FreethoughtJournal.com

What is freethought, and what should it be?

Freethought can be defined as a standpoint holding that beliefs should be acquired through evidence and reasoning without the interference of unfounded claims.

Wikipedia's one-sentence opening definition is longer and more descriptive but less committed to distilling its essence:

"Freethought ... is an epistemological viewpoint which holds that beliefs should not be formed on the basis of authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma, and that beliefs should instead be reached by other methods such as logic, reason, and empirical observation." (Since Wikipedia articles can change, I'll note that I have quoted this at 2am UTC on April 25, 2022.)

This definition includes examples of invalid bases for belief, but only some types of examples are included, and some of the terms could be misleading. It says beliefs should not be formed on the basis of authority, tradition, revelation or dogma.

A source is only authoritative if it's valid. That kind of authority is no obstacle to freethought. So we need to understand or guess at what the writer means. It makes sense if by "authority", the writer refers to the logical fallacy known as "the argument from authority", the belief that something must be true because its source is believed to be authoritative - for example, because it's in the Bible.

"Tradition" itself, of course, can't be considered a basis for belief. Using tradition itself as a basis for belief is much like the argument from authority, but does have its own name as a logical fallacy, known as the appeal to tradition.

Perhaps by "revelation", the writer refers to the idea that something can be believed because someone has had a supposedly supernatural revelation, such as a vision or some special kind of dream. But terms like this need to be used carefully or explained, because the word has a broader scope. Even a rock-solid realisation from empirical data could validly be described as a "revelation" based on a dictionary definition. But if the writer refers to a supposedly spiritual revelation, it could arguably be considered an example of what's known as a "magical thinking" fallacy - a belief without evidence that unrelated events are causally connected.

Perhaps by "dogma", the writer means a strongly supported school of thought that effectively discourages dissent, such as the geocentric theory of the sun's relationship to the earth, which Galileo overcame. Indeed it's a valid point. Something isn't necessarily true just because it is believed strongly, or believed by a significant number of people. It's a logical fallacy known as the appeal to widespread belief (and also goes by numerous other names).

The invalid bases of belief mentioned in Wikipedia's definition are only examples, and the total of the types of fallacies opposed to evidence-based belief are much greater in number.

So while Wikipedia's more descriptive approach to freethought's definition is useful for discussing its scope and antithesis, a more distilled approach focusing on its essence provides a more reliably complete definition in fewer words.

It is also useful in highlighting the need for purity of principle.

If beliefs truly should be formed through evidence and reasoning, this should strictly be freethought's only presupposition, with all other beliefs being worked out from evidence and reasoning.

As Wikipedia points out, freethought is an epistemological viewpoint. An epistemology is a way of knowing. So freethought holds a conviction about the way that beliefs should be acquired: that evidence and reasoning is that way.

Perhaps the most important application of this to real-world discussion of freethought's scope is to point out that pure freethought cannot hold atheism as a presupposition because to do so would be to make an assumption that violates the principle of freethought itself. Assuming that freethought is prescriptively atheist in nature is to assume the validity of non-belief in God without examination of evidence.

Why does this need to be said? Because most freethinkers are atheists, and this leads some to believe that atheistic thinking is a fundamental characteristic of freethought. It is not. Neither is it true that an atheist is necessarily a freethinker, since someone could choose not to believe in God for a range of reasons without having a clear guiding principle of reliance on evidence and reasoning. And while atheism is a typical characteristic of freethinkers, a freethinker's individual atheist position based on freethought is an outworking of freethought, not part of the freethought epistemology itself.

This doesn't stop some freethought and atheist organisations from using the terms somewhat interchangeably.

For example, the first words on the home page of the Atheist Foundation of Australia are this: "Our Aims: To encourage and to provide a means of expression for informed free-thought on philosophical and social issues."

And the Welcome page of the Freethought Society based in Philadelphia in the United States explains that it removed the geographical limitation in its name (removing the words "of Greater Philadelphia") "in order to provide more services to the non-theist community" - seemingly as if freethinkers were assumed to be atheist.

To be fair, there's no law against an atheist society wanting to promote freethought, and a freethought society might want to primarily cater for atheists if its members are primarily atheist. The minority of non-atheist freethinkers may want to stay home if they see themselves as having a lack of common ground with the atheists of the group.

But the seemingly interchangeable use of terms does often raise eyebrows among those who see the freethought umbrella as broader than atheism, as seen in the Freethought Society website comments.

Eric Hatfield writes there: "I am a friendly theist so I hope I am welcome to make a comment. Reading this page I felt there was a disconnect between your name and your goals. Your name says 'freethought' but your aim seems to be to progress non-theism. Is it not possible that a theist could be a 'freethinker'? Or do you believe freethought necessarily involves non-theism? If so, are there other things that you believe follow from freethought, e.g. a certain brand of politics, or certain views on public and private ethics? I would have thought that such restrictions or assumptions would be quite the opposite of 'freethought'."

Indeed. The "friendly theist" exposes problems of reasoning just as a freethinker should.

Atheism is a worldview that doesn't equate to freethought. As an epistemology, freethought is not a worldview of its own - unless something as basic as a belief in the importance of evidence and reasoning can be considered one.

In theory this means a freethinker can believe in God, even if most freethinkers would say the person's reasoning and/or examination of the evidence is flawed. The history of freethought bears this out. As Wikipedia mentions: "In the 18th and 19th century, many thinkers regarded as freethinkers were deists, arguing that the nature of God can only be known from a study of nature rather than from religious revelation ... Deists today regard themselves as freethinkers, but are now arguably less prominent in the free thought movement than atheists."

The article also mentions that "atheist author Adam Lee ... considers it as a 'broader umbrella' than atheism". And it quotes philosopher Bertrand Russell's 1944 essay titled "The Value of Free Thought": "What makes a freethinker is not his beliefs but the way in which he holds them."

This raises a question about how the term freethinker should be defined. Perhaps it seems obvious that a freethinker is simply someone who practices freethought. But is it someone who believes in practising freethought or someone who practises it accurately? And if the latter, who should judge what is considered accurate?

Some may argue that freethinkers are necessarily atheist because they believe the evidence overwhelmingly justifies atheism as a valid worldview, or even as a necessary one. If they hold that therefore believers in God are necessarily non-freethinkers, it follows that they see freethinkers only as those who accurately practise freethought.

I see that as a narrow-minded and unkind position: narrow-minded because while many aspects of mainstream religions may be possible to disprove in various ways, the definitions of God both within and outside those religions are diverse, and some may require less evidence in order to be plausible; and unkind because the world holds an overwhelming volume of evidence about many kinds of things, which any one person has limited time to observe and process.

Freethought is a reliable basis for acquiring beliefs, but may lead to different conclusions for different people, either temporarily or permanently, depending on a wide range of factors, including their background, access to evidence, memory, and thinking skills, among many others. This is not to say that opposite beliefs should both be considered true, but simply highlights that living by the principle of freethought is a journey.

To quote Bertrand Russell on the term "freethinker": "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 a free thinker." (The Value of Free Thought: How to Become a Truth-Seeker and Break the Chains of Mental Slavery)

It should be considered enough for a freethinker to believe in and intend to live by the principle of basing beliefs on evidence and reasoning. The "religion" of a freethinker should be to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

-- Monday, April 25, 2022