What does it mean to be a freethinker?
What makes a freethinker is not his beliefs, but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought he finds a balance of evidence in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem.
-Bertrand Russell, "The Value of Free Thought" (1957)
-Bertrand Russell, "The Value of Free Thought" (1957)
The above quote from Bertrand Russell is an excellent summary of what it means to be a freethinker. Many people associate freethought with atheism or irreligiousity, but in truth anyone can be a freethinker. A key idea in our organization is rational disagreement: two people can both be completely rational, and yet reach opposing conclusions to the same question. Our goal is not to determine which conclusion is "right" or "wrong," but to simply engage in critical, rational discussion to share our ideas, opinions, and the methods by which we found them.
An important key to being a freethinker is to be open to criticism of your opinions, ideas, and beliefs. This is not to say that you must accept ridicule or bullying for believing or thinking a certain way--in fact, this behavior is not tolerated in our organization. By criticism, we mean the expression of opposing ideas or the posing of thoughtful questions, both with the aim of understanding the views we express better.
So, in other words, freethinkers...
We should emphasize again that this definition does not discriminate based on one's conclusions, but on the way in which one reaches those conclusions. Freethinkers can be atheist, agnostic, theist (whether deist, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, pantheist, etc.), or any number of other religious beliefs—so long as they arrive at these beliefs through the process outlined above.
An important key to being a freethinker is to be open to criticism of your opinions, ideas, and beliefs. This is not to say that you must accept ridicule or bullying for believing or thinking a certain way--in fact, this behavior is not tolerated in our organization. By criticism, we mean the expression of opposing ideas or the posing of thoughtful questions, both with the aim of understanding the views we express better.
So, in other words, freethinkers...
- are those who holds their beliefs because they find them, after careful thought and rational inquiry, to be the most reasonable beliefs one could possibly hold.
- do not "know for sure" that what they believe is true; rather, they simply find what they believe more reasonable than what they do not believe.
- attempt to justify their beliefs as much they are able, continually altering them according to the evidence.
- does not rely on authority, tradition, dogma, or revelation to form their beliefs; rather, they submit these preexisting beliefs to critical scrutiny. If and only if do these beliefs survive that scrutiny does the freethinker then adopt them.
We should emphasize again that this definition does not discriminate based on one's conclusions, but on the way in which one reaches those conclusions. Freethinkers can be atheist, agnostic, theist (whether deist, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, pantheist, etc.), or any number of other religious beliefs—so long as they arrive at these beliefs through the process outlined above.