BellaOnline Forums Religion and Spirituality Atheist Random Thoughts

If you're in TN right now, you're covering your ears as the 13 yr cycle of the cicada has come again! They're so loud and get tangled in your hair and cats and dogs can't resist eating these big ol' things!

January 29th is celebrated as Tom Paine Day in honor of that famous Freethinker. In fact, it is also known as Common Sense Day and Freethinkers Day.

What if there was one day set aside to celebrate all of the famous and important freethinkers of the world, past and present, who would you include?

As a reminder, here is a decent working definition of FREETHOUGHT: The belief that opinions should be formed through a consistent critical thinking process that evaluates ideas, theories, and concepts on the basis of science, logic, and reason and not by dogma, authority, or tradition.

To start this off, I propose that my favorite CD's be included, Charles Darwin and Clarence Darrow. For some reason I did not include (in a freethinking sort of way) Claire Danes as it would help if I knew who she was before making a determination.

If anybody proposes Margaret Thatcher, Sara Palin, and or Ronald Reagan please exit stage right and keep on going...... as the Spinning Forum might be more appropriate for you.

Adding to the FREETHINKERS LIST is somebody that I was planning to write an article about but...

EMILE DURKHEIM

Anybody know who he was?
I was introduced to him my freshman year of college in a ______ class and he has remained with me since.

I hope someone aks me at this point in time why I keep adding posts/names in semi-rapid succession so...

Another for sure FREETHINKER or two or three.

Benjamin Franklin
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emily Dickinson

Please remember one need not be an agnostic, atheist, or Deist to "qualify" as a freethinker.

is it safe???

FREETHINKERS

Voltaire
Henry David Thoreau

Nope, it wasn't and perhaps isn't yet really safe yet so...
There is just no way that this forum can compete with the likes of "Dog Talk" and "Fibroids" let alone "Hot Flashes." lol

FREETHINKERS

H.L. Mencken
Isaac Asimov


P.S. If all these posts today are getting on your nerves, do as I am doing and blame mother nature as it has been too windy here for the last two days for me to go birding. Alas, the natural Fates are conspiring against me!

FREETHINKERS

Abraham Lincoln
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison

Freethinker-Robert Anson Heinlein

Thanks Connie,

From what I know about Heinlein he was an iconoclast and a freethinker (I just wish that he had not been an apologist for McCarthyism- a subject that I had made an academic career out of for a while).

FREETHINKER

Ayn Rand

I found the below article from the London Telegraph to be pretty simplistic and without too much value as it seems to contradict itself. Reader Beware! As for the study itself, I am agnostic about it because I have not read it in its entirety. As for me, as I have written before, I think that religion is a human ego defense mechanism similar to denial and rationalization. I also think that belief in a supreme being is the supreme and ultimate form of human hubris.

What do you think of the article?

At any rate, (see bolded section) I always did believe that my mother was omniscient as she always seemed to know what I was thinking and what I had done without her direct knowledge but that she was no god as no god would ever make me eat lumpy cold mashed potatoes- Ya, it was only one time but...!

Belief in God is part of human nature - Oxford study

by Tim Ross, Religious Affairs Editor THE TELEGRAPH

8:17PM BST 12 May 2011

Led by two academics at Oxford University, the �1.9 million study found that human thought processes were �rooted� to religious concepts.

But people living in cities in highly developed countries were less likely to hold religious beliefs than those living a more rural way of life, the researchers found.

The project involved 57 academics in 20 countries around the world, and spanned disciplines including anthropology, psychology, and philosophy.

It set out to establish whether belief in divine beings and an afterlife were ideas simply learned from society or integral to human nature.

One of the studies, from Oxford, concluded that children below the age of five found it easier to believe in some �superhuman� properties than to understand human limitations.

Children were asked whether their mother would know the contents of a closed box. Three-year-olds believed that their mother and God would always know the contents, but by the age of four, children start to understand that their mothers were not omniscient.

Separate research from China suggested that people across different cultures instinctively believed that some part of their mind, soul or spirit lived on after death.

The co-director of the project, Professor Roger Trigg, from the University of Oxford, said the research showed that religion was �not just something for a peculiar few to do on Sundays instead of playing golf�.

�We have gathered a body of evidence that suggests that religion is a common fact of human nature across different societies,� he said.

�This suggests that attempts to suppress religion are likely to be short-lived as human thought seems to be rooted to religious concepts, such as the existence of supernatural agents or gods, and the possibility of an afterlife or pre-life.�

Dr Justin Barrett, from the University of Oxford�s Centre for Anthropology and Mind, who directed the project, said faith may persist in diverse cultures across the world because people who share the bonds of religion �might be more likely to cooperate as societies�.

�Interestingly, we found that religion is less likely to thrive in populations living in cities in developed nations where there is already a strong social support network.�