Thomas Hood wrote:

Help me out here, Suzanne. Didn't you say you had an Aunt who taught Critical Thinking at Berkeley?

Interbane wrote:

It's concerning that you feel cornered enough to persuade people to share your confused perspective on who a person is that doesn't believe in a deity.

"Help me out here, Suzanne."

Tom asked me for imformation from a professor of Berekely, who teaches critical thinking, she happens to be my aunt, Tom knew this. Tom's request for additional informaton from a credible source supports the aim of critical thinking. The above statement by Interbane, in my opinion, defeats the purpose of critical thinking. Instead of asking yourself, "will more information be helpful", you instead concerned yourself with the idea that Tom was trying to persuade me, and dissmissed his request. Interbane, you made a statement without any supporting facts to base it on. If you are to use critical thinking to support your opinion, all information needs to be utilized. If your opinion is fast and firm, you can not consider yourself a critical thinker.

Frank 013 wrote:. . . Critical thinking is fair to all sides of the debate, it involves honest evaluation of all claims, it takes nothing for granted and even the thought process is scrutinized. . . .

Being fair and honest and taking nothing for granted are aspects of critical thinking? How do you know this, Frank? What books or classes or websites or conversations are your sources for the doctrines of critical thinking? Do you consider Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World to be an authoritative definition of critical thinking?

Tom

Frank wrote:

You have preconceived notions that you do not waver from and no amount of legitimate counter evidence can persuade you…

So, Frank, show me. Where is your legitimate evidence that God does not exist?

There is none.

There is no credibile evidence that God does exist.

If a critical thinker relies on evidence, and the subject of debate is subjective, and carries no evidence, you can not apply critical thinking to the debate. It becomes a debate over opinions. Opinions are never wrong, you may disagree, but without that magic evidence, you can never say opinions are incorrect. No matter how forceful you say it, you have an opinion, and nothing else.

Thomas Hood wrote:

Being fair and honest and taking nothing for granted are aspects of critical thinking? How do you know this, Frank? What books or classes or websites or conversations are your sources for the doctrines of critical thinking?

Oh dear. Is there a smiley for playing ping pong?

The issue is whether or not critical thinking can be applied to the existance or non existance of God. I believe Frank, has a grasp on the meaning of critical thinking. I also believe critical thinking is common knowledge and does not require citations.

Frank wrote:

Critical thinking is fair to all sides of the debate, it involves honest evaluation of all claims, it takes nothing for granted and even the thought process is scrutinized.

The thought process is scrutinized. There seems to be more thought process, and character scrutinization (and character defaming) going on then anything productive or useful. I don't know if there are any doctrines to critical thinking, but I have realized that discussions or debates that offer nothing, that do not expand the mind, are worthless.

You guys kill me, I make an observation, and a small joke in a forum about libraries, and the flood gates burst open. I feel like there are hawks circling the forums, waiting for something to attack. I feel like road kill all of a sudden.

Suzanne: "Tom asked me for information from a professor of Berekely, who teaches critical thinking, she happens to be my aunt, Tom knew this."

And entirely devoid of ulterior motive, right. Critical thinking should be applied to everything, even itself. Thomas is on a crusade to take it beyond what it means to most people to attempt to discredit atheists, who employ critical thinking, or genuinely hope to. After all, none of us can truly use logic or critical thinking until we have our PhD in it, right? I took Tom's sentence in context, and I was spot on as I can see.

Suzanne wrote:. . .You guys kill me, I make an observation, and a small joke in a forum about libraries, and the flood gates burst open. I feel like there are hawks circling the forums, waiting for something to attack. I feel like road kill all of a sudden. . . .

Please don't feel bad, Suzanne. In the spirit of Jesus, I have been offering myself as a lightning rod for the venomous thunderbolts of BookTalk atheists. I think they need to get it out of their systems, and once they do and surmount their doctrines, they will return to being the very nice people they are at heart.

Tom

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
42 Fallacies

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ ... logic.html
-- an atheist's site on fallacies

http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/fallacies.html

As long as you're doing some research Tom. I'm reading all of these as well, if you feel like discussing them let me know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias

Framing in the above link might be a useful study for you. Thought it's only somewhat applicable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

The above is good to understand how someone intelligent would come to strange and contrary conclusions. I believe you suffer from this, but I'm not sure how much. Dead people have heartbeats.

http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2009 ... rt-ii.html

Blogs are fun.

Interbane wrote:As long as you're doing some research Tom. I'm reading all of these as well. . .

Thanks for the links, Interbane.

Ok Interbane, I give, your daddy is bigger than my daddy.

Not everything's a competition Suzanne. What interests me most is how intelligent people can have such strongly opposing views. I'm at a chapter in "On Being Certain" right now about how neural networks, even if incorrect, become stronger over time. We should all take a stance we don't agree with from time to time, if only to break the ruts created by long held beliefs. There is no such thing as having an 'open mind' if you don't practice disbelieving in your current beliefs from time to time. It's painful, and requires one to swallow some pride.

Quite a few childhood memories come back when I do this, including an interesting one where each and every snowflake is an angel, and they were swirling around me outside the house I grew up in. It was dark and the wind was blustery and cold, but the snowflakes were large and well formed. If I concentrated hard enough, perhaps I could convince them to grab a hold of me and carry me up into the night air.