Freethought is the philosophy that man rules his own destiny, rejecting the
notion that there is any kind of divine intervention in life. Belief centers on
the idea that nature and Natural Law guide mankind and that the use of reason,
epistemology, and science are the means by which life is validated.
Freethought came to Wisconsin with the massive influx of German immigrants in
the 1850s, particularly those known as "Forty-eighters" who had fled autocratic
German states after the failed revolts of 1848.
https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS1926
https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS1926
The “kidnapped” monument to German freethinkers in the Texas hill country
https://medium.com/k%C3%BChner-kommentar/the-kidnapped-monument-to-german-freethinkers-in-the-texas-hill-country-4aee0c1f518c
https://medium.com/k%C3%BChner-kommentar/the-kidnapped-monument-to-german-freethinkers-in-the-texas-hill-country-4aee0c1f518c
1850’s..
Freethinkers refused to accept political absolutism and the authority of a
church, religion, or its supposedly inspired scripture. They insisted on the
freedom to form religious opinions on the basis of intellectual reasoning
powers and not on blind, unquestioned faith. Freethinking became fashionable in
the German state of Prussia during the reign of Frederick the Great, who ruled
from 1740-53, within a period known as the "Age of Reason."
"Freethinkers" Of the Early Texas..
https://ffrf.org/legacy/fttoday/1998/april98/scharf.html
https://ffrf.org/legacy/fttoday/1998/april98/scharf.html
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote :
What makes a freethinker is not his beliefs but the way in which he holds
them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was
young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his
thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought he
finds a balance of evidence in their favour, then his thought is free, however
odd his conclusions may seem.
..
The person who is free in any respect is free from something; what is the free
thinker free from? To be worthy of the name, he must be free of two things: the
force of tradition, and the tyranny of his own passions. No one is completely
free from either, but in the measure of a man's emancipation he deserves to be
called a free thinker.
— Bertrand Russell, The Value of Free Thought. How to Become a Truth-Seeker
and Break the Chains of Mental Slavery, from the first paragraph
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freethought
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freethought