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Author | Topic: What Does Critical Thinking Mean To You? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Taq Member Posts: 10085 Joined: Member Rating: 5.1
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I also ask all of you what critical thinking means to you and whether or not your basic beliefs have changed since you came to this forum. For me, critical thinking means that you try as hard as you can to disprove your own ideas. In the world of science, the strength of a hypothesis is completely dependent on the strength of the null hypothesis. A better way to phrase it is trying to come up with every possible way that you could be getting a false positive, and then testing for those false positives.
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Taq Member Posts: 10085 Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
To me, critical thinking means following evidence rather than beliefs, especially when evidence contradicts beliefs. For me, critical thinking is the process that you use to follow the evidence. What is evidence, and what is not? What evidence would disprove your ideas? How do we determine that our empirical measurements are reliable? That is where critical thinking comes into play for me.
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Taq Member Posts: 10085 Joined: Member Rating: 5.1
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Critical thinking is what leads to faith in the right things. How do you determine what the right things are?
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Taq Member Posts: 10085 Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
Of course I wasn't defining it, just stating what I knew to be contrary to the prevailing EvC opinion. There's no point in the likes of me trying to define critical thinking or anything else at this forum. Or saying anything at all for that matter. I think we would all be curious as to how you determine what is true and what is not, and the processes/methods that you use. You could describe them in general terms without touching on specific topics.
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Taq Member Posts: 10085 Joined: Member Rating: 5.1
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There is still the garbage in/garbage out problem. And also the problem with factors that are purely or almost purely subjective. There is GIGO, and there is the closely related "echo chamber". This is where you seek out opinions that match your own which can reinforce your own biases and prevent you from using critical thinking. We are all susceptible to this, so it helps to always be aware of it.
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Taq Member Posts: 10085 Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
With God (or faith in an established belief) a similar scenario can develop. You believe--one day--that you have met God. That is where your analogy falls apart. With the girlfriend, you can demonstrate that she actually exists. . . or at least I hope so. If you were telling your friends that you had fallen in love with a woman that no one but you could see, then we would rightly question your critical thinking skills.
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Taq Member Posts: 10085 Joined: Member Rating: 5.1
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What makes you think that I need evidence that God exists? Obviously, you don't need evidence in order to believe something. However, believing something without evidence does call your critical thinking skills into question.
Despite lack of evidence objectively, I had enough subjective confirmation to believe. I think the underlying question in this thread is whether or not subjective experiences are a valid way to confirm anything.
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Taq Member Posts: 10085 Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
Not sure I'm up to trying to analyze all that for you. That's fine. I really don't need to know your personal story. What I am more interested in is the basic way you view the world. How do you determine the difference between an accurate statement and an inaccurate statement? What methods and practices do you use to determine the difference between true and false? IOW, what does critical thinking mean to you?
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Taq Member Posts: 10085 Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
I could get interested in such a question but not in an environment where I'm surrounded by people who've decided a priori that I'm stupid because I'm a creationist and believe in God. I can respect that. If nothing else, hopefully this thread will cause you to spend some time reflecting on these questions.
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Taq Member Posts: 10085 Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
After having a few subjective experiences, I no longer doubt that God exists. . . Do you consider that to be critical thinking?
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Taq Member Posts: 10085 Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
I suppose that by definition I should seek any and all ways to either disprove my initial conclusion or hypothesize another reason... I wouldn't consider critical thinking as "any and all ways". I wouldn't use a dowsing rod to try and disprove seismic imaging, as one example. I would think that critical thinking involves a narrowing down of methods and evidence to find what is valid and what is not.
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Taq Member Posts: 10085 Joined: Member Rating: 5.1
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Seems to me the confirmation bias is very often on the side of the debunkers. They DON'T want to believe in the reality of these things, they NEED to believe that the mind does it all, that it's a hallucination or a psychosis, it freaks them out to think things aren't quite as "science" tells them they are. The clue is the kneejerk certainty. It takes some real critical thought to sort some of this stuff out. Our whole point is that you only show us belief. You never show us evidence, logic, reasoning, or critical thinking.
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Taq Member Posts: 10085 Joined: Member Rating: 5.1
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Sounds to me like you have a serious inability to think critically, meaning an inability to distinguish between mental illness and experiences of real spirits. So how do you use critical thinking to differentiate between mental illness and real spirits? Show us how it is done. What tests do you use? How do you know those tests are accurate?
And yes you believe what you WANT to believe, regardless of the actual evidence. That is called psychological projection. You are projecting your own dogmatism onto others.
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Taq Member Posts: 10085 Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
I believe the criteria for differentiating the demonic from the mental illness is quite clear in the descriptions themselves, It isn't clear at all. Describe these criteria for us.
and your inability to see it doesn't bode well for any effort I might put into trying to demonstrate it beyond that. Your inability to demonstrate it does not bode well for you.
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Taq Member Posts: 10085 Joined: Member Rating: 5.1
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If there IS no evidence but stories, it's stupid to dismiss the stories, A perfect example of how critical thinking does NOT work.
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