the average Christian is focused on sin, not on forgiveness. The argument by some in theology is forgiveness is bigger than sin in the Bible. The reason the average Christian focuses on sin is that he/she has looked at the world and decided that if sins are easily forgiven there will be more sin. A woman who was raped constantly by her father is now on a crusade to alert Christians to the dangers of offering forgiveness to child abusers. While she is a Protestant, her experience mirrors that of the Catholic Church. Apparently, Catholic Bishops focused on forgiveness of Priests who abused children. With the forgiveness of an invisible and apparently non existent god

Moorhead can be proud of an enlightened approached to drug use . An agency there is allowing use of drugs while users withdraw and continue to monitor and allow relapses during the recovery process. The old method was declare a person "drug free" and at that moment suspend public funding of treatment. That practice, still the go-to standard, has had bad results. Those who need drugs, or have needed them, often require a few years of help before leaving drugs behind. Most often, a tolerance for use while under supervision leads to a successful outcome. For several years, doctors prescribed or agreed to drug use for both physical and psychological pain. While some doctors were not careful, it appeared a path to solving the problem of an underground drug world and deaths from overdoses. This was followed by a nationwide crackdown on doctor prescribed drug use. I wonder what the predicted outcome was. I could have predicted what would happen. I would have predicted tha

Galations 6:7 warns us not to mock God. I looked up the definition of mocking God. It says to mock God is to disrespect, dishonor, ignore or deny his existence. I can't think of a better way to mock God than to point out the ultimate end of humans has nothing to do with this god or any other. Anyone can see this in the demise of a star said to be much like our sun. This star is called T Ursae Minoris (T UMi). T Ursae is closer to the end of its life and is exhibiting the behavior we can expect from our sun. That a god somewhere or somehow will save earth from its no-sun future is laughable. The ultimate death of the earth is not discussed much in the popular press because it is an unpleasant topic to contemplate. More pleasant it the false notion not only will earth and humans will go on forever but that each human who passes the judgment test will live on forever. This is how religion depends on economics. If you preached this Sunday individual humans will die with no &quo

For many decades I have read daily commentary on the stock market and the economy. Over that time I developed considerable skepticism about predicting what either will do. While thousands of people make a living "predicting" what the future will bring they miss huge signals. It is impossible to see the signals before a change happens because they are obvious only in retrospect. It is fun to occasionally read a writer who analyses the entire pundit and investor community. He makes observations that, to me, can also be seen in religion. His article is quite long but I'll mention a few observations that I found interesting. The credibility of any idea is based how much one needs a prediction to be true.  While this statement was made about the stock market of macro economy, it applies to religion. If someone needs heaven and hell to be true it is more likely he/she will believe them to exist. History has surprised us over and over. Predictions are still being made.  

I have not studied all the gods of antiquity but what little I know about them leaves the distinct impression they were all gods in the sky. I think this also is true for Jesus. There were, of course, famous gods who never bothered to come down to earth. Both the Greeks and the Romans had a list of sky gods as long as your arm. Rulers who decided they were gods were not in the sky until after they died. While on earth, however,  one could argue they were not exactly common folk who roamed around the masses on market day. It is my impression they were quite aloof from the public and lived in splendor. In that sense they were more sky god than ordinary common folk gods. The antidote to the aloof sky god was to be Jesus. Story tellers made sure he was not the son of a banker, trader or politician. He was a carpenter. But his path to being a popular god was not by working with his hands. I've not seen anyone take on Bart Ehrman's evidence that Jesus was not regarded as an

An early comparison I found of the God, Horus, and Jesus was written in 1905. While the Horus story is far more complicated than the Jesus story it was tempting to intellectuals at that time to note the similarities. The god named Horus was worshiped thousands of years before the Jesus period. It's fun to note these "facts" about Horus. It was prophesized Horus would be born of a virgin. This virgin was Isis. She was impregnated through the nostrils by the spirit god, Kneph. The virgin, Isis, was venerated widely in art, holding the baby Horus. Some depictions survive today. Horus lived with his mother until he was twelve. There is no record of him between the ages of twelve and thirty when his life as a god began. He became know as the son of a god. There are differences between the gods Jesus and Horus. Horus was known only as a sky god. He is depicted as having the head of a hawk. Nevertheless, Horus and Jesus share the characteristics of nearly all the go

The event which jump started Christianity was not the alleged birth of Jesus. It was a conference called by a Roman dictator about the third century C.E. The purpose of the conference was to establish which of the many threads of Christianity were to be "the truth" and which were to be tossed. To be successful, Christianity needed to seem familiar to the public. The most popular Pagan god ot the time, Mithra, was said to have been born to a virgin on December 25. He was crucified in the spring. Some say this was around 600 BCE, others say Mithra was popular much earlier. What we know of Mithra was passed down through many sources. Like the Bible, the writing was no doubt changed over time to reflect what scribes thought should be written. The myths of Mithra and Jesus are remarkably similar. This suggests, to me at least, the story line of both myths is not history but held, and continue to hold, broad and universal emotional appeal the millions of people. Christi

Everyone has their own private journey about religion. Countless books have been written about finding religion and losing it. I came across one person's testimony about losing his religion I thought it might be interesting to others as well. The link tells of the extra time he has without church matters to tend to. There is the money part and so on. I suspect none of this is meaningful to someone who is worried about his/her after life. They perhaps think of the time and money they devote to the faith as a bargain. Giving time and money to the faith is like buying a lottery ticket, you can't win if you don't play. I've heard many believers say they cannot understand how anyone can be happy without church rituals and church music. We who have left all of that behind cannot understand how people can be happy listening and taking part of rituals which are, so far as any can tell, mythology and are only symbolic. I'm at my annual fly in camping event in Clinton

A borough in Alaska will decide soon on putting to a public vote the practice of opening their monthly meetings with an expression of religion. This happened after a group took the borough governing body to court and won so a variety of religious expression, not just Christian, is now required. Recently someone ended her speech with "Hail Satan." When I started this blog a few years ago it was publicized on the Fargo Forum  web page. More than one critic told me this was a travesty because atheism did not "represent the majority view of the community." Certainly it is not the majority view. According to polls, however, those who do not affiliate with any religious view are the largest group in the U.S. after Christian. I have no doubt this is true also of the upper Midwest where the Forum Publishing Company  owns several newspapers. One way to hear something you do not like in a "public prayer" at a public meeting is to include in your prayer someth

Why is President Trump going after Representative Omar? Because many of his supporters think she is pretending to be religious but is not. To are millions of people in the U.S., Islam is not entitled to protection of Religious Freedom. That is because they it is not in their minds a genuine religion. This has been expressed not only by individual citizens but by religious leaders. An overarching view for those who want to deny religious freedom to Muslims is the view that Muslims place their religion over allegiance to the United States. The religion of Islam, it is said, is all about taking over the U.S. government and requiring all citizens to renounce Christianity. Tony Perkins of the Family Alliance, who is not what one would ever call an intellectual, was more precise. He has said Islam not really a religion but a judicial and economic system. He thinks it is only 16% a religion. At this time in our history to demonize Islam is to be successful in politics. Crowds turn

In a British museum is a preserved stone tablet from Babylon. It dates to about 2,000 BCE. Someone labored patiently to inscribe an entire passion play featuring the god Bel. I reiterate this is a stone tablet, not a recopied papyrus. The play begins with the god Bel arrested by soldiers and taken off the stage. He reappears at a trial in the Hall of Judgement. Bel is innocent but is sentenced to death. In the next scene Bel is accosted by a mob. He is despised and rejected. The actor playing Bel is then taken by guard to a hilltop in a sacred grove. Two criminals are taken with him. One of these is released. The the audience then leaves the theater and follows the actor Bel and his guards to the top of a hill where the death scene is enacted by hanging from a tree. The audience returns to the theater for the dramatic final scenes. The dead Bel is stripped and prepared for burial. On a theatrical hill to the side of the stage is a tomb where the body is placed. A stone is rolle

In surviving information about ancient religions, many that were present long before Judaism or Christianity, there were similar things about the gods. They were born of virgin mothers around winter solstice. The locations of their births was always humble, a cave or manger, but they went on to save the world. They encountered evil forces which killed them but they came back to life. The sources of these cults was not only surviving stone carvings and papyrus but also interviews with native people who had little contact outside their tribal life. The late Joseph Campbell wrote about the gods he learned about in conversations around campfires. During the period when ancients were writing a lot, some of which made it into the Bible, the societies surrounding the Mediterranean mostly had "savior-gods" that would save them from their troubles. The Jews were apparently alone in not having such a savior-god. They were comforted with something else, a coming savior who would

A cartoon making the rounds in atheist circles pokes fun of Christian colonists who arrive on a remote island. The natives have to explain to the colonists God was there before they arrived and make fun of their parochialism. Church members in the U. S. and perhaps a few other countries have been ponying up money for missionaries for a century or two. It's reasonable to ask what those donors have gotten for their money? I suppose many feel they are doing a favor of people in other countries by replacing the religion those people have had for centuries with Christianity. Unfortunately, there is no evidence Christianity sent a single person in any other country to an afterlife in paradise. It did pay the salaries of thousands of missionaries. Today Christians are being killed in the countries where those missionaries did their work. Those in the pews who paid for the missionaries can now see what was accomplished. The question raised by the parody cartoon is why the Chris

Many Christians claim they have nothing against homosexual people. They just do not above of homosexuality. The problem with this is that the Bible does not tell command this anywhere. A link author author notes what the Bible says about sinners, and what God thinks about them. He hates sinners. [Leviticus 20:23, Psalm 5:4-6, Proverbs 6:16-19, Hosea 9:15] When people have told me they "love the sinner, hate the sin" I always ask they how they make know their "love" for these "sinners."  Do they invite homosexual people to their homes? Do they meet up with them in cafes and listen to their stories? No one who says they "love the sinner, hate the sin" has done these things. They don't really love the sinner. It seems increasingly true that the weakest point in the faith is the desire to judge to sins of others. A part of the faith has gone out of its way to call out homosexuality. While neither the Bible nor Jesus himself is quoted as

What constitutes a good argument is somewhat in the eye of the person making it. Atheists hear the same arguments against them repeatedly. There might be some good arguments somewhere, but these we hear so often are not among them. An argument I hear often is that atheists don't want a god in their live because they want the freedom to sin. I always refer them to actual statistics atheists are under represented in jails and prisons while Christians are over represented. I realize that self reported Christians like those in prisons may be different that some other Christians. I realize also that breaking laws may not always be "sins." What a sin is is quite arbitrary. Nevertheless, prison statistics are always fun to toss out there. An argument certain not to work is, "Read this book I'm reading. It is the silver bullet that will bring you to Christianity." I heard that one so many times. I've bitten a time or two and found that person's reading

A Christian commentator recently lamented the decline of Christian numbers and the growing irrelevance of the faith in national affairs. His solution was for the faithful to stop arguing about fine points of theology, stop calling out sinners and start serving society. One practical idea he had was an army of Christian volunteers helping children in poor areas with their reading and math skills. He said it might lead a few to read the Bible but that would not be the goal. The goal would be to selflessly serve other human beings. One might think this would be an easy sell to the vast majority of the faith. But, it is not. I would guess there would be few takers. There is a large branch of the faith which really enjoys arguing the fine point of theology. It is far more fun to argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin than it is to help a child to read. The same is true about calling out other sinners. Think of the money that has been spent and continues to be

One of the main Christian shticks is that everyone is a big sinner and the only escape from this is begging for forgiveness from "The Man", God. If one assumes there is sin, and further assumes escape is blocked by a guy with a flame thrower, one must pay the price. An apparently popular book rings the alarm bell that liberal Christians are ignoring this blocked exit from sin. They are just sashaying passed the obstacle as if it is an imaginary one. The "mistaken" belief is the faith is about doing good for others. The "real" faith is about begging for forgiveness of  "sins." People are mistaken, this book preaches. Liberal people think this forgiveness requirement is something from creative minds ad is not required by rational people. Anyone who can look at Christianity from an arm's length distance can see it is filled with factions, each of which believes it is the only correct view of the faith. People deep in the faith cannot see t

As Christianity numbers seem to be falling it is common for pollsters to show increases in "nones", people who say they are associated with no organized religion. Once nones became the largest "religious" group right after Christians, the analysis as to who these people are and what they believe began. That there are atheists and agnostics among nones is easy to see. They are under ten percent but growing. The rest of the group is more interesting to speculate about. Promoters and defenders of Christianity are quick to note that nones who do not claim atheism should be put in the religious camp. It is said they have to be religious if they are not atheists. A long article in the Los Angles Times  tried to get a fix on how large spiritual practices such as crystals, astrology and terro cards has become. She said she was taken aback by the number of places these are practiced and the number of people who make a living as practitioners in this area of "sp

DNA has revealed the Palestinians may have been vilified because they were from a different culture. The ancients who wrote the Bible did not like them. They were recorded as difficult people and ones who doubted what the Biblical authors were preaching. The DNA collected from some graves of Palestinians tells use the were originally from Southern Europe and migrated to the area of the Biblical authors about 17 centuries BCE. From the Bible one gets the impression they kept their cultural identity and perhaps looked physically different. We have to use a bit of caution here and note that there may have been various cultures represented by those call Palestinians. The discovered bones with European DNA may have been but one of several subsets of people. The general point, however, that groups maligned in the Bible may have been demonized for reasons not given. They may have been foreigners or had a history different than the small group who wrote stories previously told around

Organized religion, the institution we usually call the church, was among the most trusted institution into the 1980's. Now only about one third of the public considers it a trustworthy outfit. The level of trust is still many times higher than trust in atheists. But, atheism and "no religion" are rising in popularity while religion is dropping. This is a lesson in how the public judges truthfulness. We would all agree the publicity about sexual charges against clergy have contributed to this decline in trust. But it was happening before all this publicity. Surely the claims made by preachers about sin, life after death and invisible gods are at odds with the increased access to science based information on the internet. And then there is the prejudice against homosexual people which is at odds with the majority of the public. All this, to me anyway, puts organized religion headed for a cliff of increasing levels of distrust while competing views on the ascendancy

I've mentioned here many time how helpful it would be if Sunday School classes for children would include comparisons of stories in the Bible with stories in other religions. Children would learn the Bible stories are nearly identical to the stories children in other religions have learned for centuries. In that way children could feel a bond with others elsewhere in the world and elsewhere in time. In his book, Folklore in the Old Testament (1975) Sir James George Frazer devotes over 100 pages to folk tales about floods. In countless societies there have been myths about world wide floods. I was near Rapid City, SD, a few years ago at a Native American museum and noticed a narrative about the Chief who had started the tribe which operated the facility. The museum is on a high hill in a flat valley. The folk lore of the tribe tells that the first chief arrived at the hill during the great flood that left him as the only person left alive. He started the tribe and all peoples

I've never seen a headline in a conservative site before this one proclaiming there is widespread depression among pastors. This includes pastors with suicidal thoughts. The long standing shtick of the faith is that "Jesus never gives you more than you can handle." Mental illness has also been thought of a demonic. The treatment then must have a religious source instead of a medical one. Religion, of course, is thought to have a solution to everything, alcoholism, drugs and bad marriages. There have been several stories of preachers committing suicide in the past few months. The frequency may not have increased but it seems now to be permissible to admit this happens. One or most prominent stories within the faith was the suicide of Author Rick Warren's son. Both Warren and his wife give public talks about the problem now. If a depressed preacher has told depressed people he/she counsels they need to have more faith or pray more one can understand what a down

I think it's safe to assume the entire Bible came from camp fire stories that predated the written word. Yes, there is the occasional personality that can be verified from third party sources but that is the exception rather than the rule. The reason to conclude this is that folktales have been written down for hundreds of years. Many of them predate those told in the Old and New Testament. Where and when these tales started we can never be certain. But, when there is evidence one existed long before the time the Old Testament was written we can suspect the OT stories predated OT writers. Then there is the inconsistency within the Bible. There are two creation stories in two different chapters Genesis. The days when various things were created is different. In one Adam and Eve were created before the animals. This is reversed in the other. In one "light" is created days before the sun. Critics say the two versions came from two different threads of story telling.

During the time of the Roman Empire, nothing seemed more secure than Paganism. While Paganism is still practiced it is a tiny force in the world. Why did it fail? Christianity largely replaced Paganism but it has stopped growing and appears to be declining. Why is that? I've always been fascinated with large institutions like huge corporations. Even the largest most successful ones eventually fall on their sword. General Electric has contracted, General Motors is struggling. Some day Apple and Microsoft will go belly up. Thousands of scholars and pundits try to understand why this happens. One thing that often happens is that corporate leaders misunderstand why they are rich and successful. They think it is because they are geniuses, or, that they work harder than anyone else. It may be they were just lucky. One scenario that often takes place is that a corporation expands and grows. Then it finds profits sagging so it announces lay offs of back-office people. "We wil

The Catholic Church remains a wealthy institution in spite of paying out billions to settle sex abuse cases. With its money it is able to fire gay teachers from some Catholic Schools. There are Catholic Schools which have funding sources other than the church and they continue to employ gay faculty. The latter may separate from the church. Major Catholic research universities have gay student clubs and advocate for homosexual rights. Local Bishops express a dislike of this. These Catholic Universities don't care what the local Bishop thinks because they have liberal donors and parents who pay high tuition fees. We can expect Catholic education down to the kindergarten level to play out the same way. This until the tight circle of orthodox Catholicism gets so small it must change. The same principle applies to Protestant denominations that have chosen to bash and condemn gay people. As long as there is enough money to keep these denominations afloat they will continue to cond

The number showing up to tour famous national historical sites is down , in some cases below levels back in the 1970's. While none of us knows for sure why this might be, it is fun to do some speculation. The answer might be simply one about economics. Maybe people are working more hours and have less discretion in their time and budgets for diversions and vacations of all kinds. Another goes into what story line is at the sites  and how that story is being accepted by contemporary society. Perhaps there is more cynicism about the our national narrative about how we  became a great nation. Was it about white male heroes of U. S. history or about killing natives and owning slaves? It seems inevitable the same cultural change keeping young people from staying with their traditional church is also why people are less interested in the orthodox narrative of our history. They have been exposed to so much propaganda they are not interested in hearing more of it. I went to an a

There are a couple of facts we all must face in the politics of abortion. One (A.) is that anti abortion politics are driven as much by the desire to punish women as it is about so called "life." The other (B.)is many decisions to get abortions have a large economic component. Many women terminate a pregnancy because giving birth present what they see as economic setbacks that are intolerable. A Christian group has decided it should focus on (B.) instead of (A.). This is going to anger those whose main focus is sin and the punishment of women who sin by having sex. This split among anti abortion people was highlighted in a great book about abortion, Her Body, Our Laws: The Front Lines of the Abortion War from El Salvador to Oklahoma.  The author spent years traveling and listening to women in the most restrictive countries in the Americas and in States of the U.S. She spent considerable time with women who run homes for pregnant women in conservative states. She foun

One of President Trump's so called "spiritual advisers", Robert Jeffress,  is calling out Democrats for having a god that exists no where but in their own minds. This is humorous. Since the beginning of recorded history there have been non believers who said those who believe in invisible gods have created the god in their minds. They point out it exists nowhere else. This brings up one of the great ironies about religion. Atheists and Christians agree that thousands of gods do not exist except in human minds. They disagree with about only one of them, the Christian version of a god. The same would be true about all religions. That is to say, atheists and religious people agree that 99.9% of all gods do not exist. The "god" Rev. Jeffress refers to that does not exist is the one worshiped by liberal Christians. It does not condemn homosexual relationships and does not tell women one fertilized cell is a human being. I recall sitting in a living room of

That is the title of an upcoming book by this author. She has complied all the cases she can find of law enforcement prosecuting pregnant women for a variety of reasons all the while saying it was to "protect the fetus." "Policing the womb" is such an appropriate phrase for the vigilantes that want to tell women precisely how they are to eat, exercise, work and maybe pray. Once the law determines a fertilized cell is a human being the floodgates of regulation of pregnant women will open. I'm curious as to what rights of privacy pregnant women will have if the fetus they carry is determined by politics to be a human being. Will they have privacy in the food they eat, their exercise and work schedule? Further, will their be rules about who they live with. It is not out of the question for Christian busy bodies to require that if a man is in the house it must be a husband. They would use the bogus argument that children are better off with two heterosexual p

A University Dean wants scientists to stop saying aboriginal people arrived in Australia around 40,000 years ago. That aboriginal Australians migrated into the continent is contrary to aboriginal mythology which says they have been present in that location since the beginning of time. It seems like the dispute between some Christians who think God created human beings and science which has established evolution brought about human beings. I understand some Christian colleges teach only that humans were created by God. Others teach creationism and evolution as equally valid explanations. Even President George W. Bush said it was good to have "all ideas" taught meaning creationism and evolution. It is peculiar that both in Australia and in the U.S. we have well educated people advocating young people learn less science and more myth. How could such a thing come to be? We also have high public officials, such as Presidents, implying they believe one fertilized egg is a