For the most part, people do not hear much from freethinkers.  It appears most freethinkers are quiet and do not spend much time telling others about their point of view.  Many would not even know what freethinkers are without accidental exposure to other freethinkers through rare freethinking publications such as the Freethinkers of Colorado Springs' Freethought Views "advertorial" in the Colorado Springs Independent.  That is how I discovered I was a freethinker.  Before that discovery, I just thought I was different - and alone.

Most organized religions have well-funded "outreach" or "missionary" programs designed to "spread the good news" that unless you believe in the one true religion, [insert religion name here], you will be condemned to some horrible outcome in the afterlife.  If you do not believe in an afterlife there appears to be little to worry about - although sometimes one wishes they could believe in an afterlife if only in the distant belief that unethical believers would get what was coming to them.  Of course, according to at least America's most popular religious belief your "works" in life make no difference at all - only belief matters.  Therefore, the non-believers wish that there was an afterlife so that those whose "works" are truly evil would get what was coming to them is moot.

The "loving" deity upon who's supposed teachings morality is alleged based, does not care if you do good or bad - only that you believe in the deity in the absence of verifiable evidence of any kind.  If you spend your life living in sin, murdering, stealing and performing the most hideous acts of hatred on your fellow human beings, you are guaranteed life in eternal luxury if you choose to believe in the diety - even if your belief begins in the last minutes of your overtly destructive life.  In contrast, if you spend your life living in poverty so that you can feed and care for others, sacrificing every minute of your entire life in service to others and the common good you are guaranteed to be punished and tortured through burning for all eternity if you do not believe in the deity.

Harsh, eh?

This popular religion provides little motivation to perform good works or any reason at all to avoid evil works - as long as you believe you get to live forever.  It appears in this context that such a religion would probably help believers rationalize doing bad things.  If there will be no punishment for doing bad things and you get the reward whether you do bad things or good things - what is the motivation to be good?

Freethinkers on the other hand do not believe in much of anything that cannot be demonstrated as being true through some verifiable means such as science.  While the 20th century provided a great deal of predictive, repeatable and verifable evidence of a great many things, the existence of omnipotent, omniscient beings bending the universe to the requests of prayerful supplicants was not among them.  It appears that freethinkers do good things and avoid doing bad things not because they are afraid of punishment or in hopes of a reward - but because it is ethical to do good things and the best approach to avoid hurting others in any way.

However, unlike those believing in [insert religion name here], freethinkers do not have a good "story" that explains their point of view.  There is no revered Bronze Age (repeatedly retranslated and reinterpreted) text to hand to prospective freethinkers saying "read chapters thus and such," and "don't read chapters these and those." Perhaps this is why you do not hear much from freethinkers (at least until they feel backed into a corner or are driven to action by those rationalizing horrific crimes such as the September 11th attacks on religious ideals).

While no freethinker story exists, the story of the universe that science teased from the fingerprints of whatever created the universe in the 20th century is profound.  While there is no readily accessible common book of freethought, the stunningly beautiful and amazing story of creation that freethinkers usually believe in can be found in the pages of most any basic science textbook.

Although modern medicine suggests the human consciousness dies when the body supporting its brain dies, modern cosmology suggests the atoms of which human bodies are made are literally billions of years old and chaos theory suggests the actions we take while we are alive cause profound changes in the future of the universe (sensitive dependence upon initial conditions).

So there may be many reasons that freethinkers are quiet.  Many probably do not even realize they are freethinkers (or that there is even a term defining a person who bases their beliefs on science rather than tradition or dogma).  No one is rewarded or punished when a new freethinker emerges.  No one gains or loses a tithe when a freethinker comes or goes.  However, increasingly large numbers of people are abandoning their belief in omniscient, omnipotent beings that have never been repeatably detected (and who reward and punish human beings on what appears to be rather narcissistic grounds), and turning to verifiable reality - even though that means they must surrender the ultimate product, eternal life.