The Independent Thinker
Secular Thinking
Religion
Quotes
Interesting links
WORKING DEFINITIONS
- Agnostic:
- a person who believes that the existence of God and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.
- Atheism:
- the absence of belief in a god or gods
- Authority:
- the power to influence or persuade thought, opinion, or behavior
- Belief:
- conviction of the truth of some statement. Something we regard as being true.
- Christian:
- a person professing belief in Jesus as the Christ, or in the religion based on the teachings of Jesus Christ
- Christianity:
- the Christian religion, based on the Old and New Testament
- Collective unconscious:
- in Jungian psychology, a part of the unconscious mind shared by a society, a people, or all humankind, which is a product of common ancestral experiences
- Conservative:
- tending to preserve established traditions or institutions and to resist or oppose any changes in these
- Critical thinking:
- "the careful, deliberate determination of whether we should accept, reject, or suspend judgment about a claim, and the degree of confidence with which we accept or reject it." Moore and Parker
- Critical thinking
- "is the ability and willingness to assess claims and make objective judgments on the basis of well-supported reasons. It is the ability to look for flaws in arguments and resist claims that have no supporting evidence." --Wade and Tavris
- Culture:
- That complex whole that includes knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals, laws, customs and any other habits and capabilities acquired by human beings as members of society. Culture refers to all those ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that are socially transmitted from one generation to the next
- Dependence:
- the condition of being influenced, controlled, or determined by something else; subordination
- Destiny:
- 1) the seemingly inevitable or necessary succession of events 2) what will necessarily happen to any person; ones fate 3) that which determines events
- Deism:
- the belief that there is a God, but that God is not involved in the world. Deism denies any revelatory work of God in the world, whether it be by miracles or by scripture
- Doctrine:
- something taught as the principles or creed of a religion, political party, etc.
- Evolution:
- 1) process of development, as from a simple to a complex form, or of gradual, progressive change 2) Darwin’s theory of biological evolution
Evolutionist G.A. Kerkut defined the ‘General Theory of Evolution’ in his 1960 book 'Implications of Evolution' as "the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form."
Oxford Concise Science Dictionary: "evolution: The gradual process by which the present diversity of plant and animal life arose from the earliest and most primitive organisms, which is believed to have been continuing for the past 3000 million years."
- Fact:
- a belief based on certainty or positive knowledge
- Faith:
- 1) belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion, 2) a belief which is not necessarily demonstrable through experimentation or reason
"We may define "faith" as the firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith." --Bertrand Russell
- Fate:
- the power or agency supposed to determine the outcome of events before they occur; destiny
- God:
- any of various beings conceived of as supernatural, immortal, and having special powers over the lives and affairs of people and the course of nature, often the creator and ruler of the universe
- Heritage:
- something handed down from one’s ancestors or the past, as a characteristic, a culture, tradition, etc.
- Humanism:
- a modern, non-theistic movement that holds that man is capable of self-fulfillment, ethical conduct, etc. without recourse to supernaturalism
- Independent thinking:
- a way of thinking that is independent of ones inherited social and culture conditioning. It relies primarily on reason and logic rather than convention and authority
- Instinct:
- a genetically transmitted, complex behavioral pattern which occurs through out an entire species
- Intellect:
- the ability to reason or understand or to perceive relationships, differences, etc.; power of thought; mind
- Liberal:
- implies tolerance of others’ views as well as open-mindedness to ideas that challenge tradition, established institutions, etc.
- Myth:
- a traditional story, ostensibly with a historical basis, but serving to explain some phenomenon of nature, the origin of man, or the customs, institutions, religious rites etc. of a people: myths usually involve the exploits of gods and heroes
According to Alan Dundes, on page one of his book, "Sacred Narrative," a myth is a sacred narrative explaining how the world and human kind came to be in their present form.
- Opinion:
- a belief not based on absolute certainty or positive knowledge but on what seems true, valid, or probable to one’s own mind
- Philosophy:
- theory of the principles underlying conduct, thought, knowledge, and the nature of the universe. Religion is a philosophy
- Prove:
- to demonstrate the truth or validity of by presentation of argument or evidence
- Religion:
- a belief in a divine or superhuman power or powers to be obeyed and worshipped, often as the creator and ruler of the universe
- Semantic/s:
- of or pertaining to meaning in language
- Socialization:
- the process through which an individual acquires culture, (knowledge, attitudes, value, etc.) as a result of interaction with their environment
- Spiritual:
- of, from, or concerned with the intellect; intellectual
- Theory:
- a systematic statement of principles involved
- Tradition:
- a collection of beliefs and/or rituals that are passed from one human being to another, by way of words and actions, in order to remember and reflect on a given event(s
- Truth:
- knowledge that has a high degree of confidence of being correct
- Word:
- a symbolic representation of a thought or idea