Thoughts of a Freethinker

A basic mistake in the Catholic hierarchy is that priests and bishops are not held accountable for what they say. When we see bishops shifted child molesting priests around to different parishes to keep them from being made public we must conclude bishops are not held accountable for what they do either.  When several bishops said and voted to make abortion the most serious of sins, it would have been appropriate for the Pope or some high ranking mucky muck to have asked them publicly to state where in the Bible is says abortion is a sin of the highest order. The bishops would have been left speechless because they would be unable to do so. In fact, according to the professor and link author who is a Catholic, bishops have stopped looking for the Bible justification against abortion. New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman wrote recently the Bible does not condemn abortion.  So, how do some of the bishops justify their opposition to abortion and to giving President Biden communion? ...

Posting of these blogs has been irregular because I've been on a marathon car trip. Now we're back from driving to (Godless) Rhode Island. We saw lots of signs in Ohio featuring God and Trump on the same message.  Painting Democrats as Godless liberals and Republicans as cross and flag carrying Christian nationalists is a political program that may propel the next politician to be the Republican Party's Presidential candidate. If Trump does not run the door is open for another crazy  feast on Republican primary voters. Trump appeared at an event very near to us on our trip to Rhode Island. Commenters have been critiquing his performance. They think he has lost his ability to hold a crowd for his 90 plus minutes of grievances. Of course his supporters beg to differ. One of the most telling aspects of this performance was that Fox News did not carry the Trump speech. Pundits made much of this.  What we are seeing among Republican hopefuls is a doubling down on their religio...

I came across a discussion of children estranged from their parents and my first thought was, "That is sad." Then I began to recall how many families among those we have known have this situation right now. It is not that uncommon and some who study it believe it is increasing .  While the link does not discuss differences over religion, I always think about the potential for estrangement when I read articles on Christian sites insisting parents instill the Christian faith in their children. What a better formula, it seems to me, for estrangement as adults. I don't think preachers are doing their flocks any favor by badgering parents to badger their children. The same applies to atheists who take risks by badgering their children to avoid beliefs in religion. Parents who believe they are "saving their children from an eternity in hell" are perhaps more common than children who feel they need to save their parents. I'm aware of alcoholism, mental illness and ...

Roger E. Olson is a retiring faculty member at Baylor but not a Southern Baptist. His quirky views on religion are always interesting to read though too conservative for me. He recently pondered the term "public theology" and what it might mean.  We can start with the two words, "public" and "theology." Public, of course, means a broad cross section of U. S. society. This would imply "public" refers to religious people of many stripes and to people who are not religious.  The word "theology," however, is hard to get a handle on if one tries to exclude religion. Olson believes theology has to be about religion, specifically so far as I can tell, Christianity. There is a hint, then, that "public theology" is a contradiction in terms. I would approach the concept of "public theology" differently than does Roger E. Olson. Economists have for hundreds of years pondered what we can call "change" and when "ch...

I know Catholics who say women who want to be priests are nothing but "women libbers" who want to disrupt the orderliness of the church. I suppose there are some of these. I'm sure there are opponents to women in the clergy who have no other motive but power for men. Yes, we can speculate of both such people. The New Yorker featured an article about Catholic women who are so drawn to the priesthood they cannot hold themselves back from performing the duties. These are women who have academic credentials and who are loyal Catholics. They simply do not see a reason for being excluded, have congregations and go on with the rituals and duties of the priesthood while not recognized officially by the male hierarchy which set the rules. While the women featured in the article are in the U.S., there is a discussion about the many woman functioning as priests in Germany. Along with gay marriage, women in the clergy is advocated by a large swath of German Catholics. As discussed h...

The size of crowds at these events and the number of events themselves grow each year. The number attending church falls. Perhaps LGBT events are not bigger than church events yet but things are going in the direction of bigger crowd numbers.  There are lots of complaints about them. The link refers to a panel of doctors and preachers who say gay Pride events are harmful. LGBT events are simply more fun than going to church.  It might be a good time for the Christian right to become just a bit reflective. Instead of condemning the sin of Gay Pride Month, June, they could ask themselves where they have failed? Why is it the public is not only increasingly tolerant of gays, a large portion of the public is actively advocating for gay rights? I recall decades ago I was discussing the gay rights Mayoral Proclamation with a gay man who is still prominent in Fargo. He said we should point out to the Christian right how ridiculous it will look in a few decades when the general public...

If ever a document laid out efforts at mind control for all to see, it is Pope Paul VI directives on the Holy Eucharist in his Mystererium Fedei Encyclical. He warns Catholics not to succumb to believing what they see and feel in the real world. Instead they are to replace reality with the fantasy he, Pope Paul, provided.  This is what Kim Jung-Un of North Korea does. He broadcasts to his public they should be happy they have him a ruler and should not focus on food shortages. Hilter told the German public they should focus on being the superior race and not on how many young people were being killed in his war.  Today I read a piece on a Christian site that told the faithful they should not focus on the falling numbers in the faith. Instead they should focus on the "Holy Spirit." The reason to focus on a dream world instead of the real world is simply control. Kim and Hilter knew this. Leader in Christianity, Islam and Hinduism know it as well. Cult leaders we have known in ...

I happen to live in a state where, when population changes and political districts need to be redrawn, a panel including both Democrats and Republicans convenes to draw the new lines. In many states, the party controlling the legislature draws the lines in such a way as to give the current majority an even better chance of winning the next election cycle.  Republicans have been especially aggressive at taking advantage of this in recent decades. This is given as the reason they do so well in the House of Representatives. Democrats made some gains, especially in suburban districts, and gained majorities in some states. Many democrats expected their party to redraw the lines to take back what Republicans have gained. There is frustration they are not always doing this. Some call it the Democrats "curse of good government."  Paraphrasing it says, "We must cheat like Republicans or they will eat our lunch." The latter have a point certainly. At the moment, Democrats hav...

Catholics are supposed to believe Jesus told Peter to carry on the work of Jesus. More and more Bishops are coming to believe Jesus wants them to tell the Pope what to believe rather than visa versa. In the U.S., Bishops are telling the Pope priests must not give communion to politicians who hold liberal views on abortion. In Germany, priests are telling the Pope it's good to bless same sex marriages and they are doing so. One Christian pundit , not a Catholic, believes Catholic structure has changed permanently. Current events make a joke of those Catholics who say they are happy to be in a religion with structure, unlike the helter skelter of Protestantism. Maybe Catholics will find some scripture where instructing Bishops to tell Popes what to believe. The Catholic hierarchy has been skillful for centuries at incorporating various cultures into something resembling it core messages. Now, it seems to me, things are different. Cultures and politics of white European cultures are s...

From time to time there are stories of "heroic" missionaries who died while trying to convert people in some other part of the world. Were they really heroes, or, were they fools? I read the just completed Southern Baptist Conventions renewed its commitment to missionary work.  Recently I read again about the Waodani (other names are also used) Tribe in the Amazon basin of Ecuador. This group steadfastly remains separated from outside societies. For some reason white people from the U.S. have remained fixated on converting the Waldoni. On Wikipedia there is no mention there are Christians in the tribe today though it's possible there could be some. The entire tribe is only between 2,000 and 4,000 members. Several missionaries have been killed trying to convert the Waodani. Apparently converting them has been an obsession over time. Still being written about is the widow of a young missionary killed by the Waodani. The widow took her baby and lived in the tribe for a yea...

Catholics for Choice had produced promotional materials in Spanish . They did this after watching an over-the-top campaign by anti abortion groups trying to influence Latin voters in SW USA. Catholics for Choice recognizes better than many Catholics that the Church's clergy promotes anti abortion theology, not because the Bible is anti abortion, but to control women. Women are the threat, not abortions. One can be a good Catholic by following the Bible. It is not necessary to accept interpretations provided by self serving clergy. Ironically, according to polls, Catholics for Choice represents the views of more Catholics on the issue of abortion rights than does Rome or the Bishops now meeting in their funny costumes. If all Catholics would stop having abortions lots of current clinics would close. Germany might be the best example. Even though there are a lot of Catholics in Germany there are about 100,000 abortions there each year. It is well known that black and Hispanic Catholi...

I hope I'm not engaging in hyperbole when I say a big event in Christian history is coming this Fall. It is the report of the Catholic Church of Germany on gay marriage, women in the clergy and some other liberal views. Recently in Germany, Catholic clergy blessed gay marriages and there was a preaching tour of Catholic women. There is no doubt the report of the German Catholic Church will be directly at odds with the Vatican. The link , written by a priest academic, gives three alternative scenarios that might follow the report. The three alternatives are, more or less, the Pope excommunicates German Catholics including its clergy, German Catholic split up among themselves to follow Rome or Germany and the third is some combination of those two. The authors three alternative can be ignored. None of these will happen. As an overview, lets review Germany. The government collects a lot of money from German Catholics and gives it to the church. The German Catholic church employs so ma...

One has to admit the anti abortion portion of the Catholic Church is a cult within the denomination. While the Pope wants to present the world with a denomination and bishops who are in agreement on how to operate the denomination there is another group who would prefer to see less money and membership. Pope Benedict suggested this latter, a smaller but more "pure" church, was preferable to a larger, wealthier and more politically influential one. The anti abortion cult among Bishops is driving for a vote on whether President Biden should receive communion or not.  It's fun to speculate on whether Trump would have received communion or not had he been a Catholic. It looks to me like he would have. He committed all kinds of "sins" but he said he did not endorse abortions. To some Bishops and lay people there is only on religious issue and if you are on the wrong side you cannot be a "Christian." This even though polling confirms a majority of Catholics ...

I thought the lie Biden's election was tainted with fraud originated with the likes of Trump himself, Rudy and the usual political entourage. It turns out the lie is most often repeated by some in right wing Christianity. The path to the lie is simple. Trump is a messianic figure. God would not allow his defeat. Even if we have no evidence now we know it is there somewhere. Paraphrasing, "When we say the election was stolen because God would not allow Biden to win and know there is evidence somewhere, though we don't know where, we are not telling a lie." A site that make fun of Christians said today, "Anyone who believes there is an invisible being(s) would have no trouble believing there are invisible votes somewhere."   Now there is prophesy Trump will return to office in August. This sounds quite like the many times in my life preachers have predicted the end of the world on a specific day. Some of these, like Harold Camping, sincerely believed in the ti...

Yet another article appeared this week with a solution for the ever growing number of empty churches. This columnist and former Southern Baptist preacher ran through the usual list of "causes" that are often given for the decline in Christianity. These include people have psychological problems and are unable to accept Jesus. His solution is this: More people need to love Jesus! Of course that's only a solution if one thinks there is a Jesus somewhere. Or, every was a Jesus.  Christians like this pundit are unable to understand the mind that does not think there is a Jesus or a God. When they search for a way to stem the tide of people leaving the faith they look here and look there for causes when the real cause is right under their noses. Yes, many who leave the traditional faith and church life continue to hold some concept of the super natural. But, it's not the one the church teaches. If it were they would continue their church lives. Lots of Protestants make lig...

Christian branches include those who have gone bat$hit crazy over abortion and in self-righteous piety over gay marriage. I forgot to mention no women as clergy branches. We know there are Muslim groups in the U.S. with strict and crazy rules about how women are to dress and other nonsense. The press does not discuss much Hasidism, Jews who live by an ultra strict moral code while waiting for the real messiah. Needless to say Jesus was not it. A new book reviews the history of how Hasidic Jews ended up in the U.S. and have been able to build an invisible wall around their cult in the midst of gigantic cities. Unlike the relatively isolated areas of the Amish, etc., these people are face to face with secular society every day. This branch of Jewish people people survived the Holocaust. They did not fit in in Israel, however, because they dislike Zionism. They are different from Orthodox Jews. Their leader found what he liked in an area of Brooklyn, NYC.  These Hasidic Jews survive, ...

Whether it's the famous wedding cake boycott, wedding photography or serving gay customers in a restaurant the argument is the same, "My religious beliefs tell me it's immoral." The latter, not serving gay customers in a restaurant came from Fargo, ND. Years ago a server called me to say her boss told the staff to just let the gay customers sit with no service. She told me the servers got together and vowed to defy him. Claiming the "moral argument" is "Christian" is where the things get iffy. The majority of Catholics poll in favor of gay marriage. Plenty of Christian churches march in the gay pride parades where I appear with atheists. No one can point to a passage in the Bible that condemns gay marriage. The passages used to claim gay sin are riddled with bullet holes. Anti gay Christianity is the classic example of using religion to justify prejudice. It was done with slavery and segregation and it's no different with homosexuality. Among ...

Sites about religion are overflowing with writing about Russell Moore, a prominent Southern Baptist who criticized Trump, who left the Southern Baptists. Noted columnist and Methodist, Mark Silk,  notes Moore's leaving has more to do the the decline of denominations than the sexual abuse among Southern Baptists which Moore discussed in his exit letter. The Methodists are about to split into one rather large conservative denomination and several more liberal ones. Methodists have a big publishing house and that will probably fold. Southern Baptists are declining, Lutherans and Presbyterians have split. Author Silk notes that a few years ago conservative denominations were poking fun at liberal ones because the latter were declining. Now, after the splits some the liberal denominations are larger than many of the old conservative ones that were doing the scoffing. Of the remaining denominations, churches often do not advertise their affiliation to their denominations. They think it i...

If history predicts the future, there will be a steady stream of books written by people who were declared dead by nurses or doctors but survived. The books will always, in my observation, be about entering some heavenly-like place. Often including some church music.  I gather it is not all that unusual for sick or injured people to lose their vital signs, be technically dead and then recover. A few years back a doctor wrote a best seller about his heavenly claim. A young boy wrote one and then fessed that he made it up. Does anyone write a book who had this happen and remembers nothing? Would not that be just a huge a "miracle" as seeing something?  Reports about seeing things no one else saw is a theme in religion. I think it is common in others besides Christianity. Christianity uses the terms, "visions" and "revealed." And, it works for religions to have individuals claim they saw things and/or had visits with invisible or long dead people. So far as I...

  An official of the Republican Party lauded the Pride Month of June and bragged LGBT membership in the Party has grown. The leader of the Family Research Council is REALLY angry. For the Republican Party to endorse sin is a travesty Tony Perkins says. Perkins, who complains about the "cancel culture" wants Pride Week to be cancelled. Nothing makes him madder than people doing what he disapproves of.  The old wink wink deal between lower corporation tax lobbyists and anti abortion and anti gay Christians is showing some stress that was predictable from day one. Corporations need employees and customers. A few decades ago they thought they would lose neither by getting cozy with right wing Christians on homosexuality and anti abortion. In exchange they would get fewer regulations and lower taxes. Now corporations need gays and women more than they need evangelicals. Hence, the Party endorsed Gay Pride Month and got unloaded on by pious Tony Perkins.  Perkins wrote in his t...

About 40% of voters will vote against anyone and anything that is called Democrat or liberal. What set of ideas is central to these voters? Perhaps a window into the longer standing remnants of the movements are the demographics of the Jan. 6 attackers. They are not low income Americans, their incomes higher than the national average. A sociologists referred to them as the "Elite of the Left Behind." A good portion of these people are anti abortion activists. But the remainder are a cross section of occupations including many self employed. One thing that dominates is rural states. Another is that of being wronged by the rest of society, of being passed over and others getting more than they get. Back in the early days of Trump it was noted rural males saw the way things operated as unfair to them. Women were moving up, they were not. Black people were moving up, they were not. The majority was out to harm them. A political talker who stood up for them against the majority ...

The terrible and cruel tail from the Bible about Noah's Ark has been whitewashed to children for generations. I suppose telling the story of people and animals who "escaped" the flood seems happy. Telling of drowning innocent children and pregnant women is conveniently left out.  This appeal and the opportunity to sell tickets to visit replicas of the Ark are irresistible to con artists. One is Ken Ham in Kentucky. He made a promise to local governments in a poor rural area of Kentucky: Borrow money and give it to me. I will pay taxes back to you and you can pay off the bonds with it. Then, Ham decided paying taxes was costing him money he wanted for himself. So he changed his corporation from a private one to a nonprofit that did not pay taxes. Local governments took him to court and lost. "God" won, local people lost. Now there is a funny Ark story from Europe. Someone there had the same idea as Ham did in Kentucky, build a replica and charge people to go insi...

I've been told countless times during my many decades of public life I am going to hell. Those who warn me are ever so confident they will not be going to hell with me. Now, if it is impossible there is a hell, why would anyone think I would feel threatened by such a ridiculous threat. I guess it is because the writers think there is a hell and are sure it they tell me they believe such a place exists it will cause me to worry. The hell thing is not unlike the many times early on in this blog anonymous commenters told me I am gay. Writers thought this was the most devastating insult they could come up with. That was funny because if I thought being gay made me somehow less of a person I would not have issued gay pride proclamations. These have stopped.  My question about hell is, why would anyone believe such nonsense ? The trail of items one must create in his own mind to make "hell" real are as long as your arm. First, there is the imaginary god. Besides imagining there...

I've been to Nauvoo a couple of times and plan to return one of these days. Why? Because it is a place where religious history was born. What came to be known as the Mormons (who now use a different name)  and the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (which also use a different name) split up and went their separate ways. The link from a Mormon publication reflects the solemn importance to Mormons of Nauvoo. It discusses the meaning of the Temple and religious events such as the prophesies of Joseph Smith. I'm sure many would disagree, but to me visiting Nauvoo is akin to visiting Bethlehem or "The Holy Land." It is a place where religious people believe miracles or miracle-like events took place. They see it as a spot where events important to the entire world took place. The link explains why the site of this Mormon Temple is so important. You will see language in the link used only by Mormons but they would be offended if you did not know the te...

How far we can take the concept of "civic religion" is a topic talked about by some publicly by some and thought about by others. Some of the "founding fathers" who did not seem especially religious themselves talked of religion as a good thing because it gave the public some kind of common cause or common aspiration. There is disagreement on what a "civic religion" is or could be in the U.S. Nevertheless, history has provided us with at least some direction. History taught humans thousands of years Jews and Christians some level of cooperation among themselves is needed to survive.  Killing everyone else left no division of labor for food, housing and reproduction. This did not mean it was wrong to kill and rob competing groups of humans. It is widely understood the Ten Commandments did not advise against all killing and robbing but applied only to the tribes of Jews at the time. So, do not rob and kill everyone are part of a "civic religion." V...

China has run through years of trying to "engineer" the number of children per couple to fit into its quest for a nation-wide improvement in its standard of living. Starting back a few decades ago it established on one child policy. The idea was smart in economic terms. The country was spending gigantic sums on schools and child care. Women in rural areas were needed in cities to work in factories. They could not do this if they spent 30 years of their lives pregnant or caring for children.  Large families also drained the government. Money spent on schools was money not available for new technology. The one child rule was very successful measured against the goal of the policy, economic growth. While that are many variables involved it is undeniable the one child policy was part of what leap frogged China's urban standard of living upwards. No doubt planners and economists knew the policy would be difficult to sustain. There were complaints from the public. Then there wa...

It's laughable some in the Catholic hierarchy are claiming the biggest issue facing the world is abortion. Have they not read the Bible? It's been said more than once if you want to learn what the Bible says ask an atheist, not a Christian. We all know the Sunday School story of God killing all the babies and pregnant women except for Noah's family. Killing children, fetuses and women is acceptable if they are thought to be sinners. It would be good for anti abortion protestors to know this.  Then there is Numbers 31:15-18. The order there is to kill and the women who have had sex. Then kill all the little boys. I've walked among anti abortion picketers and they have shouted scripture, but never the one. The prophet in Hosea 9 talks of killing children and women with empty wombs and dry breasts. The children, unlike today's fetuses, are not innocent. They are the guilty parties. But, the faith never changes (sarcasm).  A group of children were expendable in 2 Kings ...