This also embraces a respect for our planet, including the other animals, and feminist principles of equality. Moral dilemmas involve a conflict of values, requiring a careful use of reason to weigh the outcomes. Freethinkers try to base actions on their consequences to real, living human beings. Freethinkers know that meaning must originate in a mind. Since the universe is mindless and the cosmos does not care, you must care, if you wish to have purpose.
Individuals are free to choose, within the limits of humanistic morality.
The complexity of life requires an explanation. Freethinkers recognize that there is much chaos, ugliness and pain in the universe for which any explanation of origins must also account. Freethinkers are convinced that religious claims have not withstood the tests of reason. Not only is there nothing to be gained by believing an untruth, but there is everything to lose when we sacrifice the indispensable tool of reason on the altar of superstition. Most freethinkers consider religion to be not only untrue, but harmful.