Thoughts of a Freethinker

A minister in the Community Cosmopolitan Church is praying for progress in acceptance of LGBTQ people both in the U.S. and around the world. It seems to me some progress was made in 2020. I share his wish for more. Among all the talk about "religious freedom" is the hidden message of more prejudice. It's not even hidden in many cases. This set of people wants the right to look down on and make life miserable for those they dislike. It is stated in the language of religion. What such people don't understand is that there has been a flattening out of social structures in many ways. While the distribution of wealth and income has become less equal, less flat, the computer has given voice to grievances unequaled in history. It has become possible to form effective coalitions of resistance not possible in a previous time. One bit of evidence has been the emergence of political influence of women. It is commonly thought women's votes were a big factor in the last elect...

  About 20 years ago there was a castle revolt in the Southern Baptist Convention. Seminary Presidents and denomination office holders were voted out. In came a group of Bible thumping sin condemning air heads who said the denomination would fail unless they took over. But, they were sewing the seeds of failure. Albert Mohler, Jr. was the leader of the revolt and put himself in a high-paying post of a seminary President. Since then, the denomination's numbers have consistently fallen.  To stem the decline, other Southern Baptist officials recently adopted a statement agreeing with the intellectual concept of Critical Race Theory. This was to offset the denomination's founding which was based on slavery followed by segregation.  Black churches are leaving the denomination and the thinking was that by blaming prejudice on society the church would not look so bad. Critical Race Theory teaches race is a societal problem, i.e., cultures put racism in the heads of children. It ...

This happened in 2019 but the ramifications are now spilling out. The eleven year old had been raped by her grandfather. As soon as her pregnancy was apparent an abortion was requested. Abortion is not legal in Argentina except for the usual things like life of the mother.  Hospitals debated, delayed and could not decide. I'm sure discussion was, "That too bad about the 11 year old. But we must save her baby, blah, blah, blah.."  Later a C-section was performed and, as I understand, the fetus did not survive.  This woke up voters across Argentina to the fact anti abortion politics is filled with crazies. New abortion rights political people were elected and a vote is coming up that may legalize abortion. Argentina is the second largest South American country and the thinking is several others would follow if it made abortion legal. According to the New York Times  a coming Senate  vote  puts legalized abortion within reach. Some members have not revealed t...

Conservatives hate "socialism." They hate "Keynes." They love Trump. His is for both of these . And don't forget conservative Lutherans. Martin Luther wanted society to provide income according to needs. Luther's ideas and those of fellow German, Karl Marx, were so similar it's hard to separate them. But today, of course, Marx was for Communism, bad, and Luther for capitalism, good.  These are economic issues. Let's move to social policy. Conservative Republicans want less government in our private lives except for abortion. To stop abortions it would be necessary for government to keep tabs on all pregnant women. They cannot trust women who claim to have had a miscarriage--there has to be evidence otherwise she had an abortion and must be prosecuted.  As I have said many times here, the ability of human minds to hold two opposing views at the same time and think they hold logical and consistent views is almost infinite. Most any day we can read in t...

I've been reading How God Becomes Real by Tanya Marie Luhrmann (2020). She is an anthropology and psychology professor at Stanford. She uses these disciplines along with sociology to probe what goes on in people's minds. She studies religion. There have been many other scholars studying this phenomena for decades and there is a deep library of publications.  The obvious skepticism about anyone claiming to know what goes on in one person's mind or in minds collectively is, "How do you know?"     Psychiatrists try to determine what is in people minds by asking them to describe their thoughts. By comparing the descriptions of thousands all over the world for a hundred plus years there are some agreement/conclusions about what is going on in human minds. Even though there remain unresolved questions and problems, progress has been made.    Professor Luhrmann approached studying the minds of religious people, and the non religious, in a similar manner. Over many...

Several books that originally were in the Bible were tossed in the 1600's. There is not a record as to why they were tossed. Those who did the dirty deed were in power and needed no one's permission. One was written by Solmon, considered the wises man ever. In the Wisdom of Solomon, 2:1-24, he discusses his views on several topics. He says no one has ever returned from the grave. Our bodies turn into ashes. Our names are forgotten in time.  Adding to his wisdom, he says we should drink wine and enjoy ourselves because this is the only life we get. He get a little less charitable talking about poor people. He thinks they are rather useless. Along with being a wealthy person, Solomon was reported to have a weakness for women.  Early on, Solomon's book was in the Bible. Then it was removed. That is too bad because it has some material that makes sense to those of us who don't think the God of Bible exists nor does the heaven and hell.  There are volumes written about why ...

I predicted some months ago what was and is the obvious. Some Catholic Bishops are wringing their hands over what to do about Catholic President Elect Joe Biden . Those Bishops made their bed by going all out for anti-abortion Trump. Now to "stay in the game" they need to figure out how to do some tricky politics. I've read more than one Catholic church in the DC area has offered to host Biden for communion and whatever else. Of course, he has lived there and in his home area for decades so priests and Bishops living elsewhere lobbing bombs about his faith fall on deaf ears. Whether Catholic or Protestant, there have always been people drawing lines in the sand defining what it means to be a "true Christian." Now Trump is drawing a line in the sand among Republicans, "Are you with me or not?" Just like the line in the sand about Catholics on abortion the Trump line will not bring in any new people to his team or to Republicans. Both are inwardly focuse...