A free thinker is someone who isn't attached to any particular ideology or guru or tradition or school of philosophy, and who is able to make up his/her own mind about any issue. Well, something like that.
You can be an atheist or a theist, you can hold beliefs and be well versed in science and philosophy, but the important thing is your attitude when trying to answer the big questions, i.e. when searching for Truth. You must acknowledge and put aside your biases, and be able to entertain ideas that may seem repulsive or dangerous or out-of-fashion etc. when viewed through the glasses of our culture / group. And consider said ideas with fairness and super-human objectivity, and perhaps a bit of enthusiasm as well. Free-thinking is an enjoyable pursuit after all!what about the philosophy of science?
Surely you don't have to be free of any beliefs, or philosophy in order to be a free thinker?
I feel as someone who has religious beliefs that I am more free to think things and explore idea, than someone who is chained to some kind of scepticism dogma. I suppose that any set of beliefs may restrict someone's thoughts, so that is always a danger, and I personally must keep trying to acknowledge to myself that I don't really know what God is, and that it may be impossible to really know.
First of all, a skeptic is not "chained to dogma".
There is a significant difference twix theory, proof and law in science, Blobbers.I didn't say they were, but they can become chained to dogma. As when everything has to fit into a 'it has to be able to be tested in a scientific way' framework, I think that is dogma.
The definition of dogma is; "a belief or set of beliefs that is accepted by the members of a group without being questioned or doubted"
If we start saying that questioning and doubting things (scientific process, basicaly) is also a form of dogma then we render the term dogma to be absolutely meaningless.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScientismScientism is a term used, usually pejoratively,[1][2][3] to refer to belief in the universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints.[4] It has been defined as "the view that the characteristic inductive methods of the natural sciences are the only source of genuine factual knowledge and, in particular, that they alone can yield true knowledge about man and society."[5]