Why hasn’t this kind of critical thinking migrated out of India to the rest of the world? Methinks these educators (seriously, watch to the end) would do well to licence out their brand of debunking to other cultures.
Recorded back in 2007 for the BBC and narrated by Jonathan Pryce, this video is again making the rounds this weekend and, like religion, has nevertheless stood up well to the tests of time.
With 2012 and all the ridiculousness that entails looming large on the horizon, the BBC would do well to revisit this topic—perhaps in the U.S.?—and make another. [Boing Boing]
Ash Curkpatrick
Monday, April 4, 2011 at 2:31 PMAnd by ‘critical thinking’, I’m assuming you’re saying, ‘naturalistic thinking’?
To be sure, it’s fantastic to educate people on the way charlatans work, so that they themselves can capably discern what is the truth – but what these people are doing could almost be considered just a deceptive. Why not rather explain to these people ways that these charlatans could work, rather than attempting to dash their beliefs in the supernatural altogether? All this method does is attempt to tip the scale the other way and say that there is no such thing as the supernatural. But that sort of reasoning is /just as fallacious/ as putting all your hope in the ‘supposed’ supernatural.
As the great, late English essayist, G.K. Chesterton states in his book, ‘Orthodoxy’:
“Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them.”
-G.K. Chesterton
Sam
Tuesday, April 5, 2011 at 7:30 AMAgreed. People confuse terms, critical thinking is not synonymous with naturalist thought. I would suggest that many naturalists a very close minded about issues they don’t like.