Freethought

Freethought is a social movement centered on holding beliefs and attitudes that go against established norms, formed without reliance on authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma. People who practice this are called freethinkers, described as mentally free from the usual constraints of tradition or dogma, and they base their knowledge on facts, scientific reasoning, and logic. The term first appeared in the 17th century, used for those who questioned the foundations of traditional beliefs that were typically accepted without question.

The cognitive application of this movement is known as freethinking. In modern contexts, freethought is often linked to rejecting traditional religious or social belief systems. Freethinkers apply skepticism to science, which helps them avoid the intellectual limits of confirmation bias, cognitive bias, conventional wisdom, popular culture, prejudice, or sectarianism. Today, freethinking is most closely associated with agnosticism, deism, secularism, humanism, anti-clericalism, and religious critique.

Atheist author Adam Lee defines freethought as thinking independent of revelation, tradition, established belief, and authority, viewing it as a broader category than atheism that includes various forms of unorthodoxy, religious dissent, skepticism, and unconventional thinking. A key statement from the 19th-century mathematician and philosopher William Kingdon Clifford, in his essay *The Ethics of Belief*, declares that it is always wrong to believe anything on insufficient evidence. Published in the 1870s, this essay became a rallying point for freethinkers and was seen as a moment when they claimed the moral high ground. Clifford himself organized freethought gatherings and was a driving force behind the 1878 Congress of Liberal Thinkers.

Regarding religion, freethinkers generally hold that there is not enough evidence to support supernatural phenomena. The Freedom from Religion Foundation states that no one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. For freethinkers, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy does not guarantee truth. They are convinced that religious claims have failed the tests of reason, and that believing an untruth offers no benefit while sacrificing reason is harmful. Most freethinkers consider religion not only untrue but also harmful.

Philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote in his 1944 essay *The Value of Free Thought* that a person is a freethinker only if their beliefs are supported by evidence rather than bias, no matter how odd their conclusions may seem. According to Russell, a freethinker is not necessarily an atheist or agnostic, as long as they are free from the force of tradition and the tyranny of their own passions. Fred Edwords, former executive of the American Humanist Association, suggests that by Russell’s definition, liberal religionists who challenge established orthodoxies can be considered freethinkers. Conversely, Russell argued that atheists or agnostics are not automatically freethinkers, citing Stalin as an example—comparing him to a pope due to the Communist Party’s doctrine of dialectical materialism, which he saw as suppressing free discussion and inquiry, much like the Middle Ages.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, many thinkers regarded as freethinkers were deists, arguing that God’s nature can only be understood through nature, not religious revelation. At that time, deism was as stigmatized as atheism, and deists were often labeled as atheists or freethinkers by Christian opponents. Today, deists still consider themselves freethinkers, though they are less prominent in the movement than atheists.

Among freethinkers, a notion is considered true only if it is testable, verifiable, and logical. Many freethinkers are humanists, basing morality on human needs and finding meaning in compassion, social progress, art, personal happiness, love, and the pursuit of knowledge. Generally, freethinkers think for themselves, are skeptical, value critical thinking and reason, remain open to new concepts, and often take pride in their individuality. They determine truth for themselves based on the knowledge, answers, and experiences they gather. They reject conformity for its own sake, creating their own beliefs by observing how the world works, and possess the intellectual integrity and courage to think outside accepted norms—which may or may not lead them to believe in a higher power.

The pansy has long been the symbol of freethought, with its use inaugurated in the late 1800s by literature from the American Secular Union. The choice stems from both the flower’s name and its appearance, as the pansy derives its name from the French word for thought.