I joined a course in logical and critical thinking last week, it's free and highly recommended. Love that they use Bible-related examples to talk about logical fallacies
I wish more people would take their time to learn the skill of critical thinking. Here's the link if anyone is interested:
www.futurelearn.com/courses/logical-and-critical-thinking
why depress yourself?
with wisdom comes sorrow. the more knowledge the more grief.. ecclesiastes.
Except that this is not true. Wisdom does not cause sorrow, it simply makes you aware of it (at worst). Pretending that the world is perfect is not unlike saying that some deity will fix it all.
@RavenMunnin ,
you're young. you'll find out that that passage from the bible is absolutely, irrevocably, depressingly, true.
there's also a lot of truth to "ignorance is bliss".
I don't think I am that young, and if you define wisdom as the depressing facts about the world then you are correct. Most of the time it's the 'depressing' knowledge that people value because these are the things that they want to change to make the world a better place, and if you don't know about them then you can't change them. When you say 'ignorance is bliss' to my mind this has an implicit 'of the evils of the world' added in. If you are ignorant of the pleasures and bliss of the world and instead only know of its miseries, then the statement makes no sense. Similarly if you are ignorant of everything you will not experience bliss. So in that light what you have said is a tautology.
@RavenMunnin ,
OK.
It should start in grade school and continue in high school. Critical thinking is something very few people have. A good example: many of the Agnostics and Atheists are very angry about their once-religion failing them. Where is the critical thinking in this?
This seems interesting I took a formal logic course at a college level and I liked it. Might be fun, but I don't think I have the time for it. (here is a working link too)