
What we’re about
Whatcom Freethought group.
Upcoming events (1)
See all- Drinking Skeptically @ Barkley Jalapenos (Bob's closed for remodeling- Open Oct)Jalapeños Barkley Village, Bellingham, WA
Barkley Bob's Burger & Brew is still closed for renovations, so we'll move next door, just south of Bob's to Jalapeno's Banquet room.
In September we'll meet again at Jalapenos for Celebration of Fall Equinox on the third Thursday in Sept, the 18th.
Bob's Burger should be open in October and "Drinking Skeptically" will be back in Bob's meeting room on the third Thursday at 6pm! (Oct. 16th).
Our TOPICS:
#1) Pushing Pronatalism is back on the table! Watch 10 min. PBS report:
A look inside the pronatalism movement encouraging Americans to have more children
14,490 views, Jul 30, 2025The U.S. fertility rate reached an all-time low in 2024, according to the CDC. This trend has sparked fear among many on the right, from Elon Musk to Donald Trump, who believe Americans should have more babies. Sarah Varney looks at this movement encouraging families to have more children, its growing influence and ties to the anti-abortion movement. It's part of our series, The Next Frontier.
My Reflections below:
Pronatalist fail to realize the simplest solution to a list of their national concerns is to simply increase legal immigration to stabilize (not grow) our population from countries that have an excess of births and who have an opposite set of problems to solve!Even high birth countries are seeing a decline in fertility but are suffering their excess growth right now (explanation for world wide mass migration, along with climate change) and won't see their fertility rate drop below replacement level for another 50 years!
So we can help each other get through this transition to a steady state population that could ease human population levels downward at a pace all economies can endure to an environmentally sustainable size.
Next subject is related to Pronatalism: Capitalism and its grow or die mentality, giving brainless voice to the philosophy of bacteria & pronatalism "Grow or Die!" And the voice of Cancer & Capitalism - Grow AND die (from Ecological Disaster and returning Humans to tooth & claw misery)
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2) IS AN ADVOCACY FOR ETERNAL GROWTH NOTHING MORE THAN A PONZI SCHEME?Sorry! No reading material or videos on this. But we will CERTAINLY have an ACTIVE discussion on this!
We all are (hopefully!) in this group educated enough to be aware of the absurdity of exponential growth of any size leads to many physically impossible barriers, even the ultimate barrier of of the Speed of Cause and Effect (photons are just particles that press this limit in a vacuum and by default we call that a growth rate that will exceed the speed of light!). All dogmatic unstoppable growth rates lead to violation of the speed of light at some finite time in the future! Anyone who doesn't understand this is frankly MATH STUPID. Bacteria may be excused for not getting this, but modern humans? Really?
It should be common knowledge that ANY consistent growth rate, even fractionally tiny ones ALL lead to impossible absurdities: Their only difference is the length of time for each doubling through their identical logarithmic curve. That's why anything that cannot survive without constant growth IS A PONZI SCHEME by definition!
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#3) CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) has dissolved.Not only do we live in a Post Truth, Post Compassion era, we also live in a Post Public Era, where now everything is being Privatized. Corporation for Public Broadcasting redistribute Congressionally authorized funds to public TV & radio nationwide that work out to an average of 15% of public TV and radio budgets, as 85% are donated from private citizens and businesses.
Now that CPB has dissolved at the end of July, Cities will be fine for a while; it will be the rural areas mostly in Red States who receive over 60% of their budget from Federal revenue to stay in business that will collapse within a year. But a decade or less, the dominos will fall and the idea of a shared public arena will fall with it.
To stay within the theme of our discussion, once everything is privatized, then the ponzi exponential growth of wealth will thoroughly strip the wealth and ownership of the commons and fall in the laps of the 10%, to the 2%, then to the 1%, then to the 0.1%. That's just how the law of differential exponential growth works! Only through deeply restrictive progressive taxation do we ultimately save and strengthen the "Middle Class" like we did in the 1960's.
Welcome to the ownership society! "I've got mine! You're on your own!" that ultimately leads to no meaningful ownership at all! Divide and conquer! One dollar, one vote, not one person, one vote!
Ironically, radical privatization leads to common citizens with no ownership of anything meaningful due to the unfettered laws of differential exponential growth! Democracy? That would have died long before zero ownership!In the age of OPINIONS and EMOTIONS that matter more than facts,
THIS IS MY OPINION!*******************************************************************************
We will start out by introducing ourselves, our personal passions and also share our choice on how to conduct our meeting (2 minutes or less per person).The latest Current Affairs are always open for discussion
This is an evolving process and I will gladly accept suggestions to improve the process, quality and enjoyment of meeting for all, if possible!
We encourage attendees to share their life story that lead their journey to the 'Land of Freethought', Free Inquiry and Skepticism towards cultural norms, traditions and stories.
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Freethought ecourages creative solutions, but then this group uses reason, evidence and the scientific method as the only reliable means to prune down answers to our probing questions and common sense solutions to humanity's current problems.See you there!
Bobby Burr & Monty Vonn
Co-coordinators