From the comments on the “Hell” post, comes the following:

I as a true free thinker accept the fact god, jesus bible might not be factual, but in that acceptance decided of my own “free thinking will” I prefer to believe a god exists.

At the most concrete level, anyone can choose to believe in god, and anyone can choose to designate themselves a free thinker. It’s not like there’s an entrance exam or a set of dogma one must accept. In the sense that anyone can allow any concept they want to just enter their mind and stay there, someone could just choose to believe in god(ess)(es) and of course no one could stop them.

But no one else need (nor, I argue, should) recognize such a position as acceptable “thinking” at all. It’s self-contradictory. “Factual” and “exists” refer to the same reality, so it’s utter nonsense to say that something is “not factual” but still choose to believe it ”exists”. Let’s try the same construction with Santa Clause:

I as a true free thinker accept the fact santa clause, flying reindeer, and elves at the north pole might not be factual, but in that acceptance decided of my own “free thinking will” I prefer to believe santa clause exists.

Is there any place besides a preschool or an insane asylum where such a statement would be expected?

Statements like this don’t constitute useful “thinking” because they explictly abandon the only useful tool of thinking there is: reason. Reason is an error correction mechanism for thoughts, and if you abandon your error correction mechanism then your thoughts cease to have any relation to reality. They will be full of errors, with no means to correct them.

Elliot Temple explains reason a bit further (emphasis is mine):

Ways of thinking can be rational, or not.

Rationality is more about how one decides his ideas than what the ideas are. Rationality focusses on how one thinks, not what he thinks.

Thinking is rational if it uses reason. That means, approximately, thinking in a reasonable way.

What type of thinking is reasonable? What fits with reason? What is rational?

Thinking capable of correcting mistakes is rational. Thinking capable of improving.

Any approach to thinking which gets stuck forever without improving is irrational and unreasonable. An approach which *risks* that is also irrational.

Ways of thinking should be good at making progress. They should be good and finding and improving mistakes. They should be good at learning new things. They should be good at improving one’s existing ideas.

Rational people have open minds. They are willing to change their ideas. They are willing to consider new ideas. They aren’t overly attached to their current ideas.

Rational people like criticism. They don’t just tolerate it; they appreciate it. Criticism helps us improve by explaining our mistakes so that we can do better.

Reason relies on logic and good arguments. Those allow for improvement.

Reason rejects mysticism. Magical thinking is arbitrary and easy to vary. Approaches like accepting any wishful thinking provide no standards for judging which ideas are better or worse. It magic is allowed, it can answer any criticism, and so there can be no criticism. This is incompatible with improving our knowledge.

Reason rejects appeals to authority. Keeping an open mind means being willing to question and challenge authority. Progress requires sometimes overturning authorities.

Reason rejects declarations that the world is mysterious, never to be understood by us. This attitude is contrary to progress.

Reason rejects pessimism. Pessimism is an excuse for people to give up and not try. When we try to make progress, we make more of it. And the principle of optimism — problems are soluble with knowledge (and we are universal knowledge creators) — is true.

Reason rejects fatalism. Fatalism is the idea that Fate (or God) has decided everyone’s destiny. It doesn’t matter what people do since fate is in charge. This false claim takes away people’s motivation to learn anything.

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it with religious conviction.” Blaise Pascal

Bonus Quote!

“…a God who could make good children as easily a bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave is angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell — mouths mercy, and invented hell — mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him!”
Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

“Don’t pray in my school and I won’t think in your church.” Unknown

Our Freethought Arizona Special Correspondent from Hell, Mark Twain, sends us this analysis of the situation.jg

“…a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell — mouths mercy, and invented hell — mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him!”
– Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

OK. I can’t help myself. Here’s one more.

“Christian nationalism, like most militant ideologies, can exist only in opposition to something. Its sense of righteousness depends on feeling besieged, no matter how much power it amasses. Conservatives control almost the entire federal government [and Arizona state government], along with an enormous Christian counterculture, but go to any right-wing gathering, and you’ll hear speaker after speaker talk about being under attack, about yearning to “take the country back,” about the necessity of fighting even harder.”

Michelle Goldberg. Kingdom Coming; 2007

Note. If you haven’t read Kingdom Coming yet, I highly recommend it. I don’t see how American freethinkers can understand what is happening to our country without the insight Ms. Goldberg offers in this well-written book. jg

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

Epicurus

This water-tight logic has been well-known for 2300 years. Would someone please explain to me why today’s fundamentalists haven’t sorted it out yet?

jg

“Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.”

Blaise Pascal     1623 – 1662

“There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dares not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.”

Bertrand Russell

“…deficits don’t matter.”

Vice President Dick Chaney. 2002

“…the majority of abilities is gathered in a minority of men. The concentration of wealth is a natural result of this concentration of ability, and regularly recurs in history.”

“Despotism may for a time retard the concentration; democracy, allowing the most liberty, accelerates it.”

“…so that the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest is now greater than at any time since Imperial plutocratic Rome. In progressive societies the concentration may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.”

Will & Ariel Durant

1968