Thoughts of a Freethinker

Catholics have not always argued by running quotes for Catholic Encyclopedia up the flag. Nor have they always argued their case by quoting from the organization of U.S. Bishops. This practice of legalistic argument has been labeled "The New Apologetics." The link author, who formerly made his living as an apologist in the Catholic hierarchy, explains that the current practice of answering a question as to what or why Catholics advocate is to swamp the questioner with answers from many Catholic sources has not always been the mode of operation. In the past there have been questions about the origin of some beliefs. Today, it's as if there has never been a debate or question about the sources.  In today's world of skepticism, this doesn't cut it. People scoff and leave. The author points out that quotes in the Bible attributed to Jesus does not find Jesus handling questions in this way. While there is some reference to the Old Testament and such, Jesus is portrayed...

I've heard about from individuals I knew well and read in reliable sources there were entire wings of hospitals devoted to young women with infections from home abortions. It would be reasonable to assume most home abortions did not end up with infections--meaning there were lots of abortions. I've mentioned before my late friend who was in Fargo politics and who grew up on the streets of Fargo. He died a couple of years ago at age 99. He said there was the usual amount of teenage sex in his circle. There were pregnancies. Doctors back then most often had individual offices around the town. I grew up on a farm in Iowa and there were individual doctor's offices in small towns around our farm. My friend said it was well known in his circle of teenage friends which doctors would "take care" of a pregnancy. Was this the way it was in every large and small city? My guess is yes. There is a letter to the editor in my paper today which sheds light on abortions during the...

Recently I wrote about the Pope demoting a Cardinal who said priests can't officiate gay weddings because they "can't bless sin." It is apparent the Pope knows the Catholic position that gay marriage is a sin, but he does not want clergy to bring attention to that indefensible notion. He thinks it best if the sin thing is never mentioned again anywhere by anyone.  A few days ago he carried the "gay people, we Catholics have nothing bad to say about you" a notch higher. At a Vatican gathering he admonished parents of gay/trans children to respect and love those children. Sin has evaporated into thin air.  It is obvious to the Pope the church's position against gay marriage is folly. He knows also there is no way to change it. It is a Catholic strategy that when the church or a Pope is wrong, officials do not correct the incorrect position but just ignore it and carry on. The wrong and right positions simply exist together.  I've mentioned "the Ga...

A professor from the conservative University of Chicago, a place that loves to see the marketplace decide things, believes as I do abortions will be paid for through private fundraising. They will be available within driving distances of anti-women states and cost little of nothing for women who want them.  We've seen the amount of money the right politician can make by bilking the public. Trump is using millions of dollars to help bail out his failing hotels and resorts. Huge amounts of money have gone to anti- abortion groups. Now these same groups will profit by spreading the myths they can change states with liberal abortion laws. Expect to see leaders with big cars and houses. The amount of money raised to keep abortions available to women in anti-abortion states has grown rapidly. There has not been a clear picture of how much travel is going on but apparently there is lots of it. As I mentioned recently, the long border Texas and Mexio share will present opportunities for ab...

God needs to do something. We've discussed here before the shelf life of the sun. That is the sun will one day use up its gases and explode. So far God has not done anything about this. Of course, if God only exists in the minds of humans then when humans are gone God will no longer exist. On the other hand, right now is the opportunity for God to show us he is sovereign--that he exists somewhere else besides in the brains of individual humans. He could show us his existence by halting the sun's deterioration and save those he "loves." That said, he killed to many humans in Bible stories it may be he hates humans. That he has not done anything to stop the sun from deteriorating makes it look like he will do us in and cheer about it. Now we have another thing to pray about. We humans can only survive if the earth's temperatures are within a livable range. The temperature of the earth depends on both the sun its hot inner core. God needs to do something right now to...

All the rage today is discussion of "church planting." Church planting is the Christian name for startup churches. Denominations start churches. Mega churches also start churches at other locations. There are free standing unaffiliated churches as well. People who write about church planting admit there is no comprehensive data about the success rate. The best source I found was one which collected some data and interviewed many people involved. This found 68% of the startups lasted at least four years. Interesting, however, is the more money spent on advertisement and the bigger the paid professional staff, the higher the success rate. This is the same formula for startup businesses of any kind. This report did not include the percentage of people joining startup churches that came from other churches. While nearly all startups say in their written material they seek the "unchurched" who do not attend a church, from what I've read the people attracted most oft...

Like many others, the meltdown of Jerry Falwell Jr. has always been a mystery to me. He seemed like someone in free fall and could not get in control of himself. Finally, a writer claimed to get behind the facade of his public persona to find a person who, along with his father, did not buy into to pious and narrow life of the fundamentalist brand of religion presented in public. It is the story of a family harmed, destroyed in some ways, by religion. Jerry Sr. always appeared as the judgmental fundamentalist. He told lies about Clinton using Clinton's sexual sins as a backdrop. Always the most religious person in the room he excelled in getting publicity. Jerry Sr., however, spent himself into a corner and pleaded with Jr. to help bail Liberty Un out of its near bankruptcy plight. Jr. had no interest in religion nor Liberty but came aboard and turned things around. Jr. and Sr. were close buddies, according to Jr., closer than the son who took over the church or the daughter.  Jr. ...

There is at least a slight uptick in use by liberal political operatives of the Bible to defend the rights of women. Anti abortion whackos always refer to the fetus and all the rights they, not our laws, assign it. These anti women groups never mention the rights of the pregnant woman. I have asked commenters on this blog many times to lay out what right pregnant women have. The only reply so far has been the woman has the right to give birth. To use the Bible to advance rights of women and gay people requires both knowledge and discipline. I admire those who do it well. I've been following events within the denomination of my childhood, the Evangelical Covenant Church. This denomination, originally a breakaway from the state church of Sweden, brags it does not need a creed. The Bible provides everything needed for decisions about the faith it says. It is apparent the business strategy of the denomination is to successfully move from being a white rural denomination to one of mixed...

I predicted here that when abortion was outlawed in some states there would be large scale travel to nearby states and countries to abortion sites. I've read money is flowing to areas where women needing abortions are helped. There has not been news coverage of these efforts until now .  Missouri is a backwards state when it comes to women's rights and will quickly outlaw abortions when possible. It has, of course, a long border with Illinois, one of the best states for abortion rights.  There are two clinics just across the border in Illinois. These clinics are preparing for large numbers of women coming across the state line to receive abortions. Along with the services provided, a call center serves as a logistics operation for women. It arranges for transportation, housing and childcare for patients. Because donations are arriving many of the costs for women are being covered. Interstate 70 runs east and west across central Missouri which provides easy access to where the ...

I say often here Christianity needs to change--it needs seem relevant to the general public which no longer needs to hear the old song and dance. I know, however, for most of the faith this is a bridge too far.  Think of what would need to change in order to broaden the appeal of Christianity. First there is the staff including any pastor. He/she likes what is being preached. Those in the pews either inherited the faith or chose it from among what was available. Where is the force that will change outdated beliefs or prejudice against people who are different? Something outside the church must change and force it on the church. Forces outside the church have forced many changes in my lifetime. Female pastors did not start before women's liberation. Gay members, pastors and marriages did not change until gay rights caught fire. Abortion rights were mainstream, even endorsed by the Southern Baptist Convention, until revenue forced parts of mainstream to be against it. As discussed he...

I've been watching videos and reading about "church planting," the term used by denominations that are funding new churches. All the material is filled with enthusiasm and stories of success . I've not come on the most important information, numbers. The link is a fellow who started churches for the Southern Baptist Convention. He claimed to have great success there but left. He started his own consulting business planting churches for any denomination. His schtick is he can go into black urban areas where almost no one goes to church and be successful.  That is the same strategy as the denomination I grew up in, the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC). Originally it was a Swedish church but dropped that long ago.  The ECC claims to be growing with some 250,000 members and starting urban churches regularly. I watched a video of its convention last year. The executives, including the Financial Chief, gave glowing reports of how things are going. Filling in between the li...

I spent much of a previous decade trying to get a Ten Commandments stone removed from public property in Fargo, ND. I was President of Red River Freethinkers, the group taking the City of Fargo to court. We were unsuccessful at getting the monument removed. However, any court case lays the groundwork for others and ours goes into the permanent records as opposition to government endorsement of one particular religion. There seem to be many of these government and religion controversies at any moment in time. Our atheist group where I now live places atheist displays in the state's Capitol at Christmastime in response to the Christian manger scene. In Boston, the city's refusal to allow a Christian flag made it all the way to the Supreme Court. If the court rules Boston cannot discriminate and must allow religious flags if it allows other flags like the rainbow, Satanists will fly their flag. Satanists have already put up a permanent monument next to the Ten Commandments in one ...

I've been poking around the net trying to find recent stories about the volume of abortions being done in the states and in Mexico near Texas. There is little information.  The last story I found in the U.S. was from September of 2021.  New Mexico has the most liberal and common-sense laws in the Southwest. By September of last year clinics there were swamped with Texas women coming for abortions. In addition, a back- office operation to assist women in making appointments, arranging and paying for transportation went from all volunteers to five full time paid staff members. Around $25 million has been poured into helping women from Texas get abortions. The lack of news stories is understandable because information about getting abortions for Texas women has gone underground. Texas' anti- abortion laws give a bounty to any citizen ratting on another citizen who is getting an abortion. Inquiries from women in Texas and information to women there about getting abortions must be ...

I have had many friends born in India. They have been wonderful additions to my life. In several cases couples married who were not from the same regions. They discussed complications such as how "hot" a family's food should be. Sometime there was tension about a career wife versus one who works only in the home. It was delightful to read a skilled journalist tell of he and his wife's differing branches of Hinduism. Growing up in different regions meant different prayers to different gods and different sacred holiday celebrations. He guessed their differences were not a great as the marriage between a devout Protestant and a devout Catholic but there were issues to work through nevertheless. They have a child who is being taught both sets of Hinduism. In writing about these differences the link author referred to "traditions."  Christians would refer to "Bible-based beliefs" or "faith based on scripture." Christians would do well to use t...

Methodist professor and columnist Mark Tooley discussed recently a group of Catholic "intellectuals" (I put that in quotes because I follow one or two of them and they don't think very deeply about anything) who observe the sinful nature of U.S. society and have concluded the problem is democracy. People vote into office individuals who do not follow the wise and Godly principles of Catholic theology.  The term used for this body of thought is integralism. Its advocates conclude the U.S. democracy was doomed from the start because it did not require the tenets of Catholic teaching which God intended for the nation. As a result the moral fabric is declining and needs to be reset on the correct path. It goes without saying these Catholics have fellow travelers among conservative Protestants. To both groups the sooner we stop elections, free speech and freedom of religion the sooner our nation can be saved from moral peril.  The link lists a large group of advocates for this...

Trump held a rally in Arizona yesterday. He has two per month scheduled for several months. He has lots of donated money to do this which no rival Republican has. There is no rival anyway.  Biden is already running. His speech about Trump was the opening of his campaign. Biden laid his trap for Trump. He said Trump is a liar. Now when Trump lies about the 2020 election results he walks into Biden's wheelhouse. The media stories about Trump cover what is on the surface and understandable. This is Trump endorses Republicans he likes and others cannot get in the game. This means candidates who game the lie about 2020 run are nominated. More honest candidates give up or are defeated and the Party goes into the election season wounded. The odds of winning go down. Many then ask if these lies wound Trump as a candidate and if the lie takes down others on the ticket why does he insist on running? Another way of saying this is, why would Trump want to go down as a two-time loser. All of th...

A sociologist who studies religion provides a nice over view of the changes taking place. There are various reasons Christian numbers are falling, especially white numbers. But, she notes so correctly, one part of the change is a movement within Christianity. At its core is the inability to accept the Bible as a literal source of the faith.  The subject of the link is a professor of religion in Connecticut who plots press coverage of religion. She found liberal Christianity is getting more and better press today than conservative Christianity. The reaction to this is Conservative Christianity has doubled down on the requirements to be in their fold. One example is Russell Moore, the subject of other blogs here. He was removed from a high position in the Southern Baptist Convention because he criticized Trump. Trump himself is under fire within his own camp the endorsing Covid vaccinations. This is the purification that continues to unfold and is at least part of the turnoff to youn...

I've been looking for a group or dialogue addressing how Christianity anticipates dealing with its declining numbers. It turns out there is a nonprofit  focused on just that. Reading about its take on things leaves me with some doubt it is on the right track. Nevertheless, it is addressing today's reality which few others are. He addresses branches of Protestantism, though surely it applies to some degree to Catholicism as well. The link traces attitudes toward Christianity. It concludes the larger society viewed Christianity as positive until a time in the 1990's. Then the view was neutral for several years and turned negative 10 to 20 years ago. What is needed, the author says, is a strategy for maintaining the faith in the society which has a majority negative view of it.  The author finds three types of groups in the Christian community (he calls them evangelicals--I'd rather limit use that term). One is those considered liberal Christians. They have social standing...

If ever there was a teachable moment, or a teachable decade, about Christian denominations it is now. Anyone who follows the politics of religion knows several "mainline" denominations have split over whether to hire gay preachers. The Pope is doing fancy footwork trying to retain gay members and their families and supporters by downplaying the denomination's prejudice theology.  Now the Reformed Church is splitting. The Reformed Church was formerly known as the Dutch Reformed Church. Even before the split it was down to 200,000 members from 300,000 in the mid 1980's. A new gay hating denomination is being formed, the Alliance of Reformed Churches. One can see both the new group and the old will be quite small. The Covenant Church of America I grew up in, which I always assumed was very small, claims to have 600,000 members.  While I grew up and went to college in Iowa I never encountered the Reformed Church. Now moving back in retirement I see it is somewhat prominen...

While women are forbidden from being priests/preachers in some branches of Christianity thank goodness they are not forbidden from writing and lecturing about Christianity. A great article about the "Christian nation" notion shows us the U.S. is not a Christian nation and hopefully never will be. It is written by a woman with nerve and was published on a very Christian site, Christian Post.  Among the pilgrims were a few that wanted to establish a utopian Christian society. Some of their brethren stayed behind in Europe hoping the push aside worldly forces there and bring sinners to God. Today, whether it is the anti abortion, anti gay/trans, anti immigration or the put prayer back in schools branch there are those who want a version of what some pilgrims wanted, a utopian Christian society. The pilgrims were disappointed. Today's Christian utopians will be also. Here is why. The children of pilgrims did not believe the same things as their parents. Parents were roundly d...

Pope Francis demoted an Archbishop who said the reason the church does not bless gay marriage is because it cannot bless sin. The Bishop will retain the title Archbishop but will no longer hold a high administrative post. He was relegated to a smaller diocese. What could be wrong with saying "can't bless a sin?" It is a violation of the Catholic Church's method of dealing with unresolvable dilemmas. Let's go back to Galileo. About 20 years ago, a committee in the church was assigned the task of solving what it referred to as "The Galileo Problem." The problem, of course, was that a pope had declared the sun revolved around the earth, not the earth revolving around the sun. We all know Galileo made telescopes and figured out the earth circled the sun. Galileo was put under house arrest for life. Since any pope hears directly from God, how could the church decide God was wrong and thus the pope was wrong? After ten years in the committee, a decision was m...

The times are different, but the politics is the same. Issues are thorny, hard to explain and usually have no emotional punch. Personalities, human frailties and fear will beat issues every time. That's where the votes are. It is said Biden often advised President Obama to go after his opponents. Obama disliked this kind of politics and preferred to discuss issues. Now Biden has the pulpit. Better  look out opponents. Biden's signature line about Trump in his recent speech was, "You can't just love your country when you win." There seems recently to be a hint our country can return of its former version of patriotism. The former version was sort of, "a good American is honest, helps his fellow citizens, defends again enemies, etc." The Trump and company version is a good American is lower taxes, against abortion, against regulations, believes Biden stole the election and hates foreigners.  An interesting effort to turn back this new and terrible version ...

Long ago I was on a church "outreach committee." Our job was to contact potential church members.  One young woman told me she would not join our church because she had attended our preacher's sermon. It was a passionate case against divorce and for remaining married. I learned she soon after was divorced. She saw the limits to staying married, the preacher did not. Marriage rates are falling. That this hallowed institution is failing so baffles the Pope he is talking about married couples preferring pets to children. He is missing single preferred to marriage. We all know the statistics about marriage. Being married lowers the chance of poverty. Children of married couples do better on average than children of single parents. Being married is given the label of "being happy" while being single is given the label of "being lonely." In spite of this evidence, a different reality is hiding under the surface.  It takes fortitude to write about topics that...

There are two interesting words that are important but not easily mastered--I'm not sure I have done so. They are esoteric and exoteric. Slipping from one to the other is part of both anti vax and anti abortion. It might be easiest to start with anti vax. Anti vax operatives, like the Green Congresswoman, start with esoteric information and convince themselves vaccines give people disease. Esoteric is information inside a group and not shared with a wider audience. The information she had that started her down the rabbit hole of false conclusions came from propaganda sources, not from legitimate medical sources. These not legitimate sources claim vaccines are giving people Covid and killing them. While there are unusual cases of people experiencing reactions to the medicine there is no source observing spread or death from vaccines. Green and her blind followers were not content with being and esoteric group, however. They began public discussion of false information. In doing that...

Russell Moore held a high post in the Southern Baptist Convention. He criticized Trump. He was dismissed. Now he has a different job and is expressing his alarm at support among evangelicals for supporting the Jan. 6th attack on the Capitol. His concern is not about secular influences overpowering those of the faith but of the faith burying itself in politics. Lots of people, he writes, poll "evangelical" but have no link to the church or its tenets. They don't attend any churches and have no intention of doing so. Instead, they think of "evangelical" as a political party. Various symbols were carried into the Capitol. One was the southern rebel flag, the symbol of segregation. Another was the cross. A few Bibles were seen along with anti abortion signs. Trump signs everywhere. All of these groups hate. That is the current face of evangelicalism.  Moore believes these groups are contrary to the most fundamental teaching in the Bible. That, of course, is his opin...

Of one thing there is no doubt, each person added to the population uses resources. Those resources are not infinite. Each net addition to the earth needs food, housing, recreational space and transportation. Nevertheless, there are bloggers who try to downplay this problem or pretend a.) the earth can absorb infinite amount of population and b.) the problems of declining population are greater than those of over population.  The link cries an alarm about falling birth rates and carries on about the problems of an aging population. I don't want to deny the shortages of labor that will or do exist as people like me live longer and the percentage of young people to care for us gets smaller. However, when one puts the problem of fewer people in the labor force to care for the elderly against shortages of food and housing plus the potential for social unrest it doesn't score high.    The link plays with an old issue. It is that population numbers are not an important force in...

What humans believe or may have believed is a challenge when on visits Chaco Canyon in northern New Mexico. I've been there. To visit Chaco Canyon National Historic Park is to be taken back to a time that looks prehistoric. Yet the mysterious society that built complex buildings, the ruins of which still stand, were from relatively modern times, about 800 to 1100 CE. Caves in the area were inhabited as early as 2,000 BCE.  Anyone interested in religion should visit Chaco Canyon. Its people left ruins and there is some oral history. No written language was passed down. What its residents believed can only be surmised by looking at the ceremonial buildings and the impressive roads (not sure if they were roadks or religious monuments) that stretch for miles. The ancient roads are mostly straight instead of adaptations of animal trails. The debate goes on as to whether the roads were for transportation or were symbolic because they are aligned with the sun or moon phases. What is mostl...

  A big prayer event is planned for this month in Texas. We all need to see if it affects anything. The group sponsoring this quotes scripture from here and there in the Bible. Its overarching conclusion is only two countries in the world are in on the God deal called the covenant. They are Israel and the U.S.  The problem is there is so much sin in the U.S. God is mad and may break the covenant. This would mean chaos and destruction everywhere in this country. So the BIG prayer event is called intercessory prayer. Those praying will intercede in the dispute between God and the sinners of the U.S. and save it from God's wrath. The link article from Christian Post.Com treats these people as if they are sane and rational people instead of the whackos they obviously are.  I have the impression there are thousands of Christians across the country claiming to do intercessory prayer. They pray that God will cause something that is very unlikely to actually happen. A couple of d...

While it has always been the case societies invent and manage the direction of religions, this past year has been a teachable moment. Instead of religion remaining a "constant" while events and views in the surrounding society changed, we saw in 2021 religion running to catch up with society wherever the latter goes. On January 6th we saw the cross and the flag carried by those breaking into the Capitol. The entire event was fueled by the political claim of a fraudulent election. A large branch, perhaps a majority, of Christians say to this day the election was caused by cheating. The majority of Republicans poll supporting this and that the party is at least 3/4th right wing Christian. Anyone who claims societal norms are not running conservative Christianity is not paying attention.  A few years back there was at least a debate as to whether the Christian right should abandon the concept of separation of church and state and crawl in bed with big business that always wants ...

It's popular to call other groups, not your own and not yourself, narcissistic. "Atheists are narcissistic because they want to live in sin and not suffer the consequences." "Trump is narcissistic, Hitler was narcissistic, etc." Common is the belief the sexual revolution of the 1960 's was narcissistic. Certainly, the "casual sex" associated with the period and Woodstock it could be argued was about personal gratification and not a selfless exercise in serving the common good. That's only true, it seems to me, if you are not doing some critical thinking about other groups of that time.  I remember a potluck at our church in Fargo during the most turbulent time of the 1960's. I happened to sit by our head preacher whom I liked a lot. We drifted into our views about antiwar protests and the cultural revolution including what we call "hippies." He said he didn't like the counterculture movement because it was so self-centered. My...

The number of ways one can be a Christian has always been huge. While is seems vast today it has always been this way. The Rastafari go way back to Jamica and the time of slavery. They found marijuana lifted them from their misery and put them in touch with a spiritual life. Their Christian spiritual life, enhanced by ganja, took them back to their beloved homeland in Africa.  Now the Rastafari need more marijuana than they are allowed. Someone has decreed some marijuana is OK for their religious ceremonies but not the amount the Rastafari need. I cannot understand how it can be freedom of religion when government with its Christian values makes decisions that the "sincerely held" beliefs of the Rastafari it needs more ganja is ignored.  Native Americans were finally approved to use the drug peyote in their religious ceremonies. I think it is even allowed in prisons for native religious ceremonies. Academics have tried to date the earliest use of mind-altering drugs. There ar...