Having experience or having learned stories, passed down through books, does not make a person wise nor the story true. These are things to draw information and guidance from however many people don’t learn from their experiences and it is well known that history gets revised in books to favor a paradigm.

This blog simply seems like a justification for putting a negative bent upon those who are NOT led by a higher authority. People who make choices based on ethical and moral considerations are thinking individuals with the compassion to respect other’s beliefs and yet walk their own path. “Freethinking” should not be a threat to anyone who uses spiritual guidance to walk their path. Peace be with you.

I think lately there has been this drive by some secularists/atheists/however you want to categorize them to correlate the concept of free-thinking and rationality with anti-religion. In your entry here, you demonstrated beautifully the logical fallacy to that position.

For me, religion is just another form of philosophy and as humans tend to do with any philosophical concept, we tend to take its basic concepts and try to bend it to suit our purposes. Atheists who attempt to equate free-thinking with a hatred of religion are no different in my book from religious zealots who attempt to use religious dogma to further their own political/social agendas. After all, in both cases, the person is not leaving themselves open to pondering different ideas – instead, they’re only interested in proving their position as being right and those who oppose them wrong. Hardly what I would call ‘free thinking’.

Look, I’m not a Christian and yet, I don’t have this obsessive need or desire to trash or prove that people who believe in the Bible are disillusioned or brainwashed or whatever. Instead, I respect their choice and desire to believe that – especially since many of them respect my choice not to. I always find it curious why these anti-religion types get all worked up over something they don’t believe in and why they have this need to trash talk those who do believe in the Bible, or any other religious theology.

I’m glad to see someone is taking up this issue and pointing out that free thinking should not be exclusively defined as being anti-religious, but rather the idea that we open ourselves to examining/learning about the different ideas/notions of human existence to find that one which best suits our own understanding of the world around us.