@ Chuck:

Atheists are no more free thinkers than anyone else. The self promotion is laughable.

'Free' does not entail reflecting the view of the majority in popular culture (movies, Internet, society).
'Thinking' doesn't usually infer a position from ignorance of something that you claim to be 'thinking' about.

---

@ Whateverist

I think It's no accident that the majority of Jesus's ministry is correcting misinterpretation. I completely agree with your observations. If I thought that about God then I wouldn't believe either.

(June 26, 2011 at 4:18 am)fr0d0 Wrote: @ Chuck:

Atheists are no more free thinkers than anyone else. The self promotion is laughable.

'Free' does not entail reflecting the view of the majority in popular culture (movies, Internet, society).
'Thinking' doesn't usually infer a position from ignorance of something that you claim to be 'thinking' about.

I must say that I am not surprised with you engaging in semantics on a word that is actually a TITLE, and not merely the most base and root reason for the word.

If that were true, then Christians can rightfully be accused of worshipping waffles, or breakfast cereal, or anyone who had water poured on them as the word "Christian" means "follower of christ". "Christ" means "Annointed one". "Annointed" means "to pour or smear with perfumed oil, milk, water, melted butter or other substances, a process employed ritually by many religions."

So christians follow hookers and muffins (annointed with perfume and butter). They follow anything that is annointed... isnt that true Frodo...that is EXACTLY what the word "Christian" means.

If a hooker puts perfume on herself everyday, then that EASILY fits into the bare basice meaning of "religious". If that is so then since it is religiously done one can easily make the "annointed" claim.



feel free to keep up the semantics game..I love playing it

Are you arguing with me or Chuck Revsie?

Why are we arguing about being a "free-thinker"? Are we arguing that only atheists are free thinkers? If you use it to describe that you do not believe in god, then just use atheist. If you did the shopping mall test and ran out and yelled " I AM A FREE-THINKER!" most people wouldn't assume right away that you are atheist. But if you ran out and yelled "I'M ATHEIST" people would understand what you are better than saying "Free-Thinker". Since the word free-thinker isn't really renowned for applying that somebody is an atheist, or doesn't believe in god than the term "Free-thinker" doesn't automatically refer to being an atheist. But being a free thinker is holding a is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or any other dogma. But the term "opinions" means a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge. When referring to free thinker it doesn't necessarily refer to all opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason; so one could say "what is tomorrow?", and you could reply "Tuesday" because the current day is Monday without any religious dogma influencing your statement because you based it on a fact and knowledge. So anyone can be a free thinker unless they let religion influence their philosophical viewpoint. And if you let your philosophical viewpoints get influenced by religion or any other dogma it is considered Cognitive dissonance. It occurs when a thought or idea conflicts with other thoughts, ideas, or beliefs in our mind. So as I said before, that if you use the term "free-thinker" to describe yourself as an atheist; than don't use it because it implies other material other than just being atheist whilst atheist just means a person who does not believe in the existence of God or gods. If you only used atheist instead of free-thinker, you wouldn't have someone making a post complaining about why he isn't aloud to be a free thinker, just because of religion; mainly because being religious means that you are not "atheist".

Hope that helps.

(June 24, 2011 at 1:24 pm)TheologicalThinker1 Wrote: That Christians, and anyone who isn't an Atheist for that matter, is not a 'Free' Thinker. I may believe in Christianity, but that doesn't mean I'm not a free thinker! I made a choice to be a Christian which means I freely chose to be one. I was not forced to be one. Even as a Christian I can freely think. Can someone explain to me how the term 'Free' Thinker only applies to Atheists?

Professing your Christianity precludes your being equally titled as a free thinker, by definition.

Christianity isn't rational. Religion isn't rational. You freely choose to be a Christian however, that simply means you selected a elitist religion to hold faith in. Faith is hope the doctrine is true. However faith precludes fact. And the doctrine of Christianity at it's most basic asks the believer in it to be saved from the god they worship. To be redeemed from the infinite curse that god applied because he chose not to forgive a finite transgression by the first of our kind.

And all the days of your life you are in deficit for being born a sinner, separated from your god in the womb by the barrier he erected before the dawn of your time.
Your god created hell, in the event you fail to find redemption in the blood of himself who suffered and died to change the rule of certain irredeemable damnation that he created himself, prior to becoming the demi-god Jesus. Your god created Heaven that has a gate! And a book of life wherein the names of those let past are printed. Failing that those un-named yet saved, burn for eternity. And it's all made possible by the god that created it all to be and for his entertainment. Because an omniscient power can not be ignorant of the destiny that awaited the first of our kind in the garden he created to have two tree's bearing damnable fruit within. And an omnipresent supreme being would have watched as those two he created without intellect did follow the path his will set before them. And an omnipotent Deity would have never permitted his antithesis, his adversary in serpent skin access into what could have never been paradise, if it is decreed a sin to tempt the lord thy god and yet divine right to tempt the mortals thy god created without the intelligence to make an informed choice. So that when yet another voice instructed Eve as to what was able to be done, she obeyed as she had when listening to that creators voice who's shape and form was never before her eyes.

While an omni-benevolent god refused to forgive but instead levied an eternal curse upon all the generations to come after, as souls born from heaven and god's will, into the cursed flesh of his making.

Worship of that icon responsible for that scenario is irrational. Christianity is Maltheism. Free thought see's it for what it is, and does not oblige the myth to be lived as truth.







And the good news remains; there is always Taffy.

Freethinker is a self-imposed title. Never take those seriously.

(June 26, 2011 at 9:31 pm)FaithNoMore Wrote: Freethinker is a self-imposed title. Never take those seriously.

Also frequently used by those who cannot/will not think as a term of abuse.

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TANGENT

Min:while I think of it:here we say and write the slang for anus as 'arsehole'. Of course if one wants to sound less vulgar,one uses 'sphincter' as an acceptable approximation.i

(June 25, 2011 at 4:10 pm)reverendjeremiah Wrote: Im an atheist..if I walk into church and participate with the congregants, does that make me a Christian? If I agree that "do unto others" is a good code to live by, does that make me religious?

"Do unto others" is a crap code to live by.
If you're a masochist, I categorically prohibit you to beat me, because you hope thereby I will "do unto you."
If you harm none, do what you want is a better code, but Christians would have to become Wiccans for that one (and pitch the idea only a holy book can tell them how they should behave, rather than doing it out of an innate desire to do good). But the others will "do unto them" with a marshmallow roast as witches.
James

(June 26, 2011 at 9:31 pm)FaithNoMore Wrote: Freethinker is a self-imposed title. Never take those seriously.

Considering free thinker is a term synonymous with skeptic, agnostic and atheist, never is a very long time.

In the town I used to live, I purchased the local newspaper one day and opened to the OpEd page (the daily fights page).

In it, there was a letter written by a sixteen-year-old daughter of a father county judge and mother lawyer, exhorting readers to boycott the only coffee shop in the downtown area. That town's downtown is struggling; the coffee shop was new and the owner specifically picked the downtown area to open in. He was concerned about downtown decay and the best way to fight that is new businesses.

She pilloried the business for holding a "free-thinkers'" meeting in the store during business hours, giving free food and drink to the meeting, making it a supporter of atheism and therefore an inappropriate venue for good Christians to spend their money.

I pointed the article out to my wife. We had not heard of this freethinkers' meeting, and by this Christian teen advertising its existence on the OpEd page of the paper, she gave the meeting free advert copy.

So my wife and I called the shop, and attended the next meeting.

Then I wrote a letter to the paper in response to the teen, pointing out the inconsistencies (the freethinkers' group met after the store closed, they paid for all their food and drink), the fact that by railing against the coffee shop and calling for a boycott she was trying to stifle new commerce in an area that is now largely overrun by storefront churches that don't pay taxes, that her letter gave free advert to the shop and the group (sometimes the best method of protest is not publicly denouncing something), and she should check it out (with her parents' permission) so she could get her facts straight about the group.

I pointed out that at the meeting I went to, it was primarily composed of atheists, a few agnostics, a Baptist and a Methodist ministers, and a Wiccan. They were hardly trying to set up some "atheist cabal" to "destroy Christianity" as she intimated in her letter.

The paper ran my letter. This was followed by a call from "mommy lawyer" demanding I retract what I wrote; that I should not have "attacked her daughter" in print. She threatened libel.

I told her I would not; there was no libel; everything I wrote was true. I also pointed out that if she wants her daughter exercising her first amendment rights, she must also teach her that she cannot exercise them by getting her mommy lawyer to bully down other opinions. Click.

That girl's letter was the best plug for the freethinker's group there they ever could have gotten. By entirely misrepresenting what the group and the coffee shop were doing, she turned sympathy toward the group and the coffee shop. That shop, which used to be only open three days a week, is now open seven from the huge influx of business.

James