Thoughts of a Freethinker

Jews are joining Christians in panic over the growth of Paganism. The U.S. military recently recognized Paganism as an official religion to be served by the Chaplain Corps. I've covered here a while back the growing numbers of Pagans in the Norse countries. The growth of a tiny group such as Pagans would be of little interest were it not for the thousands of years variations of this belief system dominated parts of the world. From what little I understand about the faith it seems to fit perfectly the notion of a god or gods. That is to say, from what we know, there are no gods other than those which live in our minds. Individuals thinks in millions of different ways, especially about religion. A different god is needed by each individual. Pagans worship a wide variety of gods so this helps each person get the one he/she needs.  In the past couple of years, Pope Francis has approved a dozen or more new saints. I recall Pope Benedict wanted more saints than were being approved during...

It's a pleasure to find writers that want to probe into questions about life and death and see perspective in a broad sense. When they are found, they almost always skewer the label anti-abortion uses for itself, "pro life." When it uses government to force women to give birth, some die because of it. There is no way to deny this fact.  It borders on the impossible, however, for the forced birth faction of politics to admit this inconsistency. This is because the entire house of cards called Christianity is constructed around a you-will-never-die marketing gambit. Save your soul, you go to heaven and are never dead. Die condemned to hell, you never die there either. Jesus (and various other mythological events) was raised from the dead--death is not part of the Christian faith. I remember watching a debate between two professors of religion about the historical accuracy of the Bible. One was mostly a believer and the other a skeptic. After they had offered arguments and c...

Reports are being published, they may or may not be correct, about polling done by the Democratic Party suggest what the Party candidates will say on campaign trails. Biden's opening remarks probably were what we will hear from all Democrats. It's a sad state of affairs that he, or any Presidential candidate, is required to talk almost exclusively about wrongs done to people by too much religion in politics and government. That is U.S. politics today.  The big thing voters hate about Republicans today is book burning. Now there are few actual bonfires with Republicans throwing books into the fire, though there was one in Iowa a couple of years ago, the dramatic bans of what books can be read by children in schools, what people wear (drag) when they read books to children in public libraries and what words can be used by teachers comes off as eerily similar to "book burning." Bans on abortion are not quite the same but obviously come from the same mindset of control ov...

Nikki Haley has some things going for her, her youth and gender. She is a bit different from the clown car of Republican candidates for the Presidency in that she does not pledge to eliminate abortion in the entire country. Neither does Trump but some other clowns like Pence claim that is the goal. There is an adage that circulates in politics today which keeps coming back. It is the way to handle abortion is be in one camp or the other and ride it wherever it goes. The way not to handle it is to stay on the fence. Haley stays on the fence. Biden, Harris and a cast of other Democrats have staked out choice positions and will ride it out. "Choice" is now seen as pro women, "Life" is now seen as anti-women. Keep it simple, stupid.  Some dufus Senators like Lindsay Graham keep dabbling in "weeks" of pregnancy. It's 20 weeks, 15 weeks, 10 weeks and six weeks. They try to disguise or play a trick on eliminating all abortions. It is as if everyone in the cou...

During one of the early Supreme Court cases involving abortion, the alternatives facing a pregnant woman was discussed. Judge Barrett confidently explained a pregnant woman is never without the alternative of carrying to term and giving birth. This seems like a position of absolutes. Absolutely no abortions, period.  Recently, however, Garrett remarked that a 14-year-old girl pregnant from rape should be forced to give birth. In that case, the 14-year-old girl's circumstances were more important than the life of fetus. How could she who is so opposed to abortion make such a switch?  I think I know. Garrett has seven children. I believe four of them are girls. These daughters allowed her to see abortion from a different perspective, i.e., the possibility of one of her daughters being raped and made pregnant. In that case, the alternative of carrying the rapist's fetus to term and risking her daughter's life to give birth make the value of the fetus's life come in far dow...

Over past decades, I've read notions like this on anti-abortion web sites and magazines, "The Roe v Wade decision is a millstone around our necks. With a Federal Law giving legal approval to abortion we are running into a brick wall trying to eliminate this murder. If only we could overturn Roe and put the issue back into the states, we could win against abortion state by state. We will do this until it is outlawed in every state and thus in the entire United States." Now anti-abortion is learning it was wrong all along. It is abortion rights that will win state by state across the U.S. The entire state by state theory is being turned on its head. Of the Supreme Court Justices who are crazy against abortion, I wonder how many now realize they've been had. Could it be Judge John Roberts said to them privately, "I'm with you here. Let's overturn Roe and then we will have washed our hands of abortion. State by state it will be tossed out." Roberts would...

Lots of Christianity preaches specific rolls for men and women. The rules were written by men so, as we would expect, women come in at a lower level. While religions and individuals can have their opinions on such a thing, it is a mistake to claim the lower status of women is something that has always been or is in some way a natural or inevitable product of all human experience.  Tangible evidence that women are not "naturally" ranked lower than men can be seen in a tomb discovered in the 1920's. Archeologists agree it is the most elaborate, expensive and honor-projecting tomb ever found. It dates back to 4,500 BCE. The female corpse is bejeweled to the max.  This tomb makes a mockery of the Catholic notion women and men are "complimentary." Women make a powerful contribution, this line of thought promotes, by their ability to give birth while men by nature make the money and rule the household. The tomb illustrates the nature of humans makes no such rule. To d...

Maybe readers get tired of reading here about abortion. The rest of the news mentions abortion every day. Republicans are trying to change the subject and talk about "woke," whatever that is. In overturning Roe, Republicans stepped on a political land mine.  The bigger problem is the land mine is not one isolated charge. I've read Republicans thought there would be one big explosion after Roe was overturned and then things would return to where they were before. Where they were before was a powerful political force all across the Bible Belt and in some other states. By rigging voting districts they were strong in state legislatures. The problem with their thinking is that everywhere there is an unwanted pregnancy there is also a small cup of gasoline. Republicans have provided matches to every corner of the country. I really like the way 2024 is shaping up.  Some changes were already occurring. Geogia has been a card-carrying member of the Bible Belt since white people fi...

  When I was a Mayor, a prominent woman I knew, now deceased, wrote me a long letter complaining about my support for abortion rights. She lamented that she was not with the abortion protestors because she had always wanted to be in some great social movement. The opportunity had been there, she said, during the civil rights movement but she had not jumped in. What she did not understand is anti abortion does not have the noble characteristics of the civil rights movement. It does not have the characteristics of any successful social cause. In the late 1960's, 49 states had statues outlawing sex between people of the same sex. Potential sentences ran to life in prison. Same sex attraction was classified as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association. It was acceptable in major publications the use the term perversion and homosexuality interchangeably. In 1972, gay leaders in New York City organized the annual gay rights parade. Among the gaudy and spectacular costumed ...

I'm certain every Sunday there are thousands of preachers/priests talking up the "joy" of being in the faith. It is amusing the faith can be talked about in this way. At its center is sin and punishment for sin. Consider abortion and gayness: sin. Look out. As one of the regulars who posts on this site said a while back, "God hates abortion." It's not "God loves the women who have to get abortions and those who provide them and forgives them both even if this is a sin. The church will not interfere but stands in support if needed. It is a faith of joy." This is not the message people get about the Catholic Church today.  To claim it is a faith of joy is the ultimate stretch. That Christianity insists on associating the Old Testament with the faith was not a good idea. The Jesus people should have presented the pre Jesus world as a happy place. Instead, it has a God killing two million innocent people. As the late George Carlin said in his parody sc...

Fox News made millions by providing viewers with lies they wanted to hear. It was the ultimate profit driven news model. The John Birch Society is not in the news anymore, it became so extreme it could not hang onto its clientele. We learned from the latter President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a Communist. There were communists behind every rock and bush. The lies of the John Birch Society were like the lies of Trump and Fox News.  We've all seen the news that Fox News paid about $800 million of the Dominion voting machine company for saying the 2020 election of Biden was crooked. This amount is astounding. Even if lawyers are paid say $300 million, Dominion will be left with $500 million. Its entire net worth is only around 80 million. I admit Democrats have told lies. Lyndon Johnson's "Gulf of Tonkin" was a big one. But Democrats don't seem to have the stomach Republicans do for big and sustained lies. The John Birch Society believed apparently Communism was such ...

If you ask someone from one of the denominations that does not allow women priests/preachers you get some quite wimpy answers. "It's in the Bible," or, "Jesus only had guy disciples." Any rational person has suspicions about who wrote the Bible and what was intended. There is no verification that Jesus had all male disciples, or that there were any disciples. And, who wrote what is constantly debated. What is fun is to read arguments about some of the old copies of the Bible and see the various translations. There certainly are good arguments that scribes who wanted to exclude women from the pulpit took liberties with the oldest writing. According to some scholars, women were bigger in the faith before the Middle Ages. Apparently, the door opened for men to move into authority and move women aside. They ran with it.   The link instructs us that Paul, who is quoted often as saying women are second class citizens, actually advocates women as preachers behind the p...

I wish I knew the sales numbers for "forbidden books." What I hear most often are lists of forbidden books, lists that give publicity and generate interest in them. My guess is that when the Catholic Church spends for money taken from people in the pews to pay salaries of staff to read, hold meetings and issue press releases about forbidden books, it is a fool's journey. I would guess those in the pews buy "forbidden books." That the Catholic bureaucracy uses money taken from those in the pews and wastes it on deciding which books believers can and cannot read explains why it is a declining institution. To begin with, the men in power think they are important enough to decide on behalf of church members what church members should and should not read. We see a little of Donald Trump's exaggerated view of himself here. Jesus told Peter to run the church and today's clergy think they have authority from Jesus to decide what people read. When a large institu...

An evangelical columnist made clear his own personal version of the overriding issue in Christianity. He wants rules about how a family is to be managed. He has no doubts of his own righteousness. He is a walking talking example, in Catholic, Protestant, liberal and conservative Christianity as to why it is slipping in popularity.   I am certain fifteen-twenty years from now pundits and historians will look back at this decade and conclude this is when Christianity switched from being a force of good for U.S. and Western societies and became a source of harm. There have always been harmful branches of the faith but what was considered "good" crowded out in the public's mind what was bad.  Today, the bad is crowding out what is or was thought to be good. Christianity is undergoing a change to being a force of bad in the public's perception.  During our country's history, Christianity has been used to justify slavery, segregation, second class status for women and a...

According to anonymous reports Trump is attending regular gatherings of prominent preachers on the right, either in person or by ZOOM, where he warns them not to stray from his candidacy. He also says the Republican Party is being killed by the abortion issue and advises the preachers to stress the exceptions that allow some women to get abortions rather than that fewer can obtain them.  Trump is light on intellectual horses. He cannot understand that telling an anti-abortion zealot future elections will be hard to win if women are prevented from abortions is like talking to a stone. The zealot simply does not hear these words. What the zealot hears is a foreign and indecipherable language.  This inability to comprehend political reality was voiced by one of the participants in these sessions of religious leaders with Trump. The anonymous leader said he was really disappointed with the Trump visit. This fellow wanted to hear what Trump was going to do in his next term to elimi...

I've been reading a long book so great I have to force myself to put it down. It is Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo. The principal story is about the escape of two slaves, a young husband and wife. The wife's father was a white slave owner and mother a slave. She had the physical characteristics of a white person. She dressed as a wealthy white male, practiced such a persona and her husband pretended to be "his" slave. They traveled north under the guise the "man" needed medical attention and a male slave tending to him. One part of the story was what happened after they arrived in Boston. While they were living more or less in the open there, Congress and the President signed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. It gave slave owners the power of the Federal Government to enforce the return of fugitive slaves who had escaped to northern free states. Slave owners in the South hired bounty hunters and vigilantes to go north, find escaped slaves and return th...

An abortion rights group has been carefully tracking legal abortion numbers since Roe was overturned. It has concluded, so far,  numbers of legal abortions have dropped 6%.  The group has also tracked as precisely as possible where the numbers have dropped the most. It is from poor areas in the states that have the most restrictions. In these areas, women often cannot afford days off of work, cannot get childcare, cannot afford the travel and so on. This tread was predicted long before Roe was gone.  Anyone following abortion politics knows abortion numbers have been dropping since improved birth control has been available. This makes is possible, even likely, not all of the 6% was due to no Roe. One has to assume there are births that were due to the Roe overturn. The number of these births, however, will only be estimated when actual birth statistics are complied. If birth numbers do not rise, it raises questions about the effectiveness of state laws outlawing abortions...

The headline in my morning newspaper reads , " White House moves to protect some abortion patients' records." Long-time readers of this blog know I predicted many years ago the hidden goal of anti-abortion operatives has always been to get access to women's medical records. Men controlling women is the what the faith is all about. Some anti-abortion readers assured me I was completely wrong. The woman has never been the source of the abortion decision, they said. The decision for abortion happens because abortion providers promote abortion and confuse the hapless women into a decisions they would never make were it not for the evil and sinister abortion providers they said. I believe the official position of the Catholic Church (and perhaps some Protestant groups) remains the woman is the "victim" of abortion, not the cause.  This position has always been laughable when preached from pulpits. Now we can laugh even more because it is ridiculed on the front pa...

We've all heard it. Perhaps there are readers who have said it, "The faith never changes." Pope Benedict was considered the perfect Pope by the conservative branch of Catholics. He brought back the Latin Mass. He also changed the Church's teaching on who gets to heaven and who not. Because he was a hero to conservatives he could get away with changing the church's teaching. Pope Francis would be kicked around for doing what Benedict did.  The change involved Limbo. Limbo is that when an unbaptized infant dies, that infant goes to hell. It was not part of Catholic theology until Augustine. Augustine decided infants were sinful when born and only by baptism could the curse be lifted and heaven available. From the time of Augustine until 2006 this was Catholic theology. Pope Benedict moved Limbo from church doctrine to a lower ranking of concern. It became a hypothesis or theory. The faithful could decide for themselves whether to believe it or not. When Benedict cha...

A Christian columnist recently admitted it is all but impossible to convince a non-believer of the faith's tenets. Using the Bible as a source of history does not meet today's standards. Thus, the miracles, creation, ancient philosophers and "forgiveness of sin" merely cause eyes to roll. To argue about these things, the link author says, is a waste of one's time. The author then provides various reasons why the faithful should continue on within its circle of believers. He treats as a powerful reason to continue the faith is its "long" history of 2,000 years. While the 2,000 years argument may help a believer ward off the temptation to leave, it certainly is a weak argument for separating truth from fiction. Two thousand years out of 300,000 years of human history is but a drop in the bucket.  He mentions "sin" many times in his blog. It is as if the non-believer can receive something by avoiding "sin" or having "sin" erase...

The current government of Israel wants to take away the powers of its courts. That way, the government is not hampered by laws and precedence. There are protests across Israel against this. Not only is the right-wing government of Israel complaining about protestors, so are right wing protestants in the U.S. A marriage of government and the "correct" religion is the way to run things properly in the eyes of right-wing U.S. religion . Jews face a future of being a minority in Israel. It is important to them they do not let the institutions of democracy take powers from the minority of voters and give them to the majority. That is why the courts, if they even function, must be controlled by the minority. Here is the U.S., the majority vote for candidates from the Democratic Party. It is important for the minority party to not let the majority have the most representatives. Gerrymandering house districts is one way to prevent the majority of voters from winning elections. Trump ...

  More than one poll and the seven elections since overturning Roe illustrate the public majority does not, and will not, stand for elimination of all abortions. Polls do not give majority support for a national law making all abortions at any time legal. These polls also show majority support for abortion rights. So, what can the Republican Party and its bonkers no-abortions ever branch do to be successful in upcoming House and Senate elections? The Party needs to find its way to put legislation and the courts back to allowing abortions but allowing states to play political games around the edges with their own restrictions.  Those who disliked the original Roe v Wade say they do not want to return to a U.S. where doctors under some circumstances could perform "late-term abortions." When I write about abortion rights here commenters sometimes accuse me of advocating the right to abortion the day before birth.  This hand-wringing about late term abortions is nothing but m...

Several Easter weekends in recent years I've been visiting family in Providence, RI. Providence is almost like a foreign country on that particular weekend. The city and state have a history going back to their founding of pushing back against orthodox versions of Christianity. Today the state polls as the least Christian in the U.S. Walking around the city on Easter weekend was like any other spring weekend. Hip coffee shops and stores are open, various weekend fundraiser events are held in parks and people enjoying themselves. With a population of over a million people there are, of course, churches holding Easter services.  This year we are spending the weekend at home in Des Moines, IA. While the percentage of Christians is higher than that of Rhode Island, there are plenty of non-believers who ignore the religious aspects of Easter or maybe don't even know about them. I enjoyed taking part in two events which were as far from the orthodox view of Easter as one could possib...

Republican leaders in private must be having conversations like this. One guy says, "The question of the day is, what the hell do we do about Trump?"  Another guy says, "No, the question of the day is what the hell do we do about abortion ?" Republicans cannot return to their winning ways without correcting these two problems. They are different, however. In a few years, Trump will be gone from the political scene without the Party needing to remove him. He will lose and other politicians will move up. The Trump problem will solve itself.  The losses in elections caused by anti-abortion, however, will not solve itself. As long as it sits there making voters mad elections will continue to be lost. The Party has to solve the problem. Anti-abortion operatives have joined the Party and moved up in its ranks. These operatives are now so influential 167 Washington Republicans sponsored a bill called the "Life at Conception Act." Lately, some speaking for the Par...

All of my long life I have heard our "values" are declining. There have been certain periods when this  stood out. One was the Vietnam War. Perhaps now with the polarization of politics and decline of churches it has risen to the top of concerns again. Today's link pushes the same alarm button. It discusses a poll showing a decline in the public's interest in "community" and "patriotism." The poll shows, instead, an increase in importance of money. Whether this poll reflects changes is called into question be a response of only 4% of those offered agreed to take the poll. In previous years, when the same poll was done by telephones (instead of online) response rates were some 60%. It is believed widely lower response rates make results less random and more suspect.  I have a hard time concluding "values" are worse today than they were during the times of my parents or grandparents or even thousands of years ago. The discipline of economic...

The seven elections since Roe was overturned have been lost by the forced-birth faction of politics. Some pundits conclude the women's rights movement is picking up steam rather than wearing thin. Yesterday, Wisconsin, a state that has gone 50-50 in most elections went 55% to 45% in favor of women. The results surprised many. Our country is experiencing a "teaching moment" when those in politics are learning that pushing religion into our laws to harm people has limits. I will not review every one of the six other victories since the overturn of Roe but mention a big surprise, Kansas. That state has been trending conservative for years, but women buried an anti-abortion effort.  The thing is, anyone should be able to add up the votes. Without a doubt, the majority of women want abortion rights. There is a big percentage of men who know their wife/girlfriend's income is badly needed for the household's economics. Add together votes of these women and men and you ha...

One of the best articles I have ever read about religion is not about Christianity but about Islam. Islam is, as I understand it, similar to Christianity in that it uses a sacred book. As time has passed, various conflicts have arisen in Islam between what is written and what we might call common sense or "reasoning." What is written but seemingly over-the-top unbelievable is called "revelation." Pointing out the impossibility of such things is called "reason."  An effort has been made to handle these conflicts and determine what is "right." That is, are there times when what is written in the Koran must prevail over reasoning or common sense? Then, there are places in the Koran that are clear. Other places are not so clear. The former are called "categorical" and the latter "ambiguous."  Christianity and Islam share this dilemma. The two faiths seem identical in this unresolved matter. The Bible and Christianity has conflicts...

Former President Trump is about to be served with charges of law breaking. It is predicted his supporters will be demonstrating in several places on his behalf. What is buried in the coverage of his supporters is an answer to the question, "Who are they?" A recent survey found those who support "white rights" and "male domination over women" are also "anti abortion." These are the supporters of former President Trump. To deny anti-abortion is anti-women has always been folly. Now we are seeing that they are birds of a feather.  While this questionnaire data is interesting, those of us who have followed anti-abortion politics for several years have known it is not about the fetus. It is about controlling women. It took a few years but according to election results women themselves have come to understand supporting Trump is supporting laws designed to harass and hold back women from equal opportunity. Trump, his Supreme Court appointees and conser...

There is a steady stream of news items centering of the German Catholic Church going in a different direction than "allowed" by Rome. There are stern warning from conservative clergy the Pope must take disciplinary action. Pope was quoted from a meeting about six months ago he would tolerate differences between Germany and Rome even if the rest of the bureaucracy was angry. While conservative clergy are going about with their holier-than-thou noses in the air, one of their Pope heroes, the late John Paul, has people protesting in the streets. These protests are taking place in his native Poland. Polish citizens have found documentation that when John Paul was a Bishop he transferred child abusing priests from one diocese to another instead of turning them over to law enforcement. There must be many statues honoring John Paul. Yet, we know now he was not a good person and was more worried about bad publicity for the church than he was those in the church. I suppose some of tho...

For the decades I have been an atheist, I've seen a steady stream of books and articles pointing to obscene depictions in the Bible's stories. They make the Trump/Stormy Daniels story quite tame. All these years I assumed devout Christians would deny the obscenity in the Bible. When the Presidential candidate clown, Gov. Desantis, got a bill through the Florida legislature banning obscene reading material from public schools, a atheist activist wrote to every county school superintendent and said the Bible should be included in the ban. He went on to site some obscene material. A Christian columnist agreed and added several other examples of the material, not fit for children, in his column . Maybe holier-than-thou Christians don't read the Bible. If they did, they would have to agree there is terrible stuff in their favorite book. From day one, the Bible has been the weakest weapon in the Christian arsenal. Christian leaders would be smart to stop using it to justify the f...