Thoughts of a Freethinker

The Battle of Jericho is so far fetched it is now regarded as fiction in some standard textbooks used in university courses in religion. Joshua did not win the Battle of Jericho because Jericho did not exist at the time the "battle" was supposed to have taken place. Scholars have figured out when the story about the Jews heroic retaking of Canaan was written. It was written about 600 years after it was supposed to have happened. Thus, the story was not written from eye witness reports. Nor was it written by those who had personally known eye witnesses. It is religious propaganda. In Joshua 10:40 we learn Joshua defeated to whole land of Canaan. In Deuteronomy 13:1 we learn the Lord said the Canaanites still held lots of the country. In the Book of Joshua the Jews took the city of Hazor and put a sword through every resident. In Judges, Hazor still belongs to the Canaanites. There are several cities mentioned in the "battle" for Canaan which archaeologists say ...

In the Old Testament, the Edomites are viewed as slow thinking. The Book of Obadiah predicted the Edomites would be outsmarted and hardly know what happened to them when God's favorite groups attacked. There was a group thought to be what the Bible refers to as Edomites about 1000 BCE. There was lots of fighting among the groups in the area that is today Israel and the surrounding areas. Those who wrote the Bible later needed to portray the enemies of the Jews as inferior people who worshiped inferior gods. One such inferior group were the Edomites. In the Bible God warns the Edomites smarter people will fool them and take everything. Recent excavations believed to be of an Edomite community show the group was actually very advanced for the time. They, along with the Egyptians, invented a faster and more efficient way to make copper which was to go to metal at the time.  Perhaps as a reward for being advanced and for worshiping a different god, God smote the Edomites. God...

As the faith continues its slow decline, leaders look for a way to reverse the trend. The Bible commands believers to go out and market the faith. Translated, that means people are to talk up the faith among nonbelievers and invite people to their church. Even though evangelism is technically part of the religion, almost half of the faith blows it off. Those who blow it off no doubt have good reasons. Maybe they are skeptical about the entire Christian narrative. And, perhaps they have had people pushing them to buy or believe this or that and want no part of doing it themselves. Today, people cannot avoid marketing. It is everywhere and the last thing people want is more of it. To sell something to someone else the one on the receiving end has to have a need. If the need does not seem to be there the sales person's job is to create that need. Those who comment on this blog are forever telling me I need religion. They will post that I have some kind of guilty I don't te...

An article in The Atlantic   noted something I had overlooked. It is the stunning pace of the growth of people who no longer identify with any religion. In the U.S. that means, mostly, no longer Christian. Europe now polls majority not Christian and, if the present trend continues, the U. S. soon will follow suit. While that has been discussed here and elsewhere the author noted that compared to other social changes, it has been happening very fast. Changes in attitudes toward gender, race and economic class all moved at a snail's pace compared to the rise in "nones", those who say they are not affiliated with any branch of religion. To me the link did not mention something important, the recent rise in the acceptance of homosexuality. That also has been extraordinarily rapid. I think those two changes, the rise in acceptance of homosexuality and the fall of Christianity, are related. What makes them similar is the computer and TV screen. The printing press which ...

Anti abortion activists don't live, at least intellectually, in the real world. They pretend they can separate it issue of a fetus life from the economics the mother or mother and father face. In the real world the economics of the mother/father and the fate of the fetus cannot be separated. But, it is worse than that. Anti abortion activists do not live in the real world when then talk of outlawing abortion. They pretend that if abortions were against the law the government would prosecute women the same way it prosecutes murders now. In the real world there are so many abortions it is not conceivable law enforcement could even make a dent in the number. This becomes even more impossible as drug induced abortions become more common. They are more difficult to detect and will cost more to prosecute. If there were no economic limitations things would be altogether different. A pregnant teen age woman would be given enough money to raise a child, have child care, attend colleg...

A well known journalist was arrested outside her doctor's office, along with her doctor and his secretary,  accused of having an abortion. They have denied this happened and that records were altered. This arrest took place in a Muslim country. It is amusing how often I am chastised for not criticizing Islam--that I criticize Christianity. Here we see little difference between Islam and Christianity. Both want a strong government that inserts itself into the personal decisions of individuals. We have seen local authorities in the U.S. arrest women for having abortions. One need only visit the website of an organization set up exclusively to protect women from persecution, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, to see how often women are charged with having an abortion. The difference between a miscarriage and abortion in anti abortion law has never been made clear. This allows anti abortion politics to apply wherever and whenever it dislikes some particular woman. Abortio...

What has seemed obvious to me for several months has not been discussed in the press coverage of the President. At least not that I have seen. Interest rates have been so low in recent years they are in what is called real terms, zero. That is if interest is 2% and inflation is two percent the borrower pays the interest by an increase in the prices he/she receives for whatever she sells. The Federal Reserve has been raising and lowering their own interest rates (and reserves available for loans to banks) for several years with no discernible impact on the economy. The President saw an opportunity to pull off a ruse and it has worked until now. He made a demand of the FR which he wanted it to turn down. To make sure they turned it down he made a request far outside anything the FR would consider. He requested the FR cut in half the interest rate which was already zero in real terms. The FR has never cut interest rates in half. It seemed clear the reason he made this sure-to-b...