What Is A Freethinker?
 

free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.

No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.

How do freethinkers know what is true?
Clarence Darrow once noted, "I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose."
Freethinkers are naturalistic. Truth is the degree to which a statement corresponds with reality. Reality is limited to that which is directly perceivable through our natural senses or indirectly ascertained through the proper use of reason.

Reason is a tool of critical thought that limits the truth of a statement according to the strict tests of the scientific method. 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 basis for morality?
There is no great mystery to morality. Most freethinkers employ the simple yardsticks of reason and kindness. 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 embraces a respect for our planet, including the other animals, and feminist principles of equality.

Moral dilemmas involve a conflict of values, requiring a careful use of reason to weigh the outcomes. Freethinkers argue that religion promotes a dangerous and inadequate "morality" based on blind obedience, unexamined ultimatums, and "pie-in-the-sky" rewards of heaven or gruesome threats of hell. Freethinkers try to base actions on their consequences to real, living human beings.


Do freethinkers have meaning in life?
Freethinkers know that meaning must originate in a mind. Since the universe is mindless and the cosmos does not care, you must care, if you wish to have purpose. Individuals are free to choose, within the limits of humanistic morality.
Some freethinkers find meaning in human compassion, social progress, the beauty of humanity (art, music, literature), personal happiness, pleasure, joy, love, and the advancement of knowledge.


Doesn't the complexity of life require a designer?
The complexity of life requires an explanation. Darwin's theory of evolution, with cumulative nonrandom natural selection "designing" for billions of years, has provided the explanation. A "Divine Designer" is no answer because the complexity of such a creature would be subject to the same scrutiny itself.
Even a child knows to ask: "If God made everything, then who made God?"

Freethinkers recognize that there is much chaos, ugliness and pain in the universe for which any explanation of origins must also account.


Why are freethinkers opposed to religion?
Freethinkers are convinced that religious claims have not withstood the tests of reason. Not only is there nothing to be gained by believing an untruth, but there is everything to lose when we sacrifice the indispensable tool of reason on the altar of superstition.
Most freethinkers consider religion to be not only untrue, but harmful. It has been used to justify war, slavery, sexism, racism, homophobia, mutilations, intolerance, and oppression of minorities. The totalitarianism of religious absolutes chokes progress.


Hasn't religion done tremendous good in the world?
Many religionists are good people--but they would be good anyway.
Religion does not have a monopoly on good deeds. 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 particular political persuasion?
No, freethought is a philosophical, not a political, position. Freethought today embraces adherents of virtually all political persuasions, including capitalists, libertarians, socialists, communists, Republicans, Democrats, liberals and conservatives. There is no philosophical connection, for example, between atheism and communism. Some freethinkers, such as Adam Smith and Ayn Rand, were staunch capitalists; and there have been communistic groups which were deeply religious, such as the early Christian church.
North American freethinkers agree in their support 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 requires no faith. Atheism is indeed based on a commitment to rationality, but that hardly qualifies it as a religion.
Freethinkers apply the term religion to belief systems which include a supernatural realm, deity, faith in "holy" writings and conformity to an absolute creed.

Secular humanism has no god, bible or savior. It is based on natural rational principles. It is flexible and relativistic--it is not a religion.


Why should I be happy to be a freethinker?
Freethought is reasonable. Freethought allows you to do your own thinking. A plurality of individuals thinking, free from restraints of orthodoxy, allows ideas to be tested, discarded or adopted.
Freethinkers see no pride in the blind maintenance of ancient superstitions or self-effacing prostration before divine tyrants known only through primitive "revelations." Freethought is respectable. Freethought is truly free.

That's some fine cut and paste there.

yes sirreee bob

fine indeed

Is that supposed to be a formal term, "freethinker?"

If that elucidated anything but the obvious, do enlighten me.

Rob, you need to lay off the weed.

1) yes, it was a term coined maybe in the XVIII or XIX century when secularism began to rise, i think

2) about the weed, definitely go easy on it-- look @ what it did to atari

freethinkers and freethought originated in germany.

if that stuff is obvious to you then you are a freethinker truncated. do not assume that it is all obvious to anyone else. many many people, brought up in religion, have only a vague idea of freethought.

and laying off the weed will happen when I DIE!
I am enjoying my life! (that is my stock answer whenever anyone gets on my case for doing soemthing I like but they do not and which hurts noone)

I'm pretty sure "freethought" originated at the outset of societal life in humans, as there are always contrarians and there are always iconoclasts.
Yes, it is obvious to most people I know, and those to whom it is not obvious are pretty much lost causes anyway.

Oh, please! What's going on?

Don't get your panties all in a twist there Rob, you're making assumptions about my attitude toward illicit substances. Plus, it was clearly an extremely simplistic, yet witty crack.

No way.
We all know you are a prudish straightedge.

And therein lies my enigmatic nature. YOU JUST DON'T KNOW.

sorry if that came off as anxious. i am busy at work and typed quickly,. did not in any way get offended or uptight about yr comment!

I wouldn't have thought so, being a melt as you are.

hey savage
free thought, the basic general idea that one can think what one wants, is not FREETHOUGHT, the german based humanist philosophy that spawned the unitarians, and other such groups.

I know what you mean Rob, in terms of the "concrete philosophy by the name of FREETHOUGHT," but that concept is pretty damn natural if you are a certain kind of person.

Yeah, what he managed to say in a much more diplomatic fashion.

wikipedia to the rescue? i know porkie hates wikipedia, but i think that's because wikipedia knows more than him.

Freethought

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that beliefs should be formed on the basis of science and logical principles and not be compromised by authority, tradition, or any other dogma. The cognitive application of freethought is known as freethinking, and practitioners of freethought are known as freethinkers.

more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freethought

sonic life!

It's not even funny:

http://www.sonicyouth.com/gossip/showthread.php?t=13003

that's because there's nothing funny about masturbation. or so kegmama says. but i disagree.

http://sonicyouth.com/gossip/showthread.php?t=13708

there is no such thing as intellectual masturbation.
Just as there is no such thing as "thinking too much"

anyone who suggests it is just jealous of the mental girth and length!

There is totally such a thing as intellectual masturbation.
It's called a book club.
Or an artist's lecture.

ha ha

this reminds me of our book club from last summer, what a debacle that turned out to be. i blame arthelion for deserting us in our hour of need.

to the list of intellectual masturbation(s) i'll add then (for the fun):

a phd in the humanities
wire magazine
music discussions on the internet
religious, political, and philosophical discusion on the internet.
the internet.

Is it masturbatory to discus these things offline? does the masturbation element depend on the location? (I'd say it could be deemed masturbatory to discuss music in a chalet at ATP. Or with strangers at a gig. Also, to discuss politics/philosophy/religion in a student lounge I'd call public masturbation... but it's possibly not masturbatory to discuss any of the above in, say, a pub.. or comedy club.. or when lying on the floor half-asleep after a party. I'd call that either conversation, entertainment or wastedness.)



Now now, we all know there's nothing intellectual about 99% of the masturbation that goes on because of the internet.

So wrong. Intellectual masturbation comes with not making a clear and to the point observation about the world that surrounds you. Likely culprits on this forum or offline know, or more often don't know who they are.

I consider nothing to be intellectual masturbation, unless someone is being pretentious.

wow, you must smoke a lot of weed to lubricate your mind.