____twoism

I'm definitely a very spiritual person, but I don't fell the need to hang my hat on any particular man-made hook, I don't need a name or identifier to feel justified in what I believe. So I'm a not anything-ist, I'm just me.

Athiest and always have been.

Clearly recall being spoon fed the bible at school, aged 5, and looking around at my classmates bemused, thinking 'Am I the only one here who thinks this is a load of rubbish?'. One of my earliest school memories.

Agnostic here.

Sometimes I want there to be an afterlife. But only a better one.

Agnostic atheist. To be honest, religion and my lack of belief in one isn't really something I think about much.

Ok, does anyone else see the irony in calling yourselves free thinkers and then labeling yourselves with the same labels over and over?

I'm not saying you're not free thinkers, but seriously people...

Agnostic I suppose would be the label to put me under. Though I do appreciate the many emotional aspects of religion, it can be quite interesting.

You know it's funny, for a while when I was a kid I was actually scared to go to heaven, I just couldn't grasp the concept of floating in the clouds forever. I thought it would get super boring, and to do that forever would be terrible!

Agnostic because I understand the need for religion in society across the world. It's easy for me to say that faith plays no part in my life because I simply don't need it. The quality of life I'm afforded is good enough that the idea of unconditional trust in an (arguably) benevolent higher power seems folly to me. Take someone in the rural south of America who's home and livelihood just got trampled by Hurricane Sandy and see if they share the sentiment.

Sometimes I get uppity and proclaim myself to be atheist as a means of distancing myself completely from the atrocities perpetuated by organized religion throughout history, and I'm on the fence if it's a source for more good or more evil in a purely quantitative sense. I try and avoid that mentality because it's absurd to place fervent certainty in something that can't be proven from either side of the argument. I can't prove god doesn't exist, you can't prove that he does, ad infinitum.

Many religions and the outline of their belief systems are founded on compassion and humane morals, namely Buddhism, with which I associate the strongest. A lot of prophets and religious figures over the years have had good messages to share, and frankly, made a lot of sense. A lot were psychopaths using spiritual belief as a quick-and-dirty form of manipulation on a massive scale. I think I'll always be on the fence, and taking a hard-nosed position on any matter of religion smacks of self-righteousness and intellectual conceit.

mechanismj wrote:Ok, does anyone else see the irony in calling yourselves free thinkers and then labeling yourselves with the same labels over and over?

I'm not saying you're not free thinkers, but seriously people...

Not trying to claim such a thing. I only used the word "freethought" because that's a commonly accepted term to refer to all of this.

Besides, nobody labels themselves then thinks. They think and then they select a label that accurately describes what they think.

mechanismj wrote:Ok, does anyone else see the irony in calling yourselves free thinkers and then labeling yourselves with the same labels over and over?

I'm not saying you're not free thinkers, but seriously people...

If people are picking a label and restricting their thinking to suit (as, to be fair, many people do when describing themselves as 'left' or 'right' politically, for example) then you might have a point.
As it is, I suspect many on here are simply picking the label that best describes conclusions they have come to themselves. In that case it's simply a matter of language and utility rather than anything else.

Atheist for about the last 15 years, so I envy those that grew up that way, a bit. My family was pretty fundie and though I never was, it still took some painful "spiritual divorces" through my teens and into my 20s to get to where I was comfortable saying "yep, I'm an atheist". I feel a lot better to be where I am now though, for sure.

Atheist. I believe in something divine, but not a god that overlooks us. I don't believe in the word god. I believe that there is something divine in all of us, if we are free from past and present.

I pretty much believe in Eckhart Tolle.

Agnostic/Atheist here..consider myself more of a 'spiritualist' than anything

Ustillhavefriends wrote:...Dudeist..

Well that's just, like, your opinion man...

Since I can't share all of my beliefs here, I will say that my views identify most closely with Monism and can be described as a mixture of gnostic, hermetic, new age, buddhist and hindu truths. I'm an extreme relativist in that I don't believe there is any truth except the Divine experience which is coursing through all of reality simultaneously--no matter what you "think" you "believe".

I am a former Monotheist.

Look up the idea of "reality tunnels" and you will understand what I'm saying.

Cohesion wrote:Agnostic because I understand the need for religion in society across the world. It's easy for me to say that faith plays no part in my life because I simply don't need it. The quality of life I'm afforded is good enough that the idea of unconditional trust in an (arguably) benevolent higher power seems folly to me. Take someone in the rural south of America who's home and livelihood just got trampled by Hurricane Sandy and see if they share the sentiment.

Sometimes I get uppity and proclaim myself to be atheist as a means of distancing myself completely from the atrocities perpetuated by organized religion throughout history, and I'm on the fence if it's a source for more good or more evil in a purely quantitative sense. I try and avoid that mentality because it's absurd to place fervent certainty in something that can't be proven from either side of the argument. I can't prove god doesn't exist, you can't prove that he does, ad infinitum.

Many religions and the outline of their belief systems are founded on compassion and humane morals, namely Buddhism, with which I associate the strongest. A lot of prophets and religious figures over the years have had good messages to share, and frankly, made a lot of sense. A lot were psychopaths using spiritual belief as a quick-and-dirty form of manipulation on a massive scale. I think I'll always be on the fence, and taking a hard-nosed position on any matter of religion smacks of self-righteousness and intellectual conceit.

Well said! I share many of your attitudes.

sufi islam

mechanismj wrote:Ok, does anyone else see the irony in calling yourselves free thinkers and then labeling yourselves with the same labels over and over?

I'm not saying you're not free thinkers, but seriously people...

It's ironic and quite frankly, immature. Possibillianism, Agnosticism, Absurdism? Sure. But once you go to one extreme or the other you're doing the same thing. Both require strong belief (disbelief if you want to call it that) and even stronger opinions-- and there's not much room for free thinking when you're firmly entrenched in 'your own' opinion.

Yeah, seriously...'free thinkers'

naicob wrote:

mechanismj wrote:Ok, does anyone else see the irony in calling yourselves free thinkers and then labeling yourselves with the same labels over and over?

I'm not saying you're not free thinkers, but seriously people...

It's ironic and quite frankly, immature. Possibillianism, Agnosticism, Absurdism? Sure. But once you go to one extreme or the other you're doing the same thing. Both require strong belief (disbelief if you want to call it that) and even stronger opinions-- and there's not much room for free thinking when you're firmly entrenched in 'your own' opinion.

Yeah, seriously...'free thinkers'

naicob gets it.

I only replied to the question in the first post, didn't take anything in the topic title in consideration. I dunno whether I'm a freethinker. I just have my convictions.

Also I wonder why Rodheh actually asked that question.

A while ago I met an intelligent woman on a festival with whom I talked for hours and hours about a diversity of topics. Even though we were both able to bring plausible arguments to the discussion, her view on things left me mesmerized and I still think of the arguments that she presented frequently. In short, we ventured into new moral and philosophical territory and she influenced me and I might have influenced her. It influenced me more than any number of "free thinking" threads that I've ever seen on any forum or web site combined. I agree with the people above me that merely enumerating one's beliefs using the same old words and concepts over and over isn't free thinking. But given both the specific question that was posed by Rodheh and the fact that some might feel reluctant to venture into a discussion about belief that inevitably spirals down to some cringe worthy flame war about religion (this is mainly what withheld me from elaborating on my opinion), I understand the participants of this thread and I think that free thinking should be practised by strangers in a coffee shop or something, not as some intellectual contest on the internet like it usually turns out as. End of side note.