Thoughts of a Freethinker

The Trump appointees to the Supreme Court strike me as cocky know-it-alls with limited intellectual chops and little real-life experience. They do not seem to fear the possibility they will be impaled on their own swords.  Coming toward the Supreme Court is a case perfect for sorting out religious rights when abortion is involved. The woman is a Jew. She was pregnant with a fetus that had 90% chance of being still born.  At best, a brief life would be followed by certain death. She had an abortion allowed under a previous Indianna law.  Now, Indianna has passed a more restrictive law. At the same time it passed a stronger religious liberty law. The couple would like to have another child but the odds are one in thirty the fetus will show the same abnormality. Her Jewish faith states clearly that human life begins at birth. She is demanding the Court allow her the religious freedom to deal with another bad fetus as her religion instructs her. Prominent Methodist columnist,...

I remember years ago a Sunday class in which a church member presented the history of the denomination. We were Presbyterians. The presentation and discussion took up the hour. The history of Presbyterians is one of disagreeing and forming spin off denominations. There were so many I can't begin to recall them. Another split happened since then. The reasons given for the splits is always some obscure theological disagreement. The real reason, it seems to me, is political differences.  A recent poll found people prefer to attend a church with people of their own political ideology. That churches today are splitting over politics is a continuation of what has taken place since the beginning of Christianity. The truth is that church is a social club. People go there to enjoy themselves. If they do not enjoy themselves the go to another church--or do golf. The historical splits during Presbyterian history were about people wanting to enjoy themselves. This past week there was a confere...

Crude writing preserved in dried clay gives us a window into life about 3,500 BCE. Of course, humans had existed for 200,000 some years by that time so many ways of thinking might have come and gone. But, the crude logic revealed in the dried clay is so similar to the way many humans in our time reason it is easy to conclude humans thought this way long before it was written down. People in the 3,500 BCE period had separate gods for everything they could not control. There were separate gods for rain, sun, moon, health, crop yields and so on. Not surprisingly, each god behaved in the same way humans behaved. That is, gods got angry, were pleased, were mischievous, had families of their own and collected food and money from humans. The gods mirrored real people who had families with fathers, mothers and children. It's no surprise gods, who came from the minds of these humans, would have the same family structures. The god was the "father" to humans.  Humans studied the wea...

I follow from a distance the denomination of my childhood, the Evangelical Covenant Church. It, and many of its churches use the words "justice" or being a "just church." Then I ran across an article written by the Head Pastor of Union Church, the Episcopal Church Congregation housed in the Union Theological Seminary, in New York City. She wrote about how her church used the slow time during the Covid pandemic. She said the began studying how to be a "just church." What exactly does that mean? I spent half an hour recently watching in interview on the website of the Covenant Church. A woman pastor who is head of something in the denomination called the "Discipleship Project" interviewed a preacher in that denomination in Minneapolis. The topic was gay church members and gay marriage. She asked the preacher how the denomination's refusal to allow its pastors to perform gay marriages fit another mission of the denomination, a quest for "Ju...

An anti-abortion group is now demanding Congress investigate trafficking in abortion pills. Newspapers are falling all over themselves to get inside the groups bringing in and distributing them in states where abortion is not legal. The groups bringing in and distributing the pills are happy to talk about the illegal work they are doing because they are not afraid of law enforcement. I imagine they are thinking if one of them goes to jail, two others will step up and carry on the illegal work.  We've had decades and generations of experience with what is unfolding. We've had for decades the War on Drugs. Now we are raising the white flag of surrender. Several drugs are in route to being legal. The War of Drugs is lost. Before that, there was the War on Alcohol, better known as prohibition. Like with the War on Drugs, it took several years before it became safe for politicians to agree Prohibition was a mistake. They overturned it. One thing the wars on alcohol and drugs gave us...

There can be no doubt there were lots of abortions when they were illegal. The number was  not small. The link includes detailed statements from two doctors who performed abortion before Roe v Wade. One who performed them in a state where it was illegal thought, back then, the large numbers of women who came into hospitals with infections had some unknown cause. After abortions were illegal, it became clear the cause was poorly performed abortions.  He wrote that he was not the only one doing illegal abortions. Midwives, nurses and others who knew at least something about the practice were doing them as well. Many, however, did not know how to prevent infections. He said there were so many illegal abortions he believes the statistics that the number remains quite constant whether legal or not. The only difference is illegal abortions are not regulated and problems show up.  In his illegal practice, referrals often came through ministers. It is his opinion the nation-wide ...

We have not covered here for a while how Christianity became such a large and successful religion. As time goes on and more critical review of the Bible is done, the more clearly we can see where this branch of the world's religions came from The character in the Bible know as Jesus is portrayed as something like a local evangelist. Those who wrote the Bible tell of him preaching about the soon to come "end" in towns in a small part of the world. Professor Bart Ehrman has the explanation of Jesus that happens to make sense to me. Ehrman believes there was an actual person like the Jesus portrayed in the Bible. It doesn't really matter whether there was or was not such a person. That many believe such a tall tale is what makes the faith popular.  Ehrman puts Jesus in the category of the many local gods that existed all over the world during that period. I'm reading a book that discusses actual clay tablet records preserved from a two to three thousand years before ...

I just finished reading The Pope at War; The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini and Hitler by David I. Kertzer. It is a long history book; one you would not expect to be exciting. I found it was hard to put down as the well-known history of WWII unfolded.   Countless times I've seen both views of Pius XII. One view is he did everything he could to avert the war and save the Jews. Another view is he was chummy with Hilter and Mussolini and really put the Catholic Church into their camps. The book is new and unique in that a trove of records from WWII was just released. Author Kertzer went through them. Remarkably, they include confidential letters exchanged between Pius, Mussolini and Hilter as well as reports officials from Italy, Germany and the U.S. filed after visits with Pius. There were, of course, newspaper reports on the war over its duration.  When Hitler started his invasions, the Pope, and much of Europe I suppose, thought he would conquer most or all of the ...

An edition of the Bible that eliminated all references to freedom and encouraged slaves to obey their masters is in a display of museum Bibles. While I have heard it said Christianity brought an end to slavery it is clear it also was used to justify it. Even since the printing press the Bible has been under constant change. In the recent couple of decades, new Bible have began using the word, "homosexuality." That word did not exist until around the time of World War II. Even God did not use that word in the first Bibles.  We've all heard of Thomas Jefferson's little project to use a knife on his Bible and cut out all the ridiculous stories about miracles. Smarter people would have printed and adopted his version of the Bible and there would not be the eye rolls we see today.  Not only was a version of the Bible doctored to endorse slavery, introduction of the word homosexuality was done to condemn it. The Bible was altered in both cases to score political points. I ...

If you are a pregnant woman entering the emergency room of a hospital, it may not occur to you that hospital follows religious rules  dangerous to you. The hospitals which operate under a religious cult look just like the ones that practice good medicine. When a pregnant woman enters the emergency room, she should be given a disclaimer, "We at this Catholic hospital will allow you to be in a dangerous condition before we will perform an abortion. Sorry about that, but our Bishop tells us we will go to hell if we perform an abortion in anticipation of your serious condition -- you will need to be quite ill before an abortion can be performed. Sometimes women die because of this." Women are becoming fed up with Bishops determining their health care. That's why they are now in front of some Catholic hospitals warning women. Sometimes, of course, the only available hospital is a Catholic one and a woman must take the risk. Expected life span has been falling in the U.S. for s...

If ever one wonders what will happen to Christianity, it is only necessary to watch the male dominated Southern Baptists and Catholics. Some smaller ones are in mix as well. That women are not capable to hold certain positions in the clergy simply is not sustainable in today's world. So long as this prejudice is maintained and widely known, membership in all of Christianity will fall. I know there are millions of Christians who believe women should not be priests/preachers. They don't care how much it hurts their denomination or Christianity so long as ridged rules are followed. If you are one of those people and do not care that a "FOR SALE" sign will be in front of your church some day you are strange indeed. There are many church members who say rules about what women are allowed to do should be accepting but having them behind the pulpit preaching is just too far. There remain so many "standards" of morality like that. Some will say gays are fine so long...

A Catholic body of academics established to study abortion and issues surrounding it originally required appointees to pledge "pro-life" politically. That requirement was dropped a few years ago by Pope Francis. Now he has appointed a Catholic economist, Mariana Mazzucato, who has argued with the all-male anti-abortion wing of the denomination. What fun this is going to be. The link from a conservative branch of Catholicism complains bitterly about her appointment. The Pontifical Academy for Life was established by an earlier pope for the explicit goal of promoting the denomination's political mission against abortion. When Francis came along the requirement of being against abortion was tinkered with. The "pro-life" pledge for members was eliminated. Still, Pope Francis agrees it is a "pro-life" Academy.  To me, it seems like the entire all male Catholic clergy army got caught in its own clever game of semantics. It has always used the word "life...

I just finished reading a book,  The Ancient Near East; a Very Short Introduction by Amada H. Podany. It discusses preserved writing from the period from 3600 BCE to 500 BCE. I was not aware of the huge volume of written material, many thousands of complete letters and documents, written during that period which were not rewritten or recopied by later scribes as is the case with the Bible. That such writing was preserved intact is because of chance events in climate and human societies. While there is some writing in stone as we would expect, the huge volume was written in wet clay. The clay was not available everywhere humans lived so the fact the written word was developed where clay was available was fortunate. Further good fortune also was that the clay was not a building material that could be repurposed in later construction. Stones with engraving sometimes found their way into construction that used stone. After all of that, the dry climate of the near East was needed to kee...

Christian numbers are declining and the drop is dramatic among the young needed to keep the enterprise from freefall. Yes, there are still billions of people who self-identify as Christians. Human history tells us once atheism was just as popular. Then it wasn't.  I keep waiting for leader in Christianity to see the problem. Wouldn't it be fascinating, I am thinking, if Christianity could see the problem, explain it to believers and develop a plan to solve the problem. Today I was skimming over Christian Post.com, the largest conservative Christian site, and something jumped out. It was an article the said the author knew what the problem is in Christianity. The first of three problems is one called "Intellectual." Someone has finally figured it out, I thought.  That is, I thought, a Christian writer finally recognizes people can no longer believe the far-flung fictional stories and tenets. People do not believe Christianity knows what sin is. Nor, do they believe som...

I like to repeat the quote of Ronald Reagan, "Politics is a thing where the unexpected often happens." This could be made more accurate by saying the "unthinkable," "unimaginable" or even "not fathomable" often happens. For convenience I'm rolling together the outcome of elections and decision handed down from the courts. We all know the latter reflect to one degree or another political thinking in the society. Each reader knows an example. I'll pick out a few. One was the Roe decision making abortion legal across the United States. While people like me applauded the decision I know others who gasped. They thought it was impossible such a decision could ever happen. I felt the same way recently when it was overturned. In recent history, the election of Donald Trump seemed impossible to people like me but the "unimaginable" happened. I was once in the middle of such a thing when I issued the first Lesbian and Gay Rights Proclamat...

A burial cave was just discovered dating back to the time of Ramos. The headline in Christian Post said the stuff found in the cave dated back to the "Time of Exodus." Anyone, Christian or Jew, who uses the Bible as a book of history is badly mistaken. There is no evidence the Exodus tale ever happened. The earliest book I happen to have doubting the Exodus story was published in the 1950's. There has been a lot of searching since then. Nothing has been found. It would both helpful and practical for all Rabis, priests and preachers to simply conclude it's a myth.  There is a folk song, the most popular version was by Burl Ives, called, "The Big Rock Candy Mountain." Similar themes appear in other stories. That was repeated in the Moses story, God dropped bread for forty years. That's something to sing about.  The genre of free food and reward/punishment for good or bad deeds had to have been part of storytelling long before the written word. That is appe...

  The New Yorker has a great article this week from inside the clandestine business of getting abortion pills to women who need them in anti-abortion states. It begins with a young pregnant Texas woman who already has three young children. Her husband is so abusive she fears for her safety. She is more afraid of him than she is of the law. She is trying to hide enough money to leave him. She meets another woman in a seldom-used park. The pills go from one purse into another, the women part and disappear quickly. The pills came into Texas from Mexico. So far as I know, there have been no convictions of those who assist women who get abortions. Surely there will be some. The laws are there as a bluff of potential conviction and, of course, influence the thinking of some who provide abortions. But, there is another group that calls such bluffs. It is people who don't believe they will be caught and/or don't care that much if they are. Before Roe there were hundreds or maybe thousa...

Biden's excellent pardon of the many people imprisoned for possession is another step in coming to grips with a pointless national obsession called the War on Drugs. He ended the war in Iraq, another somewhat politically risky move he made to help our country extract itself from a mistake. No one can predict an upcoming election for certain so Biden's work to straighten things out is a noble mission. It's been known for years the War on Drugs is lost, never had a chance. One would think our country would have learned something from the "War on Alcohol," prohibition. Selling and drinking of alcohol just went right on. The only result was lots of money spent and many people died either engaging in illegal commerce or trying to enforce and unenforceable law. When other drugs were made illegal, they followed the same pattern of failure. While some of the justification for these prohibited substances is about the harm they can do, much of it is Christian morality. Once...

It's been a long wait, but three Jewish women have filed a case their religious rights are being violated by the claim human life begins at conception. Non-religious people have the same legitimate case to make but religions have more cachet in courts. Religious groups have tried in vain to escape the conclusion that anti-abortion is base only of religion. They have run through a gamete of arguments that the fetus is a human being irrespective of their religious argument the soul is present at conception. None of them gained new followers. Even this week the Supreme Court turned down a case that provided judges an opportunity to define clearly why conception is the moment the full human being with all such rights comes into existence.  Now three Jewish women are using religion to demand abortion rights. I don't know anything else about this case but my guess is that if several such cases came forward if might present a dilemma for religious Supreme Court Judges.  The involves ...

The odd ball film maker and pundit, Michael Moore, predicted Trump would win against Hillary in 2016. We all remember the pundit industry consensus was Hillary would win. Moore saw those who thought of themselves as "outsiders" voting in record numbers and for Trump. He was scoffed at but turned out to be right. Now he is again throwing rocks in the stream of punditry. The stream is saying these off-year elections, which usually are bad for the incumbent President, will be bad for Biden and Democrats. Moore, however, thinks there will be a tsunami of voters sick of lies and dishonesty who will give Democrats a majority in the Senate and maybe in the House. The tsunami will be jacked up by the Roe overturn Moore predicts. Moore is not just reading tea leaves. He is basing his prediction on actual turnouts we have seen. Kansas for example. Boise, ID, is another. Boise went for Trump by 73%. A School Board election was coming up with a conservative incumbent running for reelecti...

The rallying cry of the group called "pro-life" is not concerned about how many women die in childbirth. Our country is a dangerous place to give birth. It's safer to have an abortion. It would be very refreshing if the groups that want to force births on women would be concerned about the large number who die in childbirth. One group of women who dies most frequently in childbirth are children who become pregnant. Most days one can find news about a child who is pregnant and "pro-life" politicos who want to stop an abortion.  Data from 2017 show that the number of deaths per 100,000 births was two in Norway and Italy. In the U.S. it was 19. From the year 2000 to 2017 there were large reductions in the number of deaths per 100,000 births in Europe, Latin America and sub Saharan Africa. In the U.S. the rate of deaths rose. Deaths from childbirth have always been one of the most frequent causes of death in the underdeveloped world. Now it is rising at an alarming ...

  All of my life I've heard the U. S. is a "Judeo Christian country." Especially when I was a mayor people who disagreed with me would drop that phrase. For example, a prominent local newspaper columnist told me the "Judeo-Christian faith" uniformly condemns homosexuality. It does not.  When it comes to abortion, the "Judeo Christian faith" does not condemn it. Parts of both Christianity and Judaism are on either side. Just like, there is no science that tells us one fertilized cell is a human being. Nor, does the Bible condemn same sex marriages. Enter the "Judeo Christian faith" and you have entered the spin room. There are many moving parts in any branch of the Christian faith. There are documents approved by governing bodies which lay out in black and white views of religion that have been officially adopted. Name the denomination and, for the most part, there will be large swaths of the actual membership who either don't know its ten...

When I was a mayor, our clinic that performed abortions in Fargo, ND, was the center of protests by national groups. They glued themselves to doors of the clinic, laid on the sidewalks, screamed at women entering and other tactics. At least twice attempts were made to burn down the clinic. Arrests were made and orders to stop this were issued by judges. Even these were ignored by some and at least a couple of protestors did hard time in the North Dakota Penitentiary. Eventually, a federal law was passed prohibiting protestors from blocking entrance to a hospital or clinic. Harassment of women entering a clinic has continued but physical blocking entrances has ended. That is until now . Several crazies blocked a clinic entrance recently and were arrested by Federal law enforcement. I would guess they were motivated by the laws in Texas and Mississippi that put citizens in charge of arresting anyone assisting a woman who is obtaining services at a clinic which performs abortions. Protest...

No matter how you cut it, our human life on planet earth has to change. How we live today, too many of us consuming too much, is unsustainable. There is now interest in the most unlikely of places, Uruguay , as an example of a place that at least in on the path toward a modern life without crippling planet earth. Uruguay has a carbon footprint about average for developing nations. Thus, it has not arrived at the point countries need to be at in order to slow or stop global warming. One of the things it has going for it demographically is a stable and large middle class. This is contrary to trends elsewhere, including the U.S., where the middle class in declining. It has a low poverty rate. It ranks highest in Central and South Ameria in its voting rights. How could it be, a small country plotted right there on the Catholic continents of Central and South American be 14% atheist/agnostic? Uruguay is the least religious country on the two continents.  Uruguay is on a path toward rene...

It's certainly true when certain ideas swamp a culture they can ruin the very culture they are appealing to. Nazi Germany is an example. When the collective German mind felt injured and humiliated by the loss of WW1 and the terrible cost imposed by the surrender, there was an opening for bringing back self-esteem. By demonizing the Jews, developing cult-like admiration for Hitler and no opposition from the big religion, Catholicism, a religious-like zeal for Hitler took German society over a cliff. Today U. S. society has a strain of Christian nationalism pushing us toward the same kind of cliff. Nazis demonized Jews. Our Christian version demonizes homosexual people and women. The latter in the form of anti-abortion politics. This version of Christian nationalism will not save our country but instead destroy it. The link author claims it is not "real Christians" who are to blame for over-the-top Christian nationalism. Polls show, he says, those participating in Christian...

What is unfolding in no-abortion states is so complicated and changing so rapidly it is hard to follow or understand. We know, of course, some women can travel to other states. But what is happening or will be happening to those who cannot. One of the fascinating developments involves doctors who are retired or are nearing retirement. If there is a threat they might lose their licenses, they don't care. This has become a problem for states who want to prosecute. These states want to enforce their anti-abortion laws by intimidation, they don't really want to spend money prosecuting. The link is about a doctor who is not intimidated. She is providing abortion through medicine in states where it is illegal. She is located in another state. She has seemingly violated laws but has not been prosecuted. The long link leaves one without a clear view of what the laws are about interstate medical services. As I understand it, if a doctor provides an abortion in a state were that is again...

Having spent decades in universities, I have known since way back neither the Pope nor authority figures in Protestant universities would be able to hold back liberal versions of social change. Society goes where it wants to go and university, religions and everything in between follow along whether they want to or not. Now, the Catholic Vilanova University's administration has advised its staff and faculty it should no longer use traditional version of gender identity. Syllabuses for courses, for example, should not refer to "he" and "she." This is in spite of the fact the Pope has said publicly breaking down the difference between genders is "dangerous." The Pope sounds like a preacher of a Southern Baptist church, "I don't want to hear this from y'all."  There is myth circulated among Catholics a Catholic university is under the thumb of the local Bishop. It's as if the local Bishop rules over the university in his diocese. Vil...

It is claimed by some Christians that these "spiritual" rituals, witchcraft, Ouija and tarot cards, are growing in popularity with young people as Christianity shrinks. It is almost humorous that a Christian "therapist" says in the link this is happening because people want "control over their lives." Control over death is exactly what Christianity uses as its marketing schtick. Control over everyone and every thing around him/her is central to Christianity. Anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage are real-time examples of the passion for control over others.  I would agree it is not productive to spend time and money on make-believe worlds. Ouija Boards and tarot cards are no more reality than is God, heaven or hell. Those who believe in God, however, have a lot of money to push their fantasies into the public realm. By comparison, there is no National Church of Tarot Cards with lobbyists in DC and Trump-like fund raising. Tarot Card readers are not selecting...

"Did my website talk about abortion as murder? I don't remember that at all. " Websites of Republican politicians across the state have removed all their form dramatic verbiage that abortion is murder and "I believe in life" and blah blah blah. A directive came from headquarters the new Republican position is "Abortion is not an issue in Minnesota. Abortion is available in Minnesota due to our State's Constitution." This directive was issued after abortion rights buried anti-abortion in Kansas. The National Party Platform still tells us it is the anti-abortion party. Minnesota Republicans have not read their Platform apparently and don't remember what was on their websites. And where is Minnesota's Presidential candidate, Michele Backmann? She is the anti-abortion, Trump supporting, anti-gay, anti-trans and election denier the Party needs for a clear voice. A political site says anti-abortion has been scrubbed  from Republican political web...

A common theme among atheists when they discuss Christianity is that Christianity is a thought pattern based on control. The seed is planted that each person is born a sinner, headed on a path to an afterlife of misery. The afterlife for each person is a fiery hell. There is but one, and only one, way to avoid this hell, buy into an odd and peculiar faith filled with fairy tales. It has a monopoly. It controls the market. In business, there are laws against creating absolute monopolies. The industry called religion is allowed a pass on such laws. As long as Christianity could maintain these myths all went well. Now, however, people are calling its bluff. When it has to show its cards, there are no straights or aces. A Mormon writer is now telling Mormon officials they should lighten up on its marketing strategy of fear. He was writing specifically about telling Brigham Young students and faculty they must fear sin and its consequences. Instead, he says, officials should see students a...