You are painting them all with the same brush. When I was 12 I told my mother I didn't want to go to church anymore. There was no fight and no argument, no punishment. I have Jewish friends that went through the same thing. Calling yourself a freethinker is pretentious as it puts you above them just the same way they think they are right. It's insulting in that it tells the religious that they are enslaved, but the aren't many are there by choice. You don't like their choice, but that doesn't take away the free thought of a christian. Again I'm not talking about everyone. It seems to me there are free thinkers on both sides. We atheists don't hold have the right free thought. There will certainly never be any dialogue if you walk into the room with that thought. Now I understand that there are those that won't. So don't talk to them get away from the dogma.

@morlll Well I can only speak for myself (although I don't think my take is particularly anomalous and probably reflects the thinking of many others that use the term). And it has no meaning to me as a signifier of rightness. It is a signifier of freedom of thought. Some of those thoughts can and do agree with theists; some do not. But it says zero about how I handle any points of difference, or what I think about it, or how I feel about it or about people who disagree with me.

"Christard" would be an example that does what you're suggesting. "I'm a bright" would be a somewhat less obvious but still pretty good example. "I am not bound by an arbitrary ruleset in what I can or can't think" is certainly something someone could find a way to take umbrage at, but they would have to work at it and also assume way too much.

So while I hear you that you find the term offensive, and I don't doubt that others do, taken at face value, with its literal meaning, and refusing to read anything nefarious into it, I do not feel that I'm unduly challenging anyone's personal dignity with the term. I ask you with all due respect, to take me at my word as to what I am thinking, feeling, and trying to convey, and not to presuppose any of those things of me or anyone else using the term. Perhaps you've heard someone being arrogant and dismissive use that term. That does not mean it's a valid use of the term according to its actual meaning. Perhaps you've experienced someone claiming the someone who is not a freethinker is deliberately dumbing themselves down or advocating for intellectual slavery. If so, they are misusing the terms, as such notions aren't inherent in it.

There is literally no term one could use that someone hasn't misused or misappropriated at some point in time. People misuse and misconstrue "agnostic" and "atheist" and we could be in an eternal search for some alternative word that no one could possibly be upset by, but that would be a quixotic enterprise that I wouldn't advise.

Freedom of thought is in fact a very neutral concept that, outside the realm of religious belief and ideation, would I'd imagine be something everyone could regard as a Good Thing. People should be free to think about what they want to. And in point of fact, despite the efforts of some to control people's thinking, there is actually nothing anyone can do apart from some sort of "head fake", to prevent people from thinking whatever they want to in the private zone in between their own ears. I am simply asserting that freedom to be a boon and if someone else doesn't share that value, and wishes to constrain their thinking in some way, I have ZERO problem with them making that decision FOR THEMSELVES.

The problem is that many try to make it for others, and that is where we come into conflict. Not over me imagining that I'm superior in some way.