Thoughts of a Freethinker

The Mississippi legislature passed a bill and its Governor signed it to put anyone in jail who provides books in schools by atheist Sam Harris, paganists or other like minded authors. The sentence would be up to 30 days and a fine of up too $500.  I suppose schools in Mississippi have computers so here is a note to teachers, don't let kids look at this blog. It's not good enough to sacrifice 30 days of anyone's life.  In the anti-atheist industry things are going well. In Mississippi, it was reported church bells rang to celebrate. The Governor said citizens of Mississippi have suffered long enough with unGodly information coming to their children. The infamous Rep. Greene demanded legislation removing information about witchcraft. I've read something like this was the majority view of Pagan people back in the early days of Christianity. Pagans trying to stop Christianity was no more successful than will be efforts today to stop Paganism and atheism from growing today....

I remember the first time I heard a preacher in my church at the time refer to his "leadership style." It sounded just like the buzz words that rotated through academia. Every few years there would be required seminars on the bureaucratic buzz words of the years. When I run into friends still in the academy I like to ask what the current buzz words are.  It turns out the pastor at that time, and probably pastors everywhere, attended "leadership conferences" where the presenters are not other preachers but are corporate executives. The corporate buzz words and corporate concepts have been inserted into churches. The link is a preacher who laments this trend. He has attended many such conferences himself. The link author believes this corporate kind of leadership is bringing down Christianity. He notes that the rate of sexual abuse and dishonesty among megachurch Protestant preachers is much higher than the population average. He explains what he thinks is the source ...

  Amazon is facing a strong union effort in its huge Alabama warehouse. About 3/4th of the two thousand who work there are black. I've read several accounts of how it is to work in an Amazon shipping warehouse. It is tough. The union trying to organize the Birmingham capitalizes on the economics of the warehouse as well as the solidarity linked to Black Lives Matter (BLM). BLM is accused of far left, even communist, ties. This was the same accusation made of other unionizing efforts and of civil rights struggles. It was especially used against Martin Luther King. Those communist ties to Martin Luther King somehow did not stop streets all over the U.S., including one right near me, from being named after him. We're used to thinking of the "solid South." For many decades, we all know, it was the segregation Democratic Party's solid South. Since the Kennedy period it has been Republican solid South. As the link points out, however, the South has always been in turmoi...

An article in Forbes,  a Republican a national publishing house, methodically went through the charges of election misconduct and voting machine manipulation. The only reason this is newsworthy is a majority of Republican voters still believe Trump lost was because of election cheating. Forbes reported what every rational person already knew, the election was honest. Trump was soundly beaten. The Christians who protested Biden's election are making the same mistake with publicly available videos they have made with the Bible since day one. They look at the videos and make assumptions about what they see. The problem with that is others, who know more about the nuts and bolts of counting votes, see the same videos. They are able to make superior interpretations of what they see.  Republicans who have come to accept the election results as honest, as in the Forbes , have on big disadvantage. They have less, or even no ability, to monetize they acceptance of Biden as President. ...

Slavery and segregation used Christianity as the basis for prejudice against black people. Christianity is being used today as the basis for prejudice against gay people and women. Ulysses S. Grant, leader of the Union Army and President right after the Civil War understood that the passion of one group to have power over others would not stop at civil rights for black people but would spread throughout the society. He championed a Department of Justice which houses the FBI for the purpose of stamping out groups that sought such power.  Shortly after the Civil War, 1871, the Enforcement Act of April, commonly known as The Klan Act, was passed. It prohibits use of "force, intimidation, or threat" to prevent government official from executing their responsibilities. A suit has been brought by the N.A.A.C.P against Trump, Giuliani, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keeper for violating this law. The law also makes it illegal to imped the right to vote. Despite this law, the Klan spent...

I follow the legislatures of North Dakota and Iowa. While I no longer attend sessions and just read about them in newspapers, I get the impression Republican legislators (along with a few Democrats) are obsessed with passing bills that have no reason or usefulness except putting in place religious ideas. It is Christian dominionism to the max. Its  source is in Genesis. There we learn God's people are to rule. A current matter is which restroom children are to use in school. It is worth the expensive time when legislators meet to debate this. Whatever gender was on a child's birth certificate determines the restroom they must use in school. If early in a child's life the child her parents and professional in their lives determined a different gender than what was on the birth certificate that rules. The change might have occurred many years before. That does not matter to politicians of the faith. They learned from the Bible babies are born male or female and woe be it to ...

No one seems to know the numbers yet, but many Republican Party elected officials are leaving the Party. Several thousand regular voters have been recorded as leaving also. They have not registered as Democrats but instead as independents.  While we don't know the future, we do know the past. This past election, Trump lost by a significant number and Republicans moved backwards in the Senate. If Republicans run with the same personality, Trump, and the same ideas is there reason to believe they would be more successful next time when they were not this time?  Forbes Magazine, Republican at its core, published a review of a study by a well know election analysis firm. The election analysis firm gave a positive grade for the honesty and integrity of the election Trump lost. A clean bill of honesty was giving the voting machine company, Dominion. The study looked into all the allegations of dumping ballots, late night changes in numbers and every other tail of cheating and frau...