Spiritual Freethinking: An Oxymoron?
Okay, I’m back thinking about freethinking. See original Post here for a definition.
In one of the web discussions generated by that post, it was suggested that the concept of spiritual freethinking is an oxymoron. This seems to be a widespread belief — that freethinking must remain within the material realm, because nothing else is “proven”.
This feels wrong to me. It narrows what we allow ourselves to think and explore and test – the essence, surely, of freethought? – and denies whole swathes of human existence, not least the realms of creativity, spirituality and inspiration.
My favourite realms, dammit.
The realms from which some of the finest human accomplishments have emerged.
I want to explore this. While accepting the central premises of freethought – that that beliefs should not be received from authority, creed, dogma, myth or supposition but instead be formed on the basis of knowledge and reason – I want to explore these invisible, but undeniable, dimensions of human life.
I want to know what investigations are taking place, what we are learning. (Science, after all, can only have all the answers if it’s asking all the questions). I want to know if my feeling that true freethinking requires not just IQ (intellectual intelligence) but EQ (emotional intelligence) and SQ (spiritual intelligence) is borne out, when I really examine the question.
When I really free-think about it.
I want to read and research, and question and think until I reach the point where I can confidently support my intuitive answer to the question: is spiritual freethinking an oxymoron?
Thank you for another dose of brain-buzz. The definition in the original post seems to me to be a good description of the Western liberal academic tradition as well; skepticism, need for proofs instead of dogma, etc. If we accept that premise, then we’re talking Renaissance not 19th C. and that would include qualitative analysis as well as quantitative much-loved by self-styled “hard-science” scholars.
First came the thinkers, then came the codifiers, taxonomists, rulemakers and self-appointed spokespeople for who is allowed under the umbrella. Having demolished the fences, why build them again? So perhaps appropriating and capitalizing the term allows you to define it, as this organization did, but which most of us who actually think find too confining. As you suggested in your first post.
I have always preferred the simple term ’scholar’ and in that realm we can certainly examine The Great Mystery in a systematic way
Or so it seems to me.
Thanks, as always, for a thoughtful response, Great Scholar of Arkansas. And yes, scholar, or student, or writer indeed, can cover the activity. I definitely am not in the fencebuilding business – I think of it more as an attempt to set freethinking free.
At an academic level, yes, these questions are studied and debated but at the social level, it seems to me there’s a gap, a vacuum, actually. The concept of freethinking has been appropriated by anti-religious atheism (wave 5, orange, scientific achievement thinkers on the developmental wave theory outlined before). And the concept of spirituality is seen as the provenance of either religions or new agers (both wave 4, blue, mythic order thinkers).
We need freethinking to stand free from both sides. Not because “we”, those who think of ourselves as freethinkers, are right and “they”, the religious, the atheists, the new agers, are wrong — but because we’re an important thread in the braid, with a lot to offer.
I want to argue for thinking about the Great Mystery, as you term it, (nice one!) from Wave 7, Yellow, Integrative or Wave 8, Turquoise, Holistic perspectives. Not to build fences but to open a social space that supports thinking that is both tolerant and thoughtful, open-minded and self-reflective — while all the while taking the trouble to integrate the mounting knowledge about human existence. A space that just is not there right now, it seems to me.
And hey, I’d love to have a belief box on the census form that I’d feel happy to tick!
Hello Orna!
Love your web site!!!!
Your original post is great and honestly I have never known that free-thinkers had any bad rep associated to them. I think a lot of people in society may think that there exist only 2 poles: either you are religious or you are atheist. But I think that those two boundaries have in between them so much love and beauty and intelligent wisdom, EXCEPT that many in our society are afraid what it seems like to break away from one extreme or the other and find a balanced middle ground.
I was once on the religious end extreme and would never go there again – talk about shutting down your thoughts. And I have to tell you, I think that atheism is the same, just on the opposite end of the spectrum – in no way do I think that atheism is free thinking – how can it be when most atheists say there is no God and that is it.
To me free thinking is not only possible, but doable and many many more people are going that way today – I think most of them simply go by the label “spiritual”. In this realm one can believe in God or spirits at different degrees as there are NO RULES and what I love most about it is that no one (intelligent that is) can ever really truly define you by this label – there are just too many grey areas that will never fit neatly into the label “spiritual” or even free-thinker.
I like your suggestion to bring back the type of free thinking you descirbed…again I was unaware that it ever left….I guess I just labelled the same thing “spiritual”.
Our world is evolving rapidly today and more and more of us are waking up to the realization that going by predefined rules and labels just no longer serves us – in fact it never did, but we insisted on locking ourselves in.
No, it is not an oxymoron. As you pointed out in your referenced post, a free thinker is someone that “forms opinions on the basis of reason, independent of authority or tradition.” There is no reason why a person could not form opinions about spirituality in this way.
Freethinking is not synonymous with atheism (despite what “The Freethinker” mag may suggest.) I suspect many atheists are atheists because they are freethinkers (and thus they were able to form their own opinion about the existence of God(s)), but it does not follow that freethinkers must become atheists (i.e., form the opinion that there are no Gods).
In the Sioux language Wakan Tanka means The Great Mystery. Some people say their religion is pantheistic, but I have also talked to Native American professors that say the Mystery just refers to the universal energy in all things which I have seen described as Vedanta. I’ve not read much on that but it seems that Eastern meditation may be similar to the visions in which the Plains Indian tribes place great store. I can fully accept that there are many things I do not understand or can explain scientifically but which I may share with others in an emotional way. Hence Wakan Tanka. That is something I can readily accept without having to personify it.
Bear with me for a moment, I think this will be relevant but I’m thinking as I write this. I studied with a European professor and lived in Europe for 30 years. He said my post-graduate study was a European idea; study for sake of learning and not for a ticket to a career, as in USA. I saw an article just today on that same idea. Which introduces a competitive element; prescribed knowledge; “cram and dump” courses; get the ticket get the job easy street.
Even a poetry group I attend concentrates more on entering contests than discussion or reading of our own work. It seems every group I’m involved with has some competitive element instead of an open tolerance of opinion, discussion of ideas, etc. Some I no longer attend very often because it has become oppressive, I don’t fit in.
However, recently I took part in an open-ended free-wheeling discussion of contentious policy issues with other retired military officers whom I know to be of widely varied backgrounds, political ideologies, educational levels. It was respectful, interesting and followed academic guidelines of supporting with fact or evidence instead of blind assertion of fact. It was a notably enjoyable experience, so much so that I tried to analyze it. The only thing I could come up with was the retired angle, there was no competitive element, we no longer had to be right or wrong, we could relax and examine and ask questions and our careers did not depend on it. It felt good to, as you said “stand free” because we had no stake in it.
This seems to be that tolerant social space you described. The likelihood of it opening up in a group may depend on the nature of the group and the level of competition involved.
Yes, I have trouble with those boxes myself.
I wonder if it is possible to over think. This is a wonderful discussion, but I find myself left in confusion, as the point seems to shift and the words change in terminology. Free thinking – is that confined to the realm of thought or intellect? At one point of the discussion, the term seems to mean the state of conscious being, that includes all aspects of being: spiritual, intellectual, emotional, physical. Here, free thinking might suggest the ability to transcend one state of consciousness for another, or regress from one to the other, our being “free” to move from state to state.
If we are suggesting that the term free thinking is contained by what we experience that can be proved or measured, I think we are talking about something very different, more rational and sensory/behavior based. To take this route, I think, allows our external experience to define our internal selves.
I am of the mind that every aspect of my being is an expression of spirit. I am free thinking because I am free to experience this, and do so with the free will to choose my thoughts, feelings, sensations, actions, behavior. My choices then reflect to me, through my experience, who I am and the possibility of what I am becoming. I respond to my experience by freely choosing again, creating the constant mirror of reality. This position can and has been argued endlessly. I am steadfast in my choice of free thinking.
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