Will the slimy green swamp finally swallow the snake-filled Garden of Eden?

Women have been second-class citizens since, if you are a Bible believer, God stirred the dust and created Adam, and later stole a rib and created Eve, who could pull Adam out of  depression. One might have assumed that God would have known that being alone challenges a Homo sapiens male.

Anyway, Eve could be a helpmate, nurse, playmate, healer and sex object all in one – as long as she didn’t vote or talk to a snake for the rest of her celestial life. That apple she ate was not a Crispy, even if it had a lot of knowledge, so God punished all the Eves forever by making birthing painful while populating the earth. Not a nice guy.

Thousands of religions have never made women equal to men. Since the days of Jesus Christ, the Roman Catholic Church has never allowed a woman to conduct a mass or give a sermon from the official pulpit. The Southern Baptists and most of the Northern Lutherans say Bubba is the boss in house, bar and barn.

Through the years I have become a follower of Richard Dawkins, an English ethologist and evolutionary biologist who was Oxford University’s Professor for the Understanding of Science for 13 informative years. He is blunt and defensive about science: “Science is beautiful. It’s beautiful because it’s elegant. And it’s because it’s true. And, of course, it’s useful.”

Is it ever, and we learn something useful every second. I learned this morning we may soon have a drug which will control Alzheimer’s.  

Abortion is all about economics while homosexuality is all about genetics

We already know our universe is 13.8 billion years old and Homo sapiens began to develop about four billion years ago when our “life” started. A lot of animals and insects have two eyes, two ears, one nose and one mouth. As the result of billions of years of evolution on earth, a live thing finally came out of a slimy swamp.

We can now see a nanoscopic fertilized egg of Homo sapiens with an electron microscope. Fifty of them will fit in the eye of a needle that keeps our rich out of Heaven. It takes about six days after conception to determine whether the fetus will develop into a male or female. Hormones go to work, you know.

There’s lots of six-week heartbeat abortion laws in the legal books. The problem is most OB-GYNs say the heart is not totally formed yet. It takes about 10 weeks to beat right.

The Bible says all members of the LBGTQIA+ community are checked out by God in the womb right along with all the straights. Some theocrats say God only supervises straights in the uterus and puts “Prime” on the butt while his old enemy Lucifer Satan converts about 10% to many forms of asexuality, demisexualit or homosexuality.

The Norwegians have already used science to prove that at least the top 1,500 species practice homosexuality. Remember those two male penguins in the New York Zoo? It shocks the sensibilities!

Anyway, I want to use the beautiful truth of science to prove that abortion and the LBGTQIA+ community, particularly transgenders, are not about religion or associated with religion. The two are political issues to gain votes and power based on ignorance.

As people gain critical scientific facts about abortion and homosexuality, they are abandoning church pews by the millions and adding gay friends to their social registers. Abortion is an economic issue, not a religious issue. Last year economists estimated it would take $286,000 to raise a child to e18. This year it will be more than $300,000.  

If someone bothered to count them, there might be 30,000 lies in the Bible

When a reporter asked our new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson what guided him on an issue, he responded: “Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.”

I’ve been asking MAGAs – from Catholic bishops to militia members to Qanons – for years to please name me a day, week, month, year, decade or century when America was great. Haven’t got an answer yet.

Let’s cite 10 biblical statements to see if Mike will always follow the Bible in making his decisions:

1. The sun revolves around the earth.

2. Wives are the property of their husbands.

3. Working on the Sabbath calls for the automatic use of the death penalty.

4. Slavery is not against the law in any jurisdiction.

5. Thou shall not suffer a witch to live.

6. Church and state shall be bound together.

7. The earth is flat.

8. There is no such thing as same-sex marriage.

9. Individuals are charged with taking care of the poor and needy.

10.God appoints all leaders of men-and they must be men.

It has come to pass in the last 50 years that Americans have picked “no religious affiliation” from 5% in 1970 polls to nearly 30% today. Called “nones” in articles, the Pew Research Center has found the nones are young, diverse and liberal. It is the fastest- growing segment of religion – or non-religion – in the country ever.

Fifty-six percent of this group still say they believe in God while 67% say that humans have a soul or spirit. And majorities say they believe all animals and parts of nature can possess some kind of spiritual energy. They just don’t believe what Christians and members of the other six major religions in the world are doing.

Although there are thousands of religions, a majority of “Christians” say they will be the only ones passing through the gate to the golden streets. The nones say religion causes division and intolerance and encourages superstitious and illogical thinking because of stories in the Bible and in school curricula.

The Roman Catholic and evangelical and fundamentalist Protestant churches living in the fascist past, whether decades or centuries, are presently emptying pews at a tsunami rate because they have not recognized females are equal to males.

The European churches have been way ahead of religions in the Divided States of America. Most of the Christian churches are close to empty or in the real estate market. Only 2% of Italians go to church each week as they walk by the Vatican. Ireland chased the Vatican ambassador back to Italy almost a decade ago. Catholic bishops in Germany have threatened to form a new church separate from the Vatican so they can recognize same-sex marriages and the LBGTQIA+ community to their new churches. Pope Francis is 87, cardinals average 79, bishops average 67, and priests average 71.  

Two critical facts: 80% of fetuses finally breathe air, 1% are transgenders

We don’t hear much about Creationism and Intelligent Design anymore. Science is gradually removing the mysteries of the body as researchers watch a single sperm fertilize an egg through an electron microscope or a surgeon operate on a fetus while it is in the womb.

A century ago, Homo sapiens thought only God could make a watch. Now we wonder, while He was checking out the fetus in the womb, why He didn’t fix it so all fertilized eggs were all in perfect working order?

It is a critical fact that, out of 100 pregnancies, about 80 fetuses will breathe their first breaths as babies. Some may be born of rape, incest, failure of contraceptives or the hormonal power of the young, while many will join other children in a happy family.

It is a critical fact that one of the 100 will be a transgender while nine others will be members of the LGBTQIMA+ community. Some of the 20 who will not breathe an atom will die of a miscarriage, which sometimes can occur without knowledge of the female. Four of the 80 will require the skills of many people discovered by science to survive and challenge physical abnormalities.

Maybe, as we continue to evolve through thousands of years, the egg and the sperm will end up with a better deal. And pro-lifers, quit yelling “MURDER!” after every abortion. Of course, life begins when Mr. Sperm meets Miss or Mrs. Egg, but that tiny speck doesn’t fulfill its uteristic dream until “it” breathes on his or her or intersex own.

Pope Benedict said about a decade ago that “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.”

When 20% of the pregnancies end up dead before birth, evidently God was busy having lunch, betting on a football game or clapping for a baseball player making the sign of the cross after hitting a homerun.

H.G. Wells, author of The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, makes more sense: “Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”  

We are still hunting witches but evidently the warlocks have all gone to Hell

Most days we hear or see the term “witch hunt” although there won’t be a single lawperson looking for a guilty one in North America unless Donald Trump is re-elected. The last witch was tried in a civil case known as the Ipswich witchcraft Trial, also known as the second Salem Witch Trial.

Lucretia LS. Brown sued Daniel H. Spotford in 1878 for attempting to harm her through his warlockian “mesmeric” mental powers. Both were members of the Christian Scientist religion and the case gained national attention because of unusual, rather startling, claims of witchcraft.

Plus, the trial took place in Salem, Massachusetts, the scene of the 1692 Salem witch trials. The judge listened to the evidence and dismissed the case. The warlock Spotford did not have to pay up.

In 2022 the United Nations Global Rights for Women section reported that 89,000 women in the world were intentionally killed by men with whom they had been intimate. It also said one in three women will continue to suffer physical violence and sexual brutality while countless others will experience death threats, emotional trauma and control.

The glass ceilings and second-class citizenships will continue the inequality impressed on them by “religious” men throughout history.

By the way, 28 Minnesota women were killed by their husbands or partners in 2023.

One has to assume that Neanderthal and Homo sapiens women have been called witches  For thousands of years. The Holy Roman Empire finally declared witchcraft to be a serious crime in 1532 and the punishment was execution by fire. Between 1650 and 1740 Germany executed 25,000 witches and warlocks. Male witches are called warlocks (think transgenders!).

One can assume that 99% of the executed by fire were women. My resident philosopher Shakespeare, in a witches’ scene in Macbeth, had one of his three witches toss a “birth-strangled babe” into the pot that already claimed a “liver of blaspheming Jew.”

That scene not only affirmed witches were a constant presence in the 16th century, so were abortions of babies dying of abnormalities. Jews were killed for being Jews. Witches were declared innocent if they healed quickly after holding a red-hot piece of iron –or if they immediately sank to the bottom of a lake, river or ocean. If they floated on the water, they were immediately burned to death at the stake. To all witches and warlocks: welcome to the 21st century.