Freethinkers...Need help?
by Butterflyleia85 2 Replies latest jw friends
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Butterflyleia85
It’s been two years now disfellowshipped. I have changed in thinking diresticly. I also am amazed on how much reading of done in the past year or so. I’m in this book now called, “Raising Freethinkers – A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief.” It’s by Dale McGowan, and other authors.
It’s funny as I was reading I was thinking how this was helping me with what to do for my child but helping me with me! The book helps parents discover practical and effective ways to:
-Help children achieve religious literacy without indoctrination
-Explore life’s meaning and purpose
-Promote a healthy perspective on sexuality and body image
-Encourage ravenous curiosity
-Help kids come to terms with death and loss
-Find and create community
So far I’m impressed. My question is: Am I a “freethinker” if I still believe in a creator like God? Still want to show apressiation to God as well as others? It just seemed to me that the author here is agaist religion period, he kinda uses suggestive wording that religion is a hinderance to our thinking.
But I do apressiate his explaination here:
“…Most of us were raised in homes that were religious to some degree and many carry remnants of these fearful ideologies into our own parenting. Whether we are religious or nonreligious, our attitudes toward questioning and moral development too often include some undercurrent of anxitety and mistrust, the unspoken feeling that our primary job as parents is to stave off a bubbling depravity that lurks just below the surface of our children.
In this chapter, I hope to make the case that this trembling view of human nature is siply not borne out by the best of our knowledge. We will focus on the moment of the question, a moment that is the foundation of freethought parenting, encouraging an approach that holds no question unaskable and no thought unthinkable.”
In all regards I still hold on to the safety code I believe in God because I see the good in his creation and his spirit that is so misterious… Also I fear that I would make him sad and look bad to him. (Pondering Psalm 14:1)
I have strong tides to listening to the scriptures… but a change in heart of holding onto the words literally or in action. Because it is hard to believe God would hate man for his differences and distroy them for their abilities He gave them. God will always be like a father to me… but I will always be the unque me.
Is this wrong?
P.S. I thought of you guys, Jehovah-Witness.net members, when I came across these quotes.
“There are those whose lives affect all others around them. Quietly touching one heart, who in turn, touches another. Reaching out to ends further than they would ever know." - William Bradfield
“Every exit is an entry somewhere else. Remember that Columbus was looking for India when he found America." - Sir Tom Stoppard (born 1937); British playwright
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sizemik
he kinda uses suggestive wording that religion is a hinderance to our thinking.
That's probably because in most instances it is. A staunch Religious belief closes our mind to accepting possibilities that lie outside of that particular set of beliefs. Unless we're able to examine evidence critically with a "blank page" . . . all of our conclusions will be tainted by the bias of our religious premise. That's just the way the mind works.
Any firmly held pre-conception, religious or otherwise, will hinder our thinking to some degree.