Freethinker (General)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Friday, December 03, 2010, 12:26 (4914 days ago) @ satyansh

well the vedas thought me to question everything but i dont think that really makes me a free thinker. atleast i dun think so. freethinker from what i have experienced is someone who doesnt want to be labelled in any of the currently existing identities. honestly thats what it is. i for one am very comfortable being a hindu and indian and still accepting all the other ideas. while the people who label themselves as freethinkers almost have to give up all their current affiliations or identities to just be a freethinker. and if thats what a freethinker is than i woudnt qualify as one.-I'm a Caucasian South Eastern American of European decent that was raised as a Jehovah's Witness Christian. That is not who I am, that is my ethnicity, geographical origin, ancestry, and the religious affiliation that I was raised with. -I am still comfortable being a white southerner with German and English ancestors that is heavily influenced by Christianity. That does not mean that I am not free to consider religion/history/philosophy/science/humanity from every possible angle without reservation, taking what I find to be true and discarding the fluff and nonsense while still retaining who I am. And perhaps, just perhaps, the trait of not accepting a label will be what makes the previously indiscoverable things discoverable. An atheist will never discover god because they are not willing to look, and a Theist will never discover the absence of god because they are not willing to look. Besides, once you start labeling yourself you find yourself in the untenable position of having to argue for ideas that you might not necessarily agree with just because you are put on the defensive by someone who sees the label and assumes that you believe as the stereotypical member of that group. -When I first joined here, I said that I had been raised Christian, and believed that a vast majority of the bible is true. I still do and I am not ashamed of it. But immediately there was a round of questioning that basically made me feel as if I were being forced to defend even the aspects of Christianity that I might not agree with simply by virtue of the fact that I was raised Christian and was I investigating how much of the bible was true, and how much was not, trying to find what was and was not historically accurate and all that. -This is in no way meant as offensive to anyone here, so please don't take it that way. I enjoyed the Q&A and learned a lot from it.