Thoughts of a Freethinker

Being old, I have a lot of accumulated memories about churches and religion. I was a participating church member for a long time and now an ex Christian for a long time. Religion has gone through several chapters in my lifetime--will continue to change I am sure.  One of the peculiar periods of church life is referred to as the Charismatic Movement. I guess there have been Charismatics since way back. A general definition, correct this if you like, is a version of the faith where the individual, not the group, receives some presence of the spiritual world or the divine. It is demonstrated by people holding up their arms, sometimes talking a lot during a sermon and maybe speaking in tongues. To the outsider it looks like people are trying to let others know they are beamed up with a secret contact from the spiritual world.  The link author grew up in a charismatic church in South Dakota. I recall the period, in the early 1970's when charismatic behavior started to become popula...

Kari Lake, the politician in AZ who is running for the U.S. Senate just lost another court maneuver where she is trying to get to the Supreme Court. She continues to claim her election defeat was due to fraud. There is no evidence to date that she lost due to fraud--she just lost.  A veteran reporter in his sixties tried to understand people who believe Trump was not defeated and the Biden's election was due to fraud. He reached a man who lives near me. This man, retired and in poor health, has been convicted and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for threatening on the phone a public official in AZ who certified Biden's election results. The convicted man is waiting for completion of a back surgery before reporting to a federal prison. He was a sworn police officer. The reporter wanted to hear directly from someone who would go to such extremes to support the unproven claim Biden was not the legitimate winner. The interview of this fellow appeared on The Atlantic site. I can...

There can be no doubt the fastest growing subset of religion is the "nones." This is the group that replies "No affiliation with any religion" when asked about a religious preference.  Yet, when surveys ask a question like, "Do you believe the is a higher power we cannot see for feel?" majorities say yes. Christians immediately glop onto this and say, "See, they really believe in God, they are under social pressure or don't like their last church and will be back soon. They are one of us." It is risky for, anyone, Christians or myself, to claim we know the minds of the nones. Better is to look at behavior. We have at least a little information about behavior. One interesting bit, interesting to me at least, is the growing commercial success of what we can call generally the "occult." This used to be thought of as specific groups like witches or pagans. Specific groups have been splitting and dividing so much even this term has a bro...

Although it was predicted here and in other publications all over the country, laws against abortion after the overturn of Roe did not decrease abortions. There may even have been a slight increase in the number of legal abortions. The money, effort and frustration to obtain abortions for women in anti-abortion states increased. But, this experience confirms, when women and their supportive men want abortions, they get them. Anti-abortion succeeded in one of their goals, to harass women. But they did not, so far as we can tell so far, succeed in reducing abortions. It's a laugh for them to say they have a goal of stopping all abortions in the U.S. From past experience in other countries, Ireland and Chile for example, we can expect the ineffectiveness, meaning uselessness, of unenforceable anti-abortion laws to affect politics. It may not affect politics immediately but will do so over time. As an example, if organizations pull their annual conventions out of anti-abortion states, ...

"Push back harder than you are being pushed," is the message , in one form or another, I read on Christian sites. It reflects the views that the public would accept the tenets of the faith, virgin birth, resurrection, original sin, anti-gay and anti-abortion if it was told this in a forceful way. Especially, if it quoted from the Bible in its arguments.   What I always wonder when reading these essays is who the evangelical is to push back against. When people just stop showing up for church, what is the church member or preacher to do? Knock on the door and scold them? Or, what about the just confirmed young person stops coming to church? When asked why he/she just shrugs the shoulders and walks away. When we get to the growing populations of "nones", people who claim no religious affiliation, there is no one view that represents them.  There is nothing to push back against. And then there is the question of what the evangelical is to push back with.  Only by patch...

The term "synodality", according to the source I found, is a Greek term meaning "walking together." Pope Francis seems to want laity to be a part of this walk. He wants the Catholic Church to stop getting smaller and its clergy more remote from the flock. If the flock is included in church decision and policy, he reasons, the church will be more in step with those who pay the bills. Without the latter there is no church, regardless of what Jesus was claimed to have told Peter, you, Peter, build this church.  The Synod now going on in Rome is scoffed at by some Bishops. One anonymous source said the problem is many Bishops don't know what "synodality" actually means. They think it means listen to what the laity says and then tell them your decision. To them, it does not mean laity makes decisions. It's fun to speculate on how the direction of the Catholic denomination might have changed if there had been synodality for the last several decades. Supp...

Most abortion rights groups are affiliated with the hands-on work of funding and providing abortions. We all know about Planned Parenthood and a few others. The new group has at the helm the male Governor of Illinois. He comes from a family of long-standing abortion rights advocacy.  Think Big America is focusing on politics, not raising money for women to get abortions. Hopefully, it will have enough money to make grants to abortion rights candidates at all levels of politics, local to national.  From the brief link article, my impression is this group represents the center and power of the Democratic Party. We've seen a bit of this already. When Biden/Harris went further than expected in support of women seeking abortion it surprised some, including myself. I never found working in the Party especially rewarding. It is filled with many different groups advocating different things. Labor Unions are big. Teacher are big but they are a separate group from labor unions. Many are...

 During my college years my social hang-out was the Methodist Student Center. I met my future wife there. What we would call today a student outreach staff member, an associate head preacher and main guy. All of these clergy and some student leaders held meetings to discuss "Ecumenism." It was a serious topic of that era. As most know, the word refers to religious tolerance of other religions. I suppose it has some similarity to today's "multi culturalism." I don't have to tell readers today branches of two different religions are bombing, killing and torturing each other. Wars over religion have gone on since the beginning of recorded history, maybe they went on before. And we know the fighting is not always between separate "religions," but between factions of the same religion. It seems like all those efforts at ecumenism were in vain and remain a useless exercise.  It seems to me the entire concept of ecumenism is misplaced. An example is, I sh...

When I was a Mayor the topic of a water emergency came up often. Fargo, ND, has 120,000 people and gets its was from an adjacent river. There are other small rivers nearby and some wells in the area but these are not necessarily solutions in all cases. The main river, the Red River, is subject to drought but also contamination. A trucks carrying lethal chemicals use a bridge just upstream every day. One of the ultimate solutions was always to haul water by truck into the city from 200 miles away. We discussed how water trucks could be loaded and unloaded quickly.  Today, around the world, climate change and population growth has made hauling water over the road the solution in some places. A city of 80,000 people in Spain is doing it. That city has some contaminated water people use for toilets and bathing. Parents worry about children bathing in that water. It is very popular right now for people from all over the U.S. to "escape" wherever they are living and move to their o...

These numbers include the Carribean. In another 20 years the number will drop well below half of what it was in the year 2000. Latin America and the Carribean represent 40% of the Catholic Church.  While declining numbers in Christianity is old news, these numbers from Latin America are relevant because they represent a truth some Catholics refuse to embrace: Catholicism is dropping rapidly. The counter argument often made is that Catholicism is growing in Africa and China. There are plenty of reasons why this will not continue and certainly will not replace the drop in Latin America. The happy fact some try to sell about the faith does not reflect reality. All that said, the Catholic Church will remain in business because it has several businesses. It has contracts with governments to provide social services and has lots of valuable real estate. Perhaps these businesses will be able to fund the long standing Vatican and Bishop's organization that cranks out opinion pieces against ...

The late Pope Benedict once used his Christmas Eve message, broadcast around the world, to condemn the sin of homosexuality. Poland's old line Catholic leaders have been in bed with an old-line political party for eight years constantly hammering against gay marriage and abortion. In elections just held, the church lost and parties with liberal platforms on gays and abortion won. One cannot predict precisely what will happen when a new government is formed and new laws passed, but it will be different. It will take a while, but perhaps the corrupt and divisive time of Benedict is coming to an end. There are all kinds of explanations as to why the church, especially the Catholic church, is losing ground around the world. Everyone reading this will have his/her explanation. And there will be true believers who think a.) it is gaining in Africa and/or b.) it's just a temporary cycle all those who left will come back.  The imagery of Christianity is largely that of somber old white...

                                              There has been widespread coverage of the Pope's correspondence with leaders of a Catholic group which advocates for Gay, Lesbian and other shunned Catholics. Apparently, years ago Francis dismissed the groups correspondence and assumed it wanted full membership for LGBT as well as gay marriage by priests. The group, which has been active for several decades, implored the Pope to read its goals and what it hopes to achieve.  When the Pope did this he realized he had been mistaken about the group's intensions. As anyone can read on the group's website, what it wants is for homosexual people to be accepted as good Catholics and for them to participate in local church life. From what the Pope has said publicly, this is what he wants. Thus, the correspondence warmed up and leaders were invited to a private visit with the Pope....

I noticed the TV weather reporters once in a while mention ocean temperatures when talking about what is coming in the next winter or summer. Part of what they are talking about was in a recent article  was ocean temperatures. Oceans, the link says, are the engines of climate and climate determines all kinds of changes for humans. Civilizations have always been moved around by weather. I suppose gods traveled with them. The gods and humans have always been one and the same. Until reading the link, I had never understood something about weather. My 30 years of flying a small plane are over and the airplane has been sold. During all that flying I was a novice student of weather. It is often said one day we will mix flying and driving, i.e, the flying car. Flying is so sensitive to weather I don't see how that will ever happen.  For years I read articles about flying by a "ferry pilot" who moon lighted as a writer. A ferry pilot is paid to fly someone else's airplane to ...

Unmarried women have been voting in larger numbers in each of the last several elections. They are voting by a large margin for democrats, including Biden. This explains several things we are seeing. One is the demonization of Taylor Swift. If any person could be the worst news ever for Bible belting conservatives is it a single woman in her early 30's staring in the most successful musical tour ever. As one conservative male pundit said, "She's ugly and her music is terrible." The reason they have problem with her is she is not controlled by the Christian right and is hugely successful. We can expect a rising chorus of Swift demonization. The other thing we are observing is politicians backing away from a national prohibition of abortion. Polling across the board shows forcing pregnant women to give birth is a losing issue. Single women are voting against these candidates and the Republican Party. The Party used to have this in its Platform. Now is has no Platform.  ...

In all the tragic news of the attack on Israel and the pending return attack on Gaza the over-arching issue is being ignored. This dispute was about religion when it started in 1946. It is still about religion. Does anyone think there is a lesson to be learned here? If we go back to 1946, it was a time when the Hitler murder of Jews was still fresh on all minds across the world. We can understand today why people in charge at the time wanted to do something, anything, to at least in part offset the atrocities Jews had suffered. Jewish leaders said this, "We were given the land by God. We have never had a country since then. Give us back the land which rightfully belongs to us."   There were two problems with this solution. First, there was no God so God could never have given that land to anyone. Second, those who were already living there felt a religious justification for their presence there. While the desire to do something for the Jews was almost universal, it never was ...

Leave it to California to come up with new ideas. California, its budget, population and land mass is larger than many countries. It has its share, or maybe more than its share, of churches that are closing. Like everywhere else, schools also are closing as family size declines. It has another huge problem well known across the U.S., homeless people. Homelessness and empty churches/schools are being combined to solve both problems. A new law allows a "fast track" to build housing on any site where a church or school now stands. Only people who have been close to the process for approve of a building of any kind in a city, especially California, understands what this "short cut to approval" means. All of this goes back centuries to the beginning of zoning and building codes. Zoning was put in place in many places in the world to regulate what can be built next to your home. Building codes are for safety from hazards and fires (the fire codes are separate from the bui...

Sometimes I need to review, for my own old memory brain, what has taken place in abortion politics during the last many decades. Before the Roe ruling making abortion legal and since it was reversed the constant refrain from forced-birth operatives has been, "There is only one "human" involved in the abortion decision." That "human," of course, has always been the fetus. A good portion of the public just shrugged about this opinion about the one human theory. Many who believed in abortion rights said more or less, "Yeah, well, whatever. The abortion thing has two parts. One is there are people who are bonkers against it. The other is it is available. So why get involved?" Overruling Roe has an unexpected political consequence. Suddenly, another human being showed up. Women who might need an abortion or know those who might need one joined with men who support abortion rights and said loudly, " There is human being called the woman involved i...

Yet another scientist who was a skeptic of the human impact on global warming is now calling the alarm . He admits he was skeptical of the projections made a decade ago about the rate of warming. The rate we are experiencing, he now sees, is identical to that projected. Oceans are warming. The end is not yet in sight. While we could debate forever the solutions to the carbon we are adding daily to the atmosphere, we have to first agree on the most basic of the reasons for this carbon. There are two basic reasons: (1.) Our "standard of living" is too high. (2.) There are too many of us.  The link article claims we can tech our way out of these basic problems. He makes a good case more solar and wind can help. An acre of solar panels will produce more energy than a hundred acres of corn for ethanol. The freon that was filling the atmosphere is disappearing due to laws and good practices. Claiming the problem can be solved through better technology is a strategy that will win el...

A predictable series of events has taken place in the huge denomination called United Methodist. When the majority of churches in the U.S. wanted the right to employ a gay pastor or hold gay weddings the minority up and left. Those who remain held a conference recently. The Bishops attending said that since the departure of conservative churches it feels like a revival within the denomination. Now it will be possible, those remaining say, to move into the future seeking answers to complicated issues and welcoming a diverse membership. Christianity in the U.S. follows demographics. Denominations that were founded in rural areas and have been unable to grow rapidly in urban areas to offset rural decline are seeing themselves decline. Some who have made a concerted marketing effort in urban areas are doing better. In the Methodist denomination, those who left tended to be churches with older members in rural areas and in the South. These churches will mostly die when their demographic of ...

We all know there are areas of the world that experience starvation. Never mentioned is world-wide starvation. World-wide starvation is taboo subject matter. It carries with it religious and political baggage no one wants to touch. Birth rates, income classes and abortion are all in the mix. Yet, hard data is developing which does not predict world-wide food shortages but illustrates how it could happen. The conditions that would cause it are not out of reach. Former experience in world-wide food production has been that when food production plumets in one area it ramps up in another. Our powerful transportation system moves food to the food-short areas.  Those expressing caution about future food production have compared food growing conditions against the jet stream. The jet stream, as readers know, is a powerful current, sometimes divided into various currents, of air moving from west to east. It moves from areas of higher pressure towards areas of lower pressure. All of the mov...

An Irish Catholic writer , who must represent the anguish of many Irish Catholics, sees signs the country is returning to its pre-Catholic roots. There are proposals to turn saint's days into feast days. Men in drag are seen regularly. The writer is aghast.   It's helpful to remember that five years ago voters legalized abortions in Ireland. If memory serves, that was the first of many events in Europe and the Americas putting a political finger in the eye of forced-birth religious and political operatives. Now, it is on the verge of eliminating the draconian three-day waiting period and extending the weeks available for abortions. No other country in Europe, the writer observed, has done as complete a turn to the secular as has Ireland. The link author tries to make the same case about Ireland many Christians try to make about Christianity, especially the Protestant version, in the U.S. It is that the current religion also represents the culture of the country. He skips acros...

In an effort to make access to abortions or to abortion meds easier a large new site has been launched. It is called "Charley." The site asks your Zip code and time since your last period then instantly sorts through the options available. It wants to make a woman's inquiry feel like she is talking to a friend. The site will protect the woman's privacy by asking no questions about her address or phone and pledges to keep all the information it does collect confidential. It is an electronic version of what went on prior to Roe. Back then, information circulated by whispers. The very successful "Jane" operation in Chicago had no computer but performed thousands of safe abortions for women at that time. We can be certain forced-birth activists have already tried to jam the new site with fake inquires and tried to divert inquiries to their own sites where sermons can be delivered about the sin of abortion. There are, no doubt, knock off sites trying to imply the...

I enjoy the continuing views that comes out of archeology about the history of humans. There is evidence beings similar to humans were other places on earth as much as 300,000 years ago. On our continent the prevailing view has been humans were here around 15,000 years ago. Now there is there is evidence humans were here as much as 25,000 years ago. This latter comes from footprints found in desert soil.  While probably most people would not find this 10,000 year difference very important, it interests me because of the history we have about gods. Gods have a shelf life. A particular god or gods are worshipped for a while and then humans move on to others. I've always thought it would be helpful if Christian Sunday Schools would teach that the current god is just one in a long parade of gods that started in pre history. I'm not an expert in this, but my thinking is the current magical being today called God began under another name or names about 10,000 years ago. That god is c...

National groups hoping to impose a nation-wide prohibition on abortion have run into a brick wall. Elections since the overturn of Roe have gone against them and against their chosen party, Republican. This will not be the case in every election going forward but it appears certain it will tip the balance of power in Washington and harm what force-birth wants.  Forced-birth has tried to continue the narrative they thought had been working for decades. That narrative was that a fetus was a human being and to destroy the fetus was to murder a human being. As long as that narrative was a somewhat distant theory that had little to do with the actual lives of women and men it was viewed without universal hostility. Nearly all women could get abortions by putting up with pointless costs such as waiting periods and ultrasounds. This all changed when a theoretical narrative that a fetus is a human being became a law in several states making it difficult if not impossible for a few women to...

The book I quote often here about the many gods and many religions of the world summarizes Christianity as a religion that is about one thing, sin. While people with academic backgrounds in Christianity argue vigorously this is not accurate, that the faith is about forgiveness of sins, not sin, this splitting of theological hairs makes little difference really. The topic people in the pews discuss and fret about is sin. Any religion, or denomination within a religion is ultimately what those who pay the bills think it is about.  I enjoy scanning several sites which discuss religion. Sometimes I find an ideas for this blog when scanning. The writing I look for are writers who are searching for some new way to present the faith that would be meaningful and attractive enough to stop the decline in numbers. Pope Francis is searching for some new way to present the Catholic faith that is more in step with current thinking. He overtures about accepting instead of condemning gay people is...

Several years ago I read an article in an academic journal about theology. It was about the origin of various threads of theology. The scholar author had a remarkable insight that is coming to the front of debates about religion today. He wrote that people in the pews have ideas about theology and ultimately they will push these ideas into any denomination. "Those of us with lots of credentials in theology should step aside and listen to what those in the pews have to say. We, too, need instruction." A few years ago Pope Francis announced a huge "synod" would be held in Oct. 2023, right now. The synod was to be preceded by listening sessions in parishes around the world. Priests were to hold these listening sessions and records were to be kept as to what was expressed. All of these views were to be summarized by a board of clergy charged with preparing for and running the synod. I don't know how many such meetings were held, how many lay people spoke or what was...

In life, we all encounter the two kinds of people. One group I'll call the "Rules People." This group spends its time going over rules and looking for tiny violations. There may be other rules the Rules People themselves ignore. The Rules People, for example, would be outraged if they got a speeding ticket going 36 mph in a 35 mph area. "This is ridiculous" we would hear. The Rules People consider themselves to be quite reasonable. If people don't like the rules, they say, change the rules. But don't violate any rule they happen to like. The other group is the Overview People. This group believes rules are to be followed but only insofar as the broader population supports them and they serve their intended purpose. They admit not following rules leads to uncertainty and maybe even chaos. Yet, they believe, so long as there is some consensus and the rules serve some broader purpose they should remain and be followed to the extent practical. This group wou...

There is nothing honorable about slimly mangers of forced-birth politics. They know they are losing so they want their old language dropped and new vague words inserted. The terms "pro-life" are to be dropped as well as the word, "banned."   As a backdrop to the forced-birth shenanigans, we have to remember how their moral compasses work. In their world, lying is not a sin if it is done to control women. If women are not controlled they will be promiscuous, get pregnant and have abortions. The Christian way, in their minds, to stop women from being promiscuous is to force them to give birth and make them economically dependent on the church or dominant men. Lying is a very minor and forgivable sin so long as it is done to please God. The lying started way back when male Catholic Clergy ruled one fertilized egg is a human being with all the rights thereof. They was no justification whatsoever for that ruling. That lie set the pattern for many years to come. Forced bi...

There can be no doubt the Sin Leader Board in the Christian right is now topped with trans. Trump made that clear in a speech last night. Abortion doctors and women who get abortions has dropped to second place. Gay marriage no longer ranks high on the list of really terrible sins. While the Bible says believers are not to know the mind of God, right wing Christians disagree and are certain they know which sins God hates the most. Apparently, God changes his/her mind every few months because the Sin Leader Board list changes the ranking of various sins.  Every week these days some Christian publishes his/her insight into why Christianity is shrinking. Never have I seen a Christian pundit address the ridiculous way sin is handled. It starts in the Garden of Eden with God playing with people's heads. God plays with people several times in the Bible. A talking snake apparently heard from God that eating an apple is sin. Eve must have thought, "That doesn't make sense. There i...