Hong Kong Liberal Religious Forum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freethought

Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that beliefs should be formed on the basis of science and logic and should not be influenced by emotion, authority, tradition, or any dogma. The cognitive application of freethought is known as freethinking, and practitioners of freethought are known as freethinkers.

Freethought holds that individuals should neither accept nor reject ideas proposed as truth without recourse to knowledge and reason. Thus, freethinkers strive to build their beliefs on the basis of facts, scientific inquiry, and logical principles, independent of any factual/logical fallacies or intellectually-limiting effects of authority, cognitive bias, conventional wisdom, popular culture, prejudice, sectarianism, tradition, urban legend, and all other dogmatic or otherwise fallacious principles. As such, when applied to religion, the philosophy of freethought holds that, given presently-known facts, established scientific theories, and logical principles, there is insufficient evidence to support the existence of supernatural phenomena.


Chinese Wiki has a single sentence: 自由思想是思想的自由，不應被權威、傳統、教條束縛。

Free Congregation of Sauk County
www.freecongregation.org

"The longest continuously operating Freethought congregation in America is the Free Congregation of Sauk County, Wisconsin, which was founded in 1852 and is still active today. It affiliated with the American Unitarian Association (now the Unitarian Universalist Association) in 1955."
from Wikipedia's Freethought entry


My comment:

I discovered this "Freethought congregation" when I read the Wikipedia entry of "Freethought". I had not prepared for anything related to UU appearing. Yet the entry mentioned this "longest continuously operating" Freethought congregation, together with a pleasant surprise that the congregation has affiliated with the UUA. It seems that many religious freethinkers, including religious humanists (HUUmanists) and religious naturalists (UU Religious Naturalists), are converging on the Unitarian Universalist camp.

FAQ at "Freedom From Religion Foundation":
www.ffrf.org/nontracts/freethinker.php


What Is A Freethinker?

A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.

No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.

How do freethinkers know what is true?

Clarence Darrow once noted, "I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose."
Freethinkers are naturalistic. Truth is the degree to which a statement corresponds with reality. Reality is limited to that which is directly perceivable through our natural senses or indirectly ascertained through the proper use of reason.

Reason is a tool of critical thought that limits the truth of a statement according to the strict tests of the scientific method. For a statement to be considered true it must be testable (what evidence or repeatable experiments confirm it?), falsifiable (what, in theory, would disconfirm it, and have all attempts to disprove it failed?), parsimonious (is it the simplest explanation, requiring the fewest assumptions?), and logical (is it free of contradictions, non sequiturs, or irrelevant ad hominem character attacks?).

Do freethinkers have a basis for morality?

There is no great mystery to morality. Most freethinkers employ the simple yardsticks of reason and kindness. As author Barbara Walker notes: "What is moral is simply what does not hurt others. Kindness . . . sums up everything."
Most freethinkers are humanists, basing morality on human needs, not imagined "cosmic absolutes." This also embraces a respect for our planet, including the other animals, and feminist principles of equality.

Moral dilemmas involve a conflict of values, requiring a careful use of reason to weigh the outcomes. Freethinkers argue that religion promotes a dangerous and inadequate "morality" based on blind obedience, unexamined ultimatums, and "pie-in-the-sky" rewards of heaven or gruesome threats of hell. Freethinkers try to base actions on their consequences to real, living human beings.

Do freethinkers have meaning in life?

Freethinkers know that meaning must originate in a mind. Since the universe is mindless and the cosmos does not care, you must care, if you wish to have purpose. Individuals are free to choose, within the limits of humanistic morality.
Some freethinkers find meaning in human compassion, social progress, the beauty of humanity (art, music, literature), personal happiness, pleasure, joy, love, and the advancement of knowledge.

Doesn't the complexity of life require a designer?

The complexity of life requires an explanation. Darwin's theory of evolution, with cumulative nonrandom natural selection "designing" for billions of years, has provided the explanation. A "Divine Designer" is no answer because the complexity of such a creature would be subject to the same scrutiny itself.
Even a child knows to ask: "If God made everything, then who made God?"

Freethinkers recognize that there is much chaos, ugliness and pain in the universe for which any explanation of origins must also account.

Why are freethinkers opposed to religion?

Freethinkers are convinced that religious claims have not withstood the tests of reason. Not only is there nothing to be gained by believing an untruth, but there is everything to lose when we sacrifice the indispensable tool of reason on the altar of superstition.
Most freethinkers consider religion to be not only untrue, but harmful. It has been used to justify war, slavery, sexism, racism, homophobia, mutilations, intolerance, and oppression of minorities. The totalitarianism of religious absolutes chokes progress.

Hasn't religion done tremendous good in the world?

Many religionists are good people--but they would be good anyway.
Religion does not have a monopoly on good deeds. Most modern social and moral progress has been made by people free from religion--including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Charles Darwin, Margaret Sanger, Albert Einstein, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Marie Curie, H. L. Mencken, Sigmund Freud, Bertrand Russell, Luther Burbank and many others who have enriched humanity.

Most religions have consistently resisted progress--including the abolition of slavery; women's right to vote and choose contraception and abortion; medical developments such as the use of anesthesia; scientific understanding of the heliocentric solar system and evolution, and the American principle of state/church separation.

Do freethinkers have a particular political persuasion?

No, freethought is a philosophical, not a political, position. Freethought today embraces adherents of virtually all political persuasions, including capitalists, libertarians, socialists, communists, Republicans, Democrats, liberals and conservatives. There is no philosophical connection, for example, between atheism and communism. Some freethinkers, such as Adam Smith and Ayn Rand, were staunch capitalists; and there have been communistic groups which were deeply religious, such as the early Christian church.
North American freethinkers agree in their support of state/church separation.

Is atheism/humanism a religion?

No. Atheism is not a belief. It is the "lack of belief" in god(s). Lack of faith requires no faith. Atheism is indeed based on a commitment to rationality, but that hardly qualifies it as a religion.
Freethinkers apply the term religion to belief systems which include a supernatural realm, deity, faith in "holy" writings and conformity to an absolute creed.

Secular humanism has no god, bible or savior. It is based on natural rational principles. It is flexible and relativistic--it is not a religion.

Why should I be happy to be a freethinker?

Freethought is reasonable. Freethought allows you to do your own thinking. A plurality of individuals thinking, free from restraints of orthodoxy, allows ideas to be tested, discarded or adopted.
Freethinkers see no pride in the blind maintenance of ancient superstitions or self-effacing prostration before divine tyrants known only through primitive "revelations." Freethought is respectable. Freethought is truly free.

How can I support freethought?

Join the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc., an association of freethinkers working to keep the state and church separate, and to educate the public about the views of nontheists. Founded in 1978, the Foundation takes legal action against First Amendment violations, speaks out for freethinkers through the media and university debates, prints freethought books and literature, and publishes Freethought Today, the only freethought newspaper in the United States.
Membership, which includes Freethought Today, is $40.00(U.S.)/individual and $50.00(U.S.)/household. Send your check to:
FFRF, Inc., PO Box 750, Madison WI 53701

Freethinkers and UU:


"Early Freethinkers, Abolitionists, and Unitarians"
Speech to Davies Memorial UU Church, Sunday, February 5, 2005
http://www.dmuuc.org/lay/FrederickDouglass.html

First Universalist Church in Rockland: "a welcoming congregation offering a religious home for diverse free thinkers"
www.uurockland.org

UUs of Santa Clarlta Valley: "A Spiritual Home for Religious Free Thinkers"
http://uuofscv.org/docs/churchBrochure.pdf

"Secularists, Humanists, Agnostics, Atheists, Free-thinkers" is a group at the UU Church of Tampa
www.uu.blymiller.com/Secularists.htm

Freethought Radio 自由思想電台
http://ssshk.freeforums.org/freethought-radio-t84.html

Proposal: Freethinkers Group, UUHK 自由思想者組，尋道會
http://ssshk.freeforums.org/freethinker ... -t435.html

Free-Thinkers
Catholic Encyclopedia
www.newadvent.org/cathen/06258b.htm


the freethinker (UK magazine)
The voice of atheism since 1881
http://freethinker.co.uk


Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism
book by Susan Jacoby
www.amazon.com/Freethinkers-American-Se ... 0805077766

信仰, 宗教: 自由思想十誡!

伯特蘭德 . 羅素: 自由思想十誡! (網友提供!)

1) 凡事不要抱絕對肯定的態度;

2) 不要試圖隱瞞證據, 因為證據最終會被暴露!

3) 不要害怕思考, 因為思考總能讓人有所補益;

4) 有人與你意見相左時, 即使這些意見來自你的丈夫或孩子;
也應該用爭論去說服他們; 而不是用權威去征服,
因為靠權威取得的勝利是虛幻而自欺欺人的!

5) 不用盲目地崇拜任何權威, 因為你總能找到相反的權威;

6) 不要用"權力"去壓制你認為有害的意見, 因為如果你採取壓制;
其實只說明你自己受到了這些意見的壓制!

7) 不要為自己持獨特看法而感到害怕,
因為我們現在所接受的常識"都曾經是"獨特看法;

8 ) 與其被動地同意別人的看法, 不如理智地表示反對;
因為如果你信自己的智慧, 那麼你的異議正表明了更多的贊同;

9) 即使真相並不令人愉快, 也一定要做到誠實;
因為"掩蓋真相"往往要費更大力氣!

10) 不要嫉妒那些在"蠢人的天堂"裏享受幸福的人,
因為只有蠢人才以為那是幸福!

http://leoinfo.spaces.live.com/blog/cns ... 2117.entry

“独立之精神，自由之思想”，陈寅恪先生墓志铭上的这两句话激励了无数的后来人