Thoughts of a Freethinker

It seems humans have feared death since way back. The ancients , like those of us today, dealt with that fear by manufacturing in their minds an afterlife. While we don't know about what all the "afterlives" were like, usually they were better than the present life. A human mind that can make up gods surely can make up afterlives as well. And, those who want to control humans in real life can do well by demanding they behave in a way that benefits the shaman. Maybe you have heard of sin. The link describes pieces of casket found in Egypt dated around 4,000 years ago. The caskets were engraved with detailed maps explaining the routes to the afterlife so the dead would know how to reach them. Our current version of this practice is found on the internet. Every week or so it a new article written by someone who is a self appointed expert in what to expect in heaven. My many dozens of time I, myself, have been admonished about what I am to expect in the afterlife. Whe...

The biggest cultural/religion issue right now is abortion and the second gay marriage. In my view, it is hard to overstate the role of abortion and gay rights in the 2020 election. Trump's conservative Attorney General  stated clearly the right is losing the cultural war. In the past 50 years, he said recently, religion has been under increasing attack. There has been a "growing ascendancy of secularism and the doctrine of moral relativism....we cannot depend on the pendulum swinging back....This is not decay, it's organized destruction." That growing secularism has been caused by an "organized destruction" from the left certainly is contrary to polls. Polls show a big reason young people lose respect for Christianity is the attacks on gay people and abortion rights by its political arms. Christian has not lost ground because of organized resistance but has shot itself in the foot. Since the right wing branch cannot see its own failings it has com...

First, it was the surrogate womb, the fetus developed in another woman. Inevitably, someone would start developing an artificial womb for the nine month development. Now, experiments are under way. While the artificial womb will take several years to perfect, it seems like an idea that will happen. I would guess there are sources of money for the research and women's organizations are very supportive. There are many circumstances where women's lives are at risk during pregnancy and delivery. This would reduce or eliminate that risk. The social and political aspects are more fun to contemplate. What would happen to the practice of abortion. If the womb could be moved from one place to another, protesters would not know where the abortion was taking place and would have no one to shout prayers at. And, there are more men than women who oppose abortion. If the man who impregnated a woman objected to her having an abortion, the woman could simply sign over ownership of t...

I bought an Apple computer for a granddaughter last week. It cost more because of Trump's tariffs. Farmers' prices are lower because of Trump's tariffs. Will things ever get better? Trump had complained China was stealing technology from the U.S. So far as I know these thefts continue. Technology has been stolen internationally and domestically since forever.  It will continue so long as our companies profit from selling things to China. Companies know going into business relationships, either domestically or internationally, this happens. It was as predictable as the sun coming up in the morning job losses would result from higher tariffs. Slowly confirmation of job losses is coming in, now confirmed by the Federal Reserve. Thus, fewer people are working and what they buy costs more. This is the classic lose-lose scenario. I recall seeing an interview done several years before Trump got into politics. Back at that time Japan was sending goods to the U.S. like Chin...

The most widely read evangelical magazine in the world, Christianity Today, recently endorsed the removal from office of President Trump. What this editorial position portends has been discussed in dozens or maybe hundreds of articles and blogs. The link claims the CT article hints at deep chasm with both Protestant and Catholic branches. For much of the life of modern Christianity their has been little introspection. Advocates claimed they were following the Bible, coming up with different conclusions as to what was in there, but always being the soldier for Christ. Comments here at this blog often bring up what they refer to as the "great philosophers." They are referring to the chain that included Thomas Aquinas, etc. Starting about in the 1970's and certainly in the 80's a new thread of philosophy became prominent in intellectual life. The writers included recently deceased Toni Morrison. She wrote about introspection and the role of self in selecting moral...

When Galileo built a telescope and found the earth rotated around the sun instead of visa versa things started getting rough. He ridiculed a pope who argued with him. The Pope and government were mostly one and the same so Galileo was placed under house arrest for years. In recent decades the Vatican undertook a study of the Galileo period in an attempt to resolve the dilemma. The dilemma, of course, was that a pope was absolutely wrong while preaching all popes have a pipeline to God and the ultimate truth. At the end of the study the Vatican did not find the Pope wrong, only that "mistakes were made." Over centuries we've had Darwin, unsuccessful searches for the Moses story and other Christian myths debunked. Now technology means searches for the past are moving even faster. By finding teeth which don't disappear like other parts of the body scientists now can find DNA. That allows them to track where people migrated from and about when.  This, in turn, nar...

Each passing generation is less religious than the one before. Teenagers today, called Gen Z, are twice as likely not to believe as their parents. Generation Z is defined two ways, those born between 1996 and 2010 and those in the study, born between 1999 and 2015. The skepticism of Gen Z in different than that of old people like myself. In older Americans much of the resistance to the faith comes from hypocrisy and judgmentalism. In Gen Z the young people refer to the dilemma of evil and poverty existing at the same time there is supposed to exist a loving God. They hear no compelling explanation of how this could be. Certainly there are explanations provided but they do not register as logical to Gen Z. Also mentioned often in the survey were policies of some parts of Christianity against LGBTQ and immigrants. I don't see anyway the faith can win over this cohort and remain hostel Gen Z on these policies. Gen Z then remain in embrace of relativism. They are not necessar...

I went to the new Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker,  with younger people. Not really familiar with the genre I had heard it had religious themes and was curious to see if I could understand it. We all know of the ancestral worship shown in Egyptian tombs. It is also a part of native religions in the Americas. That is the religion of Star Wars. The Skywalkers are the clan given the responsibility to carry the torch for all of human (and half human) kind. Luke and Leia Skywalker has now passed the torch to Leia Skywalker II. My understanding of Star Wars is so superficial I hesitate to go into it too much. At one point there is an epic battle between Leia II and a male villain. After it is over and she wins she first spares his life, then kisses him. He then dies. I asked a younger person why he died in the story line. Eyes rolled because this villain was a turncoat and had killed so many in previous stories there was no way he could be allowed live. Perhaps it was lik...

Sometimes what religious leaders say leaves one rolling on the floor laughing. So it is with a Bishop in Illinois. He blames someone or something else for the criminal activities of priests and Bishops. Society has become too secular and uses birth control, he says, and it causes priests to sin and Bishops to hide these sins by moving priests from parish to parish. Catholics should be criminal defense attorneys with their genius defenses. Catholic clergy claim they are descendants of Peter and that gives them powers afforded to no one else. Is seems like this power and prestige should have given them the ability to persuade the faithful to not use birth control. Instead, nearly all Catholics defy these important men and practice birth control. It is hard to comprehend nearly all Catholics would ignore such holy men unless they had doubts about this claim. I might be able to help the Bishop in Pennsylvania come up with equally good reasons for  pedophile priests. I'd sugges...

Since day one people have wondered why some people are attracted to the same sex while others are attracted to the opposite. It has often been pointed out it does not matter why this happens or even that it does happen. The curiosity is driven by the view it should be prevented and it we know why it happens we could figure out how to change people with same sex attraction. The prevailing view for decades was that same sex attraction in men was caused by a domineering mother. One can assume the origin of this theory was that women are to blame for all kinds of things including homosexuality. We, exactly, is a "domineering" mother? Is any mother who holds and expresses opinions domineering?  And, what then causes female same sex attraction? Is that a domineering mother also? There has been a theory that teenagers "search" for their sexual identity, might be uncertain are it and are vulnerable to suggestions. There is no basis for this theory either. The link...

One compliment you can give anti abortion operatives is they have been successful in attaching a negative connotation to abortion. Abortion has become something uncomfortable to talk about. Abortion is similar to the gay issue in this way. For who knows how long being gay was shameful. Gay people kept this part of themselves hidden and so did their friends and families. According to what I have read, the Reagan's had close friends who were gay. Every Sunday morning two men, prominent in show business circles, put on a brunch at their home in the Hollywood area. Celebrities of all kinds dropped in the mingled. Almost always it included "Ronnie" and Nancy. But, when the gay issue came up in politics, President Reagan always disapproved. There was a wink wink understanding between himself and the large Hollywood gay community where he was well liked. Nancy championed a solution to AIDS. Abortion is in about the same place today. Self righteous moralists have made it a...

There is a controversy in Sweden over a piece of art. The art depicts a gay Adam and lesbian Eve. An explanation of the art explains why it is consistent with the Bible. The painting is hung in a Swedish Lutheran Church, the government's denomination. Many branches of conservative Christians work hard to put their religious views into law. When they do this they are coming close to establishing a state church. It is often pointed out to such groups, including the largest denominations, Catholics and Southern Baptists, that when government starts advocating religious views it may come to advocate views the opposite of yours. Abortion is one of these religious ideas some religious groups want government to ban. If government can ban abortion it can also require abortion. Political winds do often change. The same is true of gay marriage. All the efforts to make gay marriage illegal have failed. Had government entered that issue conservative people may have found out too late ...

Before a recent conference of Bishops in Baltimore, the Pope issued a statement saying, in effect, there are many issues before you. Treat them all with the seriousness they deserve. This includes poverty and global warming. After the conference the Bishops concluded global warming and poverty are not urgent issues. The "preeminent" issue is abortion, they said. Sometimes those who comment about my blog say I spend too much time talking about the rights of women to obtain abortions. My response is always that it is Catholic Bishops and right wing Protestants who spend too much time talking against abortions. If they would stop trying to regulate women's lives the world would be a better place. After the conference, the Bishops droned on about the meaning of their word "preeminent." They were not disagreeing with the Pope, they said, by using that word. All the Pope's issues are important said the Bishops. It's disturbing to think people without...

Prolific author, Bart Ehrman, will soon release a new book about how concepts of heaven and hell changed during the period when the Bible was written. They continue to change today. Today, I suppose every believer knows their bodies stay in the ground and rot or are burned up at the crematorium. If there is a heaven, then, something else has to go there. The concept of a "soul" was invented to solve that problem. The innovation of a soul being separate from a body had not occurred yet at the time Jesus was supposed to have lived. In the Old Testament the body and soul were never separated. According to Ehrman, the views attributed to Jesus were that the coming kingdom would separate believers from non believers. The right minded would live in an earthbound paradise, not one in the sky. The naughty people would not go to hell but would be annihilated. Souls and bodies were one unit, not separated. Views attributed to Jesus were the prevailing views of Jews at that time...

In Chapel Hill, North Carolina, an almost closed church has been "rebirthed" by focusing on the ills of capitalism and paying off debts of individuals. It pays off debts of members and non members. The long link explains the strange path which led to this growing small church. I tried to figure out the finances of this church but was unable to do so. It started with 600K savings so that explains some of it. But it will need to sustain funds into the future to pay off peoples' debts so somehow it has to keep raising money. We know the majority of people with unsustainable debt got into that situation, not because of poor money management, but because of medical bills or loss of jobs. Such people will often have at least a little money to pass along when their crisis has past. Partly, it started by pastors admitting that what church members talked to them about privately were not topics usually addressed in the church's theology. They talked about their money pr...

The notion that religion solves everything, or even anything, cannot come to soon. This is especially the case in health care. When an illness threatens peoples' lives and religion does not help it is time to drop the religion garbage. For several generations, judges have sentenced those with various dependencies to attend Alcoholic Anonymous and similar drug dependency groups. These are called "12 step" programs and all claim the only route to breaking from dependency was submitting ones self to a "higher power." What was meant by the term "higher power" was never defined. The founder of AA was a devout Christian so one would assume he meant the Christian God. I've heard that many groups refer specifically to God and scold those who doubt this meaning. The "higher power" approach never had statistics for evidence that it worked. Many believe it was no better than the cure rate for those who never attended any AA meetings. In rec...

Ancient peoples of the Middle East and Europe settled into agriculture long before native people in North and South America. Stable populations of farmers needed to either live in cities for protection or needed cities as places of commerce. Cities brought humans in close contact. Humans lived in close contact not only with other humans but with their domesticated animals who passed on some of their diseases. Agriculture and its unclean ancient cities, as opposed to nomadic existence of hunting and gathering, meant the spread of diseases. Wave after wave of disease swept though these humans of the Middle East and Europe. Those individual lucky enough to be born with resistance survived as did their descendants. It is thought the great societies of native people in the Americas, the Mayans, Aztecs, Incas and Mayans did not form their spectacular "lost cities" with pyramids until 500 or so CE. They did not live with animals nor have a long history of surviving the sa...

Anti abortion zealots like to call themselves in favor of life or "pro life." It turns out they are actually "pro fetus" but not pro life. There are many things they could advocate that would save human lives. They take a pass on these and spend their time and money of saving one fertilized cell. In the U.S. itself about 35,000 people are killed each year in car crashes. Most of these lives could be saved by stricter traffic laws and money spent on enforcement. So called "accidents" are crashes that occur due to intoxication, driving too fast and other preventable driving behavior. The lives are not saved because there is neither money or votes in saving these lives. To be "pro life" would be to do something about car crashes. Hospital sanitation and mistakes cause another large number of deaths. People who do not see doctors because of the expense result in many deaths. To be "pro life" would be to advocate for universal medical...

While the Bible uses the written word on papyrus to explain what one of the famous god is all about there was a form of communication long before the written word. That communication tells us of other gods preceded those currently in play. These are cave drawings and ancient sculptures that tell us about the spiritual world passed down to those who wrote the Bible and other religious tomes. Some cave art like this is dated as much as 40,000 years ago. Until recently most of it was 15-18,000 years old. To put this in perspective our human-like ancestors go back 200,000 to 300,000 years. A scientist in the link believes even older cave art will be discovered in African in future years. While I had a minor in anthropology in grad school, I don't want to portray myself as knowing a lot about it. But my curiosity remains about where customs and beliefs came from. Those who wrote the Bible had ancestors who lived in caves and drew pictures on walls. The thread from those in the...

The Vatican is quite secretive so I don't know how this information leaked out. Only about 10% of the annual offering for the poor goes to the poor. The rest goes to fund questionable projects and the bloated Vatican bureaucracy. I'm sure the Vatican would give a reason why every broken window with an image of Mary needs to be investigated by clergy. And, every divorce that requests an annulment needs paid staff to "investigate" whether the marriage ever took place. There seem an endless parade of conferences where high level clergy are required to fly to other continents. This is where "money for the poor" is spent. Money collected across the world at the end of June called "Peter's Pense" are advertised as "used by the Pope for philanthropic works throughout the world." An investigative arm inside the Vatican smelled trouble, however, and raided the offices of this so called benevolent operation. The raid discovered "seri...

It is alarming how many religious zealots there are high in the Trump Administration. Who they are and how they think is like returning to the middle ages. Let's remember how far off the mental track President George W. Bush was. He told the President of France that France should join the invasion of Iraq because it was run by the Satanic forces of Gog and Magog. This has been referred to as crackpottery. President Bush's crackpottery was no worse than the religious views of many now serving in the Trump Administration. They "know" of demonic influences lying in wait for the unwary people of the U. S. and only the thin line of those Christian appointees stands between a Godly nation and the moral abyss. VP Mike Pence does not believe evolution should be taught in public schools. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo thinks, "...politics is a never-ending struggle until the rapture." He has also said, "Jesus Christ..is the only solution for the world....

There is a spate of gay/trans issues in Christian colleges. These are always about a student or faculty member coming out while the college administration says it cannot tolerate such sinners. Students and faculty almost always support the outed person. Administrators give them the pink slip. As the link points out, the colleges will lose. The links tells what I have been saying here for a long time. Elementary teachers teach tolerance. They tell students about other ways of thinking and to accept ideas different than their own. I have sat in these classes with my grandchildren and seen teachers refer to various websites that explain these differences while the students locate the information on their laptops. Students are demonstrating, administrators are lecturing them on their improper ideas of acceptance. In time, students will be doing the lecturing. I would guess the administrations' positions are not strengthened by the shrinking enrollment at small expensive colle...

It is almost a requirement that Christians believe the Apostle Paul condemned homosexuality in 1 Corinthians 6:9 of the New Testament. The problem is, no one, absolutely no one, can take the Greek word that Paul (or some scribe later on) used in there and say it meant same sex sex. Whenever I see these certain behaviors, abortion and homosexuality, referred to as "big" and most important sins I'm reminded to material I've read about those who wrote the 1611 version of the King James Bible. By all indications they were a conscience group wanting to finally get the Bible right. They poured over the Greek and tried their best to find where words were used elsewhere to determine what they might have meant when originally written or inserted later by scribes. In the notes they made they admitted they often had to just make a guess. Today scholars have the entire Greek writing as well as thousands of other Greek documents on computers. They can scan each word over c...

A recent blog claims that not all religions are sold with a promise of avoiding death. Reading the blog, but not knowing personally much about what religions across the globe have said about death, I'm skeptical about some things the author claims. First, we have to remember that all religions take place in the heads of people. So, when famous religious works are considered the "voice" of the faiths they may not actually be what followers think or talk about. As Professor Stephen Prothero points out in his book "God is Not One", any religion can be thought of either as what its leaders claim or what its followers think  it is about. In ancient Greek paganism souls continued but had a lower status than in life. Homer's Odyssey discussed a place where there is no joy.  Ancient Shintoism viewed death as a dark underground place. The link author claims these latter religions are not the glorified versions of death adopted by Christians. While they are ...

A Christian who became addicted to opioids from taking them for pain wrote a beautiful post about how his faith contributes to the problem. He calls the Christian criticism of drug use "bad theology." The group Alcoholics Anonymous has been successful for many decades claiming that the path out of dependence on either alcohol or other drugs is handing oneself over to a "higher power." It is claimed this is not meant exclusively to be the Christian god. That, however, is the most commonly held concept of a higher power in the Christian world. I know people who attend the AA meetings. They say some groups talk openly about giving oneself to Jesus while other groups avoid to a degree this overt Christian worship. The link author went off opioids by taking alternative drugs for a long time. He was given opioids in decreasing amounts by trained professionals using tested drugs. It is exactly what modern science based treatment programs advocate. There is more than...

Right wing religious people who want to claim they can turn gay couples away from housing, fire them from jobs and refuse to provide whatever service they request may not be as successful in the long run. The Fuller Seminary booted a gay man for having a partner. What a court will decide is not yet known. Since the beginning of Christianity followers have used it to impose their will over others. I suppose this is true of all the major religions. It is one of the general problems of religion. It was true of slavery and later segregation. Religious bigots tried, and are still trying, to limit the rights of citizens who are attracted to the same sex. They successfully lobbied for prohibition of alcohol. They want the right to refuse to rent to unmarried couples, gay couples and, I predict, mixed race couples. Those in medicine want the right to refuse to sell or provide medicines for abortions. One thing religious zealots are not good at is the long game. They are so certain of ...

In story telling that predates the Bible, there were evil beings. Somehow, three evil beings, Satan, devil and the snake got combined into one in the Bible. "The word of God" has been slip sliding its way through time since it was invented by ancient Jews. Paul thought it would not catch on, and he would not be a big time celeb, if circumcision was required.  So that was dropped early on. God supposedly wrote a commandment, "Do not kill." But authors of the Bible thought it better that God kill so they had him killing two million. That God was supposed to "love" humans but he killed those two million. As the centuries past authors thought they should develop a "God lite" so his persona was improved. All this, even though the "faith never changes." I had never read about the changing villain until I came across the link. Here were see not only the Bible's god changing but the Bible's evil beings as well. As the link expl...

Anti abortion zealots have no limits to there mission of regulating the behavior of women. This bill would require each fertilized egg which did not become a fetus to have a death certificate and funeral. Doctors and others who know about this subject matter say a fertilized egg must become implanted on the uterus wall before it can be considered a pregnancy. About half of fertilized eggs do not became implanted and are absorbed by the body or expunged. It is all but impossible to locate these unsuccessful fertilized eggs so no a death certificate can be issued--a death certificate is required before there can be a funeral. In any case, a microscope would be needed to find the "corpse." In fact, a microscope would need to be present at every funeral for the "viewing." If this all sounds like it is right out of crazy land, it is. Crazy land begins with the idea of the one cell human being and just keeps going further off the rails from there. That the one cel...

Around 2010, a man named Scott Roeder came up behind Dr. George Tiller in Tiller's church and fatally shot him. Tiller was murdered for performing abortions which were and remain legal. All the big anti abortion groups issued public statements criticizing the murder of Dr. Tiller. Yet, I heard interviews with anti abortion protesters who said in effect, "These doctors should fear for their lives." Today protesters carry signs warning doctors they may be harmed. Under the radar, so to speak, are anti abortion zealots who organize to support murders of doctors who perform abortions. They are funded enough to have their own website where they sell their books about hate and the religion that goes with hate. Our country has a history of such groups. It was within my lifetime black people were accused of such things as looking at a white woman and hung from trees. Those who did this were no different from today's advocates of murdering doctors. They used religion...