did you use your critical thinking skills or just blindly believe everything?

Question

I am actually being serious about this. for those of you who are believers, did you ever use your critical thinking skills and then go like "okay it makes sense" and you just wanna take a chance on something, you know to believe something without proof? or did you just blindly accept everything at face value?

Im asking cause some people just believe everything without a doubt, but some really think about it and accept it and anything that science says about otherwise just look at it as a miracle from god. so yeah, did you ever really think about it, or just believe everything without asking?

Answer 1

I was an atheist for 25 years, and had all the intellectual arguments down pat. I read 'Case for Christ' and found them severely challenged. I'm now a Catholic. I have a college degree, I work in tech consulting, and am a member of Mensa. So, yes, I did a lot of thinking.

Answer 2

I think that you are labouring under a misconception that people just decide to have faith and that's it. One day, change your life forever.

It's a little more involved than that, and to give you a good idea of it, why don't you reverse the question to yourself, and ask yourself, why am I not believing and trusting, why do I always ask questions? Why can't I be more grounded? etc etc.

I mean, it doesn't make sense to you because it is a part of you. Neither does it make sense to a person of faith to try to explain it critically. Sometimes it just defies explanation.

You probably could do well to have some coco round about now.

Answer 3

QUESTION EVERYTHING! So many people take things at face value. I used to be that way before I began to think, logically that is. I began to open my mind from my southern baptist upbringing and began to really ask questions. Once I got the answers, I was blown away and I felt better knowing I CREATE MY REALITY and that my life has not been made out for me or that some diety is putting challenges in my life. Thats a crutch for the crap that goes wrong and for what doesnt. I question everything. Einstein did!

Answer 4

I'm sorry. I was educated in the United States where critical thinking is discouraged. If we went around exercising "critical thinking," we'd not patronize McDonald's or WalMart or Starbucks. We'd turn off the television and toss it out in the trash and start reading books.

We don't like critical thinking! It makes our heads buzz.

Answer 5

Sociobiologists believe that rationality arose to control the emotions. There is substantial evidence that in the absence of emotion, rationality cannot exist. If you damage the amygdala of a person (please do not try this at home), or if it becomes damaged by disease, you cannot feel your emotions. It turns out people who cannot feel their emotions cannot make rational choices either, because they cannot feel what they prefer. Rationality is not achieved by all people either and it is acheived in varying degrees. Research on causal logic in the 80's showed that only 40% of undergraduates ever achieved it, the rest learned algorithms that mimicked rationality so they could operate in their chosen profession. It is presumed the percentage is lower among the general population, however I am cautious about how much less it is prevelant. Blind acceptance is a survival algorithm, it is a special form of copying or mimetic behavior. We teach children to copy adults in order for them to learn. We encourage copying everywhere. When you reject "blind faith," you are rejecting a person's survival mechanism. You can see the strong responses that occur on YA because people are attacking basic surivival mechanisms. This does mean that careful choice of belief systems by the rational is very important, because it will be copied diligently. Fanaticism is really just diligent copying. Francis of Assisi, Luther, Mohammed, Anthony of the Desert, Buddha, Marx, Confucius and so forth are really dangerous because they were rational fanatics. Rationality is not a guarantee of a positive outcome. Even bin Laden is a rational fanatic. He is more dangerous because people dismiss him as a nut. That is extremely dangerous because he isn't. Within his framework, he is eminently correct in his actions. In the absence of strong belief, rationality likely leads to moderation and moderate behavior, but religions demand strong belief and human character fills that desired need naturally. In a sense, that is what is so dangerous about religions and I include atheistic philosophies such as communism in that group. We periodically get street preachers on campus, they travel around the country and set up shop. It has increased quite a bit over the decades, it used to be limited to one per year. As such, he actually had a better audience and was granted a better location. Now no one gets a location, nor an audience. One of them recently lost out to a person who debated him using the magical sphaghetti god arguments. The preacher wasn't up to an assault by rationality. I ignore these things, but I was walking with someone, a Christian as it happened, and they asked me if it even matters one way or the other. My answer was this, "If you believe in the tooth fairy, it would be easy to think of that as a harmless belief, even a positive one. However, if you pulled your teeth out in expectation of receiving money, or worse pulled out other peoples' teeth for their benefit, then it is clearly harmful. The real problem with that preacher was that he could be doing something valuable for society. He could be useful, but his extreme fanaticism makes him at best a detriment to the world." Beliefs are not harmless because they are acted upon. Someone will diligently act on them. We should not be arguing against irrationality as it is an essential component of being human. It is a key component to what makes us distinct. It is deadly valuable. We should be arguing about belief schematics. Failure to do so could result in the needless extinction of the species. We are in a time of great danger to our species. We could easily convert the world into one giant Easter Island where all the resources are consumed, the planet melts and you have death in the billions. The world is too fragile at this point to allow poor decision making systems to survive.

Answer 6

no years of skeptical debate and originally otherwise have lead me to a non believer atheistic stance outside of formal religion but still a moralist. no blind faith for me thank you !

Answer 7

We are TOLD to question and dig and meditate, pray, ask for wisdom and knowledge........ so I do....... I read the Bible, but first I pray for wisdom..... I think about it, meditate on it, etc.......... and still with all that, my FAITH grows stronger....... go in peace......... God bless