Thoughts of a Freethinker

Our public officials, mostly Governors, are forced with decisions about what to allow and what not to allow open.  Mostly these consequences are about economics, peoples jobs and the money they lose. A few involve actual lives lost or lives saved by a Governor's decision. Governors have to decide which is more important, lives saved by not opening or money lost by remaining closed. One of the most interesting is animal slaughtering plants. Apparently they have many people working close to one another, breathing hard, splashing water and blood on each other and spreading the virus. If the plants are closed people who work there suffer, farmers have to destroy their pigs, bank loans are not repaid and consumers have to eat nuts and beans for protein instead of feeding their faces with bacon. Maybe 100 million voters eat bacon. Farmers are a voting block as well as the bankers. The deaths occur among low income packing plant workers with little political influence. The economi

A prominent man in atheist circles today predicted an exodus of people from Christianity because all prayers for its end have gone unanswered. It's been even worse than that. President Trump declared the day, March 15, to be a Day of Prayer to end the pandemic.  Almost immediately the numbers of sick and dead rose sharply. I would be the first to admit praying makes many people feel better. The right word might be "cathartic." This is not what Christians are taught. They are taught that prayer actually changes events in favor of he/she who prays. The Bible explicitly promise those who pray will receive what they ask for. "All things, whatsoever ye shall as in prayer, believing, ye shall receive." (Matthew 21:22) Just in the New Testament there are at least 11 promises like that one. There are some in the Old Testament as well. Preachers from coast to coast are urging prayer to end the pandemic. How many millions are praying thinking it will do some good?

Over time, however, I came to wonder how the Catholic Church could put its name on institutions which make legitimate efforts to find scientific and philosophical truths, Notre-Dame University for example, but still make pronouncements that are clearly Medieval in origin and absurd today. I read about the Noah Flood in the Catholic Encyclopedia and wrote about what I found in an earlier blog. The Catholic Encyclopedia has many pages about why the flood is a myth. Interspersed, however, are sentences like, "The Church's position is that the flood is a historical fact." Following that is more reasons why it is not a historical fact. I began to wonder if that writing technique, stating the fact of the Church's position and also the facts as they are known in the secular sphere, was used elsewhere. I found that, yes, it is. Today I looked up " abortion " in the Catholic Encyclopedia. Sure enough, there is was again. In this case it was more carefully buri

If you make your living as a preacher, you need to be nimble. You need to take advantage of every opportunity in order to beat out competitors and grab your share of the money. There are some preachers doing this very skillfully with the virus. The preachers now doing this include some inside the White House. Rev. Ralph Drollinger leads Bible study for Trump's cabinet. He says the conronavirus is "God's consequential wrath on our (sinful) nation." Rev. Robert Jeffress pastors a mega church in Dallas and hobnobs with the President, "All natural disasters can ultimately be traced back to sin." John Piper was a mega church preacher in Minneapolis, "God sometimes uses disease to bring particular judgments upon those who reject him and give themselves over to sin." According to a poll, 44% of Americans think the pandemic is a "wake up call from God and represents "signs of the coming judgment." These are just preachers who ma

You have to wonder what gets into the heads of school boards and school administrators when they program graduation ceremonies that look like and sound like church. In this case it is apparent they attributed the entire program to students. This way they could claim students were merely exercising their right to freedom of speech. The court saw through this. The school had graduation ceremonies with Christian hymns and Christian prayers read by students. The court agreed students should have the right of free speech but an entire program stressing only Christianity was seen by he judge as manged by Christian faculty and administrators. The case is being appealed and I can see the amounts paid the atheist's attorney's reduced some. But the message was clear. The schools position must be know to be secular and separate from that of students. It reminds me of the case in an Ohio school district several years ago. The school district claimed the earth and everything on it

One of the most interesting developments within the Christian faith was the survey company started by George Barna. While Barna sold the firm in 2007 it remains focused on research that concerns the public's attitudes toward Christianity. He recently released survey results showing that the percentage of Americans who believe God is an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect and just creator of the universe who still rules the world today is now barely 50%. In 1991 73% of the public said the believed such a statement to be true. It would be reasonable to this figure will be soon less than 50%. It is a bit ironic the Christian Barna firm would publish polls that are every bit, or more, pessimistic about the status of Christianity than secular polling companies. I believe it is because it knows the specific tenets of the faith and asks about them in polls. Secular companies don't know the importance of these tenets so they ask about relatively meaningless views like, "Do y

We know all the economy is bad for all kinds of people and businesses. How are churches doing? There is lots of discussion about this. Some churches rely on the Sunday collection plate. We have to remember churches have high "fixed costs." That is, the cost of preachers/priests, staff and building maintenance goes on even when the church doors are closed. The period of closure has been only a handful of Sundays and according to interviews most people expect their church to reopen soon. If this happens the financial impact will be small. If it is longer, the weakness of the church business model will be exposed. Churches are mostly buildings built, not for general uses, but for a specific use. The economic problem is the big sanctuary is used very little. When churches began to put day care in their Sunday School room this was the beginning of sound business thinking. It was churches diversifying. What churches will learn from this virus crisis is they need to div

We've all learned about places and practices that quickly spread the virus. They are prisons, nursing homes, meat packing plants and church services plus a few others. It turns out church services are perfectly designed to spread disease. People are singing and talking projecting germs and breathing them in deeply. Then, there is the practice of communion. I've been waiting for someone within the faith to discuss how Christian services and rituals can be performed without killing those in the pews. Mostly those who write about religion only write about their demand to hold church services. The first article I found addressing a safe way to conduct church was by a Jesuit Priest. Those attending church will need to sit in assigned spaces six feet from anyone else. Churches with large numbers will have to hold many services. Each person who wants to attend will have to make a reservation and will be turned away otherwise. The seats will have to be sanitized between service

The religious web pages are these days as entertaining as the comic pages in our newspapers. One an evangelist goes into detail explaining why the virus is identical to when the Jews were captives in Egypt. This is a little hard to swallow because except for the Bible, there is no mention or archaeological evidence the Jews were ever captives in Egypt. Some scholars attribute the story as an effort to make up a heroic history for the Jews. It makes me wonder sometimes if there is a secret meeting somewhere when there is a crisis like this virus or 9/11 attended by all the TV preachers. All the crazy reasons with religious overtones for why the crisis might have happened are put into a hat and each preacher draws one and is obligated to use it but not steal from the reason other preachers shout. Maybe there are several kinds of sin so many can use one on those. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson agreed 9/11 was caused by homosexual people. Or, maybe there is an auction and the hi

The New York Times identified what is going at protests over the closed economy. It is a cultural war. Classes and political factions have divided on which group is available to die and which group must be not be allowed to die. What I have seen on television tells me most of those protesting closure of the economy are white and not elderly. If opening the economy result in more deaths, the deaths will fall more heavily on the poor nonwhite population and on the very elderly in facilities. The Governor of Texas said recently there are more important issues than the deaths. As I understand him, the economy is more important. Texas, under that governor, is among the most anti abortion states in the U.S. This means the good deaths are among adults, especially poor non whites and among the very elderly while really bad deaths are those on fetuses. Only a culture steeped in religion could come to such a bizarre conclusion. It is an education to see several flags at these protests. T

If there is one book in the Bible that imparts wisdom, experience, sound advice for how to live one's lift and is intriguing it is the Book of Ecclesiastes. Surprisingly, it is not in the New Testament were someone walks on water and rises from the dead. From Ecclesiastes comes many phrases used in modern English. Examples are "eat, drink and be merry," "nothing new under the sun" and "a time to live and a time to die." Ecclesiastes was praised by famous author Thomas Wolfe, "The greatest single piece of writing I have ever known." Parts of it were used or referred to by Pete Seeger, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Tolstoy and a list of song writers and poets too long to mention here. Those who don't like it come not from atheists but from those within the Judaeo-Christian community. Some Jews wanted to take it out of their approved reading. Among Christian scholars the question has been raised as to why it made the cut back in ancient

While all of us have read more and heard more about the Coronavirus than we care to hear and read, once in a while one comes across a broad view of viruses in general. I found such an article in The New Yorker.  It talks of the constant competition between humans trying to stay alive and viruses constantly changing and trying to kill them. We see a tiny window into this with the annual change in flu vaccines. The link includes a chilling quote from a Noble Prize-winning molecular biologist, ..We live in evolutionary competition with microbes, bacteria and viruses. There is no guarantee we will be the survivors. If there was a god, for example God, who loves us and is all powerful, why would he/she allow plagues of the past or potential plagues that could kill all humans? As an atheist pointed out recently, if there is a God, he/she is a really mean and nasty. If we move from the world of imaginary gods, heavens and hells into reality, we can realize humans on the planet ear

People who are out of work need money. So do governments. Companies large and small need money. That is why there are demonstrations demanding expiration of executive closing of businesses, schools and government offices. As several have pointed out, a trade off between money, convenience and death are made all the time. We could prevent over 30,000 deaths each years by lowering speed limits and enforcing them. We could prevent almost as many by very strict protocols in hospitals. Then there is the medical attention that could saving more new born babies and unhealthy adults. Put in that context, allowing the economy to open up when numbers of deaths is, say, equal to the annual flu deaths can use these other trade offs as justification. Everyday there are no doubt hundreds of life support shut offs because patients are not going to survive. This is both a money issue and is humane. There is more or less agreement in our society about these trade offs between money and lives.

Christian sites are brimming with Christian views on how to get through the virus period. Not surprisingly, there are also sites promoting other religions and philosophical views. I came across one that might help people, Zen Buddhism  . The Christian sites tell us over and over what everyone should do to get through this trying experience is to pray. This, of course, fits into our western culture better than other religious practices. If prayer helps you, by all means pray. The Buddhist site tells us this is an excellent opportunity to grow in the spiritual aspect of Buddhism. Quietness is the perfect time for the chant. Chanting, apparently, takes both physical and mental practice. Perfecting it so the mind is more or less unaware of anything else around one is the goal. Since I have never experienced anything I would call a profound religious experience I can only guess at what it is like. When an athlete he/she is "in the zone", performing perfectly and effortless

A recent article I found fascinating was about ancient Norway. As snow has melted in mountain passes artifacts have been found dating to around 100 CE. These mountain passes were trade routes to other parts of what is now Norway and maybe to other areas. The raiding parties by those we call Vikings came hundreds of or a thousand years later. The find illustrates the human passion to conduct trading. The cost of carrying a tiny bit of merchandise over a mountain, pelts or hand-made items, was astronomical as well as dangerous. When President Trump tried to block trade he was tinkering with a desire as old as humans. An updated version of "Natural Law" would include the desire to trade and to restrict that would go against "Natural Law." Also related to these mountain passes is speculation about the spiritual beliefs of those Scandinavians. Prior to around 1,000 CE they were thought to be some brand, or many brands, of Pagans. Today in those countries there is

Various preachers today tout sin, or some similar religious concept, as the cause of the Corona plague. Their solutions are the old standards, pray, etc. While these are covered by the press they don't  dominant as the explanation for why illness and death are occurring. According to the link the Black Death plague of the 1200's and 1300's killed, in some areas, half the population. There was, understandably, universal despair.  What happened, according to the link, was  people began to relate their suffering and the deaths to the pain of Jesus. The crucifixion grew in importance. People looked within themselves for understanding of the terrible circumstances. Apparently, the seeds of this way of handling the grief was planted before the plague began and became immensely popular as it worn on. While we are all sitting around waiting for this to end I thought I would speculate on what could happen today if our celebrities were different. What if today we had a Presi

It is astounding to read about loud Christians who want to hold church and get sick rather than abide by well established protocols for containing the disease. It is similar to Christians who believe God will protect them when they handle poisonous snakes. At least the snakes are fed before church to make them less aggressive. So often it is said, "The church does so much good." This good is offset by crazy thinking and harmful ideas. There are anti gay and anti women ideas. In this case crazy behavior that is unsafe offsets good behavior to run hospitals. I was a member of First Presbyterian in Fargo for 40 years. Decades ago a practice in such churches became popular, distributing candles to everyone and lighting up the sanctuary with the many candles. The Fargo Fire Department let it be known this was a violation of the fire code and much discussion followed. "This is a violation of our religious liberties. Church and State are to be separate," some church

One of my favorite Biblical passages is in the New Testament book of Matthew. It is a favorite because some believers make a broad generalization the Old Testament contains myths and exaggerations but the New Testament, including the resurrection, is history. In Matthew 27:53 it says that when Jesus was killed the graves of long dead people opened, skeletons walked out and were seen by many. (It doesn't say skeletons but what else could the long dead be?) These corpses were raised before Jesus was raised from being dead. In 1 Corinthians 15:20-25 Paul says when Jesus rose from the dead he was "first fruits." First fruits were the first grains at harvest time and were given to the temple. Thus Jesus was the first of the harvest that went to God. Matthew didn't know the long dead were supposed to wait until Jesus, the first fruits, was resurrected before Matthew ran his own corpses into town. The tale of long dead corpses walking out of graves is every bit as biza

Recently I referred to Jesuit Priest James Martin's essay where he referred to the "inconsistent triad." This is the religious notion that God is all powerful and all loving. An all powerful and all loving God would eliminate suffering. God does not eliminate suffering. Therefore God cannot be all powerful and all loving. Father Martin, relatively young, has just completed cancer treatments so he knows about confronting his own death. He concludes there is no escape from the "inconsistent triad". It is an impossible dilemma for Christians and the only solution is to put this part of the faith on a shelf and move on to some other religious concept. He suggests the life of Jesus. New York Time columnist, Ross Douthat, a former Protestant who converted to Catholicism, wrote today that Martin's view is unacceptable. Douthat says Christians must continue to seek understanding of the Coronavirus. He admits lots of Christians feel they understand God perf

I read a call to arms on behalf of "religious liberty" and I could not find any reference to "liberty" except anti-gay prejudice. The entire political thing about "religious liberty" sounds exactly like what was called "state's rights" back during the period of racial segregation. Back during racial segregation is was common for anti black people to say something like, "Well, we're not against black people. What we're all about is state's rights. And, some states want to continue requiring separate schools, swimming pools and water fountains for the other race because it may result in interracial marriage. That is prohibited in the Bible." In the link, the author challenges Christians to take a stand against men in drag reading to children in public libraries. Men in drag reading stories to children is, according to the author, a violation of religious liberties. Now, what "liberties" do the men in drag

One would think that when there is a time of crisis religious views surrounding medical issues would be set aside until the crisis has past. This is not happening. Instead religious governors and their cheering squads see the crisis as an opening to force religious views on the general public. They are doing this with abortion. The false claim is that abortions are optional and use medical resources that are needed to save lives of Coronavirus patients. A few anti abortion zealot Governors have used their emergency powers to limit access to abortions. Here is why the claim of medical resources is false. If a pregnancy is allowed to continue until birth, about ten times more medical resources will be required than if there is an abortion. Thus, outlawing abortions increases, not decreases, the resources available for the Coronavirus patients. Governors managing the crisis should encourage birth control, not stop abortions. Choosing to force religious views into government no d

One of Bart Ehrman's graduate students wrote his thesis on the ancient notion of demons. Now that student is a professor who writes and teaches about them. Clement of Alexandria, (about 150-215 CE) an early scholar who worked at combining Greek thinking into Christianity, ate very little meat. This was because he was convinced demons loved flesh and were contained in meat. People who ate meat were then filled with demons. There was agreement back then that demons existed but disagreement about what they looked like. Some said they were invisible, others slightly visible. One popular view was that the demon form was disembodied. A demon had no body. The notion of the morphing demon was in Jewish religious thought and something similar was believed in early Christianity. The various ideas about the demon body reflected a general preoccupation with bodies in general. When the practice of communion became common it was criticized by some as demonic because it was about Jesus&#

I've been trying to understand Bart Ehrman's series of posts on his blog. While one has to contribute to his local homeless charity to receive his blog I recommend it as a way to absorb small pieces of how a literary criticism scholar reads the Bible. Currently, he is dissecting the fourth gospel, the Book of John. There are two terms at play in trying to understand who Jesus was supposed to have been. One is called "Low Christianity", that Jesus was a rabbi and would be a leader of the Jews, and the other "High Christianity", Jesus as a god. Ehman has always said that to be complete and convincing, Christianity and the Bible need to provide a clear explanation as to who this main character was, a god or not, and, where he came from, a divine origin or not. Apparently, there is little disagreement the Book of John is a cobbled together series of ancient written work done not only by different authors around the time it came into being, more than 100 y

To pass the days of this crisis here is an opportunity. Look at Christian websites and read posts by authors who are promoting Christianity. Then, add up the number of articles which say, "This is not God's fault (even though God is all powerful and all loving) but you need to believe in God anyway. So, believe God is helping you in some way during this time of anxiety." Then compare that with articles, again written by Christians, which say, "Yes, God could have prevented this so it has to be his fault it is here. I don't know why he is doing such a terrible thing so lets just move on." The idea is to compare the two approaches, the propaganda one and the honest one. I've found one of the latter and now around 100 of the former. This is just in a couple of days. I realize Christian pundits are caught in a trap set two thousand years ago and there is no escape. Christians have been told they are caught without a defense since day one but have foun

So much of the clergy, including Protestant, focus has been on clergy apologizing and victims forgiving. I had never thought much about how this process looked to the victim until I read this link . The link points out that neither Catholic nor Protestant clergy institutions have spent much time and money studying what happens to the victims and what the victim's point of view is. If they were to ask, for example, what do you think would be a penalty appropriate for what happened to you what would they learn?  No doubt there would be a variety of responses but at least they would be asking the right question. One thing I think they would learn is that priests, preachers and church officers apologizing it insufficient. Currently, the Catholic approach is to apologize, pay out large sums of money but develop complex strategies, like bankruptcy, to stay in business. According to the link, this is not a response the response that appears like a total apology. Instead, it is beha

What is called the social-historical approach to understanding the Bible is becoming increasingly popular among Biblical scholars. We all know there are arguments about the context of individual passages in the Bible. Mostly, context refers to written material before and after the one being discussed. For example, the passage "I knew you in the womb" is used against abortion. In context it was referring to one person being discussed in that part of the Bible and not every Christian. If the concept of context is broadened to include a geographical part of the world where a bit of the Bible was written and approximately when it draws back the curtain of mystery even further. Non Biblical sources telling us a little about what was going on at that time and place plus hints in the scripture itself about that time period help us understand what motivated writers back then. There is a simple and practical way to read the Bible, remember those who wrote it had in mind a parti

Combing over the records of Catholic dioceses investigators found patterns that Catholic administrators followed when faced with allegations about priests. After years of moving them from parish to parish they began to send them to other countries. A favorite one was Mexico. The explanation was a priest "had fled" to Mexico even though he may have remained on the payroll of a U.S. parish. This dishonesty should be revolting to Catholic lay people. They should demand dismissal of all Bishops who took part in such shenanigans. But this is not an option for lay people. Catholic clergy are insulated from angry constituents. Over the past few hundred years clergy have slowly moved their sources of power away from church members and to themselves. Moving priests to other countries where they again had access to children implies Bishops considered black or brown children not worth of the same protection as white children. As the attorney representing children abused by prie

I wrote the other day about the sin of dancing and how it dominated the 1920's. Cities had ordinances against specific dancing, mostly named after women's movement like the shimmy. I mentioned it was a major form of sin in the church of my youth. We've all seen videos of tribal dancing, frenzied dancing around fires. Surely this is some kind of spiritual experience. Wiccans/pagans dances around Maypoles and such might be the same. Maybe the reason 1920's Christians were so against dancing was because earlier Pietism in Christianity had watched its effect on people and feared it. I mentioned in a earlier post we just had a granddaughter perform ballet in our building's parking lot. She is the second in that family to study ballet from small childhood on. To me ballet is full of illusions. When the male dancer brings the ballerina down from his shoulder he pauses just before her toe shoe touches the floor. It creates the illusion she is almost weightless. All

Our granddaughter did a short ballet program in the parking lot of the building my wife and I live in. The local press covered the story and if you are interest here is a link. I'm the very old guy watching from our balcony. https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/local/daniel-finney/2020/04/02/coronavirus-in-iowa-ballet-dancer-performs-for-grandparents-des-moines-neighbors-dsmstrong/5097922002/

News items often talk of the need for more young people to enter the sciences, "math and science." It is as if all progress requires more math and science. The truth is some of our greatest issues involve the social sciences and are not helped by math and science. The myths, grievances and misunderstands that cause wars come to mind first. In retrospect, it seems like many wars would have been prevented if humans understood each other and themselves better. Diseases are another. The current disease is said to have started because of myths that meat and bones of certain wild animals is the secret to strength and health. This was the source, according to current information, for the corona virus. There are countless myths like this all over the world. Science by itself cannot solve some problems. I remember one of my first courses in college as a young adult majoring in agriculture. The course was about what I would call the sociology of agriculture, though is was not

Why would anyone, anywhere in the world, think the ritual of communion is so important lives should be put at risk to keep up the practice? Yet, there are religious leaders who insist it must continue. While I could never understand or enjoy the ritual I know it is a powerful one to many people. We had a wonderful preacher years back that told of going to nursing homes and performing communion. He said it was so emotional to some who could not speak that when he himself went home he was exhausted. The various versions of Protestant communion are not very sanitary. The best one is taking the tiny plastic tumbler which is thrown away. The bread as I recall came in squares on a plate which was reasonably safe. Worse is the practice at the liberal church up the street, pulling off a piece of bread and dipping it in a bowl of juice. I will not do that one. Catholics have big wars on the internet about whether the wafer is placed on the tongue by the priest or scarfed some other wa