Thoughts of a Freethinker

Perhaps is stems from Ron Reagan's unscripted trailer, "I'm not afraid of hell." Wherever, Texas dems at their convention chanted, "We are all going to hell." It seems like the perfect kind of ridicule for today's young voters. It makes light of Christianity's weaponized mythology. The stage was set for "not afraid of hell" by polling. It seems to me and to many others the percentage of people who actually thought of themselves as Christian, who said they pray and who said they believed the Christian God really existed, has always been overstated by social pressure. People don't want to offend others, so they have often answered polling by saying what they thought other wanted them to say. As time continued it became more accepted to say, "I don't believe in any religion." These today an called "nones." That it is OK to claim "none" perhaps made it OK to ridicule "hell." To critics of this vie...

History doesn't care what you or I think, it's just there for us to study. What I have read about for 50 years, and never tire of, are the pre-invasion societies of Mexico, Central and South America. I should hedge my use of the term "pre-invasion" because those societies may have invaded and conquered previous ones.   Christianity came to Europe from the Middle East, then it came with white invaders to the America. I think there is general agreement white people came to dominate because of disease and guns. It wasn't because Europeans were superior in intellectual or physical qualities. The societies of the Americas were ahead to some respects but behind in guns. A new discovery has just been made in Mexico of a Mayan city that dates back to 1500 BCE. The city was organized for a productive society with a social life. It had literate members who inscribed events in stones that have remained. This particular site is different than most others because it is so diff...

There is a march of groups in Christianity away from, rather than toward, each other. The Asbury Seminary graduated preachers and fed them into the pool of the United Methodist denomination for 80 years. Asbury insists gay marriage is a sin and, apparently, teaches this in some of its classes. United Methodist decided it did not need such pastors and took Asbury off of its list of approved seminaries.  A spokesperson from Asbury was baffled as to why United Methodist has blacklisted the old institution. This is not hard to understand. Do any of the large denominations still say interracial marriage is against God's plan and refuse to recognize them? My impression is this is mostly in our country's rear view mirror.   How long will it take for U.S. society to entirely treat gay and trans people as equals? Slavery, perhaps a metaphor, took 400 years. Myths live on for a long time. The myth that the Bible condemns homosexuality is one of these myths.  United Methodists ...

An article on a Christian site tells us many Christians are worried those aboard Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) are liberals and/or atheists.  There is an assurance provided Christians we don't know who is operating the UFO's so until we learn this there is nothing to worry about. My guess is the worry continues. The issue is so important there was a followup . Neither of the links helps us understand what the correct Christian response is. We can only speculate. Is it to have a fresh stack of Trump Bibles ready to hand to the aliens as the exit their space craft? Or, perhaps it is to usher the space creatures to their assigned seats where Franklin Graham can preach a sermon against sin. Meeting are going on as we speak discussing what to do after the aliens land. Another possible twist might happen. A space craft from the heavens might be Jesus returning. Thus, it must be treated with appropriate respect. Some will deny that any of the green people who exist the spacecraft ...

The Church of England recently issued an apology to the women and children it separated in the name of religion. A while back, supported by law, it decided some women were not worthy enough to raise their own children. Approved groups took their children. The church received large sums of money from other couples who took the children. This was not an ancient practice. It was approved until relatively recent times.  The aggressiveness against abortion did not exist before Roe v Wade. There were many thousands of abortions. We know that from hospital records of botched efforts. The chance to get ugly came when there were abortion clinics. Back-alley abortions were not important. When I was a mayor, I mentioned to a deep Christian elected guy that his people had developed recently a cruel and vindictive attitude toward gay people. That was necessary, he said, because so many men had turned gay. That is impossible. Anti-gay happened because parts of Christianity have a cruel streak. C...

An interesting analysis showed up in intellectual-type discussion of Pope Leo. The link notes the large amount of time Pope Leo has spent traveling, meeting with officials and speaking in Spain and Italy. Pope Francis spent almost none of his travel time there.  Reading exerts from Leo's speeches, the message I see is, "We who come from a Jesuit background have a focus on the poor and bedraggled. The old message of cultural wars of Pope Benedict is out. Today, we need to include cultural Catholics as real Catholics or there will be no Catholics. If you don't buy into anti-abortion or birth control that's OK. Focus like the Jesuits on the poor and bedraggled."  The link thinks Leo sees opportunity in Europe. Catholicism's history is so strong there he thinks if that a new version that is Catholic-lite is promoted numbers will improve. Certainly, this is not an approach previous Popes ever considered.  One problem Leo's new approach is the vast number of old...

It's encouraging to read, even if only once in a while, an article by a prolife writer that realistically presents the reason women have abortions. This one writes about men . The author reviews responses of men to questions about pregnancies they admit they caused. Their answers about the obligations they feel are all over the park. Largely, they try to calculate the effect of a child on their own futures, just as women do. Except, men have more ability to walk away from responsibility even if they originally pledged money and time.  The various degrees of responsibility these men felt toward being the father of a child are a window into the circumstances women face. Perhaps a man vacillates between enthusiasm and reluctance. If the couple is not married or even living together, the man, like the woman, wonders how a child will fit into future relationships. The link says it is sponsored by a group which works with young men to persuade them fathering a child is an opportunity and...

Movement toward women priests has slowed because women, and men who support women's rights, are leaving the denomination. One cannot blame them, but it does not help to move the needle. There are not good statistics on this but lots of antidotal testimony. It's very understanding that these women leave. The surprise is that any of them stay. If, as I suspect, Pope Leo wants women first as deacons and later as clergy these leaving women complicate his task. The Pope is a political position and he needs to be able to tell conservatives there is a big group of women in the denomination that demand equal treatment. He wants to be seen as the peacemaker. If those women have left, the peace maker excuse is all but absent. Conservatives, and most male clergy do not care if progressive women leave.   This, of course, is not limited to the Catholic denomination. Southern Baptists and Missouri Synod Lutherans do not allow women clergy.  On conservative Christian sites, there is a l...

From what one observes living far from Washington, DC, there is a constant narrative within the intelligence community one countries need new leadership. Generation after generation of U.S. officials are certain they know how to bring this about and start working on it. It seems like it is seldom successful and often makes things worse. When it is successful it also makes things worse. The link talks of Christian denominations being asked to bring regime change in Cuba. The President talks of it. The clock has run out on regime change in Cuba and Iran. Back a few generations Washington was certain the Shah of Iran was the leader Iran needed. Mostly, he was the leader the U.S. needed. He set off, needlessly it now seems, anger and resentment that led to a religious takeover of that country which continues today. The Trump Administration thinks it can put into office another Shah. No luck with that so far. It could be argued Iraq is better today and this is because Sadam was run down and...

  A new way, sort of a metaphor, for explaining where our climate is headed was expressed recently by a climatologist. She said Minnesota will become today's Texas. Rhode Island will become today's Florida. Al Gore was criticized daily for his movie 20 years ago, "An Inconvenient Truth." As he pointed out recently, most of what he predicted, global warming, floods, storms, etc, have come to pass. The dates he gave were not precisely accurate but the consequences are.  As the warmth moves north, it will leave behind an area of the U.S. too hot for people to survive. Food production in the South, including meat, will not be possible. The rise in sea levels will affect coastal areas in ways we are not prepared for. We can only hope the future will bring the public on board for steps to offset the warming that is on its way. When the public wants something done politicians will follow. 

I learned today there are many "micro churches", home churches that pop up when a group of people is fed up with the church they are going to they start meeting by themselves. Apparently the groups, at least to some extent, find each other online and hold conferences. According to the link these groups avoid much talking about theology. They realize everyone has their own deal and going very deep into "what the Bible means" will exclude those who know even better "what the Bible means" so it's go lite on that topic.  Predictably, the comments that followed the link wrote of the "ignorance" of lay people and the need for knowledgeable denominational officials to decide "what the Bible means" and give proper instruction to those of lesser knowledge. On the few occasions when I've gotten into the back pages of denominations or watched videos debating what is going on inside there are the inevitable conflicts about theology. Leave t...

Like every holiday of memorable event, some Christian operatives are trying to tie the faith to Father's Day. They are doing it with the 250th, marriage, births, deaths and whatever and wherever they can.  Father's Day is an interesting one because the Bible is full of men with many wives and countless children. Some of the great males in the Bible would not have been able to name all the children he fathered. A Christian site made a valiant effort to paint some Biblical characters as fine father figures. From what one reads, there is an increase in church attendance of single young men, not married fathers. Women are leaving the faith more rapidly than men. Perhaps there is the thinking by some in Christian management positions its future is in men, not women, and marketing should emphasize men. Of course, the faith has emphasized men with male-only clergy in many parts. If ever there was a place where men are important just by being born male, it is in the Catholic, Missouri ...

Devout Muslims get on their knees several times a day to pray. Some Christians have prescribed prayers with specific words. The Muslim prayers, so I understand, are about being humble. The prescribed Christian prayers are petitions to be humble, not among other people, but to the invisible god(s). I got to thinking about what is included in prayers when I came across a Christian's complaints about changes made by denomination officials in the official versions of these prescribed prayers.  The prescribed prayers in the link to be recited during various rituals summarize the Christian faith. Prayers are to admit sin and beg for forgiveness. This, of course, is the Christian marketing program. First, call out some behaviors as sins. These may not be harmful behaviors, but they are part of making the size of the market larger. Then the faith cleverly places itself between danger from committing the sins and a happy forever. What a deal. There should be a law that every church has a si...

The conservative Christian site I review tells often of Christians prosecuted in countries dominated by either Islam or Hinduism. Once in a while there is an interesting case involving Christianity where one doesn't expect it. There is one going on in Finland. It is about a public official and Catholic Bishop. The case is headlined as Christian persecution. What it is about, however, is picking out a group in Finish society and demonizing them. The group, as we might predict, is gay and trans. The public official and Bishop were fined for expressing the old saw that the Bible only finds two genders thus finding trans not Christians. In the U.S. we experience cycles of hatred and discrimination and, eventually, try to correct. There was a time in the South when a real Christian opposed ending slavery and later opposed ending segregation. After all, God put different races on different continents with the intention they not mix. Certainly, they were not to marry and produce mixed rac...

I think it is good news that the current Lt. Governor of Texas said in a recent speech the Democratic candidate for the Senate, 34 year old seminary student James Talerico, is going to hell. Readers following this election know the Lt. Gov. was referring to Talerico's public statements the Bible does not condemn either gays or abortion.  It is hilarious when someone other than a current god tells us what the god is going to do when someone else dies. Is he certain he knows what that god's judgment of himself is going to be? Apparently, he knows the god's thinking on both Talarico and himself.  Have any of you readers had someone tell you that you are bound for hell. I have had people tell me this about myself more times than I can count over a few decades. Maybe it happened before this, but one period when I heard it often was after an event in 1984. The Fargo, ND newspaper ran the article that told of the Lesbian and Gay Pride Proclamation I wrote as Mayor and signed way b...

I've bored readers here before with the difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics. I keep returning to the difference because of an inability to see the world in other ways. Macroeconomics is in the news constantly, unemployment numbers, inflation and average incomes. The actual world, however, is run by the less discussed microeconomic decisions each of us makes every day, every hour. Anti-abortion people think abortion is a macroeconomic issue when it is actually a micro one. Humans have been making life and death microeconomic decisions since they arrived on earth. We are here because our ancestors made good micro decisions, including abortion and euthanasia. Early humans, and perhaps remote tribes today, lived in small clans. The decisions they made were for the survival of their group alone, not for societies across their region. They were microeconomies. From generations of experience, they knew how much food was available to them each year and the amount of labor ...

Let's run through just a few of the "Commanders in Chief" who were really big in solving disagreements by sending armies to destroy the enemy. They all practiced a version of the old command, "Nuke 'em."  President W. Bush was in office when the 9/11 attack happened. He could have said, "This is what happens when religion, like Islam, takes over a government. The impulse is to destroy others. Let's not be that country." Then, he could have isolated those countries, put economic pressure on them and prevented any more attacks. Instead, it was send in troops and shoot up and bomb the country. After that it was bomb and shoot up Iraq, even though Iraq had not harmed the U.S. The killing went on for years and was never completely resolved. We pulled out of Afghanistan without a victory. Israel's Netanyahu said his country needed to destroy it's enemies. Off to war he went. Now, he is unhappy Trump is pulling out of Iran and leaving Iran...

Today a religious professor posted on a conservative Christian site an essay claiming it is not the faith that is obsessed with sex but society at large. He gives lots of examples and then claims the Bible is merely responding to the sins of society. Several commenters chimed in saying this is ridiculous.  One commenter said the Bible's reference to sex is mostly about women as property. Certainly, there is plenty of that.  To me, the current obsession parts of the faith have with homosexuality, abortion and church-approved marriage is about control. The faith drew up a set of rules about sex. Then it named itself as the judge and jury of sin. Like all sin, the rules are modified constantly as time moves along. I can't think of any reason the Catholic denomination came up with the idea a fertilized egg is a "human being" and that birth control is a sin other than the need to expand the population of Catholics. Absolutely these are self serving rules involving sex. For...

Of course, Southern Baptists voted against confirming women for clergy. Male domination and being judgmental of others is the reason the denomination exists. How could it vote otherwise? Yet, as membership drops and the ground under its feet shifts, Southern Baptists will see women continue moving into powerful positions. Who is the "head pastor" when the names attached to positions changes? What does it mean to "preach." Is being the featured speaker preaching? There is the constant decline of membership which has not yet changed the world inside conservative religions but change seems inevitable. Denominations are reluctant to change until competitors take their money.  Alcohol was a taboo for many Protestants for decades. Now it exists as a taboo in only a few outliers. Gay preachers and gay marriage resistance have faded to the sidelines. One by one the old taboos are sidelined.   The current hot button taboo is trans. Watch for opposition to that disappear. The...

Vice President Vance was rightly criticized for saying he hoped his wife, Usha, would convert to Christianity. Maybe he was not serious and the two of them have made peace about religion and he knows she is not considering changing and he knows this. One whacko Christian columnist justifies Vance's "request" to his wife and all other hard sells of Christianity made by Christians everywhere. According to the columnist, Vance is doing his wife a favor by giving her a shot at an eternity in heaven. A few years ago, when I was preparing to attend an event we pilots attend to talk about flying and our airplanes, an obnoxious Christian member started posting about a morning church service he was organizing. He asked for volunteers to read from the Bible, conduct a prayer and give a "message." Several pilots chimed in and told him this was not appropriate. His reply was the same as the link , "Eternity is forever. I'm only trying to help all pilots so they do ...

The Bible is full of dreams and visions. The difference between dreams and actual events was not clear then and is not clear to many believers today. The mythical "Paul" of the Bible have visions of talking with Jesus long after Jesus was dead. To this day it is assumed often in the faith that Paul actually spoke to Jesus. While one can understand the ancients had a view that dreams were some kind of communication with some other world, we would not think it lives on today. We would be wrong . I remember a few year back watching a panel discussion on a religious site. Benny Hinn, the fake healing preacher, was on the panel. The discussion morphed into what each was hearing from God. Benny went on for several minutes about seeing Jesus while in bed. He thought he might have been asleep and it was a dream but felt it had some serious meaning. He asked Jesus questions but Jesus did not answer. Benny was perplexed because he was certain the visit meant something important but he ...

Just now Pope Leo is in Spain. He will be there for several days. According to a press article he will address several human rights issues. He will also visit youth groups in an effort to stop the trend of youth leaving Catholicism and Christianity in general. In one of his early stops, it was clear his operatives were looking for optics that made his visit look exciting. Several thousand kids were given white smocks to make a photo impression of a huge event. The Popes speech apparently was not about being a Catholic, but "returning" to the denomination. He said it should not be relegated to a museum. Leo knows the numbers. They are declining. The Pope points to the history of Catholicism in Spain. Certainly, it's been there for a long time. Before, Catholicism, however, there was something else. No doubt every region had its own god and myths. To be accurate, the Pope should urge going back into history, but not too far back. Just go back, he should say, to when Catholi...

The effect of prayer will go on forever so one wonders why discuss it? The link asks that question. You will not learn anything from the link except that believers like to pray and it makes them feel they are doing something even though there is no evidence prayer actually does anything. Many decades ago when I was a mayor of the largest city in ND, Fargo, people from outside the city regularly made appointments to talk to me. Some came to talk about money and business. Others came to talk about state politics. A popular topic was religion. I was surprised about that. The link made me remember my intercessory prayer experience. I may have written about it here before so skip the rest of this post if that's the case. A preacher from a couple of hours away made an appointment and spent his half hour telling me of the times he had done intercessory prayer and saved the lives of other politicians. One was the Governor at the time, Allen Olson, who said at the time the preacher was pray...

There will be no dog tags or tombstones listing "Atheist". Gone is training of military Chaplains in a host of religions that exist in the U.S. and which troops have listed on their personal military resume. Atheist will now be called "No Religion." Various earth-type religions or ones from the tropics will be lumped together. If you are a troubled member of the armed forces and desire to confine your emotional state to an understanding member of your clergy, you may have to soldier on alone.  Readers know there has been an explosion in the number of religions people now identify with. There are news ones every year so we can expect this will continue. I suppose there remains a view in conventional wisdom the military needs to provide clergy to troops. We know, also, the origin of the practice came from Christianity. The expansion of religions has tossed the old model of a Chaplain for everyone's faith out the window.  One can understand that providing trained c...

When the new sheriff arrived in the Vatican, that was Pope Francis, some things changed. The changes continue with Pope Leo. There is a rule , "Don't be weird. Don't even sound weird." Francis $hit-canned a Bishop who talked to the press about sinful women who have abortions. Now Leo says Bishops cannot say UFOs are demonic. The Bishop that told this to the press was relieved of duties, even though he said repeatedly it was his view and not that of the denomination. Bishops are not to appear like they are whacko. That is, they are not to go further than the whacko of one cell human beings, dead people jumping up and you know the rest.  It must be hard for old-line priests and bishops to have spent their careers repeating far out and weird stuff like demons coming from outer space and having folks in the pews listen respectfully then be told they are nuts. There is deprograming for most of us, not Catholic clergy. We can see how hard it is to hold together a giant inst...

My academic field, economics, is thought to date back to publication of The Wealth of Nations written by Adam Smith in 1776. It was a break-through from religion, though Adam Smith was a religious, because clergy in the Western world for a thousand years or so had preached all of one's life was a gift from God. Smith said, no, wealth of nations came from individuals producing more than they consume. If humans divide up the work that is there to be done and each individual becomes specialized and more productive then trades his output with another specialist both will have more. Add them together the nation has more.  Smith basic idea of the individual was expanded to the individual firm by Alfred Marshal in 1890. The same principle applied, that a nation because better off when individuals and firms seek to gain for themselves. This dominated economics until the Great Depression and John Maynord Keynes. Keynes' idea was prosperity and the standard of living of the public could ...

Just when one thinks we cannot go further into the land of crazy, we hear from a Catholic "authority" on exorcism. He exorcises demons from people and says he thinks UFO's are demonic. A few years ago the late Pope Francis said the devil is real.  So, we have here an important person in the Catholic denomination who believes people with some kind of mental problem are possessed with demons. On top of that, objects are flying about which are also demons. If one looks up the term auditory hallucinations, hearing voices, one learns it is an illness. There are protocols for treating it.  In the case of invisible demons, or gods, there is not a matching diagnosis. It seems to me that seeing invisible things in the mind are not all that different than hearing voices that do not exist. Perhaps they are not exactly the same. Yet, to me, they don't seem completely different.  Seeing invisible demons, or hearing imaginary voices, is not harmful until those who affected start re...

June is Pride Month across the U.S., maybe around the world. Parents who consider themselves very Christian but have a gay child think they have an impossible dilemma. It is, of course, that their faith paints gay/trans as the sin at the top of the Sin Leader Board but the child tells them, "It's who I am. There is nothing you or I can do to change me" while their faith condemns and scolds. It was interesting to read a Christian post telling other Christian parents accept their GLBT children. Parents, she writes, can accept their gay/trans child and hold on to their faith. During the years I held a position in the national organization, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, I heard so many stories told by parents who thought their world had ended when then learned of a gay child. Later they realized a lot of their angst was about themselves, not their child. It was, "What will others think of me when they learn about him(her)?" Often there was a preacher pus...