Interesting

At my last counseling session I was telling my counselor about how and why I got kicked out of youth group when I was 16.  That isn't really what this blog is about, but the gist of the story is that I refuse to follow rules that have absolutely no purpose other than to control people solely for the purpose of controlling them and no other greater good.  I get rules, I understand them, but if you are going to have a rule and expect people to respect that rule then it ought to have a purpose to it.  Rules for the sake of having rules or controlling something that doesn't need controlling is silly and pointless. 

She suggested I look up Free Thinkers.  I just did. Here is what Wikipedia had to say about it:
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Freethought holds that individuals should not accept ideas proposed as truth without recourse to knowledge and reason. Thus, freethinkers strive to build their opinions on the basis of facts, scientific inquiry, and logical principles, independent of any logical fallacies or the intellectually limiting effects of authority, confirmation bias, cognitive bias, conventional wisdom, popular culture, prejudice, sectarianism, tradition, urban legend, and all other dogmas. Regarding religion, freethinkers hold that there is insufficient evidence to support the existence of supernatural phenomena.



A line from "Clifford's Credo" by the 19th Century British mathematician and philosopher William Kingdon Clifford perhaps best describes the premise of freethought: "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."

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I think it interesting that Free Thinking would be ascociated with lack of religion.  That the two are somehow complete opposites.  That makes no sense to me.  Can you not be both?  A free thinker and have a relationship with God?  I say you can.  I am living proof of that.  What do you think, can you think freely and be "religious" (for lack of a more appropriate word)?
 
If you look around at the world, the universe, just the process of growing a baby and how intricate that is, how can one not see the hand of God touching all of it?  Where is the evidence suggesting otherwise, that he does not exist?  Personally, I find there is insufficient evidence to prove that there is no God.  Chaos never turns to order.  It is the opposite, order has a way of turning into chaos.  Fill a tube with dust and gasses and you will never re-create a big bang.  If it was possible once, why can it not be re-created?  If everything evolved from one base creature, wouldn't we all still be evovling?  If we came from apes, why are there still apes?  Why aren't they all evolving into men, where are the in betweens?  Not ape, not man?  Why would they start evolving and then stop?  That makes no sense.  You can't have a missing link, because there is no link to miss.  I belive that things change and adapt.  That makes sense, but to think and to have a belief that we all came from one original fish goo creature thing, makes absolutely no sense to me and takes a lot more blind faith to believe in than it does to see the hand of God and believe in Him.  Again, not trying to sound or be judgemental.  If that is what you believe then I hope you have really looked at it.  Pondered it, questioned it and don't just believe it because that is what you were shown to believe as a child growing up. 
 
 
Can you be a free thinker and not believe in God?  Obviously, lots of people classify themselves as such.  I think that if you are a free thinker, it means you question, you don't blindly accept the world, life, experiences at face value. You dig.  You dig to find the Truth.  I am a digger and a believer.  I don't think that they are opposites.  I think there is a lot of arrogance in thinking otherwise.  In thinking that all those who believe in something bigger than what they can touch and see are somehow blind followers.  To me, that is not free thinking it is closed minded thinking. 
 
I am interested to see what all of you have to say about this, what your take on it is.