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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (4571)	5/10/2010 9:28:42 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

"well that eliminates all liberals,socialists and democrats" No. It is not intended to do that. The important thing is to know what freethinking means and the sort of intellectual position a freethinker would hold. Freethinking tells nobody what to believe--it merely addresses the manner in which beliefs may be developed. So the key words are “free” and “thinker“. The beliefs held by the freethinker are not imposed by outside authority or force or dogma. Thus, if a freethinker chooses a discipline, a science, or a passion that may hold some dogma as a structural component…IT IS NOT THE DOGMA itself that compels the belief. Rather the dogma conforms to the intellectual reasoning (or FREE THINKING) that the adherent utilized in order to accept the dogma. If the dogma compelled the belief on its own merits while not limiting (by the dogma or through any threat or opprobrium) the exercise of clear rational thought and rejection (without penalty) of any and all of the dogma, then it does not negate free thought. If the thinker is FREE to accept or reject any or all tenets of the so-called dogma, then the remaining variables that could deem it other than “free” would be an insufficient reliance on rationality to the increase of emotion and prejudice. In other words, although there will obviously be transition zones where well meaning people can argue about whether or not a certain combination of emotion, thought, prejudice, etc. might properly be called free thought--it is just as obvious that superstitious and faith based belief is not free thought. Certainly, it is not intended that people be bumped from the club because they believe in (for instance) a liberal philosophy. One could rightly state that all coordinated beliefs rationally structured have “dogma” in a neutral sort of usage. However, the dogma that bears on freethinking is of the more pertinent sort--the kind that is considered (ex post facto) stubbornly impervious to change or improvement or criticism--the kind to which the appellation “free thought” is immediately seen as incompatible and virtually an oxymoron. So liberals can certainly be free thinkers but they are not necessarily so. The more rigid and dogmatic the structure the less likely it is that an adherent is a free thinker. Because obviously, the reasoning mind is always open to having beliefs challenged and changed to conform more greatly with reason. The dogma intended in the definition is not the dogma of a reasoned solution to a mathematical theorem or the best way to cut down a tree. It refers to dogma in the fullest sense of constituting many beliefs that arose from faulty reasoning or a complete lack of thought and carrying forward through tradition and authority and extreme stubbornness and resistance to challenge or change. Any ideology so structured removes itself from any reasonable depiction of “free thought.” There is no precise way of knowing where this line is when people discuss an issue which must resolve to sound judgment, but when grooves run so deep that all thought is forced down the same slope one is obviously dealing with an ideology that (whatever else to which it may be hostile) is DEFINITELY an enemy of free thought. So all ideologies that are soaked in stubborn and unreasoning dogma (most religions and communism as examples) have ALWAYS been anathema to free thinkers and free thinking. Don't think, obey versus think and judge freely will always be contradictions to one another. So when liberals (or any other philosophical grouping) cease to invite thought but rather say "come and learn the Absolute Truth* from us. We will teach and you will learn." And you WILL NOT QUESTION,* then such a group will no longer be comprised of any free thinkers...NOT ONE.