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If we had read Baruch Spinoza instead of the Bible we would be civilized.

Why Jerry Lee Lewis sang: “There’s a Whole Lot of Shakin’ Goin’ On”  

For the last couple of months, the “Star Spangled Banner” was not the national anthem. It was Jerry Lee Lewis’s song about sex titled “Whole Lot of Shakin’ Goin’ On.” At the same time there was a whole lot of sex going on the continents and in the great depths of the oceans.

Pope Francis even got into the act by proclaiming in St. Peter’s Square at a general audience that “Sexual pleasure is a gift from God” and should be cherished. He also discussed the “vice of lust” and the dangers of pornography. He admitted two years ago that priests and nuns also watched online porn. He also added he was against surrogate motherhood, which upset infertile and same-sex couples. 

For political purposes with conservative bishops, he used the term “unborn child” when saying surrogacy was a “deplorable practice.” He should be reminded an “unborn child” is called a fetus until she breathes on her own.

What often happens between the sheets has finally been matched by evidence of what also happens between and beneath the waves. Some years ago, smart Norwegian sex researchers announced they had studied the top 1,500 species to see if homosexuality existed among many. They quit working because it was present in all! As an old farm boy, I had watched same-sex horses, dogs and hogs find “sexual pleasure.” It was just announced last week there’s a whole lot of “shakin’ goin’ on” below the waves. The Scottish Association for Marine Science photographers caught many species of whales and dolphins penetrating each other regardless of gender.

Whales with brains weighing as much as 15 pounds and penises six feet long are easy to photograph because these huge animals pleasure each other for hours. Dolphins will do it while they are swimming and surfing through the waves. That’s sort’a like humans who pay good money to “shake” at 8,000 feet. Maybe killer whales and dolphins will be the gay porn stars of the coral reefs.  

Maybe the Kinsey Institute could have jerked the Vatican into the 21st century

On top of all the sex goin’ on underwater in oceans, the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University was not aborted by a 2023 act of the Bible-loving, sex-hating Republican Legislature withdrawing all funding from the world-renowned sex research facility. The Board of Trustees voted last week to continue to fund the center created in 1947.

The primary goal of the institute is research in the areas of sexual assault, sexual disability, and sexual health. Needless to say, Dr. Kinsey and his institute has been controversial for decades, arousing theologians, Christian denominations, parents and teenagers alike.

Through the years, Kinsey revealed that almost 90% of men had had premarital sex, that half had had extramarital sex, and a third had had homosexual “experiences.” Science wins again and truth hurts. The institute has also done extensive research into female orgasms and the LBGTQIA+ community. Perhaps the Vatican should have funded research early on gender and celibacy and avoided a lot of trouble.

I loved the latest kerfuffle about the Vatican’s New York diocese scheduling a funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, not knowing the casket contained the body of a famous transgender, Cecelia Gentili. The pews were filled with more than a thousand people, mostly transgenders, celebrating the life of a person who was an advocate for sex workers, transgender people and gays living with HIV. She was also an atheist. The eulogists led them in cheers and prayers for transgender rights and gender-affirming health care. The funeral may have set a precedent in Catholic history.

The archdiocese later released a statement condemning the “scandalous behavior’ in the church and revealing “the cathedral only knew that the family was requesting a funeral for a Catholic.” Gee, I thought the Catholic Church loved all sinners, even if they were “intrinsically disordered.”  

And then, the Alabama Supreme Court dropped a nuclear sex bomb

Be sure to notify your insurance company to insure your eggs immediately after you have had sex. Make the policy enough to cover triplets. And don’t forget. The fertilized egg is a baby, so appoint someone power of attorney. Stuff happens.

The Alabama Supreme Court decided embryos are live persons. This precedent will sweep like locusts through MAGA land. Sign an affidavit indicating time, place and egg names to assure coverage. Before Christianity added politics to the strains of populating the earth, Jews had decided that embryos became fetuses at 80 days before they would be in a protected status.

The Vatican and its Protestant by-products have been fooling around with sex and its by-products for more than 2,000 years, and now acting theologians sitting as real judges have thrown another embryo mess at the freezer.

Some pantheist, naturalist or agnostic has counted the number of gods and goddesses Homo sapiens have created since gazing at the African moon. The number is 28,000. Christians say they have only one God and only true believers get to Heaven. That leaves people led by 27,999 other gods circling Heaven in Limbo, Purgatory or living in Dante’s circle of infernal Hell forever. Well, stuff happens. I just learned the other day that the Sherpa people, who have guided thousands to climb Mount Everest, are enthusiastic about their Goddess Oomolangma because She created the 29,032-foot mountain. In 2023, 667 people, many of them Christians, paid Sherpas about $60,000 each to reach the crest through putrid mountains of trash and human waste left for half a century.  

Does religion or science encourage our freedom to think rationally?

Two centuries ago, Homo sapiens thought that only God was smart enough to make a wristwatch. Two decades ago, ministers, priests and “religious politicians” were pushing legislation to require the teaching of “Intelligent Design” in public schools. It was an argument that a Christian God had created all present forms of life instead of the natural evolution of life as described by Charles Darwin in his Origin of the Species.

The pews were beginning to empty, so theologians had to do something to convince people that God existed and was the “Intelligent Designer.” Evolutionary science won that argument and dumped the idea on the trash pile. Homo sapiens began to be intelligent designers. Oh, like atomic energy, polio vaccine, robotic surgery, Viagra, International Space Station, fentanyl….

Science fiction writer Arthur Clarke nails it: ”Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Because sperm whales have big brains and complicated communication clicking skills (Whale Code), scientists are currently working on a language so we can ask whales about sex and family life and then have them respond to the question: “What do you think of human beings?”

We also have geneticists using DNA found in cave floors, a jawbone and teeth to learn why Denisovans left friendly Neanderthals about 40,000 years ago to travel to Siberia. Some of the material they are examining is more than 200,000 years old. Homo sapiens are dumb enough to die in wars but are smart enough to accomplish things gods got credit for in the past.  

If we had read Baruch Spinoza instead of the Bible we would be civilized

The Bible says the Great Designer created Adam’s partner Eve because he was lonely. But, being a curious woman, Eve ate a Crispy apple after being seduced by a snake hiding in a Joshua tree – or something like that.

The Great Designer had told her not to eat fruit from the Garden of Eden. Well, you know women. Because of her transgression, God doomed all Eves to suffer great pain in childbirth. Having had seven babies, Corky told me it’s true. The Bible also reveals that God examines everybody while in the womb to see if they are worthy of a blessing.

But the Intelligent and Great Designer made a few design errors from that piece of Adam’s rib. Of 25 eggs fertilized by the most dashing sperm and judged to be alive at conception, 20 fetuses will become living and breathing souls. Five will die of miscarriages and abnormalities before they become a child because of poor design. Four percent of the surviving babies will require serious surgery or other treatment to survive.

Abortion and contraceptives have been around for thousands of years. Egyptian women searched the Nile River banks to get the right herbs and plants to abort babies they couldn’t feed – and they tried everything, including horse and cow manure, as contraceptives.

Recent estimates have revealed that, regardless of whether abortion was legal or illegal, for thousands of years the number of abortions has always been about the same ratio. That only proves the sex rate hasn’t changed much either. Abortion has always been a personal and economic one – and not a religious one. Remember: Catholic women have the same rate of abortion as the rest of humankind. The largest “religious” group in the U.S. is ex-Catholics. T

he Sephardic Jew Philosopher Baruch Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632 and became dedicated to the freedom of thought and expression early in life. He was in trouble most of the time and was often called the devil’s disciple. He thought religious dogma, particularly Christianity, was used by theocrats to crack down on free thoughts.

He wrote: “True good in the world can only be found through reason and rational faculties and not through religion, tribal feelings or authoritarianism.” He laughed at the idea professed by theologians that only a few wars were caused by religions. Even today, religions claim that only seven percent of wars were caused by religions.

Spinoza was known as a gentle man free of scandal who hated conflict. Many German and Dutch elite compared him to Jesus Christ, even if he was an atheist. He was so well-known for his virtues it made religious believers angry because he was morally irreproachable but did not believe in God. Here he was, one of the most important philosophers in the Enlightenment, but he is almost unheard of today.

He often wrote that one of his greatest fears was that mobs, often spurred on by religion or lack of the right kind, and whipped up by malevolent leaders, would use violence to gain power. Think of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Here are the book burners, racists and fascists who would force raped 12-year-olds to carry fetuses to term, ban vaccines and use firing squads for execution of death sentences.

And to those who think the United States of America should become a Christian nation, I will use a quote by George W. Bush, who I thought never amounted to much, when he was asked about the subject: “I will be your president regardless of your faith. And I don’t expect you to agree with me, necessarily, on religion. As a matter of fact, no president should ever try to impose religion on our society. The great tradition of America is one where people can worship the way they want to worship. They are just as patriotic as your neighbor.”

So are atheists like Spinoza.