A generation of engaged young people has grown up with works like The God Delusion as its defining texts. If you venture out to any public lecture, debate or discussion on matters of religion, atheism and the like, there never fails to be a healthy number of fresh-faced attendants – often they’re the ones asking the most intelligent questions.

The event, too, will likely be held at a university. But, despite this novel presence, the young never feature significantly in the dialogue. The aim of Young Freethought is to try to go some way towards changing this injustice. It’s almost a truism that, for any generation, adolescence and early adulthood is the time for intellectual absorption. But, even more importantly, it’s a time for “conceptual engineering”. Young Freethought is a construction site.

As an aspiring writer of all things writable, I wanted a place where my thoughts could be read and debated by others. Submitting work to the big names in the rationalist press can be daunting for the young freethinker. I failed to find any site designed purely for the purpose I craved. So, in a eureka moment, I dashed to my computer, Googled “start a blog” and Young Freethought was born. The thought was sudden, but the idea was a long time coming.

Though the blog was created out of a need that I felt, it is most definitely not an egotistical enterprise. The point is to ensure others don’t face the same problem. It’s function is to receive submissions for online publication, submissions being an umbrella term for anything, whether articles, short essays or book reviews. They can be based on personal experience, or have a more philosophical slant.

Stated simply, Young Freethought is a blog “open for anyone, but with the aim of providing young people with a way of getting out their ideas regarding rationalism, atheism and secularism through online publication”.

The topics discussed are wide-ranging and often of the utmost importance. As you might expect, many are forward-thinking. Concerns about how the freethought movement should proceed and whether the current approach is “working” have been considered and discussed, as have the meaning of life, Darwin’s legacy and even nanotechnology.

Words such as “outlet” and “opportunity” describe our aims best. The ideal article for Young Freethought would be a passionately thoughtful polemic or a beautiful exposition of naturalistic majesty. Bashing religion can be great fun, but it’s just as important to remember what the religious mind misses with its petty substitutes – that indescribable wow factor when peering through the Hubble telescope. Young people, freshly exposed to such wonders, often feel them most deeply. Young Freethought is a site of demolition but also one of celebration.

The “big break”, as it were, came with a wishful (to say the least) attempt to woo Richard Dawkins to write a piece for the as yet insignificant and humble site – you don’t ask, you don’t get! He kindly did write a letter to the blog that was both encouraging and beneficial.

It’s not every day that a key instigator of a global rationalist reawakening “wholeheartedly” endorses a project of yours. The site received almost four thousand hits in three days and I received a great deal more submissions from impressive writers all over the world – literally.

In fact, one of the biggest realisations I’ve come to from this whole experience is the enormous power of the Internet. Most traffic came from America, but there were views in Jerusalem, Manama, Deli, Auckland, Innsbruck and elsewhere. In fact, one early submission, much to my astonishment and delight, was from a 15-year-old Singaporean.

Thanks to this continued support, Young Freethought will hopefully flourish. The future is as yet distant. For a group of already overworked students, running a blog like this is a commitment. We don’t ask for any form of financial aid.

Its condition is a minor indicator of the success of global education in science and critical thinking – young minds are manifestations of these things. I hope the site grows at a rate I’m unable to keep up with, eventually becoming an established presence in the freethinking arena.

The young posses a sensitivity to the world. It’s fragile, but should be cultivated. I’m talking about the ability to respond and observe, coupled with the framework of rational thought. Religion has succeeded for centuries in numbing this precious faculty. Let’s go some way to reversing the damage and begin the fight-back on behalf of reason.