I gave them a book on the history of the earth; they politely refused as they said they prefer to read their religious text. Also, they are not even taking the chance to read other religious texts save their own! If you love to read about science in the morning, then dinosaurs in the afternoon, finishing off with medicine and its benefits in the evening, and you appreciate the facts instead of picking and choosing a fact that agrees with your opinion, then well done you are nearly a freethinker!
Opinions are located somewhere between knowledge and ignorance. If we all acted upon our opinions rather than facts, then the world would be a very scary place! Just think about it, we all have opinions which we later find out are wrong. Freethinkers think logically, reasonably and rationally. Thinking with your heart can land you in trouble; just ask your young-self when you chose that girl over your mates! If you can relate to the 5 points above, then well done, you are probably a freethinker!
Carl Sagan advised us to be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains fall out! And that is what being a freethinker is all about — being sceptical, knowing and accepting things that work like Mathematics and Science, and knowing what is best left alone in the realms of mythology, like our gods and our goblins.
You must be logged in to post a comment. Fewer than one-in-five U. Atheists were at least as knowledgeable as Christians on Christianity-related questions — roughly eight-in-ten in both groups, for example, know that Easter commemorates the resurrection of Jesus — and they were also twice as likely as Americans overall to know that the U.
It organizes the public into nine distinct groups, based on an analysis of their attitudes and values. Even in a polarized era, the survey reveals deep divisions in both partisan coalitions. Pew Research Center now uses as the last birth year for Millennials in our work.
President Michael Dimock explains why. The vast majority of U. Use this tool to compare the groups on some key topics and their demographics. About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world.
It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. I am a working scientist, but I have also long wanted to conceive and communicate a human narrative for science within culture. I constantly detect that the human core of science has been at best hollowed out and at worst lost in our superficial and materialistic times. Working through the history and pre-history of science for this project, I found the need to draw on the theological story of ends, relationships, healing, even to articulate an account of the problem.
You must be logged in to post a comment. Opinion , Religion. Leave a comment. In addition to that, he has won several awards including the Weissenberg Medal and the Bingham Medal for his work on molecular rheology of polymers.
You may also like Interviews , Philosophy , Science. Entertainment , Philosophy. Interviews , Philosophy , Science. Leave a Reply Cancel reply You must be logged in to post a comment. Interviews The world's most inspirational freethinkers It's time to be inspired March 20, For these reasons, Socrates is the quintessential skeptical freethinker. He stands as a symbol, both of Greek rationalism and the Humanist tradition that it inspired.
And no equally recognized saint or sage has joined his company since his death. His books were burned as a consequence.
Another great freethinker and Humanist in ancient Athens was the tragedian Euripides. His dramas criticize religious fanaticism, superstition, male domination, war, and other evils. For example, in The Bacchae , Euripides expresses in poetic drama all the seductions and dangers of cultic and fanatical religious belief. His characters suffer personal tragedy to the very extent that they allow themselves to become caught up in the Bacchic frenzy, or to dogmatically and undemocratically work to suppress the Dionysian cult.
And Dionysus, in the end, is exposed as the cruel, capricious, and vindictive god that he is. Through him, all his promises of joy through faith are ultimately broken.
In Iphigenia at Aulis , a priest declares that Agamemnon has sinned against a god, and this is why the wind has not blown and will not blow to send his thousand ships to Troy. So, reluctantly, Agamemnon orders the daughter seized and burned at the stake. But, for now, the priest lights the flame, and, ironically, not a moment too soon, because the winds have already begun to blow.
Across history freethought has been expressed through the literary arts in this way. In the realm of music Mozart and Beethoven were just two of many creative freethinkers. There have been sculptors, painters, actors, and so many others. Isadora Duncan was a freethinker who brought innovation to modern dance. Gene Roddenberry was an atheist who created the Star Trek phenomenon.
The list goes on. But let us return to ancient times. One of them was the Cyrenaic school, founded by Aristippus of Cyrene. All of its philosophers were atheists who advocated that physical pleasure was the highest good. Then came the Helenistic age, during which time numerous schools of philosophy flourished. One of them was the Epicurean. Epicurus was a quietist hedonist who held that mental pleasures could be superior to the physical ones advanced by the Cyrenaics.
And instead of propounding atheism he advanced the view that the gods exist but, being immaterial, have no impact on nature and are unconcerned about human affairs. Philosophers of rival schools were quick to claim that this was a mere disguised atheism.
But the philosophy flourished, debunking popular fears of eternal punishment after death, finding its greatest expression in Roman times through the epic-length naturalistic poem by Lucretius, On the Nature of Things. Another school was that of the Skeptics. They held that no certain knowledge existed and therefore a totally agnostic approach to all issues was in order.
Greek Hellenistic philosophy was eventually transferred to Rome where it thrived. Specifically, the pantheistic, rationalist philosophy of the Stoics captivated those in positions of political influence. The skepticism of the New Academy influenced intellectuals like Cicero, whose book, On the Nature of the Gods , pitted Stoic, Epicurean, and Academic arguments against each other, leading the reader toward the conclusion that, though it is good and pious to worship the gods, there is no philosophical argument that can prove they exist.
Cicero followed this book with On Divination, in which he vigorously debunked astrology, prophetic dreams, portents, auguries, and all the rest. Cicero wondered how two augurs could meet each other on the street without laughing out loud over the foolishness they were putting over on the public.
Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher who was critical of traditional religion and popular superstition. In the time of Augustus Caesar we have the poet Ovid, author of the Metamorphoses. He disguised his freethought in the mythical tales he told. Today scholars have figured out that the reason why so many of the first stories in his poem are the tales of rapes is because his aim was to subtly discredit belief in the gods.
Among freethinkers of Roman times who wrote in Greek, Lucian stands out. He penned numerous satirical essays and dialogues poking fun at mythology, the gods, miracle workers, and even philosophers. In late antiquity one of the most surprising sources of persuasive freethought arguments is an early Christian writer by the name of Arnobius.
His book, Against the Heathen, written about the year of the Common Era, leveled a blistering series of attacks that thoroughly debunked the absurd beliefs of Roman paganism. He had hoped it would make him admired among Christian leaders of his time. They all seemed to have understood something he had overlooked. His effective appeals to common sense could prove equally potent if turned against Christian doctrines! These and other works are the sources which influenced the Christian humanists of the Renaissance and the freethinkers of the Elizabethan era and the Age of Enlightenment.
Let us turn now to those freethinkers themselves. Playwright Christopher Marlowe was the author of Dr. He kept company with the leading intellectuals of London, many of whom were privately freethinkers. Then in , when he began openly pointing out inconsistencies in the Bible, the government came to suspect him of heresy and conducted an investigation. They had his roommate tortured into giving evidence against him and Marlowe was to be brought before the Privy Council.
But he kept the words in the mouths of his characters instead of expressing them himself. It was in the eighteenth century, the Age of Enlightenment, where freethought truly came into its own. The French philosophes and other eighteenth century Enlightenment thinkers brought new ideas into the popular consciousness.
The pen of Voltaire skewered the Roman Catholic church. As with the Enlightenment itself, freethought went beyond religious critique to advance social reform. Freethinkers challenged the divine right of kings, sought an end to cruel and unusual punishments, and advanced civil and social rights—efforts that reached their peak, and excess, during the French Revolution.
You see, in the mid seventeenth century, after the invention of mechanical clocks, people started caring more about time. Not only did thinkers stay up nights with it, but they met together in those great institutions of freethought, those catalysts of new ideas where great revolutions were hatched, the coffeehouses. As we speak of Enlightenment thought and Enlightenment thinkers, we need to be aware that Enlightenment women are too often forgotten.
She immediately followed with A Vindication of the Rights of Woman , considered the first feminist document. Part of the final chapter is even devoted to debunking fortune-tellers and faith healers, charlatans who often preyed on women. As a deist she rejected the patriarchy of the church in favor of an unknowable but all-sufficient god of nature-though biographer Eleanor Flexner and others point to evidence that she died an agnostic.
Wollstonecraft had a daughter, Fanny, through Imlay, who she never married. Later she married William Godwin, who became the father of her second daughter, Mary, who grew up to wed atheist poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and write Frankenstein. He was jailed for his various freethought and social reform activities. But when one thinks of nineteenth century freethought what most often comes to mind are those who critiqued, debunked, or poked fun at religion. And certainly one of the best at this was Mark Twain, another atheist.
In The Damned Human Race he tells this story of his scientific research. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.
Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals [the dog and cat and so on] was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh — not a specimen left alive.
These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.
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