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GeraldG -> RE: Critical Thinking & Logical Deduction Are Becoming Extinct Like The Dinosaur (5/1/2010 7:49:58 PM)
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I believe you are severely misjudging the psychology of humans, on an individual as well as on a societal scale, if you think that there can ever be “quality of argument” in a discussion on topics crossing the boundaries between faiths. It is not in the nature of the average man to have any desire to know the actual facts about things that are out of their sphere of consciousness.
While I have the education to put my faith in science rather than religion, it is still faith. I still don’t have an actual understanding about the exact science of dinosaurs, or falling stars, or why the sky is blue – just vague recollections of the facts that was taught to me by long since dead people whose books are still being used in education.
Yes, I know... as the quote says: “You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.” Science rules the physical universe, faith rules the psychological one. We can’t compare apples to oranges. But we can’t expect people to act like anything but people either. Disprove their science and the rational ones will be rational. Try and disprove their faith, and rationality takes a vacation.
I really don’t think logic and critical thinking is dying out. Some, by force of their belief, just choose to apply it to a different material. As much as I have ever cross-referenced the data I’ve collected, and compared theories between books, religious people have always cross-referenced their data and compared theories within their source material. Like you said, it’s not about who’s right, so then it shouldn’t matter what material they apply their studies to.
The end result though, well, I’m sure those of you who have ever worked in video editing or similar fields are well aware of the saying “crap in, crap out”. If rational kids with the ability to think critically are applying this to a fantasy flat planet reality, then their results will always be skewed. It still doesn’t make their logic any less sound... they just never had the data to get a proper result.
So then we are down to the problem of good children having bad parents. Since people tend to get all weird when I suggest we should enforce a license to procreate I guess we have to live with the world we got. Just make sure the kids YOU interact with get good data, and those that can think rationally will do so.
As for the rest, they’ll become forum trolls.
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