JR'S Free Thought Pages
            No Gods  ~ No Masters   

                         Back to Welcome page   Back to Welcome page

         Cave ab homine unius libre* 

                   Qui bene interogat bene docet**

                 * Beware the man of one book     **One who questions well teaches well 

         Greetings Freethinkers  ~ Welcome to Johnny Reb's Home Page 

This web site is dedicated to the promotion of free thought, skepticism and critical thinking. The maxim for this endeavor is Cogita tute*(*think for yourself) , an activity for which very few people have a natural inclination. It would seem that humans are a credulous lot with a propensity to belief and conformity, accompanied by a  low tolerance for doubt. If I may be permitted a useful metaphor: people are sheep in credulity and wolves in conformity. This is fortunate for those in positions of power and unfortunate for the future of freedom, justice and  the democratic process. In spite of the stifling influence of the education system, religious institutions and mind-numbing conditioning of mass culture, it is possible to learn how to think clearly and develop a disposition to what I call constructive skepticism.  However, this undertaking requires immense intellectual effort, particularly if you have had the misfortune of having been raised in an authoritarian, dogmatic environment. Many people have been unwittingly exposed to a process of indoctrination,  and subsequently robbed of their intellectual autonomy, often making it virtually impossible to expose their beliefs to critical inquiry. Over 2000 years ago Aristotle proclaimed, "Man is a rational animal". In my view this assertion is clearly false. One must learn how to think logically and rationally. If you want to counter today's swamp of paranormal claims you need more than an inherited intelligence or inborn inclination, you need the tools and skills of critical thought.   

The philosopher Richard Paul, an expert in logic and critical thought, describes three kinds of cognitive dispositions: (1) vulgar believers, who employ slogans and platitudes to browbeat those holding different points of view into accepting their views; (2) sophisticated believers, who are skilled at using rhetoric and sophistry to provide arguments for what they already believe; and (3) critical believers, who reason their way to conclusions, are willing to expose their beliefs to skeptical scrutiny and listen to divergent points of view. There are many acceptable definitions of "critical thinking". One good one is provided by Wade & Tarvis in their book Critical and Creative Thinking: "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 or that are  entirely based on motivational or emotional appeals. Critical thinking, however, is not merely negative thinking. It also fosters the ability to be creative and constructive, to generate possible explanations for findings, think of implications and apply new knowledge to a broad range of social and personal problems. You can't really separate critical thinking from creative thinking, for it's only when you question what is that you can begin to imagine what can be."  In addition to observing the rules of logic, Wade and Tarvis provide eight guidelines one should follow.

An important component of critical thinking involves the assessment of the soundness of arguments - a difficult task that demands skill in emmploying the rules of logic. The unpleasant truth about the intellectual life is that first rate inquiry and critical thinking require an enormous amount of effort, anxiety and even desperation. From a practical perspective, critical thinking involves three components: (1) An analysis of the meaning of arguments, their statements and words employed in those statements. An argument may be unclear because of the statements or words used in the argument. For example, presenting arguments for the existence of God is inconsequential without a clear definition of the concept "God". (2) Determining the truth or falsity of statements or, at least, their plausibility. Many arguments fail on the basis of the falsity or implausibility of premises. (3) A knowledge of the types of reasoning (deductive and inductive), the variety of inferences and an analysis of the validity and coherence of the logic or reasoning process. These three components may be referred to as interpretive, verification and reasoning skills.

Critical thinking is an invaluable skill in today's world in which we are continually bombarded by useless data, bias and seriously flawed logic. We are constantly inundated by arguments designed to convince us of some conclusion that we would otherwise find unacceptable. Groups who have less than honorable intentions such as corporate advertisers, televangelists, preachers, politicians, special interest groups and a plethora of organizations and religious groups claiming paranormal or supernatural powers attempt to persuade us to believe what they want us to believe. As Voltaire once said, "those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities", and the infamous history of religion validates Voltaire's astute assertion. I sincerely think that religious belief has been and continues to be a colossal negative force, causing great suffering and conflict and standing systematically in the way of most of mankind's efforts at moral progress, freedom and flourishing. Moreover, everything from the various creation myths of religions to the logical incoherence and inconsistency of the idea of miracles and supernatural agencies is, to anyone with even the most rudimentary understanding of science,  pure nonsense. Most religious entities and pronouncements are no more plausible or intelligible than my claim that there are invisible green goblins hiding out in my back yard or that pigs can fly.

                                     But then I could be wrong!               

 Learning to think critically is a matter of self-respect and intellectual integrity. We are diminished intellectually when we allow others to do our thinking for us and when we are incapable of detecting flaws in another's arguments. Without these logical skills we leave ourselves vulnerable to becoming slaves to the ideas and values of others. Many of the arguments from the aforementioned groups are emotionally charged and have no logical support whatsoever. Although it is important to be open-minded it does not imply that any opinion is as good as any other. Sometimes people justify mental laziness by proudly telling you that they are 'open-minded.' "It's good to be open-minded", replies philosopher Jacob Needleman, "but not so open that your brains fall out."

This page and subsequent linked pages are committed to assisting you on the path, not only to becoming an independent freethinker, but thinking clearly and critically - to become genuinely educated. Aristotle believed that the purpose of education is to enable us to make noble use of our leisure and he truly believed that the ultimate criterion of the quality of a culture is what its citizens do with their leisure time. He believed this entailed the cultivation of an enlightened autonomous thinker who will  develop a lifelong active intellectual life beyond formal schooling. In this endeavor our education system has been an abysmal failure. 

My conception of an independent freethinker is one who is willing to use his mind without prejudice, bias and fear in order to understand ideas that may clash with his own customs, privileges or treasured beliefs. There are positive actions you can take to reduce your vulnerability to the authority, influence  and dogma of power structures. For those who are interested in studying logic and argumentation check out my logical argumentation pages.  I created these for use in a calculus course I taught to enable students to learn about rules of logic as well as how to think clearly and to recognize flaws in arguments.

  About JR: (that's me!)....Check out my Photo Album here 

(1) Biggest Influences: My Mother, my younger brother Mark, my good buddy George and Bertrand  Russell....Here's a terrific photo of an elderly Bertie : 

The Man                                       

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), eminent mathematician, philosopher, intellectual, social critic, author of over 70 books and hundreds of essays. Russell won the Nobel prize for literature for his History of Western Philosophy and was the co-author with Alfred North Whitehead of Principia Mathematica. He was married four times, intervened personally in the First World War, Cuban missile crisis and the Sino-Indian border war, survived a plane crash at the age of 71, and was an active protestor against nuclear weapons well into his 80's. He died at he age of 98. His 3 volume autobiography published in 1967 is a fascinating read.

          The Prologue to Russell’s Autobiography 

                    "What I Have Lived For" 

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness—that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what—at last—I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

Two Notorious Quotes by "The Man":

For More Russell quotes click here          For Russell's Essay on Ethics click here    

For Russell's Essay on Faith click here       For Russell on Education and Religion  

For a Russell Reading List, links to some online essays and some photos click here            

(2) Favorite Writers: Bertrand Russell, Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Fyodor Dostoevsky, H.L. Mencken, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and Robert A. Heinlein

(3) (a) Favorite Books of 2000: Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago and Skeptics and True Believers by Chet Raymo

      (b) Favorite Books of 2001: A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver  and Truth by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

      (c) Favorite Books of 2002: 'Tis by Frank McCourt, White Oleander by Janet Fitch, Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson, The Future of Moral Values by A. C. Grayling, The Meaning of Things by A.C. Grayling and A People's History of The United States by Howard Zinn (Updated Version).

     (d) Favorite books of 2003: The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy.

(4) Intellectual Heroes: Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Raymond Smullyan, Chief Dan George, Tommy Douglas and my kid brother Mark. 

(5) Favorite Sport and Athlete: Tennis ~ Patrick Rafter. Rafter is one of those rarities in professional sports who demonstrates wisdom, humility and maturity combined with incredible athleticism.

(6) Favorite Comedians: George Carlin, (to listen to some hilarious satirical comedy routines by Carlin Click Here    ),  Woody Allen, Groucho Marx and Robin Williams. My Woody Allen Pages:  Allen Quotes - My philosophy -  My Speech to the Graduates (These are hilarious - check them out!)

(7) Favorite Music: (A) Classical ~ Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Mozart and Rodrigo. (B) Contemporary ~ Beatles, Elvis Presley (these two are in a league of their own), Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Santana, Doors, Gordon Lightfoot, Burton Cummings, Roy Orbison and Fleetwood Mac. (C) Some of my favorite songs: Imagine by John Lennon,  At Last by Etta James, All Along the Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix, Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin and Unchained Melody by the Righteous Brothers

(8) Favorite Movies: Wizard of Oz, African Queen, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Grapes of Wrath, Viva Zapata, Norma Rae, High Noon, Inherit the Wind, Little Big Man, Black Robe, The Elephant Man, Dr. Zhivago, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dances With Wolves, Awakenings and South Pacific

(9) A few of my more recent annoyances with the state of the world.

(10) Some of my favorite quotes:

If you found these stimulating, click here for a compilation of  more of my favorite quotes.

(11) Favorite Conundrums: What was God doing before he created the Universe,  why did he bother with the enterprise and why did he screw up so badly?  Moreover, why would an omnipotent deity find  it necessary to rest after the sixth day? For more, check out my skeptical ruminations page.

For some of my favorite Free Thought Sites : Click Here   

To quote Spinoza, "Anything excellent is as difficult as it is rare"... and critical thought is no exception. Your starting point must be to release your mind from its lengthy exposure to the onslaught of the indoctrination and cultural conditioning of the education system and corporate media. One must unlock the mind from its hermetically sealed state. My suggestion is to start with the following:

After reading these works you should be ready to take a promethean leap to critical thought. For an extended free thought reading list click here   

You will want to expose yourself to mind expanding classical writers such as David Hume, Friedrich Nietzsche or John Stuart Mill and contemporary social critics such as Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, Howard Zinn, Barbara Ehrenreich, Christopher Lasch and John Ralston Saul. These writers are capable of unlocking the closed mind. An open mind is surely an intellectual virtue, but one should recognize the distinction between open -mindedness and a hole in the head. >A "hole in the head" implies that we abandon all standards of critical inquiry and be willing to assimilate uncritically anything thrown into it. There is as much difference between an "open-mind" and a "hole in the head" as there is between "tolerance" and "anything goes."

Avoid, as much as possible, the useless drivel and distortions served up by the corporate mass media. Its right wing bias and scarcity of critical analysis will only anesthetize your already inert brain. One of the main reasons NAFTA and the notion of unfettered global capitalism has been ostensibly endorsed by the masses is because no platform was available in the media for objections or alternatives. As Thomas Mann, the late great German writer proclaimed, "It is impossible for conflicting ideas to compete in the marketplace if no forum for their presentation is provided or available." It never fails to amaze me how the herd blindly accept what they read in the media as holy writ, thoughtlessly relinquish their rights and obediently submit to the rule of law as though it were written with their interest in mind. One must never confuse morality, ethics and justice with the legal system. The founding fathers of the constitution were rich landowners, merchants and slave owners who wanted political democracy but not economic democracy. The economic injustices that existed before were simply regularized and maximized and are now guaranteed by the rule of law and facilitated by corporate lawyers and clever accounting practices. Now we have set in motion unbridled global capitalism, a new world order concerned with promoting greed, expanding the domain of market dynamics and removing checks and balances to enable those who have the wealth to acquire even more.

 And beware of simplistic facile answers to complex questions. What explains everything explains nothing. Moreover, miracles are a dime a dozen. All we need to do is observe that human egoism, credulity, fraud, myth-making and simple mistakes are too common to let us take such reports at face value. Fraud and psychological explanations provide the best way of viewing the evidence for outrageous claims. If there is any miracle in the universe, it's that so many people still actually believe in the existence of God or Gods.

In addition to the lack of instruction in critical thinking and emphasis on conceptual understanding in mathematics and science, one of the many serious deficiencies of the education system is the failure to teach students a basic understanding of  probability and statistics. Probability and statistics, like logic, is not just for mathematicians anymore. It permeates our lives. One of the sad consequences of these serious deficiencies is its link with belief in the supernatural, pseudoscience and the paranormal. In a culture where genetic engineering, laser technology, astronomy and particle physics are daily adding to our understanding of the world, it's especially sad that a significant portion of the adult population still believes in astrology, psychic phenomena, angels, creationism and the efficacy of faith and prayer. Magical or mystical thinking is one of those chimerical human appellations, usually reserved for the other person’s religion. It is deemed acceptable for Saskatchewan farmers to offer Christian prayers to God for rain, but superstitious nonsense for a native Cree Indian to dance in the name of the Great White Spirit for the same blessing. I have, if only for a few cursory nanoseconds, examined the plausibility of the latter since I am one-eighth Cree (my great grandmother was a Northern Alberta Cree). If people would use the same arguments and critical skepticism they employ in repudiating and subsequently rejecting the beliefs and myths of competing religions and apply the methodology to their own beliefs and myths they would undoubtedly have to come to the same conclusions. You may want to take a look at Wendy Kaminer's notable essay "The Last Taboo"  on the inviolable nature of religious criticism both within the corporate media and our public education system.  Also see my piece on Acts of God and my compilation of H. L. Mencken's essays on Religion.

People tend to believe what they want to believe and generally fail to search impartially for evidence. I contend that the litmus test for the intellectual integrity of a belief is this: strip away all the reasons you have for wanting a belief to be true and then ask yourself if you would still believe it. Humanities oldest pathologies are egocentrism and the quest for certainty. Truth is not synonymous with social usefulness - and when beliefs persist with no evidence or supporting arguments in their favor, one should examine causes and motives. Irrational beliefs will continue to flourish so long as there are psychological and social forces to maintain them. 

The will to believe can be very strong. Consider the case of holocaust victim Elie Weisel who had his faith literally shattered when his entire family was wiped out. Yet after returning to normalcy following the War he curiously resumed his faith in a benevolent omnipotent God. Weisel's book Night (1961), by the way, is a fascinating account of those horrifying holocaust experiences. Although it is said that faith can move mountains, experience shows that dynamite is better.

Check out an interesting piece on the research of Michael Persinger of Laurentian University called The God Helmet. Click here      for the article.

Internal Links: Click the feather icon following the description to get there

Authority in Ethics:     Belief and faith:     Russell Reading List:    Quotations:  

Constructive Skepticism:    Freethought Reading List:    Favorite Websites:    

 Indoctrination:   Logic Guidlines:       Logical Argumentation:   Acts of God:

 H. L. Mencken on Religion:    Metaphysics:     Photos:    Paper on Self Esteem:  

 Skeptical Ruminations:    Russell Quotes:    Russell on Religion & Education:     

  Russell on Faith:    Skepticism Test and Logical Levity:  Wendy Kaminer's "Last Taboo": 

Woody Allen: 1  2  3     Michael Persinger Interview:   Annoyances:

 Influence and Authority:   George Carlin Page:      Patriotism:    

 God Changes Everything:       Confessions of A Lonely Atheist:    

 Bush and the Ethics of Belief:    Immorality of the War in Iraq:  

                                   Why be born again when you can just grow up?          

                                  Freedom is the distance between Church and State