Religion has a history of enforcing conformity of thought. During the Inquisition, people were arrested, tortured, and killed for the so-called crime of heresy. In many Muslim countries today, people are being killed for being Christians or atheists. In its most basic form, freethought is a rejection of this tyranny of the mind. As Chapman Cohen puts it …
In 1947, the Jehovah’s Witness magazine Awake! published a very informative article on the tricks propagandists use to manipulate people’s thoughts and opinions.
If one religion is the one true religion, all others are false. If none are true, all are false. If each has some truth, the many differences between religions still imply a good deal of error in religion. Since faith produces varying results, critical thinking is what we need to discern truth in religion.