Author: Scott Lohman

Scott Lohman is a 60 something male who lives in North Minneapolis Minnesota. My day job is customer service in health insurance. I am a life long SF reader. I have chaired “Diversicon”, a small literate SF convention for over 10 years. I am a life long “Star Trek” fan. I am active with the Humanists of Minnesota. I have a wide variety interests. I’ll be blogging about books, Humanism, religion, politics and of course “Star Trek”.

Book Review-“The Woman They Wanted: Shattering the Illusion of the Good Christian Wife” by Shannon Harris

Book Review by Scott Lohman

“The Woman They Wanted: Shattering the Illusion of the Good Christian Wife” by Shannon Harris

Shannon Harris was married to Joshua Harris, the guy who wrote “I Kissed Dating Goodbye”, a book that was out in the heights of the “purity” era for conservative parts Christianity.  Joshua Harris wrote the book when he was in his early 20’s and was considered brilliant for showing everyone how men and women should meet up, create relationships and move on to marriage.  It was supposed to stop couples engaging in that icky sex.

Shannon Harris was the woman that Joshua “courted” and used their experiences and relationship as the basis for the book.  Joshua went on to be a pastor for churches in the “Sovereign Grace” group.  Shannon chronicles the relationship from what she saw and experienced.  Women in this part of conservative Christianity are not treated well.  Shannon was the wife of one the junior pastors in the church. She was encouraged to start having babies and being the “helpmeet” of her husband.  Roles in both the church and her marriage were strictly set out.  She was discouraged from using her singing and other non-church related talents.  She was told that the man was the boss in the marriage and she was follow his lead in everything.  She even had the senior pastors wife “helping” her, or more like issuing orders on the proper role of women in these churches.

Harris writes the book in essay style with longer sections in the early parts of her life as she establishes her story and background.  Like all memoirs, she is open about what she wants to tell and closed about things she prefers to keep private.  Many of these type of books keep things related to the children out as to keep their lives private.

The lessons Shannon learned from her life in that controlling society, is that conservative Christians of the type she was part of for years, want women quiet, hard working and showing up with a cheerful attitude of service help with perfectly groomed and well behaving family.  Shannon shows that this takes an enormous tole on the women, as they are not allowed jobs of their own, much less being able to follow their dreams of creative careers such as music, writing etc. Women are expected to fall in line, spouses of senior pastors get to rule over those of the junior pastors. And the men are always in charge.

Fortunately Shannon was able to escape and Joshua renounced his book and moved on as well.  Shannon’s story is a warning about the damage and danger of high control religion.  Hopefully her story will help many.

“No Kings” October 18, 2025

by Scott Lohman

Today across the country people gathered to show protest signs, show their presence and in some locations hear speakers. I went to a park in Robbinsdale Minnesota. Between 500 and 700 people gathered there. There were people with signs standing at the corners of an intersection encouraging drivers to honk. The main gathering was around a platform for speakers. For this location that included a drag queen reading of “And Tango Makes Three” about the gay penguins who raised a chick. The book is being removed from many libraries as apparently gay penguins are an inappropriate topic.

The Twin Cites had a number of “No Kings” protests with attendance well beyond the one I went to. And there was no violence at all. And this despite this being what Minnesota Congressman Tom Emmer said would be the “terrorist wing” of liberal politics. Resistance to authoritarianism starts with showing up.

Book Review: “The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies are Destroying Lives and Why the Church was Right All Along” by Jennifer Roback Morse

  If you’re looking for something new in a discussion about sexuality and society, this is not it.  If you’re looking for insight from the religious side that accepts that sexuality is a normal part of being human, this is not it.  If you’re looking for a book that will look at sexuality from the conservative religious point of view and is willing to admit that attitudes towards sexuality have been changing over decades and longer and not just since the 60’s, this is not the book for you.  If you’re looking for a book which wants to treat sexuality as something humans have to suffer with, treats women as brood mares, gays as bad and birth control as the worst thing ever, then this book is for you.

     Jennifer Roback Morse is the founder of “The Ruth Institute”.  She founded it to counter what she considered the “bad” ideas of the sexual revolution. Morse has a doctorate in economics, which of course makes her an expert in sexuality. She taught and was on facility at George Mason University in Virginia. She has been a research fellow at the Acton Institute and the Hoover Institution. She also worked on California’s Proposition 8, the initiative to make marriage “one man/one woman”.  At one point The Ruth Institute was part of NOM (National Organization for Marriage) and separated from them.  She is Catholic and signed the anti-gay Nashville Statement.

     Published in 2018, the book is divided into 3 parts. Morse looks at three things about sexuality. “The Contraceptive Ideology”, where she talks about the sexual revolution separated sex from pregnancy. “The Divorce Ideology”, where she talks about divorce, child birth and separating sex from both of those.  “The Gender Ideology”, where she talks about homosexuality and transgender issue. 

      Morse and other conservative Christians are obsessed with the 1960’s being the point where sex became exploded into American society.   Somehow they think that if they could just erase that decades social changes, life would be good again. Women would somehow become happy staying at home and raising kids, gays would either go back in the closet and get converted to being straight and no one will have heard of transgenders at all. The problem with this concept is that societal ideas about sexuality have been changing over centuries not just in one decade.  There is a big change in relations between the sexes when marriage changed from being primarily arranged by parents to the individuals making the decision. Aside from the fact that many people never had a formal church wedding. Gays were already making waves about repression well before the Stonewall riots. 

     Morse is also obsessed with how feminism has changed women and not for the good. Being Catholic Morse is totally against comprehensive sex education. She wants it totally out of the schools.  This is another case where conservatives think that sending that home will make it all better. Even though far too many schools are doing the hopelessly bad “abstinence sex education”, it can at least inspire the smarter kids to find way better sex education online. The Unitarians have a great program and there excellent sex educators on the web.  If people think that removing sex education from the schools will solve the issues, maybe we should look at “abstinence drivers education”.  

     Morse is also against contraception.  I find this unfathomable in a female.  She tries to totally sell the Catholic position that contraception is bad.  I can’t buy it and I’m an old white male.  

     Morse’s organization, “The Ruth Institute” is a classic conservative approach to things they don’t like.  Her organization try’s to put out that it is a resource on human sexuality, when they are pro societal control of EVERYONE’S sexuality.  They want no one even trying to ponder that you as individual should have any stray thoughts about sexuality at all.  They don’t want you learning ANYTHING outside of their extremely narrow rules on sex.  

     As with most conservative entries on the “culture wars”, Morse dives right in with assuming she has the most perfect opinion on sexuality and the rest of us should just stop and go with what she says.  I’m sure you’ll find that also like most conservative attacks on various culture war ideas, they’re totally going to be ignored.  

Reality vs. Mythology

    I like to read a broad spectrum of things.  I’ll read news from a broad range of sites from reasonably non-partisan sites to very partisan ones.  I also read from religious and free thought/atheist sites.  I find it fascinating to see how different parts of the spectrum cover a story. It can be a good way to check the story.  If both parts of the spectrum get the basic facts of the story the same, you know that other stuff in the various stories are opinion and spin.  If one part of the spectrum get’s the facts totally off, then you know who is spinning the story more. 

One of my stops often is “The Gospel Coalition ” (thegospelcoalition.org).  This site pretty much covers things from the point of view of the Southern Baptist Convention.  Opinions, politics and theology are pretty much party line from that organization.  You will not find articles advocating gay rights, labor unions, climate science,  feminism or liberal political and economic polices.  Even knowing this I was still shocked to see this title to a story: “Poll Finds Increasing Number of American’s Reject Reality” by senior writer Joe Carter. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/americans-reject-reality/ this is from July 27, 20223. 

 In the article, Carter is reviewing the results of a Gallup poll from July 2023.  Gallup is a national polling company that conducts polls for a variety of organizations as doing ones for their own research.  They have been looking at religious issues for years.  This particular poll is an update of one that has been done for years.  They polled a spectrum of American’s on some religious concepts. This poll looked at the number people across various age spectrums on the concepts of: “god”, heaven, angels, hell and “the devil”.  I looked the poll and their questions do not define the concepts, leaving up to the person being questioned to assign their own definition. This means that people are going with their own definitions of those concepts.  What the poll found is that there has been a decline in belief of the 5 concepts from 2001-2023 that is fairly significant.  And this is what Carter is concerned about.  However it was his article title and his conclusions that got my attention.

Belief in the concepts have dropped by 20% or more on several of the concepts since 2021.  Here is the difference: “god” 90%-74%; heaven 83%-63%; angels 79%-69%; hell 71%-59%; “the devil” 68%-58%.  Carter is concerned that people are shifting where the get “authority” from.  He says “that’s why we shouldn’t be surprised by this Gallup poll.  If god, angels, heaven and are real-of course they are- they possess and existential threat to the idea that truths is based on a person’s feelings.”  Carter is missing the point.  He thinks that his version of Christianity is the “truth” and the rest of us just need to accept that and follow its stricture’s and rules.  The thing that TGC and its writer’s aren’t going to mention is that there are thousands of versions of Christianity and many of them define the five concepts very differently.  It’s hypocritical to criticize people for having different concepts when there are so many versions. 

It was the article title that got me to read it. When your concept of reality is based on bronze age stories and mythology, it’s going to be jarring when the most of the rest of us find those concepts unbelievable.  TGC needs to look at their own presentation of the concepts and figure out why most of us are not buying it.  Insulting us by saying we “reject reality” will not bring more people to their religion.  Carter’s only solution is “Jesus better ”.

Good luck with that.

Humanists and Billboards

Essay on “Mornings with Carmen” on HOM Billboard

By Scott Lohman

A group I’m involved with, the Humanists of Minnesota, sponsored a number of billboards around the Minneapolis St. Paul area.  The billboard says “Reject Christian Nationalism, Keep Religion out of Government.”  And apparently we are controversial. 

I regularly listen to “Faith Radio” which is a radio network out of the University of Northwestern in St Paul Minnesota.  It is a bunch of radio stations in a number of states.  It was started 74 years ago by Billy Graham.  This is just some basic background on the radio station.  The station runs mostly SBC (Southern Baptist Convention) flavored ministry programs. They also have 3 live programs produced out of the St Paul campus.  One of those is “Morning’s with Carmen”.  It is their morning program from 6-8 am (central time).  

Carmen LaBerge is the host/namesake of the show.  She talks to a variety of guests from pastors to political commentators.  One of those guests is Dr.Adam Carrington from Hillsdale college. He is associate professor of politics there.  He is a guest regularly on the program. Hillsdale College is an independent college in Michigan.  The college is very conservative in terms of its philosophy and what they teach.  They publish a newsletter called “Imprimis”. It is published monthly and generally prints speeches given at the college. 

All of the above is a quick background for this.  It was during her conversation with Carrington on Monday May 15, 2023, that LaBerge brought up the Humanists of Minnesota billboards. The StarTribune, our local major newspaper, published an article about the HOM billboards with quotes from the president of the group about what the HOM are about and what we do.  LaBerge first said it’s “huge”, like we Humanists managed to get a supersized billboard instead of normal sized ones. Her initial comments were that the secularist are trying to get “Christians” out of government, when what Christian’s are trying to do is “help” people. As if that is the only reason why “Christians” are involved in government.  I’m using quotes around the word christian as there are thousands and thousands of versions of Christianity in the world. LaBerge and Carrington generally only mean their version of Christianity.  In this case the Christianity they are talking about is both religiously and politically conservative. 

Their first set of comments is that the Humanists are trying to stop Christians from being involved, which is not what we are doing. What we want is that we stop emphasizing and legislating conservative Christian policies into law.  If Christians were there to “help” people, we’d be glad to help with that.  Volunteers from the humanist group do that all the time at food shelves, teen group homes and many other places.  My issue with them picking  the wrong thing to say the Humanist are advocating with the billboard is what they talked about immediately afterwards. There are advocates in Uganda, wanting to have single payer healthcare. Why they picked this as important escapes me when there are plenty of healthcare issues to talk about here in the US. LaBerges’s politics about healthcare was perfect on why religion should not be the starting point on what should be considered part of healthcare. She immediately wants abortion, transpeople care and other sexually related care eliminated from being part of healthcare.  

Using your religious and political philosophy to advocate for your policies is what we all do, however what the conservative right wants to do is control what is covered as part of healthcare and what they want to exclude and therefor make it tougher for people to deal with their own body issues.  LaBerge and Carrington are quite fine with there being more regulations on the female reproductive system than on guns.  They want trans people to be “out of sight, out of mind” instead of getting the medical care they need. 

The discussion was a clear case of “moving the goalposts” arguments.  LaBerge and Carrington started by being offended by saying Humanists “want to exclude anyone who is religious” from being involved in government to shifting to them saying they are going to decide what is healthcare and what is not.  This clearly shows that everyone needs to be involved in the politics around everything and that we humanists can make a difference if an 8 word billboard can get them offended. 

Book Review: “The Coming Tsunami: Why Christians are Labeled Intolerant, Irrelevant, Oppressive and Dangerous and How We can Turn the Tide” by Jim Denison

Review by Scott Lohman

     This is your basic opinion book by a conservative Christian pastor on the state of American society and culture.  These are produced by the dozens each year by various pastors and right wing pundits.  The quick and easy summary is this: “America has drifted/slid/fallen from the ideals of its founding and good golly we need to get back on the true path ASAP, by following my(the author’s religion/philosophy) as only I(the writer) know the truth”.  It follows a pretty standard format.  First you show how bad things are all over the U.S., and possibly around the world, then you show how the author’s “truth/true religion” is the ONLY way to follow.  It’s like there is an outline handed out by the publishers for these books.

     Dr. Jim Denison is a former pastor at at number of churches in Texas and Georgia.  He is “cultural theologian” and Theologian in Residence at the Baptist General Convention of Texas.  

     The full title of the book is: “The Coming Tsunami: Why Christians are Labeled Intolerant, Irrelevant, Oppressive and Dangerous and How We can Turn the Tide”.  Yes, it’s a mouthful.  Conservative Christians do not like being called names, especially ones that are like intolerant and oppressive, as they don’t like being called on what they are doing. They are the ones who have the “truth” and they are not being either of those things by pointing out that gay is very icky and that women, gays and people of color just need to accept white Christian men and their surrogates white Christian women as the purveyors of “God’s Truth”.  

     The book came out in early 2022.  Denison doesn’t have much to say about how Covid effected things in the book so avoids bringing that to the discussion. Denison starts the book with what he calls “warning signs”.  In this case start with sex, as that is what White Christians want under control, their control specifically. Denison says that approval of same sex relationships went from 40% approval to 66%.  Sex between unmarried adults rose from 53% to 72%. And approval of divorce from 59% to 77%.  He doesn’t explain where these numbers are from and how they were compiled, so don’t waste your time hunting them down. He does, however, define “evangelical”, which is a nice departure from a number of these books. He defines it as: “believe the Bible is the ultimate authority, salvation is only through faith in Christ, non-Christians need to hear and accept the gospel and the Bible forbids all sexual relationships outside of a monogamous marriage between one man and one woman.”  Although it is still not one that will distinguish his version from others by much. 

     Denison lists what he calls 4 “earthquakes” that will trigger the tsunami’s that will over run us. First: the rise of “post truth” culture, which he says is “the truth becomes your truth”. The  second: rise of sexual revolution, as the role of women, growth of pornography, counter cultural movements and of course, gay rights. The third: rise of critical theory, racism is a result of the West’s cultural system and not the corruption of an individual’s heart and “color blindness” is impossible. CRT is an ideology that locates salvation in society’s liberation from injustice.  And the fourth: rise of secular religion, like stores no longer being closed and the sexual revolution.  

     Denison says discrimination against Christians is rampant.  He gives a number of examples, again don’t expect to be able to find the specific ones.  A nurse is “forced” to “participate in a late term abortion. My favorite “a crucifix in Illinois was vandalized”.  He does NOT give specifics on the crucifix, whether it’s someones personal one or one in a church someplace or outside of church or church school. No note whether it is prominent one someplace.  Ah the hazards of cutting and pasting data from someplace.

     Denison points out why religion is considered dangerous. Religious beliefs are hazardous, religious beliefs are irrational, we have evolved beyond religion and belief in an afterlife is harmful in this life. Denison somehow misses the irony that his religion calls all other religions of being guilty of those same things. 

     Denison also rolls out the olde “Ideas have consequences” line. He asks: Is religious freedom in jeopardy, are evangelicals, churches and schools are risk, are evangelical leaders under attack and what is the risk to evangelicals in health care.  And as he is prophesying doom, of course you can figure out the answers to the above.  And there are other threats: secular ideology, the undefinable “woke”, corporate support of gays and “woke” and the mysterious “genetic medicine”.  I was unable to figure out what he meant by the last. 

     Denison drags out the usual apologetic arguments for the existence of god and why the Christian Bible is reliable as a source of the “Truth”.  And as unconvincing as apologetics always is.  Skip those chapters and you won’t miss anything.

     Denison wants Christians to defend Biblical truth with reason and relevance.  He also says everyone is bad about sex and that the youth suicide rate is the highest since the government be collecting data in 1960.  Yeah, not sure why he mentions that.

     In conclusion, Denison basically wants everyone to follow his religion and his deep understanding of “truth”.  There. 

     Books like this one are quite common and pretty much written the same.  Denison doesn’t bring anything helpful and deep to the discussion, just the usual right wing tirade about American culture is in bad shape and only he knows the way.  And remember “a crucifix in Illinois was vandalized”.  

Book Reviews

I’ll be reviewing a wide variety books. I read a broad spectrum of books from fiction, science fiction, religion and politics. I read books from people I agree with, learn from and disagree with. Reading across a spectrum can be fascinating and aggravating. It’s the best way to explore, learn and find things out. Enjoy.

Book Review: “Star Trek-The Motion Picture Inside the Art and Visual Effects”

“Star Trek – The Motion Picture Inside the Art and Visual Effects”
By Jeff Bond and Gene Kozicki

Review by Scott Lohman

      “Star Trek – The Motion Picture” come out in December of 1979.  It was the culmination of a decade of attempts to bring out a movie version of the original “Star Trek” series.  There had been a number of attempts to make either a TV “movie of the week”, another TV series or big screen movie.  “Star Trek: The Animated Series” had gotten produced in 1973-74 with 22 episodes. Fans wanted more.

     There were two major attempts to do new “Star Trek”.  One potential move almost got off the ground.  “Planet of the Titans” was one of those attempts. It had some people who had done a number of movies in the past.  The pre-production art included contributions by Ken Adam, a production designer for many “James Bond” movies and Ralph McQuarrie, who was the artist most responsible for the look of the first “Star Wars” movies.  Both artists working on ideas for the “Enterprise” and what Starfleet and the Federation would look like.  The project was abandoned when the movie idea was not picked up by the studio.  

     The attempt that did ultimately lead to ST- TMP was a new attempt at a new “Star Trek” TV series. Paramount was working on creating a “fourth” TV network in the mid to late 70’s.  The executives approached Gene Roddenberry for a new “Star Trek”.  “Star Trek: Phase II” made it all the way to having scripts, a cast and sets completed before the Paramount TV network idea collapsed.  This was in 1977.  In 1977 “Star Wars” came out to become the biggest movie in a long time, sparking interest in SF concepts.  Paramount then remembered they had “Star Trek”.

     Gene Roddenberry got to work on bringing Trek to the big screen.  The pilot script for “Star Trek: Phase II” “In Thy Image” was updated to be a movie script rather than a TV series pilot.  At the initial point all of the original cast, except Leonard Nimoy were signed to do the new movie.  When directer Robert Wise joined the project, he considered his first job to bring Nimoy on board.

Robert Abel and Associates were hired as the special effects team for the movie.  They did a lot of work including some work on the “Enterprise” and a number of the special effect sequences that would be part of the movie.  One of the important personal they brought on board was Andrew Probert.  Probert had done some industrial design and was working on spacesuit design, set concepts and the “Enterprise”.  The ship model that had been done for “Phase II” was scrapped and a movie quality design was approved and built.  The new “Enterprise” has a number of people who contributed to it’s final design: from Matt Jeffries, who designed the original ship, Mike Minor, art designer for “Phase II”, Andrew Probert and Harold Michaelson.  

     The sets that had been built were redesigned and updated.  With the console controls being a mix of actor and technician control.  The “warp core tower” idea was changed and modified to become a staple for Trek engine room designs. The corridor designs were varied and the concepts carried on in later Trek productions. One section of corridor was incorporated into both “Enterprise D” and “Voyager” sets. 

     Fred Phillips returned to do make up. He was able to “upgrade” the Klingons due to changes in make technology.  It was cheaper and easier to do prosthetics. 

The Vulcan monastery set was shot both on the Paramount lot and featured location shots in Yellowstone National Park with Leonard Nimoy.

     The dry dock shots of the “Enterprise” were lit using inspection and dental mirrors to achieve a more realistic light.  The travel pod was both a full set and a rather large miniature with dolls standing in for Shatner and Doohan.

“V’ger” had an extensive design process, it’s full shape was not seen until the Director’s Edition release.  Concept artist Syd Mead did painting and concept drawings for V’ger. Giving the ship an alien design that was probably an inspiration for Borg designs in the Next Generation era.

     Robert Abel and Associates were fired in February of 1979 from the production. Robert Wise said they were good, however he had concluded “It would take 3 years for them to get it done.”  John Dykstra, who did the special effects for “Star Wars” and Douglas Trumbull, who did special effects for “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” were brought in to complete the effects.  The “memory wall” sequence was scrapped and replaced by Spock’s spacewalk in V’ger.  Both teams worked on separate sequences.  And despite long hours, were not able to complete the needed effects.  ST-TMP went to it’s premiere as a rough draft.

      The movie was completed 2001 for the DVD release.  Robert Wise was able to do a directors cut and a group of technicians completed and update the missing special effects.  And recently it was announced that ST-TMP the Directors Edition will finally come out in Blu-ray in 2022.

      This book is a visual delight. It has pre-production and production art, as well as behind the scenes photos of work on the various ship models.  There are very cool pictures of the model segments of V’ger that the “Enterprise” flew over.  There are a variety of art works from all segments of the movie.  For those of you who love movie production art books, this is a perfect addition to your library.  It not only gives us insights into the production of the movie, but a look at how a new era of “Star Trek” was created and designed.   And kept the franchise alive to move into the 1980’s and beyond.