Reality doesn't care, it is amoral. It happens; we observe and then make a decision on how to deal with it. Our decisions are quite often based on our personal world view and less often on the facts in hand. Reasonable and rational thinking are cast aside in favor of what an ideology wants. Politician's have boxed themselves into these ideologies to a point where freethinking is not allowed, or in some cases downright persecuted and the thinker ridiculed. I dislike this type of orthodoxy with a passion. It makes cowards out of politicians, and hands over the rod of fear to the demagogues. We should be free to think outside of our comfort zones, to experiment with ideas that may seem counter-intuitive or even counter to our current beliefs. Even in the atheist circles that I travel, certain dogmas prevail.
Jokingly, I used to label myself a fiscally conservative, progressive libertarian. To my eyes, this moniker is still too restricting. I am a progressive, there's no doubt about that. I am also an atheist; a liberal with a libertarian view, but I am somewhat of a socialist (as we all are to some degree). Every one of these nouns has been demonized by the far right-wing. I do not fear these labels, but many do, and will shy away from using them to describe themselves. So I think it is time to bring back the noun 'Freethinker' from it's Enlightenment roots in the mid 1600's. It hasn't been given the hot poker treatment by the Christian right-wing; well not yet. But give it time, and plenty of promotion, and it will be considered as evil as the phrase 'baby eater'. Now, more than ever, we have to own it, run with it, and run the promoters of Armageddon style fear mongering out of (Washing)town.
Although I haven't done a survey or study, I think there are many progressive Christians and perhaps even Muslims, Hindu's and other moderates out there who could consider themselves 'Freethinkers' as well. Many of them loosely associate themselves with their holy books, perhaps gleaning only the occasional golden nugget that appears between the thick, congested seams of the darker texts. Thomas Jefferson edited the four Gospels, taking out the miracles and the supernatural and calling it 'The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth." He certainly got criticism for that, but he remained a Deist, which is about as close to a Humanist as one can get. Especially one who was instrumental in establishing our Secular Government.
Wikipedia has this description of what Freethought is:
Freethought holds that individuals should not accept ideas proposed as truth without recourse to knowledge and reason. Thus, freethinkers strive to build their opinions on the basis of facts, scientific inquiry, and logical principles, independent of any logical fallacies or the intellectually limiting effects of authority, confirmation bias, cognitive bias, conventional wisdom, popular culture, prejudice, sectarianism, tradition, urban legend, and all other dogmas. Regarding religion, freethinkers hold that there is insufficient evidence to support the existence of supernatural phenomena.
The last sentence may be considered a game changer for atheist Freethinkers. How can we allow people, even with a very tenuous belief in the supernatural, into the Freethinkers club. The short answer is 'we have to'. Unbelievers are a minority group, and although we are greater in numbers than the Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Scientologists, Mormons of this country, we have very little political clout in the current climate. We atheists create our own wall of separation between ourselves and our progressive (spiritual) counterparts, who are a substantial percentage of the population. We need them, and we should be comfortable with sharing the word 'Freethinker' with them. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I am not comfortable in groups; The larger and more diverse the group, the more comfortable I am. Perhaps I'm just a hippy, only I shower more and am relatively clean from drugs.
Anecdotally, I have believer friends who barely give their Christian belief a first glance, let alone a second. They don't attend church, except for the high holidays (I like 'high' holidays too, but only spent on a beach with friends). They crave the community that their church gives. It's just a belief system that they were brought up with as a child. It gives them comfort. Why not? I say. Does it have to be a full conversion to atheism before we can accept them to Freethinking status. Which gets me back to the religious right wing. They are pulling their Shepherd's wool over our secular governments eyes, and gradually over its arms. Their intention is to constrict the social progress made for women, gays, and children made over the last forty years. They want to get to work and dismantle the Department of Education, which is too secular for them. I realize that many government departments and agencies are dysfunctional, but they stand between us and the extremism that we have in this country. When Obama took office, and even gave a shout out to 'non-believers', we thought we had seen the end of right-wing extremism, but they are stronger than ever before. They want to bring prayer back to school, take out the Theory of Evolution from the biology class and replace it with the seven day creation myth. We need to bring the Freethinking movement to the forefront of the debate, and we need as many people as possible to promote our agenda.
So a quick word to my atheist friends. Progressive religious people accept pretty much what we Secular Humanists believe. They want to help those who are different from themselves, and not convert them. Just plain, simple, pure, compassion. Like us, they want to share our fortunate circumstances with the world. They want freedom of religion, and freedom from religion. As Thomas Paine said, "My country is the world, my religion is to do good."
