Why I am a Free-thinker

Why I am a Free-thinker


Freethinking is a school of thought that espouses the practice of logic, reason, and skeptical inquiry. I was not raised a Freethinker. I can’t even say I’ve been a Freethinker for the majority of my life. I was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church, raised by Catholic parents, and attended a Catholic school for a good number of years. My original career aspiration was to become a priest at the church I attended.

In order to understand why I am a Freethinker, we must first examine why I do not belong to an alternative school of thought. Raised Catholic, I semi-regularly attended mass on Sundays. My mother also taught Sunday School. There was a time, when I was about 4 years-old, that I asked my mother why we were Catholic. She told me, in the most matter-of-fact way, “We are Catholic, because the Catholic Church is the best and truest path to God.” That certainly seemed like a very satisfying answer, at the time. One day, we attended my Lutheran aunt’s church. I was left dumbfounded when I discovered that what they used for the Holy Eucharist was not wine, but grape juice— and the priests in the Lutheran church could marry! I asked my mother how this could possibly be permissible. She replied, in a most well-rehearsed manner, “There are different paths to God, some just get you there by alternate routes.” Not two years later, our Mormon relatives from Utah came to visit. Again, I was confronted with an alternative style of worship that seemed incredibly foreign to me.

I once again asked my mother why their religion, not nearly as similar to our Catholic Church as the grape juice swilling Lutheran Church, was permissible in the eyes of God. “They have another prophet!” I would exclaim in disbelief. According to her, this too was another path to God. At least they accepted Jesus Christ as their lord and savior, I figured.

My next encounter with Freethought was in the second grade. I was raised to believe that every Christmas, Santa Claus would fly down from the North Pole and deposit presents in the homes of good boys and girls. The very idea of this seemed dubious to me, so naturally, I questioned it.

The reply that my parents would give was always something along the lines of, “If you don’t believe in Santa Claus, you won’t get presents.” I eventually gave up on believing in Santa Claus, yet my parents went to even greater lengths to reinforce my belief. I woke up one Christmas morning to find that I had no presents under the tree. The only gift for me was a little white envelope with my name on it. I opened it up, and found a letter inside of it. In a dainty, cursive scrawl was a message that said, “If you still believe in me, check under your bed.” I decided to believe in Santa Claus again, and scurried up to my room to check under the bed.

I was quite delighted to find a brand-new Sony Playstation 2. Looking back on this, I am still puzzled as to why my parents found it necessary to reinforce a belief in a being that simply was not real. Rather than encouraging my skepticism, and cultivating my critical-thinking, they stifled it, and continued a highly deceptive ruse.

While I eventually gave up on believing in Santa Claus, I continued believing in the Holy Trinity. I believed that anyone who accepted Christ into their heart would enter the Kingdom of Heaven upon death. This all seemed good and well, until the time I entered junior high. By this time, we began studying historical figures a bit more closely. I felt quite drawn to Gandhi. The surprise I felt when I discovered he was not a Christian was incredibly surmountable. Surely, all good people since Jesus Christ must be Christian! Then the kicker: I found out that Adolf Hitler was in fact a Catholic. This left me quite flabbergasted. This meant that Adolf Hitler would, at least after some time in Purgatory, enter Heaven. However, paragons of benevolence such as Gandhi would spend eternity within the circles of Dante’s Inferno. No usage of logic, science, or reason could rationalize this situation.

Entering high school, I met my first atheist. Sure, I’d met many Protestants, a couple Mormons, even the odd Jew here and there; never before had I ever met an atheist. I ended up befriending her in the hope that perhaps I could convert her, and show her the light. We became close companions, and had many conversations on a myriad of topics. I discovered that, while she did not accept any god into her heart, she was a decent person. This was quite the logical fallacy to me. That was really what got me thinking. What is “good?” What does it take for a person to be considered a “good person?” If God is the only path to righteousness, why are there friendly atheists? These questions plagued my mind throughout my freshman year. The conclusion I came to was profound, and paradigm-changing.

The subscription to a dogmatic, faith-based belief is not required to make moral decisions. Reason and logic are the tools that I used to make moral decisions. I only used the tenets of Christianity to justify the moral conclusions I had come to. Upon having this epiphany, I also had the terrifying realization that other people could use religion to justify their beliefs. Other people have used religion to justify their beliefs. Rational thinking will never lead someone to commit mass genocide against another group of people. Sound systems of ethics are based on democracy; they are based on what a community agrees is best for the community, as a whole. To best make moral decisions, we must use empirical evidence to make our decisions, rather than Bronze Age pieces of literature that simply don’t hold up in today’s societies. This multi-faceted conclusion is what led me to Freethinking and Secular Humanism.

Since becoming a Freethinker, I have seen dozens of instances in which people who are not Freethinkers have acted in ways that, from a more objective perspective, seem atrocious and terribly out-of-character. A prime example of this is a recent experience I had with a relative of mine. We were talking about same-sex marriage, and I am of the opinion that homosexuals should have the same privileges and rights as their heterosexual peers.  My uncle, on the other hand, not only believes that they shouldn’t have the right to marry, but that they don’t even have the right to be homosexual. In no way does he justify this using evidence, or a rational argument with various contentions. Rather, he uses a line from the Book of Leviticus, in the Old Testament, to support his belief. The problem is that the Bible is not based on modern-day knowledge. Whether or not it’s based on anything substantial is doubtful.

I strongly believe that, in order to make truly ethical decisions, one must practice Freethinking. Whether or not anyone realizes it, we all use Freethinking to a certain degree. The choice I made is to not use religion to justify what conclusions Freethought has brought me to. I became a Freethinker by using a process devoid of dogma, logical fallacies, and social prejudice.