Critical Thinking
Today is the 10th anniversary of Carl Sagan's death and Joel Schlosberg has proposed a Sagan-blog-a-thon. Sagan was a huge proponent of critical thinking which is a topic that has been on my mind of late.
My traditional holiday family arguments frequently involve me pleading "Think for yourselves - don't rely on the church to do if for you!" The children I encounter at work get frustrated when I don't "just tell them what to do." Co-workers lose their cool when I don't follow procedure ("that's just not how we do it!"). While I'm thinking of words like "apathy," "lazy," "ineffective," and "incongruent" others seem to be thinking of words like "faith," "patriotism," "tradition," and "hierarchy."
Why are phrases like "doubting Thomas" and "ye of little faith" insults? We most definitely should question what we are told and we should assuredly not be proud of holding beliefs without evidence.
My traditional holiday family arguments frequently involve me pleading "Think for yourselves - don't rely on the church to do if for you!" The children I encounter at work get frustrated when I don't "just tell them what to do." Co-workers lose their cool when I don't follow procedure ("that's just not how we do it!"). While I'm thinking of words like "apathy," "lazy," "ineffective," and "incongruent" others seem to be thinking of words like "faith," "patriotism," "tradition," and "hierarchy."
Why are phrases like "doubting Thomas" and "ye of little faith" insults? We most definitely should question what we are told and we should assuredly not be proud of holding beliefs without evidence.
posted by Zeolite at 11:41 PM
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