Thoughts of a Freethinker

"Beating a dead horse" must have come from the days when horses were the economic engine of the English-speaking world. The thing is, when one enjoys saying something, it's also enjoyable to say it over and over. It's not so enjoyable to those who have to listen. The dead horse I have beaten is the view that abortion will be the issue that determines the outcome of the 2024 election. I've been saying this for several years. As time moves us closer to the Nov. election, polls are changing steadily.  The old adage is people vote the economy. Every election year, the out of office party asks people, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" It's not hard to find lots of people who think they are worse off and can be made to think it is because of the current President. A few elections back, James Carvell, the well know liberal political consultant, admonished Clinton and Democrats where to focus, "It's the economy, stupid."  In th...

Christianity has major dilemmas. Some Christians recognize the dilemmas exist but some do not. I found fascinating a review of the dilemmas by none other than a Jesuit Priest. He died recently but was the kind of Christian I wish I would encounter regularly.  There is a small army of people studying Jesus, giving lectures about Jesus and writing about Jesus. The link author points out that while these might help answer some questions about the historical Jesus, they will never answer all of them. That is because there is very little historical information to study. The context of this is the new form of Christianity which takes a pass on the Old Testament and the cruel figure, God. We have something better, Jesus. This Jesus turned the other cheek and had lots of forgiveness and did not judge so much. He was not in favor of giving the rich the break they think they deserve. Because of all the good things Jesus did and had to say, let's just stick with that and leave the other stuff...

While much of the blustery branch of the Christian right shouts the country is falling into immorality and Trump will correct this, another group of Christians is saying , "Wait, Christianity is really about caring for the poor and the marginalized. Vote for Harris and other Democrats." Harris has just appointed a woman pastor to head up her faith outreach. Needless to say, the preacher is not a Southern Baptist. She is head of a national outreach group in Christianity and has for years advocated Christianity welcome the LDBTQ+ into its center. Right wing religious sites are full of outrage over this appointment. Demographics, however, are on the side of the Harris appointment. The majority of young people are leaving the faith they grew up in. Rather than saying Harris is going after the "religious vote," it might be more accurate to say she is going after first the liberal part of Christianity and second the post Christian demographic. For some reason, Trump and h...

For decades Forced Birth organizations have had two positions. One was they were working to overturn Roe and as soon as that was accomplished, they would go state by state across the country and eventually ban abortions in every state. The long goal was not turning abortion back to the states, it was banning all abortions in the U.S. The other view expressed by Forced Birth political operatives was they would first overturn Roe, then have a Congress and President pass a national ban. The long game in both scenarios was the one with the political juices, a national ban. Now, the door to both routes to a national ban have been slammed shut. Ironically, Trump and Vance slammed one of the two doors. It takes political juices to open check books. My post recently about the Forced Birth group that rents billboards showed that its money was limited. My guess is big money will no longer flow to the national Forced Birth groups like it did before. If they cannot achieve a national prohibition t...

A huge national company has acquired over time thousands of prime locations for billboards. When I was a Mayor one of the first visitors to my office was a local sign company. I was unaware of the many ordinances the city had about billboards. Billboards are very competitive and a large portion of the public does not like them anywhere.  In past decades I have had several experiences with the companies that sell billboard space. First it was renting a sign with a picture of local parents and their gay child. This was unusual at the time it caused quite a stir. Later I was involved with our local atheist group in Fargo, ND, renting a billboard. The atheist group here has also rented signs. The national company has started turning down Forced Birth signs at the low cost it offers to "educational purposes." It did not give a reason, it does not have to. The Forced Birth organization that rents signs across the U.S. says it will instead find locally owned sign companies. Since it...

The Superintendent of Public Schools in the State of Oklahoma issued a directive a while back that all public schools will have Bibles for students to read and all schools will "Teach the Bible." A survey of school in Oklahoma this week as they were about to open did not locate any Bibles or lesson plans to teach the Bible. Satan is winning there. The State Superintendent, Ryan Walters, is fighting, not only with local school administrators, but with his own Republican Party. Some Party leaders say he is secretive and "rogue." One state education leader said he know of no school district in the state that has, or is even trying, to implement Walter's whacko edict. There are a few teachers who would like to do what he wants but they say they don't know how to go about it because there has been no direction. Walters himself says the edict is self-explanatory, that the Bible is the basis for all knowledge so teachers just need to do what it says. This edict to ...

While my link today may have fire walls requiring a subscription, I hope many can read it. David French is a lawyer who formerly defended Christian organizations in court and prosecuted the concepts of non believers. He attacked abortion rights. Then the right turned him into a villain and today he writes interesting things about having moved from inside the zealot Christian center to it fringes. His column today debunks the popular view in the Christian right that Christianity suffers from persecution and its rights are trampled upon. He suggests that no religious group in the world has its rights protected as much as U.S. Christianity. The problem with Christian zealotry is that it cannot stop itself from trampling on the rights of non Christians. It wants books banned and abortion never mentioned. David French's conclusion that the religious right cannot hold back its zealotry to some level that is acceptable to the general public says what I have read into the Founding Fathers....

Conventional wisdom floats around until someone does an exhaustive study and determines if it is correct of not. A good example was the Turnaway study of women who received or did not receive abortions. Among other things, it established forcefully that abortions do not harm women. The conventional wisdom that women were left wounded was so commonly believed it was repeated by a Supreme Court Judge.  A commonly repeated conventional wisdom is that it is impossible to establish a firm version of morality unless the morality is based on Christianity which, in turn, is based on the Bible. A wonderful paper is available which defines clearly what is meant by "morality" and whether religion is necessary to hold moral views or practice life in a moral way.  Using public opinions and written materials from religions around the world, the link concludes that "morality" is about relationships with other people, not relationships with any god. Being honest, generous, consider...

I've collected a lot of signatures from the public in my day. I can understand how abortion rights people in Arkansas failed to certify training of all who gathered signature for a state referendum on abortion rights. The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that even though 100,000 signatures were collected when only 80,000 are required, the issue cannot be put in front of voters. The Forced Birth political operation does not want to give voters a say in abortion rights. They have lost in six out of six votes. Arkansas Forced Birth operatives seem to assume they will lose there as well when it is on the ballot. If history gives us a hint about what will happen next, it is that abortion rights will be fired up and make this thing happen. They will collect the signatures again and make Forced Birth face their political gallows. Forced Birth is trying in every state to avoid putting abortion rights on the ballot. They used to brag about the public support for their anti-abortion rights polit...

Decades ago a late friend, who was a priest, told me of a problem at the time in his large congregation. It was that several members had begun speaking in togues during mass. This annoyed others and they complained. They told my friend he should do something about it. He said he called a meeting of all those involved and told the speaking in tongues group to come to the early mass only and stay out of the later one. It worked. I don't know if this fad lives on in that church or not. Around the time when our priest friend told us of this I was a mayor. A couple of religious zealots addressing out City Commission were so carried away with anti-abortion or anti-gay passions they briefly lapsed into a babble that must have been speaking it in tongues.  A columnist on Christian Post tried to answer the question, "Can I be a good Christian if I do not speak in tongues?" Apparently, some people really wonder about that--feel unworthy if they cannot babble pointlessly. The column...

Iowa's Governor Kim Reynolds spearheaded an effort to get books she does not like taken off the shelves of public schools. The law made a general reference to books that had race, unfavorable history, trans and sex that must be removed. Local school staff make the decisions but, of course, there are bad consequences for the career of anyone guilty of breaking the law. Local newspapers have done many stories about books taken off the shelves and sometimes put back on the shelves. Books are banned in some school districts but OK in others. In today's statewide paper is a story about four books taken off the shelves in a suburb of Des Moine. The city is Johnston. Here is a tiny review of the four books: Neither by Airlie Anderson. In this children's book a creature is not quite a bunny and not quite a bird. I suppose we cannot have a book about such uncertainty when God clearly made animals, man, males and females. If we start children thinking God might have been uncertain ab...

The Barna Group is headed by an evangelical but does legitimate polling. It is different than other polling groups in that it does not merely ask questions like, "Do you believe in God?" It pokes more deeply into people's inner lives. Recently it found the inner lives are not reflected in being a member of one kind of a church or another. By its definition of "evangelical" Barna found there are fewer than previously thought.  I did not wade through the fine points of what Barna found as "evangelical." I know from commenters a lot of people spend their lives debating who is and who is not an evangelical. What I think is that the role of religion in people's lives is overstated by general polling questions like, "Do you believe in God" or "Do you pray and how often." Are people thinking about "God" and "prayer" 80% of the time or 008% of the time. And, what exactly do they consider "God" and "Pra...

While a lot of Christianity these days spins on the abortion issue, another issue has been here since forever and will remain forever. It is the prosperity gospel. It is taken from one or maybe more phrases in the Bible which say more or less directly, "God wants you to be healthy and prosperous. He wants that even more for me." The ancient wealthy who wrote the Bible did not aim it at the broader society nor at modern society. They had some audience existing at that time they wanted to influence. Because the marketing strategy of Christianity has always been to claim the ancient musings had some universal truths, it left a big barndoor open. It was for scheming preachers to say, "Look, right here in the Bible it says I should take your money and make myself rich." Their thinking is "why not?"  Of course, there is lots of hand wringing over this in the faith. The hand wringers say, "That's not why the Bible means." Keep trying to say that, Br...

Hatred of Jews in embedded so deeply in the DNA of Christianity there it seems no way to remove it. Constantine, the dictator in the 3rd century credited with getting Christianity off the ground, railed against the Jews. Martin Luther railed against the Jews. So, we are to believe that today one of the foundational beliefs in the faith can be left behind? Don't bet the farm on it.  Some Christians have commented on this site that any who claim to be of the faith could not believe "The Jews killed Jesus." It's obvious, they say, the Romans killed Jesus. But what of the tale in the Bible where the assembled Jews called for Jesus' death? I can't remember the details now, but I remember reading an analysis of the politics inside the Jewish community during the period when Jesus was supposed to have been killed. There was an ongoing political dispute and those who called for Jesus' death were being demonized for political reasons. It was no different than today...

Mark Silk in the site about religion wrote that both sides, Harris and Trump, have a religious overtones or overview. It is true a lot of religion is bandied about. It seems to me it is not so much about religion. Instead it is about who will have the power to do what. In the link, Mark Silk makes an interesting observation. Both sides want to return to something perceived to be lost. One the Trump side it is to "Make America Great Again." Silk goes on to repeat themes of many politicians who tried similar themes. Returning to past "values" was run up the flag by Nixon, Reagan, the Bushes and even some by Obama.  Harris has an angle that is about abortion. It recently was tossed to the states by the U.S. Supreme Court. Harris' theme and borderline spirituality is "We will not go back." Forced Birth is seen by her as an affront to the values that made America great. Both of these approaches surely must have some appeal to some voters. I think, however, ...

The beautiful country of New Zealand has had for a long time a very dark side. It is facilities which care for children. For various reasons, many children of native people end up being cared for in institutions. Some of the institutions are government but many are run by Christian denominations. The truth is now out there always has been a lot of child abuse in these facilities, more in the ones run by Christians than in government run ones. The reason for pointing this out is the old saw, especially from the deep Catholics who used to argue here, that pedophiles show up everywhere in society and we are singling out Catholics unfairly. The child abuse in New Zealand occurred in all denominations but was more prevalent in religious facilities than in government-run facilities. The Catholics stood out as most evil because they had a centralized system of assigning priests and quietly moved them around to continue their crimes.  Also sad in all of this is to see otherwise intelligent...

I have always made an assumption here that churches conform to those in the pews because they are the ones providing the money. It turns out this is only partially true. Large corporations with CEO's who have a religious message pump large amounts in exchange for the church promoting the right message. This is true for churches but also for websites and magazines.  I read somewhere a wealthy corporate executive put up the money for a Catholic ad campaign about "coming home" to the Catholic Church. According to the link, which is based on a book, the efforts in influence messages are both from the "orthodox" side and from the liberal side. Tolerance of LGBTQ+ has also been promoted by corporations and wealthy people. The magazine, Christianity Today, has received funds in exchange for a less right-wing content. All of this is monetization of the Christian message. The only justice is that both the left and the right monetize what is called, "The truth that n...

 According to the link , the NAR was the force behind the much-published photograph of Trump in office surrounded by solum men and two women. They were laying hands on Trump. This group is classified in various ways by those who study versions of Christianity. It is about laying on of hands, speaking in togues and ridding the world of Satan and evil in preparation for Jesus' return.  The group has no interest in Trump's past sins with women and lies. Instead, he is a tool to be used by NAR to achieve its objectives. A person with even more moral demerits would be fine with them, it's all about how such a politician can be used. The NAR sees todays sin as an obvious sign Jesus will return soon. Their task, before Jesus returns, is to clean up the sin. NAR needs a strongman to do this. The more forceful and the more willing to break the laws of conventional wisdom to complete the cleanup the better. Who better to do that than a man who ignored the rules of decent behavior eve...

For as long as I can remember, there has been a debate in Christianity about how the preacher should preach. The two camps are, first, to warn about sin and hell and quote scripture to "prove" hell awaits the unrepentant sinner and, second, to welcome all people, go light on warnings and theology and be a friend. A Jesuit priest who does a lot of media work just published a piece admonishing parish priests to put the hammer down. He says parish priests need to lay out the rules of being a Catholic along with the consequences of not following the rules. The link author scolds parish priests for not in turn scolding their parish members. The author, himself, does not make a living as a parish priest. Instead he is a professor, publishes pointy headed books and give lectures across the country. No wonder he doesn't understand what it is like to face the those in the pews who pay the bills. What is it like to be a preacher or a priest? Perhaps more than any other profession, ...

I came across a Christian's column about the candidacy of Kamala Harris written several days ago, right after Biden dropped out. It is filled with sarcasm about men in drag endorsing her as well as her advocacy of transgender and gay rights and abortion rights. It was written at the time nearly all Trump supporters were absolutely certain she was a joke and would amount to nothing. The writer went on about how Christians have a right to feel offended by Harris. "We are so hurt by her reference to men in drag as respectable parts of humanity," is a paraphrase of the writer and much of the Christian community. To me what would be most wonderful if Harris/Walz won the election as well as several in the Senate and House is the possibility of a new "narrative." The new narrative I hope for is the one I think has existed for several years but is whispered in selected company and not expressed loudly and forcefully. It is that all of the Christian right is welcomed to ...

While the Vatican is suffering from a loss of funds, it still has people being paid to hold meeting and write positions on topics that will invade the privacy of individuals. Recently released was a paper outlining in detail when water and food could be denied a person with no chance of recovery or survival. This all comes down to a belief that clergy can figure out precisely what is sometimes called "laws of nature" or what it calls "natural law." Perhaps there was a time when this concept had meaning but as technology developed things got thorny. The Vatican could save money and make friends by finding the exit door to this room. The "Natural Law" rule seems to be you are not allowed to die unless your body quits working. Allowing death by withholding meds, machines and water is not allowed even for a long vegetative state. The new rules issued by the Vatican says the person's wishes need to be considered but goes onto the old cruel rules. I think th...

In my decades of attending church I must have mumbled "the creed" hundreds of times. It never meant a thing to me. Since writing this blog I've learned how important the creeds are to some Christians. The link laments the reality that individual people are assessing religion and those who remain in it make their own choices. Some church shop leaving one church and joining another that is different. Others drop church altogether but keep some kind of religious notions that make sense to them. Orthodoxy is present when the members of a church together recite a creed. When an entire denomination or several denominations recite the same creed we do not, theoretically, have every person picking and choosing what to believe. There is conformity, so this thinking goes. I remember some decades ago reading a statement by the then head of the Episcopalian denomination. He was lamenting the disagreements within the denomination at the time. He said, paraphrasing, "OK, we can to...

The self-appointed "Catholic intellectual" George Weigel wrote a blistering column criticizing Pope Francis' "synodal" meetings.  Wiebel is correct in saying the Pope's Vatican is using hype and its own press to try to increase the influence of the meetings. The Vatican, unlike Wiebel, has bills to pay and needs numbers in the pews.  Wiebel has caught the Pope doing the same thing his own right-wing branch of the denomination has done since forever. By drumming home over and over again the notion that one fertilized human egg is a human being with a complete set of rights defended by government, the Catholic right was quite successful for a long time. It did something similar with Latin Mass. They have blasted the married or female priest. How dare the left with Pope Francis introduce and accept ideas that are sound in Catholic theology and practical? Right wing demagogues like Wiebel are mad. The Catholic right is no different than the Protestant right in g...

I've had over 20,000 comments about my blogs since I started it about 15 years ago. While the comments are now infrequent the themes some contained live on in writing on the web. One frequent criticism has been that my writing does not correctly state certain parts of theology. Probably I am now using the word "theology" incorrectly according to such critiques. I was reminded of the arguments paraphrased as "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" when reading a recent post on line. It's hard to imagine how people can make a living arguing about the "correct" difference between how Mary rose ("ascended" is the $5 word) to heaven and how Jesus did this. According to the article, the difference is very important. These fine points in theology are "very important" the link author tells us.  To understand why such an argument goes on, we need to consult with my discipline, economics. There needs to be a source of money to pa...

The age of priests in Ireland is going up. Doblin, a metro area of almost two million, has only one candidate for priesthood training. Parishes are being closed and combined because of a lack of priests. A solution is to allow women and married men to be priests. So far, this has been unacceptable to many in the pews and the hierarchy. The race is on between when the denomination will allow these women and married men to be priests and the death of the last single male priest. The latter will, of course, close the last parish. Why is this so hard to figure out? The reason it is hard to bring about a simple and practical solution is that religion plays with people's heads. Self-destruction appears in religious heads as superior and a higher level of moral behavior. We on the outside can laugh at the peculiar thinking but sympathy is in order. When invisible gods latch onto brains it is hard for some to escape. Consider the peculiar thinking in Catholicism. Those in the pews are enco...

JD Vance, Trump's VP guy, ridiculed "childless women." Like minded Christian columnists are jumping on his bandwagon and blaming women who do not have children for other woes such as loneliness. The cure for loneliness is a grandchild, one writes. Blaming women, like Eve in the Bible, for whatever problem that comes along has a long history.  Do children and grandchildren bring happiness? Certainly, they have for my wife and me. But I can't begin to add up the number of parents I have known who are estranged from their children. My impression is that in those cases children have brought unhappiness to parents.    We can all agree there are certain economic and social problems that come with a lower birth rate. There are fewer people paying the social security of the old and handicapped. To the extent children take care of their parents, aunts and uncles there is less care. We have to remember there are problems with birth rates that are too high. Lots of resources are...

Things get thorny for universities when religion gets involved. Liberty University, now a large place with more students than some state universities, gets federal funding for its students and operations. An employee who had been given good reviews working at a phone help desk notified her supervisor she had transitioned from a male to a female. A month later she was asked to attend a meeting. She was fired on the spot. None other than the ACLU has weighed in to defend her. ACLU wins a lot of cases and often recovers lawyer costs from those it defeats. Liberty and all such "holy" places will claim it has a right to follow its religious opinions. The question always, how much harm can the religious harm people before they harm the country by eliminating equal opportunity for all? How far can they push their own particular religious views before they become the religion of the nation? Let's take a hypothetical. What if the President of a public state university declared mix...

New York Times columnist David French wrote a beautiful article which sums up today's politics and religion in the U.S. He explained the difference between two theological camps, orthodoxy (right beliefs) and orthopraxy (right conduct). His example was to compare the two approaches of the two camps when confronted with two issues. The first would be philandering preachers or priests. The orthodoxy camp would shrug and say this is to bad but not that important. There is sin in the world. Orthopraxy would see this as a serious matter. But the two sides reverse on posting the Ten Commandments in school. Orthodoxy would view this as major goal, far more important than philandering clergy. Orthopraxy would not think posting the Ten Commandments as very important. More important is the conduct of clergy and those in the pews. I grew up in a church with many rules of behavior: no to card playing, movies, dancing, alcohol and several other issues of "conduct." I've since lear...