How to think straight. Useful resource IMO.

by Open mind 6 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Open mind

  The Watchtower, on rare occasions, pays lip service to the importance of good critical thinking skills. Most born-in JWs probably think they have decent "perceptive powers", I know I did. I got good grades in school. I could beat my fellow students, siblings or parents now and then in arguments.

  Then I found this place and other web-based forums.

  DOH!!!

  What an undereducated, over-confident, ignoramus I had become after decades of the "Best Education on Earth" (tm).

  Anyway, I stumbled upon this Critical Thinking web page hosted by San Jose State University the other day and found it to be a helpful primer in argumentation and logical fallacies. The logical fallacy section reads like a walk through the cubicles of the WT Writing Department.

  http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/itl/graphics/main.html

  Let me know what you think!

  om
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  itsbeenalongtime

  Thanks!!!! Yeah the best education on earth, that is killing one family after the next!!
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  SweetBabyCheezits

  I love to see critical thinking links. Good find.

  If you like this, be sure to check out Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit (full text available here), a chapter from his book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.
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  Open mind

  Sweet B.C., I remember the first time I saw "Demon Haunted World..." on a library shelf. I thought some of Sagan's COSMOS work was really interesting, (except for all that Satanic Evolution stuff) but as a true-believing JW, when I saw "Demon" in the title I immediately looked away.

  How dumb was that?

  Fast forward a few more years and "Demon Haunted World" was one of the first books to crack through my JW-trained thinking processes.

  om
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  OnTheWayOut

  WTS loves to misuse appeals to authority. They use scholars and Christendom and Clergy and whatnot. They often don't even tell you the exact authority. But I find they often give weight to their authority even though it really means nothing and is unverifiable. The biggest use of authority is Watchtower literature itself. They say that their literature says something, so it's already proven.

  They love appeals to common beliefs or practices of "themselves." They tell you something is disgusting to Jehovah or to the brotherhood because, well because some unrelated scriptures say something. Besides, everyone knows how God feels about that.

  Thanks for pointing this out.
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  Justitia Themis

  If you would like to test your skills, buy an LSAT (Law SAT) exam from Amazon. Several of the sections are pure Aristotelian logic.
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  PublishingCult

  bookmarked