Thoughts of a Freethinker

Although what is meant by "support" for abortion rights is not always clear, a Christian group claims their enemy, abortion rights, is gaining ground. The colleges showing the most increased tolerance for abortion were Methodist and Presbyterian. But some Catholic universities were included as abortion rights advocates as well . Here is what was studied,  The study defined "infractions" as actions by university officials that supported abortion, including internship opportunities with Planned Parenthood, publicizing abortion vendors as a health resource and hosting Planned Parenthood events. Many years ago I was listening to the radio in my car when I heard something that surprised me. It was a religious station and the program was interviewing representatives of conservative Christian colleges. There were maybe six college officials. The question was, "What do you do with an unmarried female student who is found to be pregnant. One by one each of colleges said...

Probably nearly all of us have the same impression about ancient Mongolia. It is of warriors on horseback with swords slashing their way across the world leaving a trail of blood and death. To the surprise of many, Pope Francis visited Mongolia four months ago.  The Pope has expressed a desire to have a relationship with Russia and that area to improve obstacles to understanding one another. But the visit to Mongolia, the first ever by a Pope, was even more remarkable because there are only 1,500 known Catholics in the entire vast country. There are about 3 1/2 million people in Mongolia.  Perhaps another surprise was the Pope's published remarks. He said the world should admire Mongolia for its policy of religious freedom. Christianity and Catholicism is so scarce there a local reporter was overheard asking, "Tell me again. What is this religion all about?" (NY Times)  Mongolia became an independent country, no longer part of the Soviet Union, in 1990. Its government is ...

The Bible starts with what writers wanted readers to believe, humans carry a flaw that must constantly be addressed. It is sin. We could be living yet in the Garden of Eden were it not for Eve's sin. Her sin was so bad it infects every human even before we are born.  Philosophers, doctors, religious gurus of many stripes have weighed in on what they think is central to the human mind. Sigmund Freud thought our minds centered on sex. I read that writing claiming to quote Jesus had him referring to the evils of money more than any topic. Other fields put a magnifying glass on one or another part of humans, the desire for war for example, and conclude this or that one guides all the others. My discipline, economics, the microeconomics branch of it, does this also. Microeconomics is within the behavioral sciences along with sociology and psychology. It says there is a human trait that is central to understanding most everything else involving humans. Humans, it says, are insatiable. Th...

The Bible was written by men. It portrays men as having certain roles to play in society, women an entirely different role. Women were to be property; men were to run things. Catholics, some Lutherans and some Baptists, preach that because Jesus' bros were all men, woman were not to be preachers and not stand in front of men as leaders of them. The tiny slice of society that was literate at the time the Bible was written was, no doubt, made up mostly of very wealthy men. Once male clergy were in power they did not let go. They hold on to this day. Evidence is emerging that in ancient times, women held power over men. The notion that God made the world with men in a superior leadership positions over women is B.S. Looking at a Lutheran site I follow I've seen clergy say over and over, "God made the world with order." Those men are referring, among other things, to gender roles they themselves prefer.  A burial chamber was uncovered a few years ago in Spain. The site wa...

  It all started with Moses. We all know the fictitious story of the angry Moses accusing his followers of worshipping idols. Now we have latter day followers of Moses destroying a depiction of Satan in the Capital of Iowa. Other Christians instantly sent over $70,000 for his legal defense--probably many time that amount by now. The Moses story is whacko. So is the current vandal.  How many ordinary objects are there that seem like idols. Pictures of the fetus were an early part of forced birth operatives. Protestors at clinics carried the pictures, allegedly of fetuses, on sticks with the message the pictures were of "human beings." Pictures of rabbits before born look the same. Millions of post cards with a picture of what looked to be a baby in a garbage can were mailed to public officials like me. Every professional in the field said the picture was not an unborn fetus. Yet, worshipping this idol continued.  There is the cross--sure seems like it is worshipped. Could ...

Periodically, someone comes up with new insight as to where the Bible stories came from. I'm reading How to B e by Adam Nicolson. He traveled the Mideast and looked at every ancient piece of writing he could find as well as drawings, inscriptions, coins, etc. Around 600 BCE Greeks and their trade flourished along the "seas" of the time. This trade put people from various areas, languages and religions in direct contact with each other. It was like logging on the the internet. Around this time, Greek intellectuals began to change ideas from, "I am a servant to my gods and kings. I must keep my head down and keep working at my dreary occupation " to "I, myself, am important to the world." Greeks had slaves and accumulated wealth. They developed mathematics which appear magical and other worldly. Along came a personality that mesmerized the lay people, Pythagoras. He was so persuasive he began to be seen by many as both human and divine. Included in his s...

Part of the disciple of Finance deals with the difference between "stocks" (of money) and "flows (of money). Buying a house is priced as some stock of dollars. To some who borrow to buying house, the flow to pay off the mortgage has to be low enough to fit into the other outflows from one's bank account.  In Christian churches, the flow into them is determined somewhat by the number of children born to Christian parents. Fewer babies means, of course, a smaller flow. That flow is even smaller now because 80% of children born to Christian parents leave by the time they are 20 years old.  Recently, I've wondered if the rate of outflow from Christianity in the U.S. is affected by rates of flow of other information and events. Certainly, scandals among clergy has increased the rate of leaving. But, are there certain tenets that are more important than others in influencing the rate of out flow from Christianity. There is, I believe, some evidence. I've read the o...

When DeSantis started his campaign, every other word, it seemed, was "woke." As Trump noted, people don't know what the word means. It reflected the fact that DeSantis is in over his head when he tries to be a Presidential Candidate.  When DeSantis said, "Florida is where woke goes to die" he meant, as I understand it, children in Florida public schools would not learn about the wrongs of slavery or racial segregation. Nor would children who are certain they were assigned the wrong gender at birth be allowed to self identify as the gender find themselves to be. The complications of "anti woke" were even felt in universities in Florida.  DeSantis thought the religious right would flock to him. It turns out Trump voters do not care that much about religion. Trump was strongest in lower-middle-income groups and rural areas. This demographic is declining in church attendance and membership faster than many others. The have their grievances but its not sin....

The Pope can count members and reads polls. He has now ruled priests can "bless" same-sex marriages. From what I read, same sex couples will not be allowed the experience of the marriage "ritual" with a priest conducting a wedding ceremony. This little gamesmanship is similar to what some Protestant denominations do. For example, the Evangelical Covenant does not "approve" same sex weddings. Every year a church or two is axed from the denomination because its preachers perform same sex marriages. Those churches are well aware of the rule and seemingly could care less. There is, however, official permission given for an Evangelical Covenant preacher to "attend" a gay wedding. Thus, a couple's own preacher can be part of every part of the marriage event, pre marriage counseling, the rehearsal and dinner, reception and remarks after the wedding, everything except the few minutes of the ceremony. From what I read in the Pope's decree, a local...

When looking at an overview of trends in religion, there are plenty of spins. In the U.S. and Europe the trend seems clear, Christianity is declining. In addition to polling, we know when churches are closing the cash flow is down.  But, spin machines are going when it comes to Christianity world-wide. Lots of Protestant denominations have members who think they are doing good works by funding missionaries in other countries. I suppose missionaries come back and do speaking tours like they did when I was young. I recall they made it sound like they were very successful. One common claim made by administrators of denominations is that there is big success in Africa and Asia. Is this true or only a self-serving spin machine? One thing is for certain, there is not huge growth in Christianity in either Africa or China. What remains uncertain is whether there is a tiny growth or no growth.  I started reading today, The Ends of the LCMS . The author is a young Lutheran Church Missou...

A Christian pundit wrote recently it is wrong for church goers, as well as non-church goers, to only somewhat tolerate the farfetched things in the faith. Instead, he advises, people should swallow the entire whale. They should believe the entire list of things that on their face are not believable. The faith is not, he writes, a leap of faith but a provable set of facts.  I'll digress here to discuss the way Christians regard the majority of the world's population which is not Christian. These millions can be divided into those who have been preached to but do not believe the claims of Christianity and those who have never encountered Christianity. Parts of the faith give these latter millions a pass--they will not spend entirety in a fiery hell. Those who have heard but did not buy in will, of course, have a miserable eternity. (I've been told countless times on this blog I'm the latter.) We atheists have no lever, like hell, to mentally abuse believers as they have t...

What do you get when you have a Catholic Bishop write the Constitution for a country? You get the same sexist ideas held by the Catholic Church. The proper place for women is in the home. Voters in Ireland are step by step taking their country out from under its Catholic male domination and bringing it into modern times. They are taking out of the Irish constitution references of women being in the home raising children. A vote coming up shortly is to give women equal status in the workplace, Also, it will give unmarried couples the same status and married and drop the inferior status of children born to unmarried couples. This follows the 1973 removal of the "special status" of the Catholic Church. In 2015 the country legalized divorce and 20 years later legalized marriage between gays.  As I understand it, the Ireland's Constitution was written in 1937 with much input from Catholic Clergy. In a St. Patrick's Day speech of that year, political leader Michael Cassidy ...

The term "abortion abolitionist" is not widely used. It will be better known, I think, in time. A Republican who calls himself and abortion abolitionist has just been elected to the U. S. House. An abortion abolitionist believes totally abortion is murder. This being the case, everyone involved in the murder must be prosecuted, convicted and sentenced accordingly. The woman is most responsible for the abortion, so she is first in line for arrest and conviction for murder.  I discussed the prosecution of women and conviction for murder a lot here a few years ago. It is simply the logical outcome of the strange notion killing a fetus is murder. It cannot be murder unless the woman who made the decision to kill is sentenced to prison or even death herself. The forced birth establishment at that time scoffed at what I wrote saying the traditional "pro-life" view was the woman was not responsible. All blame was on the abortion clinic. This establishment's way of hand...

Kellyanne Conway, who was President Trump's spokesperson for some years, now runs a political consulting firm. She claims to have polling data showing Republicans, including Trump, would do better against Biden and Democrats by simply saying they are the Party who is the woman's friend. Supporting birth control with federal money is the key to a successful Republican future, Conway says. She is making the rounds in DC this week talking to Republican leaders. I don't see how talking to Republicans in the Capital will change things much. Lots of the support for forced birth is based on control of women. If women can control their pregnancies with birth control this group loses. Why would they support a losing idea? As anyone who has followed politics knows, many members of the U.S. House are there because of redistricting. The larger the Republican majority in any particular House District the less candidates need to appeal to independents. This led to more and more conservat...

Today I came across two different people who use the words "religious liberty." They are both quite amusing. The first was on front page of our local paper, the Des Moines Register. It was about a rural legislator in the Iowa State House of Representatives. The legislator's last name is Sherman. He regularly sends of a political mailing called "Sherman's Liberty Letter." The one sent out just a couple of days ago was an angry rant about the State Capital.  To understand the rant, we can start about five years ago when a wealthy Christian somewhere in the U.S. decided it would be clever to manufacture 50 large manager scenes. He found someone in most states willing the receive the manufactured Mary, Joeseph and wise men and make a request at their state capitals to display them over the Holidays. This was quite successful, governors around the country spoke at the opening of the manager displays in their Capitals. Predictably, this was met by determination am...

Thinking back in the history of what are called the Jewish People and considering the unsolvable dilemma of present-day Israel, it seems there is no other source of blame except religion.  Sometime back in antiquity, someone came up with the idea there is only one god, called God, and convinced an ethnic group later called the Jews this was the truth. To further gain political influence over this group it was told a leader from the far away past who was better for them than any current authorities, a guy named David, who would return and whatever their current troubles they would all be swept away. Apparently, ancient Jews were a gullible lot. They believed both of these lies. I suppose they kept on giving money to those who lied to them.  Another whopper, one that makes their lives difficult to this day, was that the fictitious God promised them a piece of land. This land was located in the Middle east. They started reminding themselves of that false promise when they were pe...

Long ago when I was a mayor remember seeing on my schedule a coming visit with someone named Liz Magill. I figured out she was the daughter of Federal Judge Frank Magill who was a conservative Federal Judge. Judge Magill was a very likeable guy other than his views on some things. I assume Liz Magill was coming to visit about some Catholic issue since her father was widely known as a Catholic and Liz went to the local Catholic High School. Her visit was to request endorsement of some liberal issue. She made a point of telling me she had quite different political views from her father. Because she was such an impressive young woman I made note of what happened to her over the decades since. She was dean of a law school, a university provost and eventually President of the Un. of Pennsylvania.  Very recently she and two other university presidents were interrogated by some Republican members of  a committee. They wanted the university presidents to say their universities condemn...

A young woman in Texas asked a judge to allow a doctor to perform her abortion. Her pregnancy suffers from an abnormality called Trisomy. It means the fetus, if carried to term, will die shortly after birth. The woman had been making regular visits to ER for bleeding.  The judge allowed the abortion to take place in Texas. The Texas Attorney General is screaming objections. The woman has two small children and is in such poor health traveling to another state is not possible. Her doctors, I assume, thought they might lose their licenses if the provided the abortion and crazy Texas AG came after them. I assume the Texas AG did not want a judge making the decision because it can be used by future judges as president. The AG wants to be the final authority of which abortions are allowed and which ones he will use to go after a doctor's license.  I would predict the AG's concerns are well founded, once one woman has used successfully the courts to get an abortion others will do th...

Speculating on how history might have changed if this or that had not happened is good entertainment. A recent article , I'm sure many others have been written, speculated about whether Christianity would have been as successful as it has been if Rome had never gone Christian. The link points out that Christianity did not change acceptance of slavery. It just adopted slavery as a permanent institution. On top of that, slavery was a status symbol and part of the upper class. The upper class, we would call them the "5%" slice of society today, was the source of the written material such as the NT Bible. To have time to become literate and then to write required slaves.  It is said sometimes Christianity was the religion of ordinary people, not the wealthy elite. From what I have read this is hard to swallow. Besides the wealth and literacy question, the final days of the Roman Empire were fraught with class. The Goths were good citizens in the empire but the empire would ne...

Senator Tommy Tuberville represents the brain dead forced birth cult as well as anyone. His thinking goes like this, "The voting public is quite religious. It hates abortion. If it finds our women in the military get travel money to obtain abortions it will be up in arms. Everyone knows the military needs money for promotions. If Republicans hold up these promotions until women must pay for their travel to abortion clinics we will be swept into offices across the country." Now he has faced a humiliating defeat . All because he is too stupid to see what is right in front of his eyes. It turns out, both in state-wide votes in several states and in Tuberville's gambit, the majority does not care one way or the other about pregnancies or abortions. Today's majority is not overwhelmed with admiration over couples with many children. It does not condemn couples with no children. It doesn't care if women get abortions. Births and abortions are a side issue, not a central...

On a conservative Christian site is an article written by a woman who calls herself a female abolitionist. While she was in a marriage with a cheating husband, she read books on how to be a good Christian wife. The wife always to be gentle and passive. The sections of these books that discussed husbands said the male was to be decisive and driven by facts not feelings. The author found herself in the husband category.   The Christian right stereotype of woman is the passive helpful woman who always defers to her husband. A stereotype of man is as mentioned above unfeeling and decisive. Today there are books and speaker for hire to tell you why these old and outmoded models must be brought back. The view is society has blurred the difference between the genders and this is a catastrophic development. Stereotypes of men and women plays directly into animosity toward gender change, also called trans. If humans are born either male female and the stereotypes of either have been sp...

The Pope's eloquent language has put down climate change deniers. He said the "creation is a gift" to be protected.  Not only should all religions embrace the Pope's environmentalism, atheists should do the same. Atheists can recognize that the earth is here by the accidents of history and we should all work to extent its life.   What the Pope is up against is a long-standing mistake by both forced birth operatives and low tax anti regulation Republicans. They wanted, still want, to use each other but for the most part each is a millstone around the other's neck. Forced birth politicians who are needed to lower taxes and cancel regulations are up against resistance by women who want equal opportunities in the workplace.  Any clear thinking and rational person would see that Christianity is about helping the poor and the underdogs. The Republican Party is about doing the opposite. It is about self-directed ambition and lifting yourself up without aid from governmen...

Pope Francis has issued warnings that democracy is in danger. The U.S. Bishops recently issued a Catholic voter guide. Their pet issues were endorsed. They did not mention the word democracy. U.S. Bishops do not share their Pope's concern for the future of democracy.  There is good reason for this. When kings and Popes shared the thrones of power they helped each other. It is in the economic interests of clergy to bypass democracy. The Pope sees the danger, U.S. Bishops do not.  We are seeing an interesting version of that in Germany where politics are more liberal. The political sphere endorses gay marriage. The government collects a voluntary tax that is turned over to churches, especially the German Catholic Church. Not surprisingly, the German Catholic Church does not clammer against gay marriage. It knows where its money comes from.  The behavior of U.S, Bishops suggests they want a form of government where voters are not important. Since they feel they know "the tru...

It is refreshing and informative to review the Ohio vote that legalized abortion there. The forced birth operatives are claiming they lost because the abortion rights side had more money. They claim voters were given incorrect information. The real reason they lost began long before the measure was put on the ballot. Forced birth could have had twice the money and it still would have lost. It would have lost because voters no longer like those in charge of forced birth.  The measure was decided when a 10 year old girl was raped and could not get an abortion in Ohio. A majority of the public saw this as barbaric. This would have been the perfect moment for forced birth operatives to support her abortion and act in ways that seem normal to the general public.  Instead, they began blaming doctors by saying it was the doctor's fault. If he had just been willing to break the law and give her an abortion he would not have been prosecuted. That may be true, or, it may not be true. Be...

A world-wide survey found people are very aware of the severe consequences ahead of them. Two billion believe they will be forced to relocate during the next 25 years. These people are not scientists and how many actually will relocate is not precise. Scientists do agree the number relocating, including crossing borders, will be huge.  While I may be wrong, it seems like the border crossing dilemma now taking places in the Southwest U.S. is a prelude to the coming climate change impact. So far, it has been mostly impossible to stop border crossings into this country. There is not universal agreement on whether the U.S. should stop border crossings or merely record and track all those who cross. There are business interests in allowing immigration, firms need employees.  As I understand the climate dilemma, there will be two sets of people on the move to somewhere else. One group live near the world's oceans. Melting polar ice will raise sea levels and they will move somewhere ...