Freethinker is a person who refuses to accept the authority of a church or the Bible. A freethinker insists on the freedom to form religious opinions on the basis of his or her own reasoning powers.
The name freethinker dates back to the 1700’s. The English philosopher Anthony Collins used the term in his Discourse of Freethinking (1713). Collins and his friend John Toland argued against the authority of the Christian church. Later, Lord Bolingbroke and David Hume were among the leading English freethinkers. In France, Voltaire was the leader of a group of people who argued for “natural” religion, as against revealed religion. Freethinking became fashionable in Germany during the reign of Frederick the Great, in the middle and late 1700’s. Few freethinkers belong to organized groups today. Modern freedom of religion has made such organized bodies unnecessary.
