Thoughts of a Freethinker

It's seldom one gets to see the inside of the mind of a vast political/religious operation. This link is a great example.  It is about a fictional woman, "Susan," who speaks up in Catholic churches. I'm not sure where "Susan" fits in with "Karen", another fictional female character who is regarded as annoying. "Susan" is the reason liberal thinking carries the day in so many aspects of culture, including among Catholic church members. Nearly all Catholics practice birth control. The majority of Catholics favor abortion rights. This, in spite of Trump holding up a Bible in front of a church.  The fictious "Susan" in the Catholic link is a member of the "parish council." She knows the pressures her Priest/Bishop are under and knows the buttons to push. She knows well how the culture has changed and where it is headed. She tells the priest to lay off condemning birth control and go light on abortion. She reminds the bisho...

The famous columnist, David Brooks, penned a long article in the NY Times lamenting the ceremony for the shooting victim, Charlie Kirk. Brooks is referred to as a moderate Republican and his piece went in that direction. He thinks of Christianity as a force for good in U.S. society but he did not like merging the Republican Party into a Christian denomination. This is what he saw in the Kirk funeral.  Brooks, however, went off the rail when he wrote that the founding fathers advocated a nation with Christian values but one that is open to all beliefs. In the comments following the article a gazillion posters pointed out his misunderstanding of the diverse group called the founding fathers. There are many books available, and will be for centuries, debating the role the so-called founding fathers envisioned for religion. To begin with, they themselves were of several branches of the faith and, one could reasonably conclude, we not as a group very religious. Aside from the Constituti...

The Archbishop of New York kissed behinds during the time of right wing Pope Benedict. He got promoted from the backwater of Milwaukee to the bright lights of New York City. Then came Pope Francis who saw through Dolan and had little use for him. This past week, before doing home work on Charlie Kirk, Dolan spoke glowingly about Kirk. The prominent Sisters in NYC set Dolan straight . That the sisters are totally unafraid of Archbishop Dolan, even treat him as an uninformed dolt, illustrated how far his star has fallen.  Dolan's rank allowed his expenses to be paid to Rome to select a new Pope and the death of Fransis. Some fans, perhaps at his suggestion, lobbied for Dolan to have a vote even though he had aged out and is ineligible. Those who could have granted him this waver passed. The Sisters who blew off Arch Bishop Dolan understand well the harm done the Catholic denomination by Pope Benedict (preceded Pope Francis). Not only did men like Dolan who are on the edge of shady an...

  National Geographic posted an article about the Garden of Eden. I did not look into back years but I would guess it republishes stuff about this topic periodically.  The article says two or three times that most scholars who study this topic do not believe there ever was an actual Garden of Eden. The article goes through the various theories Christians have put out there about where it was. The Bible gives some information about a location but the landmarks are not present today and may never have existed.  So if the Garden of Eden is unrealistic, why does it remain within Christianity? I think one reason is that the story put men in the driver's seat of the religion and keeps women as only passengers along for the ride. The tale begins with Eve being created from a rib of Adam, not the other way around. A rather contemporary preacher in the Lutheran Missouri Synod used this as a reason there are only male preachers in that denomination. "Men came first." he said. ...

Obamacare has an option allowing those who sign up to have coverage for abortions. If others are opposed to abortion they can choose the no abortion option. For those in Congress who treat anti-abortion as a religion in its own right, this is unacceptable. They say they are willing to not approve a budget if this option remains.  Readers know shutting down large parts of the government has never resulted in good results for the party blamed in the next election. This fact is of little interest to the anti-abortion religion.  One would think that if "life" is important, accessible health care would also be important. That is not the logic of anti-abortion. Like Trump, it is about revenge. As commenters here on this blog have said many times, the intent of women who have abortions is to kill. Punishment of these women, and abortion providers, is the important issue. This publishment is all that fills the heads of those involved in anti-abortion. The lives lost due to unavailabl...

I was never aware of the back story behind rapture. It has been used, at least in the U.S., consistently for one purpose and over a long period of time, to gain the upper hand over groups being demonized . I should have understood this earlier. When I started this blog, it was early in the debate about gay marriage. Gay marriage was such a taboo it set off panic and alarms in the Christian right. This included the right of both Catholics and Protestants. There were articles all over the Christian press and I received countless posts by readers that gay marriage was the final sin, a motel sin, that would trigger the return of Jesus.  I could not understand why it was thought gay marriage was the reason for the coming rapture. Where does the Bible say this is the most terrible of sins and will trigger the big return with the holy riding up with Jesus and the unholy left in misery? The link provides an explanation using the rapture against gay people. It explains that rapture is a way...

As the faith gets smaller and Christians experience people they know and respect leaving, there is search for an argument that holds up. I've found the favorite one, the one the faithful think is always a winner, is that Christianity is the source of objective moral values and there is no other such source. This is completely bogus in so many ways. Because they define the term "objective" they erroneously conclude they have a point. I engaged on-line with a retired professor of religion, a believer, about this issue. He wrote in his blog he has never seen a non Christian source of morality. Thus, he concluded, non believers have none. I posted on his discussion page that what non believers consider moral rules are the rules that allow a productive and successful society the flourish. These are adopted in our laws. It includes don't kill, rob, lie or other such behavior harmful to others except as limited circumstances require. Self defense, for example, is allowed. Th...

A public opinion pundit told another one that his focus groups made up mostly of Republicans with business interests are turning quietly against Trump. The reason is not directly his bonkers beliefs about tariffs. It is that they see their own best interests served in a country that is a democracy. They are alarmed at Trump's practice of ignoring democracy's tenets and practices. Firing the Federal Reserve Governors is bothering them.  The link suggests these conservative business people are, at least somewhat, aware that countries run be dictators are not as prosperous and is the U.S. and democracies of Western Europe. Trump does not think in this way. In his narcissistic thinking, a country can only be prosperous if he himself is running it. Even now, so one reads, he believes the economy and his tariff games are very successful. Of course, those around him tell him this. All of us are afraid to become optimistic about Trump being brought down because we have been wrong befor...

There are polls showing that a significant number of people voted for Trump over Biden because prices had gone up and Trump promised to lower them. If he and Republicans had done nothing, changed nothing from the four years of Biden, probably inflation would have stabilized and employment right now would be stable or rising.  Instead, everything Trump did created inflation and rising unemployment. How could he have made such huge mistakes? He had simple and incorrect ideas in his head. One was that other countries would pay the tariffs and the money from them would lower taxes and prices. Another was that government was too big and making it smaller would lower taxes and generate prosperity. Yet another was that pushing the cost of government from the Federal Government to state and locals would be good for taxpayers. Then, there was that the U.S. would be a stronger more prosperous country if it had more manufacturing. Perhaps the last was the undocumented workers are a big proble...

As readers know, the Johnson Amendment tried to limit the endorsements of political candidates by churches, especially preachers. Now that it is gone, there is a dark place for the huge amount of money tossed around in national political campaigns. Preachers will be able to receive payments in exchange for political endorsements.   Unless churches demand transparency, there is no reason preachers need to disclose "gifts" from campaigns in exchange for endorsements. It could be a preacher side hustle.  It seems to me the entire conservative Christian enterprise is merging with the political right. Many on the right point out this is not a wise development. But the appeal to those who need egos boosted is not resistible. It is not hard to imagine the largest donors to a church getting together and informing their employee, the preacher, what is an acceptable political posture. If there were gifts on top of this one can see the deal done.  Often when young people who ha...

During my long life, some decades as a participant and later an observer, there has been an especially powerful issue that morphed in support between liberals and conservatives. It is mostly not in the news and has not spilled into broad political influence. That seems to be changing. The issue is eminent domain. As readers know, eminent domain happens when some level of government, local, state or federal, takes land or other property from private citizens for some broader purpose. Those whose land is taken usually are paid some version of a "fair price." Because of this payment the practice usually is not seen as controversial. Along with members of the governing board, I exercised eminent domain powers several times. There is, as one might expect in the job of Mayor, a constant din of people giving you their opinions. With eminent domain, lots of older liberal people expressed approval. They were from the era of government doing good things for the public and needing those...

The word "prophesy" shows up often in conservative Christianity. It strikes the rest of us as so phony and contrived we mostly blow it off. It's importance should not be under stated.   In the Bible the word appears a lot. It is used seductively there by appearing in the Old Testament followed by claims in the New Testament the events "prophesized" actually happened. I remember as a college student a young woman who was hired as the pastor to students passionately spoke of her faith centered on these "prophesized" events. Later when I developed some ability to see this narrative in a critical setting, I came to see the later events were either shoe-horned and altered to fit the "prophesies" or the prophesies themselves were altered to fit later events. The likelihood anyone beat the random odds of guessing the future is no better than zero. The seductiveness of a "prophesy" narrative is so powerful it lives on and people profit from...

It's hard to believe how often "demonic influences" and "spiritual warfare" are mentioned in the Christian press these days. Of course, it's always been there to one degree or another. The late Pope Francis said "Satan exists." It's scary to think of the myth there are invisible beings and forces causing certain events are thought to be real by people who might be able to harm the innocent. To me, anyone entrusted with providing information and ideas to the public should help guide TO the truth, not away from it. There are so many examples of myths that took over people's minds in history and resulted in many deaths. One of the most famous was witchcraft. Salem, MA is the city that holds the title as the witch city in the U.S. Several years ago I visited Salem and read the excellent museum explaining the phenomenon. Witch hunting took place in Europe and came here with Europeans. In Salem, it was a social and economic system. While there we...

  Over the long period I have written this blog interest in religion in general has gone up and then down. Just now it seems like it is ascending. The New York Times, for years, had no little to no discussion of religion. Then it added Ross Doubthat. Then is added David French. Now it has added a newsletter one can subscribe to. According to the link , there is big money now in sites offering paid subscribers the opportunity to chat about feelings toward the unseen and unknown.   I'll admit to being a bit presumptuous here, but I think I know why there is such an interest in paid sites that just chat with people about their troubles. It's the same reason most every newspaper still in existence still has a love-lorn, Ann Landers type, column. It's why TV news that show tears of those interviewed are the ones that sell the ads that pay for the news. All of this, plus all religion since the beginning of humans, is because many, maybe most, of us humans carry uncertainty or w...

Today various news outlets and pundits are treating the latest assassination of a political figure as a great turning point in U.S. history. The implication on the right is this will galvanize the majority to turn against the left. On the left the hope is this will galvanize the majority to regulate guns and other precautions. One thing seems to be emerging, it is not going to play out like 9/11 of the assassination of JFK. The public is growing weary of discussing such an issue and moves on more quickly than it has done in the past. I know readers recall the period when airplanes were being hijacked and/or blown up. Precautions are now in place that I'm sure make this more difficult. Could it be, also, that the practice is simply less attractive to politically motivated criminals around the world than it once was? I never hear these days of foiled attempts to hijack airplanes. It makes me think it has lost its limelight and therefore its appeal. I don't claim to be an expert i...

The myth that having an abortion harms a woman's mental health has been around for several decades. It was even repeated by a Supreme Court judge who sided with abortion rights. If the person repeating the lie knows no better, we can give them a partial pass. But when a source is referred to, and the source does not corroborate the lie, that is inexcusable. This happens every year on Christian Post and appears there today. The basic story is that women who have had abortions are more likely to use mental health services. This long-standing bit of statistics has been reported for years and continues to be seen in statistics. One of the important professional studies which looked into this was the Turnaway Study. It found women who had used mental health services before and abortion used them more often after their abortions. Makes perfect sense.  It is clear the authors of the link have not read the study they discuss. The study points out the widely known statistics that women who ...

A dufus Catholic priest has been in the news recently claiming God gave us our rights. It isn't just right wing priests who say such stuff. I heard Gorden Robertson, Pat's son, say the same thing several years ago on the 700 Club. When it comes to the "rights" such whackos are referring to, I suppose it is the "right" for protesters to block abortion clinics and close them through mob rule. It might include the "right" of Christian school administrators to require teachers to read from the Bible and pray to the Christian god every day. Right wing Christian rights are always about taking rights from others. A public official has been standing up to the priest and challenging the notion the rights of Christians to do whatever they want was given to Christians by God. Our Constitution, and court cases, talked specifically about the rights of individuals, rights not to be taken away by governments. A 1943 court case said, "The purpose of the Bill ...

A retired professor of religion is especially annoyed at other Christians who have the view, "All religions have some good in them" or "All religions are basically the same." Christians are the only ones right about morals, sin and the hereafter he seems to say. He urges Christians to stop saying good things about other faiths.  Certainly, there are branches of the major faiths that are criminal. Just now, there are reports of Hindus killing Christians in India. This, however, does not make Hinduism a worse religion. It just means there are criminals among those in the faith. One of the things that really gets the link author angry is ridicule of Christianity that is occurring in Europe and in the U.S. That something so deeply felt by believers should be ridiculed by others is wrong he believes.  Yet, he seems to justify that those who do not believe in invisible beings, life when we're dead, the dead coming back to life and the revelations received only by beli...

The Diocese on New Orleans is about to follow countless other Dioceses by filing for bankruptcy. It's hard to imagine a Catholic Diocese has $200 million to pass out and will stay in business. Aside from the unthinkable crimes clergy committed across the world, the amount of money taken from the faithful and now spent paying for crimes is another part of the saga.  Looking at the Catholic Church today, it is hard to understand how the volume of sex abuse, especially to children, could have gone on for so long without something somewhere stopping it. In parishes from one coast to the other were thousands of cases happening at the same time. Then, Bishops, who could have stopped it, approved of it by moving abusers from one parish to another. One would think parents would have organized to stop it. If not parents, Bishops would have organized and realized the problem is one for law enforcement.  Of course, none of this was stopped because of the narrative of that time. The narra...

The Trump Administration is returning us to the Hoover time of the great depression. I'm not saying we will have another great depression. I'm saying the during Hoover time there was little to no understanding about the relationship between actions of the Federal government and the national economy. In the early 1930's Hoover wrote notes to his cabinet members asking them to figure out some solution to the growing economic slide. His cabinet members wrote back that nothing could be done.  The cabinet members were following the understanding and narrative of the time. It was that the economy was made up of communities. The local elected bodies ran the local economies. There were available during Hoover Administration tools that could have been used to offset, at least to some extent, the downturn. The Federal Reserve was available then and could be pumped reserve into banks making it easier for them to make loans and the loans would have been at lower interest rates. That is...

Religious sites (including this one) are a bit monotonous, repeating many of the same themes over and over. I was drawn to one that advised the new Pope to establish a Vatican office of technology. As the writer, I assume an accomplished person in the tech field, sees the world, the Catholic denomination could thrive if tech people were close to the top of the decision structure.   I continued reading the link wondering what the new and technology could do to reverse the decline in Christianity. My own assumption has always been that tech is the cause of the decline in Christianity, not a way to save it. Eventually, the author mentioned what better, faster and bigger tech could provide a Pope. It was more and faster information. I don't understand why this would help Catholics or the faith. How would the Vatican use tech to downplay the Catholic condemnation of gays? How would tech persuade women the denomination is better by excluding them from the highest positions of author...

I write here often about George C. Barna and the Barna group. It is located in a university in Arizona and does questionnaire survey work about Christianity. Barna identifies as a Christing and sometimes publishes and makes appearances about his conservative views. His work in questionnaires about religion, however, tracks the same as secular groups showing the decline in the number of Christians. Further, as a believer, he asks about topics and thoughts that might not occur to secular groups doing this research. A recent example is an update on both Christian and secular attitudes toward "sin." To many who write and lecture about Christianity, "sin" is THE central topic. While it may not be the topic most written about in scholarly journals and taught about in seminaries, it is the topic people in the pews talk about and worry about more than any other. When I attend the liberal church down the street from me I count the number of times the word "sin" is ...

All readers know people who self-identify as Christians have all the variety of political views as the general cross section of voters. The only difference, as I see it, is that a subset of Christians claims to have some divine wisdom that should be used in voting decisions. Those with that view then sometimes vote against their own economic and even social best interests. A Christian wrote about the dilemma his group faces with Trump. The link points out that while Trump appointed anti abortion judges more abortions are being performed than ever. Trump now seems to have lost interest in the issue. It is apparent also Trump has appointed as many gay and trans people to official offices as Biden did. He does not have much interest in this either. On top of that, millions of Christians have been made worse off with Trump's odd approach to tariffs. On again then off again.  It is worth reviewing, then, the link author writes, whether Trump is the King David of the Old Testament some C...

Pick any of the great religions of our time, Christianity, Islam or Hinduism, and one will find it is declining among youth. That is what questionnaire results show. We have discussed this decline here often so it is not "news" in that sense. What is remarkable is how often it is now being reported from Christian sources.  The standard Christian response to this decline is, "If all Christians would just come over to my particular branch this decline would stop. I can point to chapter and verse in the Bible that tells us this." Ironically, it is "chapter and verse" that loses people. Since the decline among youth is so pervasive, occurring in all the major religions and on many continents, did it start in one country or on one continent and spread? Or did it start everywhere and keeps going everywhere without a focal point in one part of the world? The first time I recall hearing about the role of youth was in my little church a mile from our farm. From tim...

I've been trying to understand Jainism. It is a faith similar to Hinduism but is not Hinduism. It is found among people of Indian descent. Currently, professorships, courses and majors in Jainism are offered at well- known universities. According to the link, there are Jain followers who have become very wealthy. A large group of them are Silcon Valley tech entrepreneurs. This wealth, combined with a Jain belief one is to give away wealth, makes it possible to fund Jain projects in many places. One is to fund university chairs in the faith which grow into departments. These, in turn, attract students. There are many students majoring in the Jain religion. While I know little about the faith, it is hard to find fault with a faith where members actually give away their personal wealth. The "American way" is accumulating wealth and taking it from others when the opportunity presents itself.  I don't know how true this is, but it is often repeated by religious people that...

I enjoy finding writers who grapple with the dilemma how much we collectively should impose our will on individuals in the social sphere and how much we should impose collectively on individuals in the economic sphere. I think if you asked every adult in the U.S., "Do you believe is freedom?" nearly everyone individual would say yes. But each of these people would want to add, "But people who are bad or not responsible or not of the right religion will harm freedom so they need to be rung up by the law." The link divides political philosophies into four camps. One is economic and social conservatives. The second is people who are social liberals but economic conservatives. A third are the economic liberals and social conservatives while the fourth are economic and social liberals.  The author, seemingly a Catholic, highlights his branch, social conservatives but take-care-of-the-poor economic liberals. If he is a social conservative and this means anti-abortion and ...

In the past it was universal for the sign in front of a church to include its denominational affiliation. Today it is not. I've seen signs that advertise a church is not affiliated with a denomination as if that is something attractive. Yet, the Christian internet is full of arguments between denominations as if the public cares about such things.   Because the Methodist denomination is so huge there is still back and forth after the split into gay marriage is OK and gay marriage is an abomination. To the abomination group, it's as if there is only one message in the Bible, abomination. As readers here know, the Bible has mixed messages about gay marriage and gay preachers. Even if one is in the abomination group one should remember it is not that important.  Among the many peculiar things in Christianity is the message the faithful are to go out and convert the masses. Members are admonished to invite the "unchurched" to their church. Those invited should be condemne...