What Does Critical Thinking Mean To You?

I deny Him. I don't believe He ever existed. By your logic, I must be on the wrong road. You yourself admit that there is no evidence for your beliefs, don't you? So the question should really be, "Is it okay NOT to deny or ignore them if there's no evidence for them?"

Sometimes it's necessary to make a decision when no significant evidence points either way. You might not want to call it "critical thinking" but you still have to make the decision. In such cases, no monsters is the default position.

Worldview beliefs don't always apply. If you come to a fork in the road you have to make a choice. The bridge might be out on one road but with no evidence one way or the other, the default position is that the bridge is okay.

You can be as critical as you like. Critical thinking is not a magic wand that applies to every situation.

I was responding to the question, "Is it really critical to make such a decision when no evidence points either way?" My point is that in some situations, critical thinking only takes you so far and then your default position, critically, is that absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

I think if you've considered all of the available evidence and looked into ways of obtaining more evidence, then there's no way to distinguish that methodology from critical thinking.

It is if all the available evidence is none.

Take two possibilities, unicorns and hippos. You look for evidence for both. You find evidence for hippos and no evidence for unicorns. You conclude that hippos exist, based on the evidence. You conclude that unicorns don't exist, based on the evidence. How is one process critical thinking and the other not?

Again, my original point was that sometimes you have to make a decision now based on the evidence you have now.The critical thinking process is the same even if you don't have the leisure to carry it through as far as you might like. It should always be an ongoing process. There is no point at which it magically becomes "critical thinking".

Well, critical thought - whether atheistic or not - is based on evidence. Any thinking not based on evidence is automatically more likely to be delusional.

I thought I did: You're at a fork in the road; the bridge might be out on one fork but you have no evidence one way or the other. You can't just park in the middle of the road forever. You have to make a decision. I'd say that critical thinking requires looking for evidence. You don't necessarily have to find any.

The topic is about what critical thinking means to me.

How "horse-like" are they? They superficially resemble horses but how do we know their biology is horse-like? Maybe the heart of the Amazon is their ideal habitat.

Yes.

What their intentions are or what our intentions should be have nothing to do with thinking critically about whether or not they exist.