What it means to be a "free-thinker"

Hello, readers. I realize I have neglected you of late. I've been procrastinating doing a post about Pope Nazipants (or, as my dad calls him, "Ratzi the Nazi") in the Holy Land. As such, I haven't posted much of anything at all. That said, I don't actually think Ratzi did such a terrible job in the middle east, so I think I'm just going to let it lie and write about something else. OK? OK...

So, there's something that has been bothering me for some time now. As you may have noticed, I take just as much issue with the militant atheist crowd as I do with the fundamentalist Christians. I don't quite get the argument that a group of people can be inherently superior based on their beliefs (or lack thereof), when their behavior is eerily similar. Granted, the atheists generally don't resort to violence. But self-righteousness breeds all kinds of evils, and if they continue to believe that atheism is the only possible expression of intelligence, who knows what they might one day be capable of?

The idea that being a "free-thinker" means being an atheist or agnostic seems counter-intuitive to me. Freedom of thought should mean just that. It should mean freedom to believe what makes sense to you as an individual. As such, I propose a re-definition. Let's let the term "free-thinker" apply to anyone who has arrived at their own system of belief (or lack thereof) using their own unhindered reasoning. That does, after all, seem to be more accurate to the definition of "free."

I also propose a truce.

What I believe (which is not at all what I was taught to believe as a child) has lead me to the conclusion that life is of the utmost importance. Human beings are important. We have a duty to ourselves and to our species to live good, full lives, and to enable others to do the same. Any belief system that leads to the same conclusion is, in my opinion, a good one. As such, I believe those who subscribe to humanist belief systems should be joining forces, not bickering about specifics. Belief in God (or lack of belief in God, or belief in the absence of God, etc.) has no inherit merit. The ideas are abstract and inherently personal. A person should not be defined by what they believe, but by how they behave. I wish that was a conclusion more people would draw.


I think it is unfair and unreasonable that some atheists, in their anger and frustration with the religious right (with whom the religious left is equally, if not more frustrated), have lumped all believers together in one category. We all believe in God, therefore we are all stupid or misguided. We are not free-thinkers, because we have not wholly rejected religion. This is a fallacy. Think of what we could accomplish if those who value human rights, regardless of creed, joined forces. After all, we have more in common than we think. And I'm pretty certain that we are all "free-thinkers." Just sayin'.