What Does Critical Thinking Mean To You?

I think you're describing a psychosis, not a 'spiritual realm' - it sounds like you were going through a quite prolonged period of intense mental imbalance.If there's a single benefit for religious fundamentalism, it's its ability to stabilise an unbalanced mind - but it does it at huge cost.

You're quite right, we don't want to believe these things - we want them evidenced and then we can accept them.You have absolutely no evidence that the stuff you're talking about is anything other than psychological. And I have to say, the more you talk about it, the more convinced I am.I worked in a mental hospital for a few months, once you've seen that, you know what a mess a brain disorder can make of what you think is reality. (I met two Jesus Christs there btw)

This isn't about me and my abilities to think critically; there is no evidence for the existence of 'spirits' anywhere. Whenever 'spirits' have been objectively looked for, they've never been found - ever. All that is needed is a single piece of non-controvesial evidence to be presented for the entire scientific community to change its collective mind. But despite this, you are unable to point to a single properly organised test to show these spirits.James Randi will give you a million dollars if you can demonstrate a spirit to him, why not give it a go? Well yes, that's why they were in a mental hospital...... If it had been more prolonged or disturbing, it may very well have been, but I was simply demonstrating the power of the mind to change reality for individuals - in these poor people's case, permanently. show me the evidence and I will gladly change my mind. I'm not like you Faith, I accept evidence even if it goes against everything I think is true. But it has to be evidence, not anecdotes.

Evidence is not anecdote. No-one has provided any evidence other than personal stories which sound exactly like well known physchological trauma. Evidence is something that can be independently tested, not simply stated on the internet as fact. And neither has anyone else despite thousands of years of claims. These events happen routinely at fundamentalist gathering but strangely are never able to be reproduced under any kind of objective observation. Funny that.

Sometimes you do get things right. So we can't see them or test them and their effects look exactly like psychological trauma. Tell me Faith, what would an objective, critical thinking conclusion look like under these circumstances? I have no bias, I simply demand evidence before I accept extraordinary statements from people that behave as though they are deranged.Evidence Faith, evidence, go get some and all your troubles are over. It should be really easy, after all healers do it day in day out in churches apparently - they just never seem to do anything non-controversial like growing back a limb.

Yup, that's your problem, there's no actual evidence. It's even more stupid to take much notice of them, because, as you say, stories are all you've got and when anyone actually attempts anything more objective, it's falls flat on its face. It's evidence of absence. Quite rightly - and if it persisted I'd be treated for a mental disorder.

This is the critical thinking thread Faith.I can't hear anybody laughing and I can't feel any grip.When I apply the full might of critical thought, I come to the conclusion that there's no spirit laughing or gripping. What do you conclude from the same evidence?

Something I wrote a while ago so as to understand it better, you can, I think, substitute the idea of critical thinking for thinking rationality..... The Antecedent Probability Principle, the Proportional Principle & Carl SaganIf you tell me that there is a statue in a church of the Virgin Mary it is rational of me to accept your assertion because my life experience tells me that that is quite possible - statues often hang out in churches. If you have no history of lying to me randomly about everyday events and there is no other reason to suspect that you could be mistaken there is no logical reason to doubt you.This is the Antecedent Probability Principle. I accept what you tell me because it lies within what I know to be probable.If, however, you also say "and it's hovering 6 feet off the floor" I then have cause to doubt. I know from experience that statues don't hover and that there is a greater likely hood of your assertion being false - for whatever reason. If I am to behave rationally I must assume you are mistaken.In order for me to believe you I then need far more evidence than normal. What is happening here is that I proportion my belief in what you have told me in relation to the net evidence for it. The more rationally unlikely the event, the more unlikely it is to be true and the more evidence is therefore needed for it. This is the philosopher’s version of Carl Sagan’s argument that extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence.If someone chooses to accept weak evidence for extraordinary events above their known experience of the physical world they are therefore thinking irrationally.

It fits with how the world seems to work. It doesn't fit with the way the world seems to work. To prefer strong evidence to weak evidence is rational. The reverse would be irrational.Of course it may not be correct but the balance of probabilities are not in the weaker evidence's favour and in order to prefer the weaker over the stronger we need a proportionally larger amount of evidence.That's all the Antecedent Probability Principle and the Proportional Principle mean. Big Important Words. Very simple ideas.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

I'm pretty sure you understand the point, I'm not going to labour it any further.

I'm renowned for rarely missing the blindingly obvious. And also for having no time for the pedantic. Just a little foible.

Then you've not understood the Antecedent Probability Principle and the Proportional Principle.Of course you don't know whether the bridge is out or not. Just like you don't know whether its been magically made out of marshmallow. But those two states are not equally probable and one would require a larger amount of evidence to convince you than the other.The point of those principles is to give you a frame of reference for making a rational decision. We know that bridges are generally open and working unless something exceptional has happened. All things being equal, it is therefore rational to think the bridge is open. That's the antecedent probability principal.If, despite the fine weather and lack of recent geological activity, your passenger tells you that he believes that the bridge ahead is no longer there, you must demand further evidence before you accept his statement. That's the Proportionality Principle.If he says that he was a member of a demolition team that took it out as a terrorist activity earlier in the day, you might have a few more questions to ask, but the probability of the bridge still being there has now reduced considerably.If he says that god just told him, you'd probably not consider that good evidence would you?We make rational decisions based on what we have experienced to be true in the world. But we don't assume that what we know is 100% true, we ascribe them probabilities in order to just get by in the world.To say that you don't know if the bridge is there or not, despite your world experience telling you that in 100% of all the thousands of times you've approached a bridge it was there, is not critical thinking, it's just pseudo-philosophical silliness.

As you are now determined to be ridiculous, you don't actually know whether the bridge is made out of marshmallow until you drive onto it and you may never know if it's been put there by magic. I sure am. That's the entire point. I'm working on everyone in the world's view - including yours - that the bridge is more likely to be there than not and I'll be correct in virtually 100% of normal circumstances so to think otherwise would be an error in critical thinking. In normal circumstances the chance of the bridge being there is as near to 100% that makes no difference. The antecedent probability principle deals with likelihoods, not certainties.You travel in the same world as I do and you know that, all things being equal, the bridge will be there. If you've got no reason to suspect otherwise, it's an error in critical thinking not to expect the bridge to be there.Now stop being silly.

This is not about my opinion, nor my world view - it's a general principle that applies to all people everywhere.In the places of the world where bridges are regularly washed away in the night, the probability principle tells those people who live there that they can't ever be certain whether there's a bridge where they expect it to be or not. That's why it's called the ANTECEDENT probability principle. It relies on previous knowledge to establish a probability of something being true or false.Here in the UK, I can be sure to virtual certainty that the bridge across the River Ooze will be there if I needed it this afternoon. You would be a little less sure, but you'd still consider it more likely than not because you know that I live in a modern country with established road infrastructure.To apply any other logic to these situations would be irrational and to deny that we can know things about the world. The sillyness ends here; for me at least.

And that's where I accused RAZD of making statement of the bleeding obvious. Obvious and useless. In fact worse than useless, debilitating.It says that we can't actually know anything in advance, which is simply wrong. If our prior experiences could not teach us anything about what is likely to happen in the future - given the same or similar circumstances - we'd be incapable of action, every step we took would be the first we took. We'd learn nothing.The definition of critical thinking I prefer is from the Sceptic's Dictionary That's a practical definition - something that we can actually put to some use. Yes, that's because you expect - based on previous experience - that the bridges that you need to use will be there and functional. If your previous experience hade been that the bridges you need are quite likely to be unavailable, you would be actively thinking about what you needed to do next. Auto-pilot would be firmly switched off.