Thoughts of a Freethinker

One of the amusing things about contemporary religions is the way they first separate the abilities of men and women and conclude men must have authority. Certainly, both Christianity and Islam are full of this outdated and self serving way of thinking. It is self serving because men came up with this view, not women. When I bring this up, male commenters sometimes point to women they know and how happy the women are with being assigned a lessor role. I've asked if there was ever a secret vote asking women whether they would prefer equal opportunities. This is followed by silence.  The Christian view that men are more important than women is often claimed to come from the Bible. The Bible claims Jesus had only males in his inner circle. We don't know if that is true or not. Even if it were true it has nothing to do with how women vs men should be regarded today.  Sometimes the view is pitched here that men and women are obviously different, only women can give birth. This means

Whether to be surprised or alarmed, I'm not sure. But there are mega churches preaching that Biden stole the election from Trump. That lies are being preached from the pulpit is not a surprise to atheists. They consider the entire Christian message to be a fabrication. Start with the virgin birth, end with a completely dead person becoming again alive. Add comfy places to lounge after death for some and a purgatory for others. It is not a big leap for preachers trained to preach one kind of nonsense to move on to another. The made up stuff about a virgin birth is different, however, from the made up stuff about the 2020 election. We don't have the virgin birth/resurrection group storming the Capital with weapons. Preachers lying about the election are exciting the dangerous ones among us. The link explains right wing evangelicals have made a living for hundreds of years preaching the evils of sin about to take over the nation. As time went on, the evil sins were attributed to l

George Barna of the Barna Group and a devout Christian does constant polling about religion. He polls people about church attendance, how often the pray and read the Bible and other indicators of the faith. Consistently he finds Christianity practiced less. I've always wondered why he does this polling that is bad PR for his faith.  I think I'm finally figuring out what he hopes to accomplish. This is because he also publishes and gives interviews to outlets firmly within the faith. There he states firmly what he thinks the problem is. He says over and over again Christianity is fading because parents do not teach (he means indoctrinate) their children properly. It's hard to fathom there could be a person so truthful and pragmatic about measuring the decline in the faith and still hold such an unrealistic view of why it is declining.  It is declining because the culture writ large does not and cannot believe the basic myths and tenets of the faith. Thus, it is impossible to

One of my favorite magazines is Skeptical Inquirer.  The May/June issue  (was not on line when I wrote this) reviews believers' attempts to use probability theory against evolution. This attempt is good for a few laughs.  The main source of "mathematical" arguments against evolution is Willaim Dembski. He uses lots of meaningless equations and math symbols to cover his lack of understanding about evolution. Anti evolutionists continue to claim evolution theory works like this. There were only random events. After enough random events the complex human hand developed as well as the human brain. Anti evolutionist then conclude this could not have happened because the probability and time required are out of reach.  To illustrate the difference between what anti evolutionists claim is evolution theory and what it actually says we can start by tossing 100 pennies on a table. The average from a few tosses will show 50 heads and 50 tales. Development of a human requires the sam

Both Harvard and Yale Schools of Divinity are now holding church services for groups that are not Christian. This seems both a sign of the time and a sign of changes to come. Today, the trend of Protestant churches in general is to not affiliate with any denomination. Or, if affiliated with a denomination, to not put it out there for all to see. If there is an affiliation it is relegated to the back pages somewhere.   Holding "religious" services that are approved of but not unaffiliated with Christianity is an extension of non-denominational. Harvard and Yale are training pastors who will need to accommodate non-Christian religions. There was a big story last year about an atheist professor in the Harvard Department of Religion being named President of the Chaplains there. What should Christians, i.e., those in the pews make of all this? I think they should be delighted that somewhere in the faith there are people dealing with the obvious. The obvious is that religion in gen

I suppose it goes back the roughly the time of Reagan. Corporate low-tax lobbyists made backroom deals with anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage lobbyists. The Corporate people said, "Look, we don't care one way or another about religion. We just want less regulation and lower taxes." The religious people said, "Great, we don't care about taxes or regulation of corporations, we just want government regulate what individual people do in their otherwise private lives. If our morals and religious beliefs are law we don't have to persuade people. They just have to follow our laws."   This deal worked great until very recently. Now it is in trouble . The Governor of Florida and Presidential candidate, Desantes, has declared Disney to be the enemy. Tax breaks, smiled upon in past times by both business and religion, are being cancelled. How could a deal so sweet fall on hard times? Looking at it another way, how could it NOT fail? Corporate types did not unders

Supreme Court Judge Thomas was the only dissenter in a decision allowing a preacher to be present when a death sentence was carried out. Judge Thomas doubted the criminal had sincerely held beliefs and pointed to reasons for doubt. Courts have routinely not doubted the sincerity of religious beliefs. Maybe someday the folly of this legal trick will be obvious. Surely, everyone knows about becoming "saved" while doing jail time. Local jail chaplains are often Pentacostal preachers. Wardens offer reduced time for "good behavior." An inmate who is "saved" by the chaplain has a built-in lobbyist arguing his case. Other inmates see this and become "saved"--it's a "get out of jail free card." Judge Thomas has no idea if anyone else's beliefs are sincerely held. It is ripe for gaming. Let's take a pharmacist who wants to not work so hard. Filling fewer prescriptions per hour but be paid the same as more productive employees is the

One of my hobbies is to search the web pages of evangelical colleges/universities to find each one's Gay and Lesbian Support Club (various names). I have never added up the numbers but most of them have such a group listed somewhere in the back pages. Their professional association is also seeing some slippage from the hard-edged positions against gays of a couple of decades ago. The low-key slippage is in keeping with other big places. For example, the Pope fired a Cardinal recently for an overt statement homosexuality is a sin. The new policy is a.) don't officially change the church's position but b.) stay silent about it. Many will get the impression the Catholic Church has loosened it opposition when it has not. This is a win win.   Universities need students to pay the bills. The majority of students today have no prejudice against their gay friends or gay marriage. The dilemma for Presidents in Christian is how to attract gay-supporting students while holding on to d

Evangelical Protestants, Catholic and Muslims are not considered net contributors to the good of Canada according to a new survey . All three need a new public relations consultant.  Christians here on my blog like to refer to hospitals and schools started by denominations. In this country there are lots of them. There are hospitals and schools in countries that are not Christian, however, so it seems a hollow claim they would not exist here were it not for Christian denominations. The argument society owes thanks does not prevail in Canada.  Most branches of Christianity could have retained their favorable rating in the public if they had just stayed with holding church services and opening hospitals and schools. Instead, they have drawn attention from good works by performing bad works. They got into politics and started pushing their religion on people who wanted to leave it behind. In Canada surveys show the majority don't give Christian groups credit for much good. It could b

The chest beating goes on by states that want to outlaw abortions. Some of these states have passed laws allowing abortion clinics in other states to be prosecuted by the right to life state. Now the push back has begun. Connecticut is passing a law allowing prosecution of those who prosecute in their state. Did not Texas and other such states realize that whatever steps they did could be matched by other states? Don't the Supreme Court judges who approve of unleashing private citizens to file charges against each other know it will result in chaos and courts overflowing with whacko anti-abortion cell members?  What we are seeing in anti-abortion politics is something we've seen since forever in politics around the world. One group decides it will reduce the rights of another group, in this case religious people taking rights away from pregnant women, and the group being pushed around pushes back. Gandhi did it in India; black people are doing it in the U.S. It is as predictabl

It was almost a decade ago I read an article in a Christian academic journal that admonished scholars and preachers to stop telling others what the faith is about and listening to those in the pews. While preachers certainly try to avoid making those who pay their salaries angry, church goers in the pews, they do not systematically compile what nonclergy are thinking.   A scholar in the Jewish faith has come to believe the economic model of religion in the U.S. has failed. That model is local buildings and national or international scholarship at the home office (including Universities and seminaries) all funded by donations. The numbers are falling across all faiths practiced in the U.S., Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, etc. A steady stream of people in all faiths is leaving, deciding they do not want to pay for the building, the shaman standing in front or the scholars at the home office hashing over religious minutiae.   The link proposes a broad study about where people are going

Having been up to my chin in local government for several decades I'm still drawn to areas facing crises' and am curious about how local politics responds. We all know state and national politics are of at least some influence so that is interesting as well. Today there was a long article about the ice melt in Iceland. Throughout the north glacier areas ice is melting faster than was predicted. Gravity, of course, moves the water around the world. The article about Iceland explains the problem is bigger than melting ice. The huge weight of the ice is leaving with the melt. When that weight is gone the land, including the ocean floor, begins to rise. The floor has already risen enough to disrupt fishing areas because of shallow sea levels.  As the oceans floor rises the water flows down to lower areas of the world. One low area is Miami Beach. I look at the Miami Beach municipal site occasionally to see what is being discussed. Mostly, the official talk is optimistic. There are

Critical race theory is a small part of general critical theory. Critical theory includes reading the Bible as merely another piece of ancient literature and critiquing it in the same way as all others. Christians don't like critical theory because of the powerful case it makes for non belief.  When critical race theory came along, it was an attractive political target. Conservative Republicans/Christians saw an opportunity to portray it as something different than it actually is and posture for political advantage.  Christianity sells itself as the "truthful" narrative about where we came from, how we should live and what happens after we die. Critical theory itself only looks for the motives of those who wrote and promote this view and present what they find. Believers and non believers alike are free to decide for themselves. It is not per se a religious issue but religious people dislike its impact of people's minds. Critical race theory like wise is not per se a

Traditional, perhaps we could use the term "orthodox", Christians lament the gazillion directions the faith has taken. They want people to read the Bible again and believe what it tells them to believe. One such well known Catholic Christian is Ross Douthat. Douthat longs for the "good old days" when there were authorities in Christianity. The authorities are gone. The faith of the good old days went with them. Douthat converted to Catholicism. In recent years he has lamented various positions of Catholic leaders. Some say he has buyer's remorse. Douthat sounds like a conservative Protestant who blogs, Roger E. Olson. He lamented recently about the scattering of views in the faith. He feels his lifetime of study and teaching in religion brought him to a wide and deep understanding of the faith. He knew his own branch and all the other important ones. But now that is all in shambles he wrote. The discipline called "religion" is one he no longer understa

It turns out there are many more ways to get abortion than I knew about. When abortions are not legal in several states they will be available in many forms, some legal and some not. Before Roe, some women traveled all around the U. S. explaining the device pictured above. It is made from a few off-the-shelf items and costs $10 or so. Once women receive instructions on how to use it, either in person or on line, they can give each other or themselves abortions. Today, women have started traveling the country again giving instructions on how to make and use the device. It is called the Del-Em.  Also developing is a pipeline of abortion medicine from Mexico. While lots of it can be mailed, anti abortion nutcakes want to intercept it in the Post Office system. For this reason, plans are underway for people to walk into the U.S. with the medicine. Others would quickly move it around the country.  Different suction devices are being mass produced and sold at low cost. The devices can remove

Prohibition was so popular in 1920 it passed almost without opposition. By 1933 it was overturned with a big celebration. A future without legal alcohol seemed certain in 1920 but did not last long. Does anyone remember "three strikes you're out?" It was a very popular anti-illegal drug law. It, too, had bipartisan support. A third drug offense and it was life in prison. The thinking was this would finally end illegal drug use in the U.S. When all drug offenders were finally locked up, no more illegal drugs. This widely supported legislation lasted about as long as prohibition. Drug use is slowly being made legal. It seems none of the politicians who bragged about their support for "three strikes" remember it. Slavery and segregation seem like practices far back in our historical memory. But they were legal in the U.S. for 400 years. How could practices that had existed for such a long time be subject to political failure? They failed.  Politics of the recent pa

I grew up in a conservative church that had endless rules about sin. Thinking back about that community and the people who lived there and belonged to the church, I recall there were very enthusiastic participants and others not very enthusiastic. It was, of course, before the explosion of media platforms that allowed anyone to start a group of like-minded people and build an audience. While lots of information and views were shared at small gatherings, they could not reach wider audiences like today's technology. Those less enthusiastic were stuck in that community and that church. Would the church back then have been smaller if those who did not enjoy it had found each other? The church closed just a few years ago. Maybe it would have closed sooner if technology had arrived sooner. There was more opportunity for those who wanted others to conform to the faith to exert pressure than there is today. Our one church town was matched by one TV station when that came along. The old ada

These days I come across rational analysis of Christianity's decline more often than in the past. A few years ago, there was never an article discussing the broad cultural forces moving away from Christianity and toward something unknown.  It's hard for someone with gray hair to come to grips with the truth. The truth is he/she does not believe in sin, heaven, hell, the Resurrection, atonement and a God-written Bible because all this has been objectively arrived at. He/she believes this because it was in the culture they were born into. All such folks would agree a child in India believes in Hinduism because of where they were born. But they believe this false religion will disappear when its followers are exposed to Christianity. Coming to grips with the fact religions grow out of cultures, either Hindu or Christian, is a concept beyond the emotional reach of billions of people in the world. Yet, the truth is right before our faces. The link rehashes a conventional wisdom that

In Texas/Mississippi, if you know someone helped a woman by giving her a phone number of an abortion clinic or gave her a ride or $5, you can turn that person in to authorities and get a bounty fee. In Russia, the same rule applies. If you hear or hear about someone who opposes the invasion of Ukraine that person may be fined. Communist Russia or anti-abortion states are the same. Cells of citizens act federal agents are there to spy on other citizens. Both are doing it for God. Many times on this blog, I've asked anti abortion readers to explain what rights they advocate for a woman carrying a fetus. Never has any reader suggested what rights the woman has. This reflects the entire anti abortion political operation. It is anti women. In anti abortion politics the fetus has many rights to protect it. The entire law enforcement system in on anti women alert. No public body is assigned protect of the right of women.  In communism there is a whisper system. People secretly pledge to p

A survey of Christians finds they regard the Bible as less important than they used to. This makes sense. What does not make sense is that a large swath of the world's population ever thought it was anything but the writing of ancient and wealthy goat herders. It is odd that so many people in the world believe that if the wealthy tell them the wealthy are more important than they are, people believe it. That is what happened when the wealthy 1% in ancient times wrote the Bible.  It's foolish for the gazillion churches to call themselves "Church of the Open Bible" or other names like that. Equally foolish is the denomination of my youth, the Covenant Church. It has minimal tenets and says it rules can be found by reading the Bible. More clever is the Catholic Church which says the Bible needs to be filtered through wiser minds, the clergy, and should not be followed directly by reading it. By doing this the Catholic clergy can manipulate those in the pews to believe th

Every time I think the faith might be waking up and smelling the roses, I read another post about how those who don't believe need to be shouted at as fools. Bible verses need to be quoted.  Today I read about how alarming it is so many young people are leaving the faith. One would think commenters would discuss what they could do to make the faith more attractive. Not a word about that. When young people leave the faith there is something wrong with them, not with the faith or those in the faith. The latter has nothing wrong them. The former flawed.  We must remember the faith is able to diagnose the flaw in non believers. The ancients who wrote the Bible were geniuses at this. They diagnosed non believers as having "hardened hearts." Hardened hearts is merely another way of saying, "They ask for evidence." Apparently anyone who asks for evidence is under the influence of Satan. Those who just make stuff up or falsely claim to hear it from invisible beings are

Let's start back in the segregation days. Southerners and northern bigots said black men look with lust on white women and need to be kept away from them. Today, some conservative politicians are again repeating a similar lie about gay men. It is that they prey on children . Legislators are still saying this to justify bills against equal treatment of gay people. There is absolutely no evidence being gay has any relationship to being a pedophile. Nevertheless, the two are lumped together for political and religious gain at every opportunity. Even commenters on this blog have said the reason there are pedophile priests is because there are gay priests. Get rid of all gay priests ane there would be no pedophiles among Catholic clergy. There is no evidence this is true. The evidence says most pedophiles are not gay. Child sexual crimes against children take place because there is not adequate supervision of priests and parents are told priests can be trusted. Legislators should look a

I remember so clearly when an anti abortion wing nut sat in my office decades ago and corrected me when I said resources in the world are finite and too many people will deplete these resources. He said God would provide resources for us. Such balderdash results from decades of propaganda provided by churches. People have prayed for more resources but God has not provided then. The know quantities of several resources is getting smaller. The population and consumption per person is growing. It is folly to think a happy future will unfold without some planning and self sacrifice. Millions of people have moved into the dessert in the U.S. To support all those people, governments moved water from other places to support them. Irrigation farming and watered lawns followed the repositioned water. Now, the supplies of water have diminished but too many people still live there. They have to live somewhere because there are so many of us. It is ridiculous to say population size does not matter

Every couple of weeks another survey result is published which concludes Christians today do not share their faith with anyone or everyone around them. That finding is following by some finger wagging and raised eyebrow that the Bible orders the faithful to spread the faith.  During the ancient times when the new and old Testaments were written it might have made sense to talk up your particular god. From what on reads, there were itinerate odd balls roaming around talking about their imaginary friends. Maybe among community members people entertained themselves and each other about conversations with gods.  Whatever normal behavior was back then, it did not include 24 hours TV trying to persuade and sell stuff. People, including children, are faced with so much advertising they tune it out. Schools teach critical thinking just to help kids deal with the storm of information that are exposed to. If you are a Christian and find all this advertising and propaganda annoying, do you want t

The New York Times published a long article that should be required reading for all in this country who want it to succeed. It reviews the growing role of Christianity in the conservative wing of the Republican Party. The link authors attended event after event across the U.S. They found an ever-increasing focus on religious pageantry and ritual mixed in with political rhetoric.   At events across the United States, it is not unusual for participants to describe encountering the divine and feel they are doing their part to install God’s kingdom on earth. For them, right-wing political activity itself is becoming a holy act. Some participants afterward said the political meeting affected them in the same way a revival meeting did. They became certain God was right there in their midst.  Among the convictions of those attending Republican political gathers was that Biden's election happened only because of fraud. Add to that the belief those who crashed into the Capitol on Jan. 6th w

  An article in the famous The Atlantic illustrated a simple mechanism to perform a medical abortion. Using the term "medical" abortion is a bit misleading because no professional medical institutions are involved. It is an apparatus used only in the underground. It is an overstatement to say no medical personnel are involved. The group called midwives trained in giving birth includes many abortion rights women. My understanding is midwives operate a bit more under the radar and will play a big role in making abortions available if and when Roe is reversed.  A few years before the Roe decision, the simple suction device used for at home abortions had been developed by an abortion rights woman. She had traveled non stop around the country training women in the use of the device. More recently, the device has been upgraded and experiments and design changes are on going.   The anti abortion political operatives I've known seem like Putin. At least, they seem like the Putin

By some fluke of chance, while I'm watching the news about Russian atrocities in Ukraine I'm also reading a book by a Professor of History at the Un. of Nebraska that focuses on the brutal atrocities of white settlers on native people. Generally, we think of the "Westward Movement" as wagon trains moving with great difficulty over the plains, desserts and mountains. Native oral history records this as a series of massacres by white people of native people. It included brutal murders of thousands of peaceful women and children.  There were newspapers at the time of these massacres but they barely mentioned them. It was simply something that happened to less-than-human people and not important.  The atrocity story spilled over into religion. We all know the story of the Mormons traveling across the country and settling in what is now Utah. A large group settled in the Salt Lake City area. After a few generations their population grew and the consensus was a group needed

Among the many things I have not understood in my long life and do not understand today is why everyone does not see the danger in devout religion. The great event, 9/11 was about religion. Supposedly Putin's invasion of Ukraine is dripping with religion. Instead of understanding the danger of religion, our leaders, and I suppose most of the public, saw it as an opportunity to dive deeper into religion. After 9/11 President W. Bush gave an address from the National Cathedral. It was a political opportunity he could not pass up. It would have been more patriotic to have declared there will be no more political or governmental events in that building.  The shofar is the long pipe that is blown for ceremonial purposes in some religions. Its history is that of a call for spiritual warfare. Today in the U.S. spiritual warfare is Christian nationalism. There are millions of people in the U.S. heeding the shofar. A bunch attacked our Capitol in Jan. 6th. Several people from near where I a

It's hard to know the relationship, but a prominent Christian noted that while the pandemic was going on U. S. politics turned to focus more than ever on the rightness of white Christian males. White males, conventional wisdom decrees, are fair, they treated native Americans and slaves well and are wiser than any other demographic in the world. That white people are quite below 50% of the population matters not. White males are to decide what is good for women, people of color and enemies in the world. The link notes people of color do not suffer from being told at a young age their group is superior to all others. It might give them an edge in wise perspectives.      Black Lives Matter must not be covered in schools, the white view is, because white people might be found guilty of slavery and segregation. Surely, it those things ever happened they need to be written out of history. We all know Putin made up some history by claiming Ukraine is part of Russia but the white religious

Today Apple announced its support of gay rights and its intention to push back against conservative states. Apple and Face Book are big employers in communities across the country and resistance to right wing and discriminatory laws may have an impact.  A great example is Mike Pence. He champions himself as a courageous Christian who goes into battle regardless of the arrows coming at him. In 2015 we learned he will back down quickly when faced with threats from corporations. He was governor of Indiana and had endorsed a pending "religious freedom" bill that would have allowed religious crackpots to not serve sinners. When corporations leaned on him he demanded the Republican legislature fix this. One of the micro examples of corporations promoting freedom was the Montgomery, AL, back-of-the-bus incident. We all know the story of Rosa Parks who refused to move to the back of the bus. What is not well known is the buses were not "city buses" but owned and run by a pr