The Freethought Glossary

Agnosticism is the position that the existence of God, gods, or the supernatural is unknown and perhaps unknowable — that the evidence available to human beings is insufficient to justify either theistic belief or confident atheism.

Atheism is the absence of belief in gods, or the positive assertion that no gods exist — a position that can be arrived at through reasoning about evidence, through philosophical argument, or simply through finding no compelling reason to believe.

Deism is the belief that a creator God can be known through reason and observation of the natural world, but that this God does not intervene in human affairs, has not revealed himself through scripture, and is not available for prayer or worship.

Determinism is the metaphysical doctrine that every event, including every human thought and action, is the inevitable consequence of prior events and the laws of nature — that given the state of the universe at any moment, only one future is possible.

Empiricism is the philosophical doctrine that all genuine knowledge of the world derives from sensory experience, and that the mind brings no innate content to experience that can serve as a foundation for substantive knowledge.

Freethought is the practice of forming beliefs about religion, ethics, and metaphysics on the basis of reason and evidence rather than tradition, authority, or revelation.

Materialism is the metaphysical doctrine that everything that exists is physical — that matter and energy, interacting according to natural laws, constitute the whole of reality, and that mind, consciousness, and apparently non-physical phenomena are ultimately physical phenomena under other descriptions.

Pantheism is the metaphysical view that God and the universe are identical — that there is no transcendent creator standing apart from creation, but that the totality of nature is itself divine.

Rationalism is the philosophical position that reason, independent of sensory experience, is the primary source of knowledge — and that the most important truths about reality are those that can be arrived at through pure thought.

Secular humanism is a philosophical life stance that affirms human dignity, reason, and ethics without reference to the supernatural — holding that human beings can live well and act rightly on the basis of natural capacities alone.

Skepticism is the philosophical position that holds that knowledge claims — particularly those about the external world, God, morality, or the past — require scrutiny, and that many claims commonly accepted as knowledge fail to meet the standards that genuine knowledge demands.