Freethought (sometimes spelled free thought ) is an unorthodox attitude or belief.
96-403: Secular Review (1876–1907) was a freethought / secularist weekly publication in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain that appeared under a variety of names. It represented a "relatively moderate style of Secularism," more open to old Owenite and new socialist influences in contrast to the individualism and social conservatism of Charles Bradlaugh and his National Reformer . It
192-460: A " pope ": what I am concerned with is the doctrine of the modern Communistic Party, and of the Russian Government to which it owes allegiance. According to this doctrine, the world develops on the lines of a Plan called Dialectical Materialism , first discovered by Karl Marx , embodied in the practice of a great state by Lenin , and now expounded from day to day by a Church of which Stalin
288-482: A Church, all those who adhere to them". Sacred things are not, however, limited to gods or spirits. On the contrary, a sacred thing can be "a rock, a tree, a spring, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a word, anything can be sacred". Religious beliefs, myths, dogmas and legends are the representations that express the nature of these sacred things, and the virtues and powers which are attributed to them. Echoes of James' and Durkheim's definitions are to be found in
384-484: A concrete deity or not" to which the individual feels impelled to respond with solemnity and gravity. Sociologist Émile Durkheim , in his seminal book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life , defined religion as a "unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things". By sacred things he meant things "set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called
480-489: A definition of religion. There are, however, two general definition systems: the sociological/functional and the phenomenological/philosophical. The concept of religion originated in the modern era in the West . Parallel concepts are not found in many current and past cultures; there is no equivalent term for religion in many languages. Scholars have found it difficult to develop a consistent definition, with some giving up on
576-470: A free thinker. Fred Edwords , former executive of the American Humanist Association , suggests that by Russell's definition, liberal religionists who have challenged established orthodoxies can be considered freethinkers. On the other hand, according to Bertrand Russell , atheists and/or agnostics are not necessarily freethinkers. As an example, he mentions Stalin , whom he compares to
672-540: A landmark in the era of modern free thought. It was the year of the execution in Italy of Giordano Bruno , a former Dominican friar, by the Inquisition . Prior to World War II , Australia had high rates of Protestantism and Catholicism. Post-war Australia has become a highly secularised country. Donald Horne , one of Australia's well-known public intellectuals , believed rising prosperity in post-war Australia influenced
768-558: A natural freedom from all negative and illusive thoughts acquired from society. The term first came into use in the 17th century in order to refer to people who inquired into the basis of traditional beliefs which were often accepted unquestioningly. Today, freethinking is most closely linked with agnosticism , deism , secularism , humanism , anti-clericalism , and religious critique . The Oxford English Dictionary defines freethinking as, "The free exercise of reason in matters of religious belief, unrestrained by deference to authority;
864-617: A secular " confirmation " ceremony, and atheist funeral rites. The Union of Freethinkers for Cremation was founded in 1905, and the Central Union of German Proletariat Freethinker in 1908. The two groups merged in 1927, becoming the German Freethinking Association in 1930. More "bourgeois" organizations declined after World War I , and "proletarian" free thought groups proliferated, becoming an organization of socialist parties. European socialist free thought groups formed
960-443: A similar union between imperial law and universal or Buddha law, but these later became independent sources of power. Though traditions, sacred texts, and practices have existed throughout time, most cultures did not align with Western conceptions of religion since they did not separate everyday life from the sacred. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the terms Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, and world religions first entered
1056-654: A study of nature rather than from religious revelation. In the 18th century, "deism" was as much of a 'dirty word' as "atheism", and deists were often stigmatized as either atheists or at least as freethinkers by their Christian opponents. Deists today regard themselves as freethinkers, but are now arguably less prominent in the free thought movement than atheists. Among freethinkers, for a notion to be considered true it must be testable, verifiable , and logical. Many freethinkers tend to be humanists , who base morality on human needs and would find meaning in human compassion , social progress , art, personal happiness, love, and
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#17328691896121152-655: A subject of interest to philosophers and theologians. The word myth has several meanings: Ancient polytheistic religions, such as those of Greece, Rome , and Scandinavia , are usually categorized under the heading of mythology . Religions of pre-industrial peoples, or cultures in development, are similarly called myths in the anthropology of religion . The term myth can be used pejoratively by both religious and non-religious people. By defining another person's religious stories and beliefs as mythology, one implies that they are less real or true than one's own religious stories and beliefs. Joseph Campbell remarked, "Mythology
1248-600: A transcendent deity and all else, between the creator and his creation, between God and man. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz defined religion as a: ... system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. Alluding perhaps to Tylor's "deeper motive", Geertz remarked that: ... we have very little idea of how, in empirical terms, this particular miracle
1344-450: A wide variety of academic disciplines, including theology , philosophy of religion , comparative religion , and social scientific studies. Theories of religion offer various explanations for its origins and workings, including the ontological foundations of religious being and belief. The term religion comes from both Old French and Anglo-Norman (1200s CE ) and means respect for sense of right, moral obligation, sanctity, what
1440-559: A word or even a concept of religion in the original languages and neither did the people or the cultures in which these sacred texts were written. For example, there is no precise equivalent of religion in Hebrew, and Judaism does not distinguish clearly between religious, national, racial, or ethnic identities. One of its central concepts is halakha , meaning the walk or path sometimes translated as law, which guides religious practice and belief and many aspects of daily life. Even though
1536-400: Is accomplished. We just know that it is done, annually, weekly, daily, for some people almost hourly; and we have an enormous ethnographic literature to demonstrate it. The theologian Antoine Vergote took the term supernatural simply to mean whatever transcends the powers of nature or human agency. He also emphasized the cultural reality of religion, which he defined as: ... the entirety of
1632-461: Is also the product of the dominant Western religious mode, what is called the Judeo-Christian climate or, more accurately, the theistic inheritance from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The theistic form of belief in this tradition, even when downgraded culturally, is formative of the dichotomous Western view of religion. That is, the basic structure of theism is essentially a distinction between
1728-508: Is derived from religare : re (meaning "again") + ligare ("bind" or "connect"), which was made prominent by St. Augustine following the interpretation given by Lactantius in Divinae institutiones , IV, 28. The medieval usage alternates with order in designating bonded communities like those of monastic orders : "we hear of the 'religion' of the Golden Fleece , of a knight 'of
1824-546: Is found in texts from the 17th century due to events such as the splitting of Christendom during the Protestant Reformation and globalization in the Age of Exploration , which involved contact with numerous foreign cultures with non-European languages. Some argue that regardless of its definition, it is not appropriate to apply the term religion to non-Western cultures, while some followers of various faiths rebuke using
1920-689: Is included as a member in the umbrella organization of free humanists. In 1881 in Frankfurt am Main , Ludwig Büchner established the Deutscher Freidenkerbund ( German Freethinkers League ) as the first German organization for atheists and agnostics. In 1892 the Freidenker-Gesellschaft and in 1906 the Deutscher Monistenbund were formed. Free thought organizations developed the " Jugendweihe " (literally Youth consecration ),
2016-399: Is independent of revelation, tradition, established belief, and authority , and considers it as a "broader umbrella" than atheism "that embraces a rainbow of unorthodoxy, religious dissent, skepticism, and unconventional thinking." The basic summarizing statement of the essay The Ethics of Belief by the 19th-century British mathematician and philosopher William Kingdon Clifford is: "It
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#17328691896122112-466: Is insufficient evidence to support the existence of supernatural phenomena. According to the Freedom from Religion Foundation , "No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed , or messiah . To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth." and "Freethinkers are convinced that religious claims have not withstood the tests of reason. Not only
2208-550: Is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine , sacredness , faith , and a supernatural being or beings. The origin of religious belief is an open question, with possible explanations including awareness of individual death, a sense of community, and dreams. Religions have sacred histories , narratives , and mythologies , preserved in oral traditions, sacred texts , symbols , and holy places , that may attempt to explain
2304-422: Is not necessarily an atheist or an agnostic, as long as he or she satisfies this definition: The person who is free in any respect is free from something; what is the free thinker free from? To be worthy of the name, he must be free of two things: the force of tradition, and the tyranny of his own passions. No one is completely free from either, but in the measure of a man's emancipation he deserves to be called
2400-526: Is possible to understand why scientific findings and philosophical criticisms (e.g., those made by Richard Dawkins ) do not necessarily disturb its adherents. The origin of religious belief is an open question, with possible explanations including awareness of individual death, a sense of community, and dreams. Traditionally, faith , in addition to reason , has been considered a source of religious beliefs. The interplay between faith and reason, and their use as perceived support for religious beliefs, have been
2496-467: Is sacred, reverence for the gods. It is ultimately derived from the Latin word religiō . According to Roman philosopher Cicero , religiō comes from relegere : re (meaning "again") + lego (meaning "read"), where lego is in the sense of "go over", "choose", or "consider carefully". Contrarily, some modern scholars such as Tom Harpur and Joseph Campbell have argued that religiō
2592-876: Is the Fédération nationale de la libre pensée , created in 1890. In Germany, during the period 1815–1848 and before the March Revolution , the resistance of citizens against the dogma of the church increased. In 1844, under the influence of Johannes Ronge and Robert Blum , belief in the rights of man, tolerance among men, and humanism grew, and by 1859 they had established the Bund Freireligiöser Gemeinden Deutschlands (literally Union of Free Religious Communities of Germany ), an association of persons who consider themselves to be religious without adhering to any established and institutionalized church or sacerdotal cult. This union still exists today, and
2688-454: Is the Pope. […] Free discussion is to be prevented wherever the power to do so exists; […] If this doctrine and this organization prevail, free inquiry will become as impossible as it was in the middle ages, and the world will relapse into bigotry and obscurantism. In the 18th and 19th century, many thinkers regarded as freethinkers were deists , arguing that the nature of God can only be known from
2784-401: Is there nothing to be gained by believing an untruth, but there is everything to lose when we sacrifice the indispensable tool of reason on the altar of superstition. Most freethinkers consider religion to be not only untrue, but harmful." However, philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote the following in his 1944 essay The Value of Free Thought : What makes a freethinker is not his beliefs but
2880-631: Is widely regarded a symbol of the victims of Christian religious intolerance ; La Barre along with Jean Calas and Pierre-Paul Sirven , was championed by Voltaire. A second replacement statue to de la Barre stands nearby the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Paris at the summit of the butte Montmartre (itself named from the Temple of Mars ), the highest point in Paris and an 18th arrondissement street nearby
2976-504: Is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." The essay became a rallying cry for freethinkers when published in the 1870s, and has been described as a point when freethinkers grabbed the moral high ground. Clifford was himself an organizer of free thought gatherings, the driving force behind the Congress of Liberal Thinkers held in 1878. Regarding religion , freethinkers typically hold that there
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3072-550: The Collins English Dictionary , a freethinker is "One who is mentally free from the conventional bonds of tradition or dogma, and thinks independently." In some contemporary thought in particular, free thought is strongly tied with rejection of traditional social or religious belief systems. The cognitive application of free thought is known as "freethinking", and practitioners of free thought are known as "freethinkers". Modern freethinkers consider free thought to be
3168-481: The Abrahamic religions Christianity, Islam, and Judaism , while others are arguably less so, in particular folk religions , indigenous religions , and some Eastern religions . A portion of the world's population are members of new religious movements . Scholars have indicated that global religiosity may be increasing due to religious countries having generally higher birth rates. The study of religion comprises
3264-634: The Agnostic Journal and Secular Review , and shortly thereafter changed the name again to the Agnostic Journal and Eclectic Review . Ross died in November 1906 and the last issue was published in June 1907. Freethought A freethinker holds that beliefs should not be formed on the basis of authority , tradition , revelation , or dogma , and should instead be reached by other methods such as logic , reason , and empirical observation . According to
3360-566: The Church , and the literal belief in the Bible . The beliefs of these individuals were centered on the concept that people could understand the world through consideration of nature. Such positions were formally documented for the first time in 1697 by William Molyneux in a widely publicized letter to John Locke , and more extensively in 1713, when Anthony Collins wrote his Discourse of Free-thinking, which gained substantial popularity. This essay attacks
3456-452: The Sacré-Cœur is also named after Lefebvre de la Barre. The 19th century saw the emergence of a specific notion of Libre-Pensée ("free thought"), with writer Victor Hugo as one of its major early proponents. French Freethinkers ( Libre-Penseurs ) associate freedom of thought, political anti-clericalism and socialist leanings. The main organisation referring to this tradition to this day
3552-747: The Unitarian Universalist Association ) in 1955. D. M. Bennett was the founder and publisher of The Truth Seeker in 1873, a radical free thought and reform American periodical. German freethinker settlements were located in: Religion Antiquity Medieval Early modern Modern Iran India East-Asia Religion is a range of social - cultural systems , including designated behaviors and practices, morals , beliefs , worldviews , texts , sanctified places , prophecies , ethics , or organizations , that generally relate humanity to supernatural , transcendental , and spiritual elements —although there
3648-608: The Vrije Universiteit Brussel , along with the two Circles of Free Inquiry (Dutch and French speaking), defend the freedom of critical thought, lay philosophy and ethics , while rejecting the argument of authority . In 1873, a handful of secularists founded the earliest known secular organization in English Canada , the Toronto Freethought Association. Reorganized in 1877 and again in 1881, when it
3744-553: The medieval period . In the Quran, the Arabic word din is often translated as religion in modern translations, but up to the mid-1600s translators expressed din as "law". The Sanskrit word dharma , sometimes translated as religion, also means law. Throughout classical South Asia , the study of law consisted of concepts such as penance through piety and ceremonial as well as practical traditions . Medieval Japan at first had
3840-574: The origin of life , the universe , and other phenomena. Religious practices may include rituals , sermons , commemoration or veneration (of deities or saints ), sacrifices , festivals , feasts , trances , initiations , matrimonial and funerary services, meditation , prayer , music , art , dance , or public service . There are an estimated 10,000 distinct religions worldwide, though nearly all of them have regionally based, relatively small followings. Four religions— Christianity , Islam , Hinduism , and Buddhism —account for over 77% of
3936-527: The religion of Avys '". In classic antiquity, religiō broadly meant conscientiousness , sense of right , moral obligation , or duty to anything. In the ancient and medieval world, the etymological Latin root religiō was understood as an individual virtue of worship in mundane contexts; never as doctrine , practice, or actual source of knowledge . In general, religiō referred to broad social obligations towards anything including family, neighbors, rulers, and even towards God . Religiō
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4032-399: The "Oracle of The Div(in)e Bottle", he learns the lesson of life in one simple word: "Trinch!" , Drink! Enjoy the simple life, learn wisdom and knowledge, as a free human. Beyond puns, irony, and satire, Gargantua's prologue- metaphor instructs the reader to "break the bone and suck out the substance-full marrow" (" la substantifique moëlle "), the core of wisdom. The year 1600 is considered
4128-488: The 1500s to distinguish the domain of the church and the domain of civil authorities ; the Peace of Augsburg marks such instance, which has been described by Christian Reus-Smit as "the first step on the road toward a European system of sovereign states ." Roman general Julius Caesar used religiō to mean "obligation of an oath" when discussing captured soldiers making an oath to their captors. Roman naturalist Pliny
4224-611: The 19th century, free thought in the Netherlands has become more well known as a political phenomenon through at least three currents: liberal freethinking, conservative freethinking, and classical freethinking. In other words, parties which identify as freethinking tend to favor non-doctrinal, rational approaches to their preferred ideologies, and arose as secular alternatives to both clerically aligned parties as well as labor-aligned parties. Common themes among freethinking political parties are "freedom", "liberty", and " individualism ". With
4320-429: The 19th century. François-Jean Lefebvre de la Barre (1745–1766) was a young French nobleman, famous for having been tortured and beheaded before his body was burnt on a pyre along with Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary . La Barre is often said to have been executed for not saluting a Roman Catholic religious procession, but the elements of the case were far more complex. In France, Lefebvre de la Barre
4416-619: The Chinese (note for example the seafaring renaissance of the Southern Song dynasty of 1127–1279), on through heretical thinkers on esoteric alchemy or astrology , to the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation pioneered by Martin Luther . French physician and writer Rabelais celebrated "rabelaisian" freedom as well as good feasting and drinking (an expression and a symbol of freedom of
4512-520: The Elder used the term religiō to describe the apparent respect given by elephants to the night sky . Cicero used religiō as being related to cultum deorum (worship of the gods). In Ancient Greece , the Greek term threskeia ( θρησκεία ) was loosely translated into Latin as religiō in late antiquity . Threskeia was sparsely used in classical Greece but became more frequently used in
4608-558: The English language. Native Americans were also thought of as not having religions and also had no word for religion in their languages either. No one self-identified as a Hindu or Buddhist or other similar terms before the 1800s. "Hindu" has historically been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for people indigenous to the Indian subcontinent . Throughout its long history, Japan had no concept of religion since there
4704-519: The International of Proletarian Freethinkers (IPF) in 1925. Activists agitated for Germans to disaffiliate from their respective Church and for secularization of elementary schools; between 1919–1921 and 1930–1932 more than 2.5 million Germans, for the most part supporters of the Social Democratic and Communist parties, gave up church membership. Conflict developed between radical forces including
4800-552: The Nazis until the mid-1930s. In the 19th century, received opinion was scandalized by George Ensor (1769–1843). His Review of the Miracles, Prophecies, & Mysteries of the Old and New Testaments (1835) argued that, far from being a source of moral teaching, revealed religion and its divines regarded questions of morality as "incidental"--as a "mundane and merely philosophical" topic. In
4896-514: The Netherlands, free thought has existed in organized form since the establishment of De Dageraad (now known as De Vrije Gedachte ) in 1856. Among its most notable subscribing 19th century individuals were Johannes van Vloten , Multatuli , Adriaan Gerhard and Domela Nieuwenhuis . In 2009, Frans van Dongen established the Atheist-Secular Party, which takes a considerably restrictive view of religion and public religious expressions. Since
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#17328691896124992-795: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless and Social Democratic forces in Western Europe led by Theodor Hartwig and Max Sievers . In 1930 the Soviet and allied delegations, following a walk-out, took over the IPF and excluded the former leaders. Following Hitler's rise to power in 1933, most free thought organizations were banned, though some right-wing groups that worked with so-called Völkische Bünde (literally "ethnic" associations with nationalist, xenophobic and very often racist ideology) were tolerated by
5088-457: The Toronto association, T. Phillips Thompson , became a central figure in the city's labour and social-reform movements during the 1880s and 1890s and arguably Canada's foremost late nineteenth-century labour intellectual. By the early 1880s scattered free thought organizations operated throughout southern Ontario and parts of Quebec , eliciting both urban and rural support. The principal organ of
5184-750: The Turks read the Quran and think about it, they will leave Islam. Atatürk described Islam as the religion of the Arabs in his own work titled Vatandaş için Medeni Bilgiler by his own critical and nationalist views. Association of Atheism ( Ateizm Derneği ), the first official atheist organisation in Middle East and Caucasus, was founded in 2014. It serves to support irreligious people and freethinkers in Turkey who are discriminated against based on their views. In 2018 it
5280-653: The United States declined in the early twentieth century. By the early twentieth century, most freethought congregations had disbanded or joined other mainstream churches. The longest continuously operating freethought congregation in America is the Free Congregation of Sauk County, Wisconsin, which was founded in 1852 and is still active as of 2020 . It affiliated with the American Unitarian Association (now
5376-538: The West (or even in the West until after the Peace of Westphalia ). The MacMillan Encyclopedia of Religions states: The very attempt to define religion, to find some distinctive or possibly unique essence or set of qualities that distinguish the religious from the remainder of human life, is primarily a Western concern. The attempt is a natural consequence of the Western speculative, intellectualistic, and scientific disposition. It
5472-693: The abolition of slavery. The " Golden Age of Freethought " in the US came in the late 1800s. The dominant organization was the National Liberal League which formed in 1876 in Philadelphia. This group re-formed itself in 1885 as the American Secular Union under the leadership of the eminent agnostic orator Robert G. Ingersoll . Following Ingersoll's death in 1899 the organization declined, in part due to lack of effective leadership . Freethought in
5568-421: The adoption of the principles of a free-thinker." Freethinkers hold that knowledge should be grounded in facts, scientific inquiry , and logic. The skeptical application of science implies freedom from the intellectually limiting effects of confirmation bias , cognitive bias , conventional wisdom , popular culture , prejudice , or sectarianism . Atheist author Adam Lee defines free thought as thinking which
5664-422: The belief in spiritual beings exists in all known societies. In his book The Varieties of Religious Experience , the psychologist William James defined religion as "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine". By the term divine James meant "any object that is god like , whether it be
5760-430: The beliefs and traditions of Judaism are found in the ancient world, ancient Jews saw Jewish identity as being about an ethnic or national identity and did not entail a compulsory belief system or regulated rituals. In the 1st century CE, Josephus had used the Greek term ioudaismos (Judaism) as an ethnic term and was not linked to modern abstract concepts of religion or a set of beliefs. The very concept of "Judaism"
5856-646: The clergy of all churches and it is a plea for deism . The Freethinker magazine was first published in Britain in 1881; it continued in print until 2014, and still exists as a web-based publication. The freethought movement first organized itself in the United States as the "Free Press Association" in 1827 in defense of George Houston, publisher of The Correspondent , an early journal of Biblical criticism in an era when blasphemy convictions were still possible. Houston had helped found an Owenite community at Haverstraw, New York in 1826–27. The short-lived Correspondent
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#17328691896125952-601: The communication of supernatural beliefs, defining religion as: ... the communicated acceptance by individuals of another individual’s “supernatural” claim, a claim whose accuracy is not verifiable by the senses. Friedrich Schleiermacher in the late 18th century defined religion as das schlechthinnige Abhängigkeitsgefühl , commonly translated as "the feeling of absolute dependence". His contemporary Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel disagreed thoroughly, defining religion as "the Divine Spirit becoming conscious of Himself through
6048-410: The decline in church-going and general lack of interest in religion. "Churches no longer matter very much to most Australians. If there is a happy eternal life it's for everyone ... For many Australians the pleasures of this life are sufficiently satisfying that religion offers nothing of great appeal", said Horne in his landmark work The Lucky Country (1964). The Université Libre de Bruxelles and
6144-566: The fight to make access to abortion free and legal in Canada. In France, the concept first appeared in publication in 1765 when Denis Diderot , Jean le Rond d'Alembert , and Voltaire included an article on Liberté de penser in their Encyclopédie . The concept of free thought spread so widely that even places as remote as the Jotunheimen , in Norway , had well-known freethinkers such as Jo Gjende by
6240-450: The finite spirit." Edward Burnett Tylor defined religion in 1871 as "the belief in spiritual beings". He argued that narrowing the definition to mean the belief in a supreme deity or judgment after death or idolatry and so on, would exclude many peoples from the category of religious, and thus "has the fault of identifying religion rather with particular developments than with the deeper motive which underlies them". He also argued that
6336-784: The first national freethinkers organization, the "United States Moral and Philosophical Society for the General Diffusion of Useful Knowledge". It was founded on August 1, 1836, at a national convention at the Lyceum in Saratoga Springs with Isaac S. Smith of Buffalo , New York, as president. Smith was also the 1836 Equal Rights Party 's candidate for Governor of New York and had also been the Workingmen's Party candidate for Lt. Governor of New York in 1830. The Moral and Philosophical Society published The Beacon , edited by Gilbert Vale. Driven by
6432-600: The free thought movement in Canada was Secular Thought (Toronto, 1887–1911). Founded and edited during its first several years by English freethinker Charles Watts (1835–1906), it came under the editorship of Toronto printer and publisher James Spencer Ellis in 1891 when Watts returned to England. In 1968 the Humanist Association of Canada (HAC) formed to serve as an umbrella group for humanists, atheists, and freethinkers, and to champion social justice issues and oppose religious influence on public policy—most notably in
6528-422: The furtherance of knowledge . Generally, freethinkers like to think for themselves, tend to be skeptical, respect critical thinking and reason, remain open to new concepts, and are sometimes proud of their own individuality . They would determine truth for themselves – based upon knowledge they gain, answers they receive, experiences they have and the balance they thus acquire. Freethinkers reject conformity for
6624-558: The introduction of cantonal church taxes in the 1870s, anti-clericals began to organise themselves. Around 1870, a "freethinkers club" was founded in Zürich . During the debate on the Zürich church law in 1883, professor Friedrich Salomon Vögelin and city council member Kunz proposed to separate church and state . In the last years of the Ottoman Empire , free thought made its voice heard by
6720-579: The late 1800s. The reasoning behind the pansy as the symbol of free thought lies both in the flower's name and in its appearance. The pansy derives its name from the French word pensée , which means "thought". It allegedly received this name because the flower is perceived by some to bear resemblance to a human face, and in mid-to-late summer it nods forward as if deep in thought. In the 1880s, following examples set by freethinkers in France, Belgium, Spain and Sweden, it
6816-424: The linguistic expressions, emotions and, actions and signs that refer to a supernatural being or supernatural beings. Peter Mandaville and Paul James intended to get away from the modernist dualisms or dichotomous understandings of immanence/transcendence, spirituality/materialism, and sacredness/secularity. They define religion as: ... a relatively-bounded system of beliefs, symbols and practices that addresses
6912-450: The mind) in defiance of the hypocrisies of conformist orthodoxy in his utopian Thelema Abbey (from θέλημα: free "will"), the device of which was Do What Thou Wilt : So had Gargantua established it. In all their rule and strictest tie of their order there was but this one clause to be observed, Do What Thou Wilt; because free people ... act virtuously and avoid vice. They call this honor. When Rabelais's hero Pantagruel journeys to
7008-583: The nature of existence, and in which communion with others and Otherness is lived as if it both takes in and spiritually transcends socially-grounded ontologies of time, space, embodiment and knowing. According to the MacMillan Encyclopedia of Religions , there is an experiential aspect to religion which can be found in almost every culture: ... almost every known culture [has] a depth dimension in cultural experiences ... toward some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for
7104-428: The possibility of a definition. Others argue that regardless of its definition, it is not appropriate to apply it to non-Western cultures. An increasing number of scholars have expressed reservations about ever defining the essence of religion. They observe that the way the concept today is used is a particularly modern construct that would not have been understood through much of history and in many cultures outside
7200-419: The rest of life. When more or less distinct patterns of behavior are built around this depth dimension in a culture, this structure constitutes religion in its historically recognizable form. Religion is the organization of life around the depth dimensions of experience—varied in form, completeness, and clarity in accordance with the environing culture. Anthropologists Lyle Steadman and Craig T. Palmer emphasized
7296-504: The revolutions of 1848 in the German states, the 19th century saw an immigration of German freethinkers and anti-clericalists to the United States (see Forty-Eighters ). In the United States, they hoped to be able to live by their principles, without interference from government and church authorities. Many Freethinkers settled in German immigrant strongholds, including St. Louis , Indianapolis , Wisconsin , and Texas , where they founded
7392-488: The sake of conformity, whereby they create their own beliefs by considering the way the world around them works and would possess the intellectual integrity and courage to think outside of accepted norms , which may or may not lead them to believe in some higher power . The pansy serves as the long-established and enduring symbol of free thought; literature of the American Secular Union inaugurated its usage in
7488-413: The term superstitio (which meant too much fear or anxiety or shame) to religiō at times. When religiō came into English around the 1200s as religion, it took the meaning of "life bound by monastic vows" or monastic orders. The compartmentalized concept of religion, where religious and worldly things were separated, was not used before the 1500s. The concept of religion was first used in
7584-555: The town of Comfort , Texas, as well as others. These groups of German Freethinkers referred to their organizations as Freie Gemeinden , or "free congregations". The first Freie Gemeinde was established in St. Louis in 1850. Others followed in Pennsylvania, California, Washington, D.C., New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, Texas, and other states. Freethinkers tended to be liberal, espousing ideals such as racial, social, and sexual equality, and
7680-400: The way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought he finds a balance of evidence in their favour, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem. A freethinker, according to Russell,
7776-466: The word to describe their own belief system. The concept of "ancient religion" stems from modern interpretations of a range of practices that conform to a modern concept of religion, influenced by early modern and 19th century Christian discourse. The concept of religion was formed in the 16th and 17th centuries, despite the fact that ancient sacred texts like the Bible , the Quran , and others did not have
7872-463: The works of distinguished people such as Ahmet Rıza , Tevfik Fikret , Abdullah Cevdet , Kılıçzade Hakkı, and Celal Nuri İleri . These intellectuals affected the early period of the Turkish Republic . Mustafa Kemal Atatürk – field marshal , revolutionary statesman, author, and founder of the secular Turkish nation state , serving as its first President from 1923 until his death in 1938–
7968-502: The world's population, and 92% of the world either follows one of those four religions or identifies as nonreligious , meaning that the remaining 9,000+ faiths account for only 8% of the population combined. The religiously unaffiliated demographic includes those who do not identify with any particular religion, atheists , and agnostics , although many in the demographic still have various religious beliefs. Many world religions are also organized religions , most definitively including
8064-400: The writings of Josephus in the 1st century CE. It was used in mundane contexts and could mean multiple things from respectful fear to excessive or harmfully distracting practices of others, to cultic practices. It was often contrasted with the Greek word deisidaimonia , which meant too much fear. Religion is a modern concept. The concept was invented recently in the English language and
8160-439: The writings of, for example, Frederick Ferré who defined religion as "one's way of valuing most comprehensively and intensively". Similarly, for the theologian Paul Tillich , faith is "the state of being ultimately concerned", which "is itself religion. Religion is the substance, the ground, and the depth of man's spiritual life." When religion is seen in terms of sacred, divine, intensive valuing, or ultimate concern, then it
8256-506: Was edited during the period 1882–1906 by William Stewart Ross (1844–1906), who signed himself "Saladin." The journal was founded in August 1876 by George Jacob Holyoake , after he and George William Foote experienced difficulties with their collaborative editorship of the Secularist: A Liberal Weekly Review (1876–1877). In February 1877, Charles Watts assumed the editorship. A new series
8352-540: Was invented by the Christian Church , and it was in the 19th century that Jews began to see their ancestral culture as a religion analogous to Christianity. The Greek word threskeia , which was used by Greek writers such as Herodotus and Josephus, is found in the New Testament . Threskeia is sometimes translated as "religion" in today's translations, but the term was understood as generic "worship" well into
8448-434: Was most often used by the ancient Romans not in the context of a relation towards gods, but as a range of general emotions which arose from heightened attention in any mundane context such as hesitation , caution, anxiety , or fear , as well as feelings of being bound, restricted, or inhibited. The term was also closely related to other terms like scrupulus (which meant "very precisely"), and some Roman authors related
8544-515: Was no corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its meaning, but when American warships appeared off the coast of Japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese government to sign treaties demanding, among other things, freedom of religion, the country had to contend with this idea. According to the philologist Max Müller in the 19th century, the root of the English word religion, the Latin religiō ,
8640-424: Was originally used to mean only reverence for God or the gods, careful pondering of divine things, piety (which Cicero further derived to mean diligence). Müller characterized many other cultures around the world, including Egypt, Persia, and India, as having a similar power structure at this point in history. What is called ancient religion today, they would have only called law. Scholars have failed to agree on
8736-582: Was proposed in the United States as "the symbol of religious liberty and freedom of conscience". Critical thought has flourished in the Hellenistic Mediterranean, in the repositories of knowledge and wisdom in Ireland and in the Iranian civilizations (for example in the era of Khayyam (1048–1131) and his unorthodox Sufi Rubaiyat poems). Later societies made advances on freedom of thought such as
8832-557: Was renamed the Toronto Secular Society, the group formed the nucleus of the Canadian Secular Union, established in 1884 to bring together freethinkers from across the country. A significant number of the early members appear to have come from the educated labour "aristocracy", including Alfred F. Jury, J. Ick Evans and J. I. Livingstone, all of whom were leading labour activists and secularists. The second president of
8928-510: Was reported in some media outlets that the Ateizm Derneği would close down because of the pressure on its members and attacks by pro-government media, but the association itself issued a clarification that this was not the case and that it was still active. The term freethinker emerged towards the end of the 17th century in England to describe those who stood in opposition to the institution of
9024-579: Was started in June 1877, merging it with Foote's Secularist , under joint editorship, to form the Secular Review and Secularist . Foote served as co-editor with Watts until March 1878, after which Watts edited the paper on his own until 1882. William Stewart Ross joined Watts as co-editor in January 1882 and assumed sole editorship in July 1884, using the pseudonym "Saladin". In December 1888, Ross rechristened it
9120-783: Was superseded by the Free Enquirer , the official organ of Robert Owen 's New Harmony community in Indiana, edited by Robert Dale Owen and by Fanny Wright between 1828 and 1832 in New York. During this time Robert Dale Owen sought to introduce the philosophic skepticism of the Free Thought movement into the Workingmen's Party in New York City. The Free Enquirer' s annual civic celebrations of Paine's birthday after 1825 finally coalesced in 1836 in
9216-550: Was the practitioner of their ideas. He made many reforms that modernized the country. Sources point out that Atatürk was a religious skeptic and a freethinker. He was a non-doctrinaire deist or an atheist , who was antireligious and anti-Islamic in general. According to Atatürk, the Turkish people do not know what Islam really is and do not read the Quran . People are influenced by Arabic sentences that they do not understand, and because of their customs they go to mosques. When
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