free-think-er n. An individual who, rather than being influenced by tradition, authority, or preconceived notions, bases their religious views on rational considerations. Atheists, agnostics, and rationalists are all examples of freethinkers.
It is impossible to be a freethinker and insist on blind allegiance to a particular religion, dogma, or messiah. Orthodoxy does not prove anything, and freethinkers reject revelation and faith.
Freethinkers value autonomy in thought and hold that every individual should have the freedom to choose their beliefs based on evidence and reason.
What criteria do freethinkers use to determine truth?
It was famously said by Clarence Darrow, “I don’t believe in God because I don’t believe in Mother Goose.”
Individuals that practise freethinking tend to have a more realistic perspective. A statement is considered true if and only if it is consistent with reality. Reality is restricted to that which is immediately perceivable via our natural senses or indirectly discovered through the right application of reason.
As a critical thinking tool, reason constrains the veracity of an assertion in accordance with the rigorous standards of the scientific process. For a statement to be considered true it must be testable (what evidence or repeatable experiments confirm it?), falsifiable (what, in theory, would disconfirm it, and have all attempts to disprove it failed?), parsimonious (is it the simplest explanation, requiring the fewest assumptions?), and logical (is it free of contradictions, non sequiturs, or irrelevant ad hominem character attacks?).
Do freethinkers have a foundation for morality?
There is no tremendous mystery about morality. Most freethinkers utilise the basic yardsticks of reason and charity. As author Barbara Walker notes: “What is moral is simply what does not hurt others. Kindness . . . sums up everything.”
Most freethinkers are humanists, basing morality on human needs, not imagined “cosmic absolutes.” This also encompasses a respect for our earth, especially the other species, and feminist ideas of equality.
Moral dilemmas entail a conflict of ideals, requiring a critical application of reason to balance the alternatives. Freethinkers say that religion fosters a hazardous and insufficient “morality” based on blind obedience, unexamined ultimatums, and “pie-in-the-sky” promises of paradise or horrible threats of hell. Freethinkers aim to base acts on their repercussions to actual, live human beings.
Do freethinkers have value in life?
Freethinkers realise that meaning must originate in a mind. Since the world is thoughtless and the cosmos does not care, you must care, if you desire to have meaning. Individuals are free to choose, within the boundaries of humanistic morality.
Some freethinkers see purpose in human compassion, societal development, the beauty of mankind (art, music, literature), personal happiness, pleasure, joy, love, and the growth of knowledge.
Freethinkers often find beauty in the natural world and seek to understand the universe through scientific exploration and personal inquiry.
Doesn’t the intricacy of existence need a designer?
The intricacy of life deserves an explanation. Darwin’s theory of evolution, with cumulative nonrandom natural selection “designing” over billions of years, has offered the answer. A “Divine Designer” is no solution since the intricacy of such a creature would be subject to the same examination itself.
Even a kid understands to ask: “If God made everything, then who made God?”
Freethinkers realise that there is tremendous chaos, ugliness and sorrow in the cosmos for which any explanation of beginnings must also explain.
Why are freethinkers hostile to religion?
Freethinkers are persuaded that religious beliefs have not passed the tests of reason. Not only is there nothing to be gained by believing a falsehood, but there is everything to lose when we sacrifice the necessary instrument of reason on the altar of superstition.
Most freethinkers regard religion to be not only erroneous, but dangerous. It has been used to justify war, slavery, misogyny, racism, homophobia, mutilations, intolerance, and persecution of minorities. The dictatorship of religious absolutes chokes development.
Hasn’t religion done immense good in the world?
Many religionists are wonderful people–but they would be excellent otherwise.
Religion does not have a monopoly on good actions. Most modern social and moral progress has been made by people free from religion–including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Charles Darwin, Margaret Sanger, Albert Einstein, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Marie Curie, H. L. Mencken, Sigmund Freud, Bertrand Russell, Luther Burbank and many others who have enriched humanity.
Most religions have consistently resisted progress–including the abolition of slavery; women’s right to vote and choose contraception and abortion; medical developments such as the use of anesthesia; scientific understanding of the heliocentric solar system and evolution, and the American principle of state/church separation.
Do freethinkers have a specific political persuasion?
No, freethought is a philosophical, not a political, attitude. Freethought currently encompasses supporters of practically all political persuasions, including capitalists, libertarians, socialists, communists, Republicans, Democrats, liberals and conservatives. There is no intellectual relationship, for example, between atheism and communism. Some freethinkers, such as Adam Smith and Ayn Rand, were committed capitalists; yet there have been communistic parties who were highly religious, such as the early Christian church.
North American freethinkers agree in their advocacy of state/church separation.
Is atheism/humanism a religion?
No. Atheism is not a belief. It is the “lack of belief” in god(s). Lack of faith demands no faith. Atheism is definitely built on a devotion to logic, but that hardly qualifies it as a religion.
Freethinkers extend the word religion to belief systems which incorporate a supernatural world, divinity, confidence in “holy” literature and obedience to an absolute dogma.
Secular humanism has no deity, bible or savior. It is founded on natural reasonable principles. It is fluid and relativistic–it is not a religion.
Why should I be delighted to be a freethinker?
Freethought is rational. Freethought permits you to conduct your own thinking. A multiplicity of persons thinking, free from limitations of orthodoxy, permits ideas to be examined, rejected or embraced.
Freethinkers perceive no pride in the blind persistence of archaic beliefs or self-effacing prostration before heavenly dictators known only via primitive “revelations.” Freethought is acceptable. Freethought is genuinely free.
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