the.com/freethinker
Believes conclusions should be earned by evidence, not inherited from authority.
means A person who forms their opinions, especially about religion and morality, through independent reasoning rather than accepting tradition, scripture, or official doctrine on faith.
from Coined in English around the late 1600s, when the word was practically a battle flag. It emerged from disputes over religious authority, used first by critics to brand skeptics who questioned the Church, and then reclaimed by those skeptics as a badge of honor — 'free' from the dictates of clergy and creed, 'thinking' for oneself. It's a straightforward compound, but its early life was anything but neutral: to call yourself a freethinker in that era was to pick a side in a fight over who gets to decide what's true.
- not atheist
- can believe in god, just refuses to be told to
- origin
- 17th century term for anti-clergy skeptics
- motto
- question everything, including this definition
- irony risk
- often forms predictable tribes of contrarians