Another great book on critical thinking. In order to best express ourselves, we need to know how to think clearly and systematically — meaning practicAnother great book on critical thinking. In order to best express ourselves, we need to know how to think clearly and systematically — meaning practice critical thinking. Critical thinking also means knowing how to break down texts, and in turn, improve our ability to comprehend. In learning how to analyse the logical structure of texts, critical thinking improves comprehension abilities. Without critical thinking, how can we really live a meaningful life?
We need this skill to self-reflect and justify our ways of life and opinions. Critical thinking provides us with the tools to evaluate ourselves in the way that we need to.
Critical thinking is crucial for many career paths. Not just for scientists, but lawyers, doctors, reporters, engineers, accountants, and analysts (among many others) all have to use critical thinking in their positions.
Those with critical thinking skills tend to solve problems as part of their natural instinct. Critical thinkers are patient and committed to solving the problem, similar to Albert Einstein, one of the best critical thinking examples, who said “It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”...more
This wonderful book which was recommended to me by a friend, is about evolutionary psychology, a field that I was only superficially familiar with. EvThis wonderful book which was recommended to me by a friend, is about evolutionary psychology, a field that I was only superficially familiar with. Even though the arguments presented here are mostly speculative and in the form of hypotheses, it is still a wonderful scientific effort and a wealth of information and data has been gleaned by psychologists that can give us insights about who we are, where we came from and why we possess the current behavioral traits from an evolutionary perspective. This book deals with a wide range of issues from problems of survival to challenges of mating and mating strategies to evolutionary roots of aggression and warfare and more. Very very easy to read, by the way.
This book has many highs and lows. And here I'm going to focus on some of the lows.
The author says and I quote:
"As an intuitionist, I’d say that the wThis book has many highs and lows. And here I'm going to focus on some of the lows.
The author says and I quote:
"As an intuitionist, I’d say that the worship of reason is itself an illustration of one of the most long-lived delusions in Western history: the rationalist delusion. It’s the idea that reasoning is our most noble attribute, one that makes us like the gods (for Plato) or that brings us beyond the “delusion” of believing in gods (for the New Atheists)."
So after hearing someone say this, how could you ever take them seriously?
He claims that we are groupish from an evolutionary perspective, something that results from group selection. Well, group selection has been denied by many evolutionary biologists so it remains very controversial.
"Religions are social facts. Religion cannot be studied in lone individuals any more than hivishness can be studied in lone bees." I'm sure you can do that. You just need to open your eyes.
"religion does not seem to be the cause of suicide bombing. According to Robert Pape, who has created a database of every suicide terrorist attack in the last hundred years, suicide bombing is a nationalist response to military occupation by a culturally alien democratic power." Oh, yeah? How about kids being indoctrinated from an early age by religious ideology? How about imposing pernicious ideas upon then about killing apostates? How about that?
"Anything that binds people together into a moral matrix that glorifies the in-group while at the same time demonizing another group can lead to moralistic killing, and many religions are well suited for that task. Religion is therefore often an accessory to atrocity, rather than the driving force of the atrocity." I disagree.
"Societies that forgo the exoskeleton of religion should reflect carefully on what will happen to them over several generations." Are you serious? Look at all the secular counties in Western Europe. They have by far the best functioning democracies in the world; countries like Switzerland, Sweden, etc....more
Sometime around her third birthday, my daughter asked, “Where does gravity come from?” After talking about how objects attHere's a quote from the book:
Sometime around her third birthday, my daughter asked, “Where does gravity come from?” After talking about how objects attract each other—and wisely ignoring the curvature of space-time—my wife and I arrived at our deepest and most honest answer: “We don’t know. Gravity is a mystery. People are still trying to figure it out.” This type of answer continues to divide humanity. We could have said, as billions of people would have, “Gravity comes from God.” But this would have merely stifled our daughter’s intelligence—and taught her to stifle it. We could have told her, “Gravity might be God’s way of dragging people to hell, where they burn in fire. And you will burn there forever if you doubt that God exists.” No Christian or Muslim can offer a compelling reason why we shouldn’t have said such a thing—or the moral equivalent—and yet that would have been nothing less than the emotional and intellectual abuse of a child. I have now heard from many thousands of people who were oppressed in this way, from the moment they could speak, by the terrifying ignorance and fanaticism of their parents. The reason for this widespread mistreatment of children is clear: Most people still believe that religion provides something essential that cannot be had any other way....more
Loading...
