The only true freethinkers are agnostic freethinkers.

That is the beauty of being a freethinker. We can think for ourselves.

As such, when we get a toolbox we can decide which tools to use for the job. Some tools are used a lot, other tools are left alone for the time being, and still others are trashed when we see they are broken and useless.

Again, a freethinker is 'free to decide' how they wish to proceed.

Just be careful of falling into the trap of 'mind manacled freethinker' as many ego based people fall into.

The prejudiced, blind, small minded thinker cannot entertain freethought as they must block or censor the ideas and concepts before testing them for truth.

Their ego will not allow it! Such people do not operate on truth, they operate on ego. There is nothing wrong with having personal opinions, but when we use these opinions to destroy others, then it does become very wrong.

The difference between an authority and an authoritarian is this.

An authority speaks from a place of truth and such speaks as an authority. Whereas an authoritarian rules by fear and not by truth. For the truth stands on it own and the authoritarian stands on their EGO.

No, egocentricity is not good for spiritual work and we need to be open to others ideas and embrace them as nourishment for your growth and sustenance for life - as no one person is God.

Traditional freethinkers (atheists) do not accept me as one of their group, since I draw from spiritual paths as well as wordily areas to garner wisdom to live at peace. Traditional freethinkers do not like anything that comes from religion.

Kind of a misnomer isn't it...I'm a freethinker...but I must block out everything that comes from religion and spiritual traditions and whatever other prejudice I wish to inject into the equation?

Psychologist William James once said, "A great many people believe they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."

When we limit prejudice we can open our minds to truth and peace. And realize the truth of Blake's words that "all deities reside within the human breast." 

If it is religion that an atheists need to adopt, they only have to look as far as the religion of humanity. But just paying secular humanism lip service will not do any good.

Our talk of spiritual values must match our actions.

I was at a religious discussion where the group was composed of a wide spectrum of believers and non believers. One atheist said he ran his life by the golden rule. Another person piped up that the golden rule came from the bible, which made the atheist wince.

The atheist seemed to take pride in his self sufficiency and did not like to run his life by anything that came out of the bible. When it came up that the concept of golden rule might be from an earlier source than the bible, the atheist was relieved.

This was a good reminder to me to examine where my guiding light resides? Is it ego based or truth based?

When the guiding light of this atheist was not grounded in the bible he was happy. But when it came from an area that he did not like, he was upset.

How can the same material be used to build a palace by one man, yet only build a hovel for another? By one spiritual practitioner seeing truth and applying it to live a life at peace. And the other person only seeing prejudice and problems and doing nothing.

Every religion was made by man and as such every religion is imperfect as it is run by man. Despite these imperfections, each religion also has many "perfection's" within it as well.

We can still be open to peace generating tools from any of the religions and spiritual traditions that are available to us if we are serious about being at peace. This requires us to run our life by truth and not by prejudice.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said: “Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them” (Matthew 7:12). Nowadays this verse is commonly referred to as “The Golden Rule,” and is more commonly quoted as: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Here are some of the earliest sources for this concept of reciprocity

~1970-1640 BCE "Do for one who may do for you, / That you may cause him thus to do." - The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant 109-110, Ancient Egypt, tr. R.B. Parkinson.

* ~700 BCE "That nature only is good when it shall not do unto another whatever is not good for its own self." - Dadistan-i-Dinik 94:5, Zoroastrianism.

* ? BCE "Whatever is disagreeable to yourself do not do unto others." - Shayast-na-Shayast 13:29, Zoroastrianism.

* ~550 BCE "You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your countrymen. Love your fellow as yourself: I am the LORD." - Tanakh, new JPS translation, Leviticus 19:18, Judaism.

* ~500 BCE "Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful." - Udana-Varga 5:18, Buddhism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethic_of_reciprocity

Now, whether you believe in God or believe in Jesus or are an atheist or Buddhist does this wisdom not apply to you? This truth is universal in nature as it is based not on being of a certain religion, other than that of the religion of humanity.

In this case, you can adopt a peace generating tool and apply it to your life irrespective of your religious beliefs or lack thereof.

I had to chuckle one time when an atheist argued that the golden rule is not perfect, so he said he does not follow it. When I questioned him about what he does follow as well as the state of perfection that applied to his life, all he could do was reply with profanities and attacks on me.

Those that can't argue truth...argue personalities.

If we are waiting for perfection when it comes to spiritual studies we will always be disappointed. Before applying perfection to anything outside of us, we should examine the perfection within us.

The nature of humans is that of imperfection, so we must always look towards direction and forget perfection.

I heard a story one time in a Yoga lecture that illustrates this point. "Range is of the ego - Form is of the soul." The only thing we need to be concerned with is how is our form when it comes to our spiritual practice and our life.

Regarding the golden rule? It is more perfect than imperfect, so it is a most useful tool to live a life at peace by.

And when we combine it with other tools such as universality, natural law, contrast the greater good with the greater right, etc the synergistic effect is close to perfection as humans can get with this subject.

But it takes some thinking and one will not see it without an open mind. Wisdom for living a life at peace is all around us for the taking. But many of us get blinded with labels and personal prejudices.

Whenever we take it upon ourselves to beat down, we are headed in a direction of destroying peace. We destroy our own peace as well as others peace. As such, I practice from many religious and spiritual traditions without problems or prejudices and readily look for such gifts irrespective of what label they come under - on the contrary I am most grateful wherever I find them.

If I am not able to use a concept, I leave it alone, but do not spend my time or energies to beat others down.

Do we like to be beaten down?

I saw some paintings in a Japanese museum that showed a cousin of the Buddha being of great power and to show his strength he went up to a baby elephant and pushed it down to the ground. A second painting showed the Buddha helping this baby elephant back up to his feet and the Buddha lifted the elephant high up over his head and said, "It is much better to uplift - than to tear down."

Whether this is a true story or not I do not know. But we can all benefit from uplifting rather than destroying.

I see this predisposition to destruction many times in responses I receive from my posts. The critiques offer much in the line of 'no goods' but they seldom do they offer any substantive tools to finding peace. Maybe I do not have it '100% right' but I have it 'right enough' to be able to be at peace if I apply these principles. If I waited for perfection, I would never act. I use the tools at hand.

Aristotle ~ "It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible."

This being able to 'rest satisfied' is something the perfectionists lack and why they will never be at peace until they stop collecting concepts and start using the concepts of peace generations.

The atheist I mentioned above demonstrated this with his blanket dismissal of the golden rule since it is not 100% perfect. He could offer no substitutes for the golden rule, all he could do was succumb to personal attacks on me. We can examine our writing to see what useful tools for finding peace we offer to others it also says a lot about our own practice of generating inner peace.

When you practice peace promotion with others you will reap inner peace promotion. When you practice destroying others peace, you will reap self destruction of inner peace. This is the truth when the prejudice of ego is stripped away.

Whether atheists, theists or Buddhists, I submit that you all drop the pretense and lies that you have been grasping onto for entire life and rebuild your life through a foundation of truth and testing and regenerate yourselves into a truth based agnostic freethinker.



Take care,
 
 
V (Male)
 
Agnostic Freethinker
Practical Philosopher

This statement sounds like those Christians who wave their magic wands at stuff with their, ‘only true Christians.’
Freethinkers come in many flavors and to dismiss them because they are not agnostic is simply dishonest.
Sadly, you seem to be generalizing a small group of atheists you have encountered or believe with the majority.
I am an atheist and I do not care if you draw from ‘spiritual’ paths and I do not discredit you as a freethinker. I might not agree with you on certain subjects like your ‘spiritual’ paths but, again I do not shun you. I do not concur with your statement about not liking ‘anything’ that comes from religion. I simply know the roots of religion and mythos and place it in the right BOX.

I call you to get off your high horse and just be a freethinker.

I would say what makes you a free thinker is whether or not you think freely (check my logic). 

The ancient questions about how the universe came to be, why are we here, what is the purpose, etc. are matters for the individual to answer based on their own life experiences, subjective views and gut instincts.  What's most important is that we have the courage and freedom to pursue our own answers and always be willing to question instead of taking things on someone else's say-so. 

Agnosticism is a statement of lack of knowledge.  In many cases, people can reach agnosticism not through free thought, but in fact, through no thought.  People who are not born into religion, and therefore do not go through any questioning stage, might define themselves as agnostics, and rightly so, because they "don't know" whether there is a god or not (and in many cases, they don't really care to find out).  Agnosticism is an opposite of gnosis - or knowledge.  Gnosis does not imply knowledge of everything, it would be absurd to think that it does, but it does imply at least a search for knowledge.  Agnosis or agnosticism can imply ignorance of the problem, and a certain apathy as to its solution (although admittedly, not necessarily). 

That is not to say that there cannot be agnostic freethinkers.  I agree that people coming from a religious background often pass through agnosticism, because it is a place that allows them to give their religious doubts room, without totally abandoning religion.  In this way, they are thinking freely, at least, more freely, perhaps, than they were when they were "shackled" by religion.  But are they the 'only true freethinkers'?

One of the problems with statements such as "the only true" is that it implies that there is a single truth.  That is problematic because truth is a relative concept.  All religions, for instance, may be considered true, for any given value of 'true'.   

Furthermore, the concept of anything being the "only true" version of such concept, is pistic - or purist - in nature.  In the history of religion, the pistic variety - which is always more rigid, less flexible, with greater emphasis on doing without asking, rather than on seeking personal truths - has tended to triumph over the gnostic variety - which encourages thought, questioning, knowledge.   I submit that agnosticism, by definition, cannot be gnostic, although that does not necessarily make it purist.  On the other hand, atheism, which can be gnostic, can also be pistic.  Pistic atheism is the sort that says that nothing good can come from religion.  Gnostic atheists, I think, see through that argument, and whilst they agree that there is, as a matter of fact, no god or supreme being, they realise that humanity, in order to reach its current state of awareness of the world, probably had to go through a religious stage (or stages). 

So while I agree that there might be atheists who do not think freely and who are bound by their own dogmas (i.e., the argument that there is no god, therefore all religion is bad, therefore everything that originated out of religion is bad), I think that there are others who are able to get past that purist form, to a gnostic form whose atheism is based on knowledge - or the search for knowledge - rather than doctrine.

Surely they are freethinking atheists?

"The only true freethinkers are agnostic freethinkers."

Hate to break it to you but agnostics ARE atheists.

In regards to belief in a deity, you either have them, or you don't.  If you claim that you don't have enough knowledge, or that the knowledge can never be known, the fact remains that you still don't believe in a deity.

I realize that the popular definition of atheism is one who DISbelieves or declares that there is no god, but I think the distinction is little different from simply not having the belief.  It's knowing whether or not you have the belief.  Babies for example, are atheists.  They don't know it.  They still lack belief in god though. 

I Agree

Im an Agnostic is a polite way of saying I dismiss all your bullshit and am an atheist Cunt destined to burn in Hell (beating CW to the punch).

 

Reminds me of a bit by Bill Hicks: 

"You're goin' ta hell boy!"

"Well, I AM in Oklahoma!"

"An agnostic is basically an atheist without any balls." ~ Stephen Colbert

Or another quote:

"Hello Devil, welcome to Hell."
- Hornbeck to Drumond, welcoming him to "Heavenly Hillsboro" in "Inherit the Wind".

I think that more or less describes the issue at hand fairly well.  Atheists are just as guilty of irrationality as anyone else, I've met plenty that followed the fallacious reasoning of "Religion is bad, everything that came out of religion is bad."  I term that "strong atheism," with agnosticism being "weak atheism."  Really, they're both the same, but the prefix "a" in atheism and agnosticism is much more truthfully translated as "without." 

In my own case, the god question is irrelevant.  I have no need to invoke a deity in any explanation, and I don't see the need to preach this to others.  If god is irrelevant to me, why spend so much time arguing about it?  I recognize science's limits in answering questions and welcome philosophy as long as it also allows for observation and empiricism.  I prefer to make sure that both theists and atheists actually *understand* the scientific method and why there are some questions that it cannot be used to answer.

Why? Because he doesn´t follow atheist disbelief in the same way a fundi follows his belief?

Why? Because he doesn´t follow atheist disbelief in the same way a fundi follows his belief??  

Agnosticism is more or less PC atheism.  You can say that you 'don't know,' but the fact of the matter is that the person in question still "lacks" belief in a deity. 

I don't think it should be any surprise that from my perspective, the agnostic stands midway between the deist and atheist.  It's the same way "don't know" is between "maybe so" and "probably not". 

Hm... depends on what you mean by "agnostic". Colloquially, it's taken on connotations of "dunno". Huxley, who coined the term, was actually more... aggressive? He was going against the idea of "gnosis". More or less "revelatory knowledge". The agnostic rejecting any "knowledge" that is not derived via reason and evidence.

Funny thing being that in Huxley's terms, agnosticism is actually more strident than atheism. Atheism is simple lack of belief. It's actually trivially true that my dogs are atheist. Not a useful bit of information but it's true they don't believe in any gods (unless you count He Who Dispenses The Doggie Treats as being their god but they have actual evidence I exist  ).

Agnosticism per Huxley denies "knowledge of god" even exists. It's more than "I don't know", it's "and neither do you".

I guess you could say that people who take the "I don't know" position are agnostic per se by not claiming knowledge of any gods but it's, oh, more of a "naive" agnosticism (not using the word in any insulting manner by the way).

I'm personally more Huxleyian (if that's a word) agnostic. I don't accept people can "know" gods exist by some mystical revelatory knowledge. I expect actual hard evidence before I would accept there is "knowledge" of such a critter.

Of course this is all splitting hairs (but everybody needs a hobby eh?). And people who don't care whether I believe their god concept or not don't have to care. I had a pagan roommate for seven years. His beliefs were his beliefs and we got along very well. Probably the closest friend I've had in my entire life (he passed away a year and a half ago at a tragically young age, still miss him, especially his humor).

And speaking of things trivial, this is all why I tend to refer to myself as agnostic atheist since "atheist" as a modifier is clunky...