Thoughts of a Freethinker

Joe McCarthy was a House member from Wisconsin in the 1950's. It was a time when both parties were fervently opposed to Communism. The conventional wisdom of the time was that Russia was huge and wealthy and intended to eventually invade the U.S. Stories about vast arms supplies buried and spies across the U.S. were common. Money was thrown at the Pentagon and still is.  Today Washington politics goes after universities for teaching "woke." Professor are investigated. In the 1950's it was Communist professors. I don't recall there ever was even one Communist professor. There were many pointing out that communist block nations did not get along with each other very well and there was no actual evidence Russia and the old Soviet Union had any ability to invade other countries in Europe to say nothing of the U.S. The link reviews what came to be almost universal dislike of McCarthy. He held hearings that were broadcast live on the three networks of that time. Somewh...

World history is full or hoaxes about health. During my lifetime there have been some. One was "Hadacol." It was heavily advertised as a mineral and vitamin supplement. One could buy it over-the-counter in drug stores. People felt "good" after taking it. Eventually, it was determined the good results were from it 12% alcohol content. Government provided a public warning and the stuff was pulled. Conversion Therapy is not alcohol but a drug of religion. It is a "therapy" or "cure" for gay people by training the minds to think of gay urges as evil and harmful. Gay people enroll and learn an important thing in their minds, their gay partners and friendships in the gay community, even approval by their own families, is evil. While there are a few gay people who live out their lives as heterosexual, a large proportion return to their natural same sex attraction. A former head of a national Conversion Therapy group resigned and apologized for harming p...

Today VP JD Vance tested another villain, Satan. President Trump tried out "Chinese Communists" in his recent speech. Just a few decades ago Jerry Falwell said it was the "gays." Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council says it is abortion pills. So many villains to demonize, so little time.  Since Vance first used the "Communists" several others have used it also. My own theory is that inside the National Republican Party Headquarters are various departments. There is Finance, Fund Raising, etc. Then there is a Villain Department. One the wall is a list of the various sub departments which include Gays, Trans, Atheists, Liberals, Satan and Communists. If you look carefully at the door of the Communist suite of offices you will see the door once said "RUSSIA." That has been painted over. Since Trump came to office Russia is no longer a villain. Those who worked in the Russia Department had to transfer to a new villain or leave the villain indu...

  All of us can see around us people who have abilities that are extraordinary. Most of the time, they are extraordinary at one or two things. Athletes, for example, can control their bodies better than most of us. Artists see something the around them things the rest of us miss. There are people who see money-making opportunities that are in front of all of us but only they recognize it. Politicians, in most cases, are people who see how other people think. Most of us are focused on our own logic but a successful politician understands the thinking of groups different from him/herself. At one point is time Trump showed us this talent. That was when he entered politics, about 2015. He could see people did not like those at the top, especially those who had an air of self-importance. It was an eye opener when he dismissed Jeb Bush of the prominent Bush political family with "no more Bushes." That he once had that ability makes it all the more mysterious that he now has no unde...

I have several of New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman's books. Now that he is retired, he does podcasts instead of longer lectures and his prominence seems to grow rather than fade.  In these podcasts, he passes along what he has learned over a lifetime of academic work. One topic that fascinated me was his review of the bonkers idea some Christians have that Jesus died as a sacrifice for all of our sins. I've wondered who could believe such a thing?  In this podcast, he explains why this peculiar notion that Jesus "died for our sins" is not a tenet of Christianity. The claim Jesus said such a thing before he died is in a couple of the Gospels but not in all. No one was present who later wrote he said this. Instead, it somehow got imbedded in the folklore of the next decades and was written later by someone(s) who heard the tale but did not hear it from Jesus himself. Ehrman makes the case, and some others agree, that the book of Luke and later writing by Paul (Ehrman i...

Statistics show the liberal wing of Christianity, I think of it as moderate or main stream Christianity, is dropping in membership rapidly. This data come from denominations like the Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, etc. They are denominations, mostly, which now approve or do not condemn gay people or gay marriage.  This data does not show trends in non denominational churches which have become popular. So far as I know, there have been no studies of the theologies of these churches. If there is something called "return to the mean" in Christianity, a theme of theology that brings people in the pews back to something that has been believed for most of U.S. history, what would it be.  Recently, a post in the conservative Wall Street Journal pointed to the denomination of Presbyterianism as a force toward freedom of assembly and belief but resistant to a government religion. It concludes the ideal of Christian nationalism in the Presbyterian denomination has...

The view that religion is "important" dropped from the 60% range to under 30% in recent decades among democrats. Among Republicans, it dropped buy only about 20%. The religious right is wringing its hands over this drop. It claims false doctrine has taken the place of the real stuff. Instead of whining, the religious right should be figuring out why this is happening and trying to reverse the downward trajectory. Instead, it is watching its numbers fall and complaining. I've been watching commentary of the national convention of Missouri Synod Lutherans. One set of younger preachers has been telling the rest of the denomination on videos that the million-member drop is continuing because its churches are often in rural areas that are emptying and the average ago of member is rising increasing deaths. They believe the decline might slow if the requirements for preachers were made less expensive with on-line degrees so and more preachers could be licensed who in turn could...

Pregnancies take many unexpected turns and doctors with their patients need to figure out what to do is the case being made in Massachusetts by a legislator. She told of a woman whose fetus had a stroke and an abortion was needed after the legal limit. The patient had to leave her state to get the abortion. This logic that abortions, even late ones, are available somewhere in the U.S. undercuts the Bible thumpers and their one-cell human beings. "If abortions are available somewhere, why force our women to travel?" is a question for which anti-abortion has no political answer.  State by state, country by country, the availability of abortions is increasing. There could be a few set backs from time to time but the resolve of women to get them will be the force that prevails. The Roe decision which made abortions legal nation-wide set a time limit on when an abortion could happen. It is widely known this was at the point when the fetus was "viable" outside the mother....

If today, July 22 is Mary Magdalene Day in the Catholic denomination and you are a Catholic, you have an obligation to go to church. The Catholic denomination has some cleaver marketing. It comes up with reasons you should spend your time and money supporting the denomination.  When I was a young person I lived in Catholic Puerto Rico for a year. There were so many holidays based on Catholic saints an outsider could not keep track of them. I suppose each of these was a reason to demand Catholics attend church. More religious days crowded out other interests. The Catholics are still playing the saint card. "Mary Magdalene" is in the Bible, allegedly present at the death of Jesus. She was said to be a woman of ill repute but brought back from her sin to be briefly big in the Easter story. She disappeared from Bible tales so what became of her was not of interest to the men who wrote the Bible. Her big contribution was that is gave Catholic executives a reason to have a day dedi...

Famous authors today say books by the author of The Late Great Planet Earth plus that book itself sold more books than any other author of Christian books in the world. This book was said to be quite influential with Reagan and his cabinet including James Watt, Secretary of the Interior. I visited with Watt in Fargo when I was mayor. Watt was in religious la la land.  It's almost alarming the book is classified as "nonfiction." The topic is prophesy and the New Testament book Revelations. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of books have been written and sermons delivered telling of the events prophesized before the return of Jesus and the end of the world. It is almost a cottage industry. Every generation is willing to shell out money to read "inside" information as to how current events foretell those prophesized in Revelations. That a President and the Cabinet that run our country now believe, or believed back then, this fictional mythology is reality is frightening.  I ...

While Christian missionaries are not allowed in Iran there are efforts to spread the faith through satellite broadcasts. It was a pleasure to read an article in the Christian press by a devout Christian who is involved in Christian broadcasts aimed at Iran but who has studied Iran's current leaders and knows them better than does Trump and his tight circle of chest-beating bomb-them-to-dust cronies.  The Iranian clergy/politicians believe they can outlast the U. S. and be in a stronger international position afterwards. They believe this because that's what happened when Iraq invaded and was unsuccessful even having more and better weapons. Sadam finally decided he could not conquer the country and gave up trying. To the Iran leadership, the same thing is unfolding against the U.S. Iran has been badly damaged, but is a large and well-educated society with oil. The Christian link author does not think Iran will negotiate nor give up its gains. In WWII, the German nazis invaded R...

All of us, or maybe just me, enjoy reading things that are exactly what we believe. An author who writes for the public just published a nice article listing 10 things humans across cultures and time fear and/or believe that give religion an opening. He says humans believe religions in order to fill needs from these fears/needs and that if/when religion does not work anymore something else moves in. That something else is today's political factions, tribes and single-issue voters. It all suggests the case Christians make that it is "needed" for a cohesive society has some validity. The author points out we can handle these without religion. Readers here know all the "needs" listed in the link but I'll list some of the old regulars: Fear of death/need for an afterlife, need to know/understand the origin of human, need to know rules to live by for approval and the need for a villain/Satan to blame things on. There are others the link author does not list in th...

An anti abortionist recently chastised her group for not attacking the in vitro practice of fertilizing several human eggs, picking the best one for implantation and discarding the rest. She pointed out the in vitro clinics "kill" more "babies" than Planned Parenthood. I've never heard of anti abortionists demanding these clinics be charged with murder or that there be funerals for the discarded fertilized eggs. Readers may recall some states have laws requiring funerals for ended pregnancies  I think there is a simple way to explain why anti-abortion groups do not demand in vitro clinics stop throwing away these "babies." There is no money in it. To bring donations, anti-abortion needs a villain. Once upon a time the villain was the abortion clinic. This villain is disappearing as more pregnancies are done by taking meds. When the villain became the woman taking the pills it hurt anti-abortion revenue. In the case of the in vitro clinic, the "vil...

We all know denominations have seminaries. What seminaries and their professors study, write about and teach is what might be called (I'm the only one I know of who calls it this) the faith's manufacturing and wholesale sector. Preachers preach what those in the pews want to hear preached. This is the retail sector of Christianity. Those in the pews are the consumers. In the market system, what consumers buy sends money to the manufacturing, wholesale and retail sectors.  Professor Stevphen Prothuro in his book, "God is Not One, says Christianity is the retail sector, what those in the pews think and talk about. In most of both the Protestant and Catholic branches this is sin. It's what they worry people worry about. Ultimately, preachers read this back to them. Then, there is what a denomination's leaders, like the Pope, talk about. A professor at Mormon BYU studies what the head of Mormons focuses on. It changes. These leaders talk about certain sins until those ...

The newspaper in Iowa ran a story about the common Catholic practice across the country. Parishes are closing and being combined. Mass attendance has fallen by about 50% and the numbers of available priests is falling. To become a priest requires several years and is, therefore, very expensive. Add to that, of course, only males and no marriage. To increase attendance, the denomination needs to open parishes on every corner like McDonalds. By maintaining its expensive requirements for priesthood, the Catholic denomination has shot itself in the foot.  What jumped out in the report about the Catholic denomination in Iowa is that about half the current priests were born in other countries. It got me to wondering if the unstated method for keeping the denomination alive is a pipeline of priests from poorer countries. If the percentage is now 50% will it be much higher 10 or 20 years from now. I found a study of the priesthood and tried to find out where these foreign-born priests come...

Somewhere there must be a "standard list of sermon topics" preachers use to rotate their sermon topics. One topic that is covered over and over in the Christian press is why the faithful should not expect God to answer all their prayers all the time. It seems like it comes up more often these days. Could it be there is more doubt than in previous times? The theme of many sermons is that God is there to help after a tragedy happens. In the link, we learn God is there for the long run, eternity, so current events that go bad and kill loved ones need to be put in a broader perspective. Where, then, does the admonition to "pray" have some benefit? Why are there signs along roads from coast to coast that say, "PRAYER WORKS?" In what way does it "work?" An ex preacher said one of the things he most disliked about being a preacher was the requirement to write a sermon each time there was a national disaster that, "Took God off the hook." It s...

Countless times I've heard TV preachers and some politicians use the phrase "God given rights." Maybe I've used the phrase myself. It's really meaningless.  First of all, of course, there is no God or god so far as anyone knows. But rights are there anyway. Our rights had to have come from somewhere else.  What about the rights in other countries? The Hindu faith is older than Christianity. Did the rights of people in India come from a Hindu god? I wonder if Hindu people in India have a phrase like we do. There are about 4.5 million Hindus in the U.S. Did the rights those Hindu citizens in the U.S. come from the U.S. Christian God or from a Hindu god or from no god anywhere at any time? Our rights, that is our government and the laws we live under, did not come from the Christian God, a Hindu god or any other god. Where, then, did they come from? I'm not a historian nor an attorney but it seems to me our government, political system and rights came from a chao...

  Conventional wisdom is that sanctions against Cuba will cause the current post-Castro government out of power. One has to wonder, what kind of government will come next if that happens? A Catholic posted the plight of the Catholic operations in Cuba. Except for the wealthy in high places, the entire island is destitute.  While conventional wisdom would tell us the current government, run by remnants of the Castros, is running things and that if citizens rise up that government will be replaced with something "better," we can wonder if that is reality. I've read that the military owes all the important assets of the island. It owns things like the source of electricity, water, etc. They pay themselves well. Where does "revolution" fit into that situation? From this distance, it's hard to tell what difference it makes to the mighty U.S. if Cuba is run by a corrupt military or something better. The U.S. had something at stake when the Soviets were going to pu...

Has raising a child changed over the last few decades? Everyone knows it is far more expensive. There are tomes published with explain why this has happened.  Economic forces have change many things.  In my Sunday paper today is an article discussing how vast the practice of retired age parents giving financial aid to adult children has become. Nearly half of retired parents with children do this. This reason they do this surely is because their children or grandchildren need this money. That this economic situation exists has to affect the decisions of children and grandchildren as well and the older generation.  The anti-abortion industry tries to blow off the economics of giving birth and raising a child. It never, ever, mentions the lives lost in childbirth. Instead, it blames decisions to have abortions, by pills or surgery, on "abortion clinics," "women who do not want to be held accountable for their sin" and "the culture." I've pointed out befo...

I suppose we're all guilty at one time or another of writing or talking about other groups we're not part of and incorrectly thinking we know all about them. That happens when Christians talk about atheists. Christians say atheists leave religion because atheists want to live in the fast lane called sin and not pay any consequences. Atheists live their lives at the same moral level as Christians. The latest version of this is the Christian Right talking about "socialism" and assuming it is the same as "communism." They use the terms interchangeably. Those who advocate more government services, especially more programs for the poor and public education, are labeled "socialists" even though more government is not the same as socialism.  There have been, I would guess, hundreds of books written about socialism and communism. What those words mean is not precise. In general, socialism means government owns all the "resources of production." T...

A group of liberal Baptist preachers recently formed a group , not a denomination, to push back against Christian Nationalists. Many of the preachers serve mostly black churches. They are almost missionaries in a foreign country.  Religious conservatives often crow about the loss of numbers in denominations like Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Lutherans. It is true their numbers have dropped dramatically. Numbers in conservative denominations like Catholics and Southern Baptists have dropped dramatically as well. What is unknown is where the numbers will be ten or twenty years from now. I find the You Tube channel "Mormon Stories Podcast" so interesting I watch it too much. There, former Mormons tell of their loss of trust in the information provided about the origin of the denomination, The tale of Joseph Smith finding tablets telling him to start the denomination is so blatantly stolen from Moses' stone ten commandments it is laughable. All to the polygamy in the denom...

I would guess that pleas for money to fund Christian missionaries have been very successful over the last 100 years. My late uncle was a missionary. Some denominations, like Southern Baptists, have cut back funds for missionaries but keep the program alive. Missionaries are usually married men with children. How this affects their families was discussed recently by a woman on a Christian site.  The wife of the male missionary is required to fit into the society targeted by the faith. If there is a language and cultural barrier, this is not always easy. Perhaps most children make such adjustments more easily than adults, but when the missionary assignment ends, children must reenter a society they are not familiar with, The link author asks believers to help children returning from assignment make new friends and become acquainted with a society that in now foreign to them.  To an outsider, all of this seems very pointless. Societies around the world have religious views that c...

There was a fascinating opinion in a Federal Appeals court in Florida signaling some hope for freedom of speech. The MAGA Florida legislature and Governor passed a law state universities cannot teach "woke" ideas. Readers know this is both specific issues like our history, racial equality, trans and will include in the future whatever and whomever conservative politics decides to demonize next. The law was challenged by a group of students and faculty. It ended up in the Federal Court of Appeals in that district. A Trump appointee wrote the majority opinion that the Florida legislature cannot dictate which ideas and acceptable and which not. A majority overruled the law. I suppose the Supreme Court could hear this case, not sure. If there is one thread that can hold together this democracy it is free speech. Conservatives have the bonkers notion that "free speech" is private education from childhood to adulthood. A dissenting view in the Florida decision was that a ...

The question asked repeated by skeptics of Christianity is, "If God loves us, when does he allow children to suffer in pain and die? Why does he allow so much suffering everywhere?" The columnist answered that today. God makes us suffer, he said, so we "surrender." When things are most painful and hopeless we will get on our knees and petition God for help. People who are healthy and wealth are worse off according to the link.  When a child suffers is that child made better by getting on knees and "surrendering" to an imaginary god? When God sent Noah's flood did a million people come to God just before he downed them? The link seems to me like an ad marketeers came up with after the company faced a dilemma. The dilemma was the company had a product to sell that was inferior in quality and too high in price. The company asked to ad company to produce an ad that said, "Buy our inferior over-priced product because you will feel better after you help...

In the years I've been writing this blog many Christian pundits have confidently posted in comments why I'm an atheist. All the reasons they have given are ones I have seen in other posts on other sites. The ones that come to mind are that a.) I want to sin without punishment, b.) I had a bad experience in a church, c.) I have not read the Bible, d.) I fell under the influence of Satan, e.) I do not understand the consequences of sin in eternity, f.) I am under the influence of liberals like Obama and Biden, g.) I am going through a temporary period that will be followed by belief when death approaches, h.) there must be a h.) but I'm bored with his list. All of these explanations are wrong. I simply could not believe the tenets of the Christian faith nor any other. The more interesting observation about the list, however, is that every explanation as to why I do not believe had one thing in common: Not believing is my fault. Anyone who does not believe has something wrong ...

When congress left Washington without a vote on the budget, an old bill defunding visits to women's clinics expired. This means the funding restarts . Anti-abortion groups are steaming mad. Anti-abortionists have always tried to demonize Planned Parenthood. It was as if Planned Parenthood was the reason there are abortions. The reason there are abortions, of course, it because women want them. If it weren't Planned Parenthood running clinics it would be someone else. In fact there are groups right now that would step up if the market needed them. One of the things that has always annoyed anti-abortion is that Planned Parenthood provides medical services to poor women. Anti-abortion assumes that revenue from these services funds abortions. So far as I know this is not true. It is just another preoccupation anti-abortion needs to get over. Republicans in Congress went on break without reauthorization of the bill that harmed Planned Parenthood and poor women. It is obvious most of...

In what borders of parody, Trump railed against "communists" at Mr. Rushmore. None of the four faces in Mt. Rushmore were against communists nor against government. All were responsible for some government expansion. Washington gave the green light to the government growth of Alexander Hamilton. Before the, Washington chaired the Constitutional Convention establishing a stronger federal government over interstate commerce. Lincoln decided all states must knuckle under, so he defeated the South.  In the link's report of his speech, Trump hints that immigrants are communists. Pope Leo gave an address recently where he admonished the continents of Europe and America to welcome the newcomer. This is the opposite of Trump who likes to hint immigrants are not the right race, creed or loyalty. I'll admit it's creative to bring back "communists" as the villain. Trump noted the original Russian version of communism saw Christianity as an enemy of Communism and wo...

There has been news recently that personality Tucker Carlson will "help" build a third political party. My observation of talk show hosts, and it's not true of all of them, is they like to make sweeping generalizations and leave out the details. Sometimes the details are facts, sometimes intellectual content. In Tucker's case it seems both. There is a huge third party already. It has been growing. It is called "swing voters," "independent voters" and "undecided voters." Every election cycle, networks and columnists feature pieces with the lead-in, "Let's to into real America and find out what voters are thinking." They interview a few people then feature one or two from every perspective. We never learn what "the public" is thinking. Invariably a person or two will say something like, "I'm very particular about who I vote for. Neither party has put up a candidate good enough for me." Such self-importa...

We all have our ideas about what is good or smart politics. I'm no different. Those who read this blog have to hear mine. My thinking is millions of voters will go to the polls in the next two elections for the specific purpose of voting against Trump. Most of these voters, however, will not admit that is why or how they are voting. They will have convinced themselves they are voting for some reason more idealistic and loftier. An example of what they might say to themselves is, "I'm voting for a better country." The job of Democrats, Libertarians, Socialists and whomever is to give those voters something that ends the sentence, "I'm voting for someone other than a Republican because..."  The sentence will not end in "...I hate Trump." It will be something else. That is what Texas Govitorial Candidate Talarico is doing so well.   Talarico is telling Texans their state is too big and too important to yield to the narrow views of the far right. T...

In Peru is a statue carved in stone. It is engraved with a text which says that particular location was, or remains, the center of the universe. In the Bible we have the Garden of Eden, thought to be in today's Iran. The Bible says that is where history began, i,e, center of the universe. The statue in Peru and the story in the Bible date to about the same time, some years BCE. Which is "the truth?" The term "written in stone" indicates power and longevity. Unfortunately, the god of the stone did not last forever and, like all the other gods, is lost in the sands of time. It could well be that god lasted longer than our current on in Christianity will last. It exists due to oral history and what sins that god condemns changes regularly. It could be that if Christians had written the Bible on stones instead of on pieces of papyrus that are long gone the faith would not continue to change. The wealthy Green family of Hobby Lobby funded the Museum of the Bible. I a...