Thoughts of a Freethinker

Trump and company has been lampooning environmental rules and ridiculing concerns. The longer this goes on, and we're still here, it's easy to imagine there are no consequences. An end to our current standard of living is out there. Some scientists are still talking about it. The link calculates known resources and our rate of using them. The conclusion is the earth needs to cut its population by billions in order to shoe-horn back into the available resources. When I have brought up the need to reduce the earth's population before skeptics always say dire predictions of the past have never materialized. It is, of course, impossible to predict exactly when and how environmental damage will take its toll. It is not hard to realize the problem is out there. Rational people will see the need to adjust.  One simple way to see the problem is to recognize our food production depends on artificial fertilizers. We can produce food without it. We just cannot produce as much. In ingr...

Growing up in a tiny rural community we all knew the serious sins. The Sin Leader Board, as I remember, was beer, doing work in farm fields on Sunday, dancing and playing cards with clubs and spades. Probably it was not a place good for mental health. There was right there in the Bible a sin no one mentioned.  A recent article in Christianity Today reminds us the Bible's Sin Leader Board has near the top the sin of "usury." I don't have a subscription so a pay wall keeps me from reading the entire article. I think I know what it says, however. The conventional wisdom within the faith today is that "usury" refers to charging unfair or extraordinary interest. It is to take advantage of the borrower. "Reasonable interest" is OK. That is not how the Bible passages were interpreted during much of the time since its existence. Interest was bring in money for no labor. Nothing was produced, why should anyone be paid? There have been times and places in hi...

The older I get the more difficult it is to read history. On every continent of the world are people there because of brutal conquests back in time. I don't know of any place we can be certain is "indigenous." Reading about this country and my people, the white ones, is especially painful. One of the "heroes" is Columbus. He wrote of his capture and enslavement of indigenous people he found here and bragged at length of the victory for Christianity. Today, we have the same thing in Secretary of Defense Hegseth using his religion to justify cruelty. The link contains a picture of Columbus' own handwriting which spells of the Godly virtue of his capture and enslavement of some natives. It was the work of the Lord. Of course, those who later brought slaves here from Africa also claimed a pious cause. The Bishops of Italy gave Columbus their blessing as he sailed off. He made two more trips here for fame and profit. I have beside the chair where I am sitting nex...

Some decades ago I was in Winnipeg, Manitoba with our son's scout group. Most of the group was hosted overnight by a church in the downtown. The congregation had been declining. The solution was to tear down the church building and build a high rise affordable housing building. The congregation continued to meet in rooms on the main floor. I remember marveling at the moveable furniture and attractive appearance. Why don't we do that in the U.S. I wondered? Now this is being done in downtown Madison, WI. As in Winnipeg, the smaller congregation will meet in the new building. Maybe this is underway in other places.   Everyone agrees more affordable housing is needed in the U.S. Mostly people do not want such housing near them so acquiring land zoning is difficult to impossible. Land itself, of course, is expensive in the downtown areas where people need to live so they can find work nearby.  Downtown churches can help because usually they own land free of debt. When they de...

A convert from Islam to Christianity recently penned a post lamenting the number of Christians going the other way, from Christianity to Islam. Her theory is that Christians are too pushy and judgmental and that is why some leave for Islam. This theme of obnoxious Christians has been appearing more frequently in the Christian press recently. The posts always include some quotes from the Bible admonishing the faithful to win over those in other faiths with kind behavior. If these quotes are helpful, why are they being put out there now? Earlier would have been better. The link lady makes one big error. She writes that the Christian message is not just one message competing with others. She thinks it is something above all that. Unfortunately, it is actually just one more group pumping out propaganda. It is not different from all the others. New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman claims Jesus, that is the writing claiming to quote Jesus, was different than anything else during that period. Eh...

Democrats have been burned so many times in recent decades they refuse to believe they can really win in Republican states. Texas is an example. Yet, everyone who talks to Texans says the same thing. Texans have questions about Talarico. But there is deep dislike his opponent, Paxton. We all have a tendency to predict voting patterns on past experience. As Reagan once said, "In politics the unexpected often happens." There are other generalizations made by prominent politicians. Tip O'Neil wrote a book, All Politics are Local. I have that book. Tip says politicians are known locally and how they are perceived locally often supersedes national issues. Hubert Humphry said, "You cannot talk down to voters." To me, Trump and his version of the Republican Party are doing that. Making outcomes even more difficult to predict are changes in demographics. Every day, some voters die and young people have birthdays moving them into the voting age. All of us know the old te...

The Christian press has tried lampooning Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion for all of these 20 years. Yet the book's impact, or the cultural change that gave rise to its popularity, continues. Dawkins penned a wonderful essay about the conflict between the faith and those of non faith and it's worth reading.  Dawkins points out that the power of Charles Darwin's book explaining where humans came from. It destroyed creationism as the explanation. Darwin wrote this around the time of the Civil War. Christian creationism started downhill and has never stopped. Dawkins points out in last week's essay the destruction of creationism has been so complete those in Christianity with academic backgrounds have all but abandoned it. Dawkins points out these Christians who have been forced to abandon creationism have now turned to another argument. That is about the universe. Readers all know the argument. It is that so many things in the universe had to happen to arrive at an e...

When the Secretary of Defense announced a new office of religion in the miliary he did not refer to it as encompassing all religions. It was as if he had never heard of religions other than Christianity. He quoted from the Bible.  The Office of Religion is the Office of Christianity in the military.  The U. S. military is so huge I suppose there are many specialized enterprises within it. There is a chaplaincy corps that considers all or nearly all the faiths represented in the military. Chaplains are prepared to conduct religious services in religions they themselves are not part of. Where does Secretary Hegseth's Office of Religion and the Bible verses he used fit into the Chaplaincy Corps? I would guess most of the career Chaplains do not know where it fits in either. I read over the years about the part of the military that deals in propaganda. We all know playing with the heads of the enemy has always been part of warfare. Where does Hegseth's own religious propaganda fit...

With more Democrats who are clergy running for office and suggesting there is more than one version of Christianity other than the Christian right we are seeing bitter commentary about these liberal politicians. If several of these liberal clergy win election, will there be anyone that disapproves of any version of the faith? Will there be any blasphemy left? Christians are so fragmented it's hard to see a central definition in the future. Not long ago, Christian factions united against liberal who did not want prayer in schools and at public meetings. Now Christians themselves are in different camps. Some are saying the Constitution itself was flawed in wanting a separation of church and state. Apparently, they want a new Constitution requiring the Christian right.  Political groups now seem to be forming religions that conform to politics. This may not be all bad because it is more honest than what we see today. Today religious groups say their politics are a result of their reli...

One of the most humorous things conservative Christians say about their faith is, "The culture changes but the faith never changes." Beliefs in Christianity have morphed in many directions since day one. When studying the faith as a whole, we need to distinguish among the various ways its many parts are organized. Groups like the Southern Baptist Convention join it voluntarily. Churches can be kicked out but there is not a church bureaucracy like the Methodists, Lutherans and Presbyterians. Yet the economic base of the latter is those in the pews who pay the bills. The members navigate the cultural waters to a large degree. People leave one denomination and go to the competition. To gage the struggle in the faith, the Catholic denomination is the place to look. It has been for the last several hundred years very top down. The "truth" is at the top, not in the pews. The current struggle I've been following for several years is the German Catholic  determination t...

A standard fare in sermons and Christian writing tells believers what to do when they experience doubt. This problem, doubt, is so common it is discussed in the Bible. There must have been doubt about the previous hundreds of gods that have been worshipped because they are gone and forgotten. Belief invisible gods exist and doubts about them have existed at the same time since forever. All the writers and clergy telling others how to deal with doubt seem not to know there are people who have complete disbelief. Would they tell one to pray for the ability to set aside complete disbelief and even contempt for the old beliefs? I've had close believing friends and commenters of this blog recognize and acknowledge my disbelief but I don't remember any advice about how to change it. On the You Tube site, Mormon Stories, former believers describe in great detail how they came to leave that denomination. Most have left religion entirely. There seems a pattern that nearly all of them fo...

There are reports from preachers of single men coming to their churches. Women, we know, are leaving. There are questionnaire studies all the time asking things like "Do you believe in God?" and "How often do you go to church?" There is little information about who these young men are and why they find something in church. The information we have is not encouraging.  The link talks of a Christian male identity focused on masculinity. It includes anti women, blacks and tolerance of slavery. Those at the top of this movement are collecting money and building organizations.  For single young adults, men or women, who have leisure time, what to do? Surely the best choice is something that is pleasant. A church service needs that. Next might be finding new and interesting friends, something apart from the drudgery of the job. Taking all this into account, it is interesting, even a bit alarming, that more men are finding something in church than women are finding.  It fun...

After losing in court with an atheist group a few years back, something dawned on me. It was that atheists are not the right group to offset the Christian right. The right group to do this would be a non-Christian religious group. I was so convinced about this I sought out people from different religious traditions in Fargo, ND where I lived at that time and invited them to join in the effort we atheists were engaged in at the time.  People from other religious traditions, however, could not understand why we cared about the Ten Commandments monument on public property which was our issue at the time. They did not see the point of putting themselves, and their children, out in the light of public opinion over this stone object few people noticed. Now, events and the politics have changed. Other religious traditions are being pushed to the front of the battle. The change is most striking in Texas . Texas has just the right mix of in-your-face liberals to shout back at in-your-face T...

A woman who transitioned from her birth designated gender of male preached a sermon on gender that has exploded. She explains why God is neither male nor female and, as I understand her, Jesus was not either.  There has always been this mystery about God taking a rib from Adam, a male, and making it into a female, Eve. Isn't this "trans?" That this woman's church and denomination thinks it's fine for her to hold the post of priest, or priestess, is the business of those parties involved. I don't see any point for the Christian press to make a story about it nor for commenters to carry on about how heathen the church and the woman are. Really, if you are a Southern Baptist in Mississippi it will change your life not at all. The priestess has things to deal with more complicated than being bashed on Christian Post. It includes, for example, traveling and using rest rooms if she does not pass as a female. We know from experience this can be outright dangerous. Th...

There is an old saying in economics, tax something and you will end up with a shortage but subsidize something and you will end up with a surplus. That may be the future in religion. We all know churches are not required to pay property taxes. Churches compete with every other use of people's money so this keeps their costs lower than other businesses. As mega churches have grown, their need for parking has grown. This has increased their subsidies. While there are churches that close every week there are also some new ones in new or old buildings. There are also new religions. The Church of Satan is an example.  Local governments turn down, or try to turn down, religions they do not like. This cancels the property tax break for the newcomers. Then off to court they go. Courts have shown a pattern in approving new faiths and not approving others. The link says courts have dabbled in the "sincerity" of religions to decide if the qualify for no property taxes. A common reas...

I wonder if Trump has been taken and lost money in deals as often in his private business dealings as he has done as President. As President, he has cost us a bundle. Trump has met with Xi various times. They met a few months ago, yesterday and two more meetings are schedules in the coming year. Nothing comes happens or changes at these meetings. Perhaps the meetings crowd out Russia a bit or help each of them be famous. Nothing happens that is in the interests of the U.S. The U.S. would be helped by offering lower, instead of higher, tariffs. Hopefully, China would lower its tariffs on U.S. goods. This would help grain prices among other things. Trump said he would alter trade relations making the Balance of Trade favor the U.S. Instead, China's balance of trade has gained. Trump is obsessessed with the Balance of Trade and does not understand it is mostly meaningless. Republicans in Congress need to understand the person at the head of their party and who is President is not up t...

A movie about women and spiritual forces opened earlier this month and is so far the highest grossing movie of the month. The link is a Christian post alarmed at this interest in the occult. According to this review the movie focuses on women's grievances and on the enemies of women.  For several years I have read about the growing industry of making and selling items of what can be called the occult. Now, perhaps, we are seeing the size of this phenomenon in a movie. While I don't know much about the items of the occult, I think of them as beads and the great one that made Superman, kryptonite. Kryptonite is a fictional material that was a creation of a story author who knew of an actual element in space called Krypton.  Learning about the growth of a new version of witchcraft which I will use interchangeably with Paganism is especially entertaining because it reflects the long history of what goes on in humans' heads. Paganism thrived when every community was quite isolat...

The part of the world is obsessed against trans people cannot keep their views to themselves. They feel the need to put their views into law and even into the United Nations.  A group in the United Nations wants to list crimes against humanity. This would allow international knowledge of countries which practice horrific acts against minorities. To do this, the practices hate groups use and the populations they target need to be named. There is support to name trans people as a group targeted by hate groups. The hate groups, of course, do not want this, they want to target trans people. The link reports over 100K signatures have been gathered opposing naming trans as a targeted group. Those opposed want the freedom to demonize those they dislike. After all, the hate groups say, God created only two genders and did allow switching. Every informed person knows there have been people not identified as either male or female. Ancient writing referred to such people. Those in the U.N. wa...

We're now a couple of decades past the best seller by Richard Dawkins. Its sales have fallen, new writers emerged and time has gone on. Now it is popular to claim Dawkins has been defeated. That is, conservative pundits, making a living selling to conservative readers, are claiming the existence of an invisible super-natural force is not a delusion but backed by science-based information.  One can see a pattern in the critics of Dawson. It is the same pattern that we have seen of evolution since day one. Someone, usually only one, person with science credentials will write somewhere the creation including humans is too complex to have happened without a "designer" or "creator."  Usually the critic has some way to justify the amount of time it would take for something like fish becoming bird or the human hand to develop and decide it could not have happened by evolution. There wasn't enough time, it the bogus theory.  Then there are comments made by prominent...

  Add together those who poll atheist, agnostic and None in New Hampshire and one gets the most secular state in the U.S. Surrounding states in New England seem to be a little under 40%. The average age of believers is higher than the general population so one could conclude the secular trend will creep higher in coming years. California falls roughly into this category but the New England states poll more secular. The population of New Hampshire is only 1.3 million.  The nearby states in New England have secular populations a bit smaller than New Hampshire. It seems like the liberal Christianity and secular populations are joining together. That makes is fun to speculate on how this will affect politics in that region and across the country. Beginning in the early 1990's New Hampshire swung from Republican to Democrat in Presidential elections. Nearby states have done the same.  A majority which polls non Christian would be a milestone in polling. Of course, the importan...