Showing posts sorted by relevance for query critical thinking. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query critical thinking. Sort by date Show all posts

Thinking Critically vs Skeptically

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[Edit 1/2/2015: This is another post in my series, "Do You Want To Be A Christian Apologist?" This is number 17 in the series, which are tagged with the words "Christian Apologetics" below, seen in reverse chronological order. So, let's say you want to be a Christian apologist, someone who defends the Christian faith. Then what must you do? The 17th thing you must do is make a distinction between thinking critically and thinking skeptically and focus on the former to the exclusion of the latter. ]

There shouldn't be a difference between thinking critically vs skeptically, for to think critically is to think skeptically, and vice versa. So why do I write about this? The answer in a word: Faith. Believers can and do think critically, especially the best of the best, like Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne and William Lane Craig. Other notable Christian scholars are Paul Copan, Randal Rauser, Victor Reppert, David Marshall, and Matt Flannagan who regularly engage in apologetics against atheists like me. But they are not truly critical thinkers since they do not think skeptically.

Teaching students to be critical thinkers is very important but teaching them to have a skeptical disposition is more important. Critical thinking should lead to this disposition. The problem is that faith is a critical thinking stopper. It builds up a wall that stops believers dead in their tracks. They dare not go beyond it to the proper conclusion when applying the standards of critical thinking. Now I taught critical thinking classes as a Christian believer. So I know exactly what they are doing. Norman Geisler, one of the leading Christian apologists who defends the indefensible, even co-wrote a book with Ronald M. Brooks titled, Come, Let Us Reason: An Introduction to Logical Thinking.I don't know enough about the leading defenders of other religious faiths, but I suspect in their universities they teach critical thinking classes from textbooks they have written too. And I expect we would all agree with what they teach and write, except for some of the examples they use to illustrate a particular logical rule.

So what's the problem? Faith. Faith stunts one's critical thinking skills. It prohibits a person of faith from applying the set of critical thinking skills we all agree about. You can see this by how they argue, which I am documenting here. What believers do is to defend their faith rather than look critically at it, no matter what the intellectual cost. Stephen Law is right: “Anything based on faith, no matter how ludicrous, can be made to be consistent with the available evidence, given a little patience and ingenuity.” (Believing Bullshit, p. 75). If Christian apologists could think logically, without the perceived need to defend their religious sect's faith, they would see they are not thinking consistently critically.

In the hopes I can help nudge them along this road I recommend reading Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn's college textbook, How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age.There are newer, more expensive editions of this book than the one I linked to. But look inside this one then choose which edition at which price you can afford. But get it. You will see what I mean when I say there is no distinction between critical thinking and thinking skeptically. They are one and the same. That's why I argue faith is an irrational leap over the probabilities. I say believers operate by double standards. They do not think critically, in the sense I just wrote about and which this book could help show them. When we say the party of agnosticism and atheism is one of reason and science we mean it. We invite believers to the adult table, where an adult conversation can be had.

Critical Thinking: the Weakest Skill in the Christian Toolkit

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Hardly a surprise, since the clergy urge, “Just take it on faith”


Quite a few years ago I knew a devout Catholic woman who bragged that she never read books—not even in college. She managed to get passing grades by taking careful notes in class. Nor did she have any interest in discussing religion, because she didn’t want to risk damaging here faith. Her primary goal in being deeply Catholic was to be able to see her mother again in heaven. She represents a case of extreme piety, but I have met other devout Christians who decline to engage with me on religious issues; they are determined to hold tight to their beliefs, reluctant to weaken them in any way. I suspect they’ve experienced too many moments of scary doubt.

An Interview With Guy P. Harrison

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The following interview was conducted by "The Promethean" which is the email newsletter of Prometheus Books. Enjoy.

Will Humanity Ever Escape the Grip of Religion?

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It’s unlikelywe seem to be cursed with it forever

There are now more than eight billion humans on the planet, and a significant portion of this total has been indoctrinated by hundreds of different religions. The great irony, of course, is that these religions have never been able to agree about god(s). The supreme irony is that there are thousands of different Christian brands, and they differ significantly in their beliefs about god. This alone is evidence that religion is guesswork, which makes the fanatical attachment to it puzzling indeed. What can we do to escape this curse?

Christian Dependance on Gaslighting

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Religious indoctrination in the scheme of evil


A popular song from the 1960s still resonates, What the World Needs Now Is Love Sweet Love.

How true, of course, given the history of human obsession with war and brutality. But also urgently needed is critical thinking. That is, there is so much ongoing damaged caused by belief in ancient superstitions—Christianity being the champion superstition, i.e., it has survived for two millennia. It created a perfect blend of superstitions, gleaned from the cults of the ancient world: (1) the idea that a god was going to send a savior/rescuer/messiah to save its chosen people; (2) after the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple, animal sacrifice to appease god for sins came to an end—and so Christianity resorted to the grim belief that a single human sacrifice would do the trick; (3) when this human sacrifice resurrected, this had major magical impact for those who believed in it, i.e., eternal life. What a formula—and people still believe it!

The Making and Unmaking of a Zealot, By Dr. Dale O’Neal

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This essay was written by Dr. Dale O'Neal, who received a “Preacher of the Year” award from Talbot School of Theology when he studied there. The winner two years earlier was John MacArthur Jr., and the winner the previous year was Josh McDowell. As an ex-christian and psychologist he explains  how Christian zealots are made. This is very insightful! Christian apologists should read this essay to see what has happened to them. I can only hope it will be shared and read widely!

What to do…with the brains evolution gave us

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Religion wins if we can’t teach our brains Good Thinking


In the musical My Fair Lady, lyricist Alan Jay Lerner punctured misogyny by showing it in full foolishness. Professor Henry Higgins is the ultimate “confirmed old bachelor” who is distressed by his attraction to Eliza Doolittle. He bluntly warns his friend Colonel Pickering, “I will never let a woman in my life.” Female heads, he declares, are “filled with cotton, hay and rags.” “Straightening up their hair is all they ever do. Why don’t they straighten up the mess that’s inside?”

But Professor Higgins was only half wrong. That is, all human brains, male and female, are prone to the cotton-hay-and-rags syndrome. Throughout the millennia, humans have been wrong about so much, and—sorry, Professor Higgins—men have been the major culprits. We can blame the men especially for the monotheism represented in the Bible—a major mess of contradictions, if ever there was one. But the fault lies not with gender, but with the brains that we owe to the clumsy evolutionary process. We have to work hard to outsmart our brains.

“The age of Jesus was not an age of critical reflection…”

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Kooks, quacks, lunatics, and con artists


It has been my depressing experience, a couple of times in recent years, to attend services at Catholic churches. Once for a funeral, once for a wedding. On both occasions—one for grief, one for joy—the Mass was celebrated: the theatre, the spectacle, of magic. Here were citizens of the modern world: they survive and thrive because they have a pretty good grasp of the realities of life. They know what to do to raise families, acquire cars and houses, pursue careers, plan vacations, and build portfolios for retirement. 

 

Their family entertainments commonly include Disney and superhero movies—and, of course, the Harry Potter adventures. These make-believe worlds are fun, because on-screen magic is fun. But why, in the world of church theatre, is the magic taken seriously? During both ceremonies I witnessed, members of the congregation approached the priest—in splendid theatrical costume—to receive a fragment of the body of their god: to eat their god. On some occasions they drink its blood as well.

Dr. Peter Boghossian Seeks to Revolutionize Our Academic Institutions

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I'm writing a few posts about Peter Boghossian's book, A Manual for Creating AtheistsTo read other posts in review of his brilliant book click on the tag below. In this one I want to highlight how that he intends to revolutionize academic institutions, a big yet noble goal.

Victor Reppert is Blind as a Bat and I Can Prove It

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I'll let you read this exchange between Vic and myself for yourselves. Do you see what I do? I said what I wanted to say there although I'll duplicate it below.

The Evil God Challenge, Part One: Introduction

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John W. Loftus asked me to write about Steven Law’s Evil God challenge (Wikipedia link). The topic turns out to be rather large, and it ramifies into several related topics that should be familiar to readers of this blog.

The Evil God challenge spawned a sizable literature, with articles that expand on it, and articles from theists that attempt to rebut it or nullify it. To keep the subject manageable, I’ll split my coverage across several articles. This article introduces the subject and provides references and a video.

Now that AI is here, check out my brief chat with Google Gemini on the Evil God challenge. Here is Gemini’s initial response:

Steven Law’s “Evil God challenge” is a philosophical thought experiment that questions the traditional concept of an all-good, all-powerful God. Here’s a summary of its core ideas:

  • The Challenge:
    • Law presents the challenge of explaining why believing in an all-good God is more reasonable than believing in an all-evil God.
    • He argues that many arguments for God’s existence don’t inherently prove God’s goodness, and could equally support the existence of an evil deity.
  • The Symmetry Thesis:
    • A key component is the “symmetry thesis,” which suggests that if the existence of good in the world is used to argue against an all-evil God, then the existence of evil should similarly argue against an all-good God.
    • Essentially, he questions why the “problem of evil” is considered a strong argument against a good God, but the “problem of good” isn’t considered an equally strong argument against an evil God.
  • The Goal:
    • The challenge aims to provoke deeper consideration of the attributes ascribed to God, and to examine the logical consistency of theistic arguments.
    • It also forces examination of why we define good and evil in the way that we do.
  • Responses:
    • There have been many responses to Laws challenge, including arguments that good is a positive reality, and evil is a privation of good, therefore not symmetrical. Also there are arguments that an all evil god, would not allow any good to exist.

In essence, Law’s challenge forces us to consider why we prioritize belief in a good God over an evil one, and to scrutinize the reasoning behind our theological assumptions.

Gemini’s summary is pretty good, but could do better at framing the Evil God challenge as a tool for showing how weak the standard theodicies are. (A theodicy is an attempt by a Christian apologist to solve the Problem of Evil, i.e. to explain how there can be so much evil in a world supposedly created by an omni-God.) Steven Law says that for many of the standard Christian responses to the Problem of Evil, there is a “mirror theodicy” that equally well (or poorly) tries to explain how there can be so much good in a world created by an omni-malevolent God. If the theist views the theodicy as a valid justification for the omni-God, why then isn’t the mirror theodicy an equally valid justification for the Evil God?

Alert readers will recognize similarities to parody religions and Street Epistemology, topics I’ll address in following articles. To very briefly summarize, both of those things aim to stimulate critical reflection by showing a person how the arguments they give to support their own religious claims work equally well, mutatis mutandis, to support a wide variety of other claims, such as the claims of other religions, or of parody religions.

This notion of analyzing the form of an argument, and plugging different terms into it, to see if the argument form still seems to work, is central to critical thinking. Around 2400 years ago, Ancient Greek thinkers began to analyze arguments this way. Presumably people had been making arguments for as long as they had language (which might have been for as long as people had anatomically modern vocal organs). Critical thinking began when people realized that arguments aren’t just things you assert when you want to make some specific point, but things that have forms you can analyze. The Evil God challenge is a clever case study in this kind of critical thinking.

Here’s a video to finish off this short introduction to the Evil God Challenge. Enjoy!

With Thinking Skills Like These No Wonder You Believe

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In a recent post I had written this sentence: "Joe, my goal is to change the minds of one person at a time, alone as they read my book." Then a Christian named Neal responded: "Man, your opinion of yourself is quite deluded. The idea that after Hume, Nietzsche, Comte, Marx, Engels, Popper, Russell, Sartre, Schopenhauer, Ayer, Chomski, and the list could be multiplied on and on now suddenly a second-rate atheologian like John Loftus has the arguments that will demolish Christianity once and for all is more than just hubris, it is outright self-deluded narcissism. Your estimation of your own abilities is quite exaggerated."

Does anyone know what a non-sequitur is? Neal's response is one.

It’s Not Hard to Figure Out What’s Wrong with Christianity

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Study, research, and critical thinking are the key


A long time ago I heard it said of someone, “He’s got a mind like concrete: all mixed up and firmly set.” Perhaps the reference was to a fundamentalist, and it certainly applies. In my article here last week, I discussed Janice Slebie’s book, Divorcing Religion: A Memoir and Survival Handbook. She describes the rigid mindset that she was raised to accept and was expected to obey without question. It took a lot of anguish and family crises for her to realize that she had been severely brainwashed. She made her escape, and has devoted her career to helping others who have experienced religious trauma. Selbie’s book is a welcome addition to the publishing boom by atheist/secular/humanist authors in the last two or three decades. The horror of 9/11, a religiously motivated terrorist attack, was a powerful motivator for non-believers to finally step forward to say, “Enough is Enough!”

Ten Reasons Why Most Believers Don't Seriously Question Their Faith

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[Written by John W. Loftus] This topic interests me to no end. Why don't most believers seriously question their faith? Does it take a special type of individual? Does it require some personality trait that believers don't have? Does that make skeptics different people? Could it be intelligence? Could it be that skeptics have a higher self-esteem than others? Is it that we don't need social approval? Is it that life's experiences have shown us we cannot accept the dominant opinion on a matter? Is it that we question what we're told in general? Perhaps, but when we look at skeptics in general there doesn't seem to be a set pattern. Perhaps a scientific poll might help answer that kind of question. What I do think is that the following ten reasons are almost certainly necessary conditions even if they are not sufficient ones:

Victor Reppert Again, On What Would Convince Us God Exists

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Many of the things that it is supposed that God could have done to make his existence perfectly evident could be passed off as the work of powerful (but evolved) aliens. And no matter how much evidence God provides, there is some additional piece of evidence that an atheist could say God didn't provide, and if God really cared for us, he would have provided. The amount of evidence God could have provided has no intrinsic maximum.
Vic made this comment in this discussion. Like other apologists who have an invested stake in being apologists he won't be convinced otherwise, but since there are Christians who want to be honest with their faith I'll respond.

Ten Reasons Why Most Believers Don't Seriously Question Their Faith

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Every Monday morning I'm posting submitted essays, excerpts from my books, and some of the best posts of the past. Here's one from January 17, 2012.

This topic interests me to no end. Why don't most believers seriously question their faith? Does it take a special type of individual? Does it require some personality trait that believers don't have? Does that make skeptics different people? Could it be intelligence? Could it be that skeptics have a higher self-esteem than others? Is it that we don't need social approval? Is it that life's experiences have shown us we cannot accept the dominant opinion on a matter? Is it that we question what we're told in general? Perhaps, but when we look at skeptics in general there doesn't seem to be a set pattern. Perhaps a scientific poll might help answer that kind of question. What I do think is that the following ten reasons are almost certainly necessary conditions even if they are not sufficient ones:

My Interview of Professor Keith Parsons About The Philosophy of Religion

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Dr. Keith M. Parsons is on the faculty of The University of Houston--Clear Lake, where he is Associate Professor of Philosophy. He has written a number of books and essays and was the founding editor of the philosophical journal Philo. He also did very well in two debates against William Lane Craig. Keith has honored me with the opportunity to interview him on the philosophy of religion, a topic I'll be writing about in a book titled, Unapologetic: Why the Philosophy of Religion Must End. What prompted this interview was that I noticed he was teaching a Philosophy of Religion (PoR) class after saying he wouldn't teach these classes any longer, or so it appeared seen here. I want to let him clear the air in case he changed his mind (his prerogative if he so chooses), or correct any misunderstandings readers might have. Going beyond this I want to get his present perspectives on the PoR discipline.
The following interview took place as I asked Keith a question via email, to which he responded as his time allowed. Then I would ask him another one, and so on. This was not debate, because I was restricted to asking questions. Even though I threw a few hardball's it wouldn't be fair to characterize this as anything more than a discussion. I interviewed him for the purposes of learning his views more or less, and that's it.

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John: The first question I must ask is why are you teaching a PoR class? Is it just one class, or are there others? Didn't you say you would no longer do so?

A Charming Bible Story… and Its Bad Theology

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Mark, Chapter 2: another installment of the fantasy novel
Some gospel episodes are so irresistible that they end up in Bible books for kids, which may be the ultimate test of a story’s suitability for telling “the good news.” Preachers and Sunday School teachers get all the mileage they can from them.

One such story is reported early in Jesus’ preaching career, as events are portrayed in Mark’s gospel. Jesus had already achieved local fame:

“When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them.” (Mark 2:1-2)

Another Bible Chapter that Wouldn’t Be Missed

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Somebody please get the scissors


My challenge to Christians—my plea, actually: Read the gospels and epistles carefully, meticulously, critically. Bring to these texts the same due diligence that you would apply when reviewing a mortgage or employment contract; you don’t want to be cheated or fooled. Let’s face it: pastors and priests are paid propagandists; yes, I keep saying this, because their urgent concern is to make all the stories come out right and banish doubts. Christians, you can do better than that: do the tough homework. The pews might empty fast—except for the folks who want to be conned, and don’t even notice that it’s happening.

Lighting the Fuse

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At a recent atheist meetup, I was talking with a former Muslim, and asked him what had led to his deconversion. He said that he had come to the United States from Pakistan and was working as a taxi driver while attending college. One night, after his shift ended, he asked a fellow driver to give him a ride home. As they were talking, the other driver, in a passing remark, said:

“You know, all religions are man-made.”

There was no discussion on the topic, just that simple statement, but it stuck with him, nagging at his thinking. Approximately two years later, he rejected religion and became an atheist.