The Church of Critical Thinking wants your story.

[COCT]

After a bit of planning, I have finally opened the Church of Critical Thinking.

The Church of CT aims to take the rather successful model of a Church (with sermons, missions, a congregation, etc) and apply it to spreading the word about Critical Thinking. It is my opinion that too many of these types of discussions simply preach to the converted, and I want to get out there and teach Critical Thinking to people who don't already have doubts about their faith (or political candidate, or health remedy, or whitening toothpaste, or whatever it is that they're accepting blindly on faith without looking for proof).

Critical Thinkers don't have missionaries like churches do. Eventually, I'd like to change that. I'm kinda fed up with the dominance of rules based on religion instead of reason in my society. Will I succeed in changing that? I don't know. Perhaps not. But I aim to try.

Of course, it's hard to convince people that spreading the word about Critical Thinking will have any effect. Many people I speak with are so strong in their convictions that no evidence will convince them otherwise. That's where you can help.

I'm looking for stories from people who used to accept things blindly, but whose eyes were eventually opened. Maybe you lost money to a scam, or lost years to a cult, or maybe you're just embarrassed to think how long you believed in Santa Claus. Whatever your story, I'd like to hear it and share it with the Church of Critical Thinking.

The site is still growing (okay, it's only been functional for about a day so far) but I encourage you to visit and share your story. Furthermore, suggestions and criticisms are also welcome. The Church of CT is just taking shape, so I'm totally open to whatever you have to say.

The site is at http://www.churchofcriticalthinking.com and you can click on "contact" to make a submission.

Thank you.

COCT

The Church of Critical Thinking. "Your Suspicion Is Our Mission"

[Suezoled]

...we're not gonna have to pass the plate around, will we?

[COCT]

Nope. I don't accept donations. I don't want anybody to confuse it with a real church after all.

COCT

[c4ts]

If I'm going to think critically, I don't need to be sermoned at. Perhaps you should divide people into rooms with a table and guide them into a socratic discussion or something about a particular topic. The best way to appreciate critical thinking is through practice.

[COCT]

Originally posted by c4ts
If I'm going to think critically, I don't need to be sermoned at.

Exactly. So I won't need to come to you and open your eyes. They're already open. I'm concerned about the people who aren't going to be thinking critically. I hope to get them to the point where they don't need to hear me, where they can just think critically on their own.

COCT

[Keneke]

Do you think that using the word church is more of a dig against religion, seeing as how what you are doing is not precisely worship? To truly advance your view (which I wholly agree with), would you not use a more suitable word, such as organization, community, or fellowship?

[COCT]

Hmm. A dig against religion? Not intended as such. Well, maybe in the slightest way. It was meant more to be a catchy name than as a dig at religion. Of course, I am critical of religion and will possibly say things in the future that may be construed as a dig at religion. But this in particular wasn't really meant that way.

I'm sure religions would object much more to the content of the site than the name.

I like the model of the church as far as organizing a community to discuss a commonality and spread the word. So I adopted that model. And the word.

COCT

[Fidelio]

You might (if you haven't already) check out The Secular Humanist Revival Meeting (http://www.hatrack.com/store/store.cgi?loc=us&item=AUDIO_Revival&opt=). It's from the 80's but still relevant. You can listen to audio clips at the site.

[Suezoled]

awww! cute widdle fuzzy possum!

[LizardPeople]

Church is boring. Model a circus.

[Yahweh]

*Yahweh gets up from his round-the-clock worship of his idol god, Charles Darwin*

I think your website is very promising, however I have one concern, From your FAQ page you state:
This is the preaching on street corners phase. I want to see someone handing out fliers advocating Critical Thinking on every street corner where there's a religious preacher advocating accepting Jesus.
There was a skit on a show called "MTV's Jackass". The skit involved a guy in a red devil costume "preaching" on the steets, he had a sign with an "X" painted over the word "God". He was making an ass out of himself yelling the words "Keep God out of California", after a few minutes a fundie character attacks the guy in the devil costume and breaks his sign.

[COCT]

Originally posted by Yahweh
I think your website is very promising. I have one concern...


Thanks for the support. You're right. Dressing like a devil and shouting like a dumbass doesn't strike me as the approach I want to take. I imagine more subtlety.

I want to make fliers/bruchures that answer a few questions I hear about atheism (like "Why would people bother being good if they're not trying to get into heaven?"), and suggest a few questions worth asking about religion, and point people to my website for further exploration. Particularly, I'm inspired by the Jews For Jesus fliers that I see handed out at airports. Then instead of dressing like the devil, I imagine wearing a blazer or something and shouting, "Hey, it's completely okay not to believe in Jesus" or "I've done some research and it turns out there's no God" or something like that -- not too provocative, but surprising because it's not what you expect a street preacher to be shouting. If it drums up some debate on the street, I'm up for that. I'm not up for a devil costume, though.

I haven't though about details though, really. I'm not at that phase yet.

COCT

[geni]

You are aware that the false dilema logical fallicy don't just apply to creationists?

[neutrino_cannon]

Originally posted by Yahweh
*Yahweh gets up from his round-the-clock worship of his idol god, Charles Darwin*

My pantheon could beat up your pantheon.

[c4ts]

My pantheon has more eldrich horror than your pantheon.

[evildave]

Originally posted by Yahweh
*Yahweh gets up from his round-the-clock worship of his idol god, Charles Darwin*

I think your website is very promising, however I have one concern, From your FAQ page you state:

There was a skit on a show called "MTV's Jackass". The skit involved a guy in a red devil costume "preaching" on the steets, he had a sign with an "X" painted over the word "God". He was making an ass out of himself yelling the words "Keep God out of California", after a few minutes a fundie character attacks the guy in the devil costume and breaks his sign.

One of my favorites.

[T'ai Chi]

COCT, you should write some non-tracts.

[Flo]

Looks like someone already had thought along those lines (http://www.ie.lspace.org/fandom/afp/timelines/subliminal.html) ...

I've been mulling this over for a while, but it's time to change the world...you are all invited to join the first genuine twenty first century religion

Jehova's Innocent Bystanders

I plan on groups of us knocking on people's doors and patiently
explaining to them that "we know nothing at all, we probably weren't even there, and if we did know anything we wouldn't go blabbing about it to all and sundry"

it also saves on printing costs, because all our leaflets would be blank sheets of paper


You should however be wary of schisms, they tend to appear very early in all new religious organisations:

> we shall simply treat all sheets of paper as blank sheets of paper,<

I liked the idea, up until this. I think it's time for a split. I hereby
found the Jehova's Innocent Bystanders (reformed). We do not approve of these new ideas of treating *all* sheets of paper as blank sheets of paper. Only *proper* blank sheets of paper will be considered blank sheets of paper.

[Iacchus]

Does this rule out the possibility of anything spiritual? If there were any truth to it would that be a part of critical thinking?

Oh, did you know I died and gave birth to myself? And I was torn to bloody awful shreds ... that is until my grandmother finally stepped in and reconstituted me later. Huh? ...

http://www.dionysus.org/x0501.html

[COCT]

Originally posted by Iacchus
Does this rule out the possibility of anything spiritual? [/url]

Not if it holds up to critical examination. I'll refer you to the JREF's million dollar challenge...

[geni]

Originally posted by COCT


Not if it holds up to critical examination. I'll refer you to the JREF's million dollar challenge...


Doesn't apply. There is no objective way of observing sprituality.

[Suezoled]

Originally posted by Iacchus
(snipped)

Oh, did you know I died and gave birth to myself? And I was torn to bloody awful shreds ... that is until my grandmother finally stepped in and reconstituted me later. Huh? ...

http://www.dionysus.org/x0501.html

I don't want to hear any more about your drunken inbred exploits.

[COCT]

Originally posted by geni
Doesn't apply. There is no objective way of observing sprituality.

Then I guess the answer is no. If there's no way of observing a phenomenon, I don't imagine it would hold up under critical examination. I can't observe invisible robot monkeys that teleport into my home whenever nobody's home. Should I believe they exist? What reason would I have to do so? Or not to do so? If I just have a feeling that it's happening, does that make it so?

[geni]

Originally posted by COCT


Then I guess the answer is no. If there's no way of observing a phenomenon, I don't imagine it would hold up under critical examination. I can't observe invisible robot monkeys that teleport into my home whenever nobody's home. Should I believe they exist? What reason would I have to do so? Or not to do so? If I just have a feeling that it's happening, does that make it so?

Does ball lighting exist? How about black holes? Singularites do they exist?

Eddited to add. There is no way of obseving the non existance of of god.

[COCT]

Originally posted by geni


Does ball lighting exist? How about black holes? Singularites do they exist?

Eddited to add. There is no way of obseving the non existance of of god.

There is no way of observing the non-existence of teleporting invisible robot monkeys either.

But theories about ball lightning, black holes, and singularities didn't just come out of thin air. They're based on observeable phenomenon that lead directly to those conclusions. If you're interested, here are some resources:

Ball lightning (http://www.nature.com/nsu/000203/000203-8.html) (nature.com)

Black holes (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/htmltest/gifcity/bh_pub_faq.html) (nasa.gov)

Singularities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_singularity) (wikipedia.org)

[geni]

Originally posted by COCT There is no way of observing the non-existence of teleporting invisible robot monkeys either.

Is that a challange? I can think of a few (delection of patricle streams and a few others). You need a better example. Just as you can disprove some Gods and can disprove somne forms of invisible forms of teleporting monkeys

But theories about ball lightning, black holes, and singularities didn't just come out of thin air. They're based on observeable phenomenon that lead directly to those conclusions. If you're interested, here are some resources:

Ball lightning (http://www.nature.com/nsu/000203/000203-8.html) (nature.com)

Black holes (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/htmltest/gifcity/bh_pub_faq.html) (nasa.gov)

Singularities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_singularity) (wikipedia.org)

Ball lighting has slightly dodgy evidence to say the least Your article does not help much. Singularites would violate some fairly fundimental laws of physics. Black holes allmost certianly exist. You premies is only valid if you can prove that ideas about god did not come from observed phernonom. Since most of the claims date back severl thousand years you are going to find this dificult.

[COCT]

Originally posted by geni

Ball lighting has slightly dodgy evidence to say the least Your article does not help much. Singularites would violate some fairly fundimental laws of physics.

Great thing about science. Physicists occasionally develop theories or observe phenomenon that seem to violate some fairly fundamental laws of physics. When this happens, they reevaluate those laws. How is it they're being violated? Are the laws wrong? Are the observations wrong? Do we need to make exceptions or changes to our 'laws' based on new evidence? The world was believed flat. We observed that it's not. New fundamental law. We thought that what goes up must come down. But if you go up enough, you won't come down. New theories about gravity.

Religion doesn't allow for that. Religion is simply always right.

Black holes allmost certianly exist. You premies is only valid if you can prove that ideas about god did not come from observed phernonom. Since most of the claims date back severl thousand years you are going to find this dificult.

I see. So unless I can prove that nobody actually saw Jesus come back to life, you'll assume that he did? Or that he walked on water? Or was born of a virgin? Your proof is that it's written in a book? You'll go against everything you know about the way the world works because of claims that date back to a much less enlightened time?

[geni]

Originally posted by COCT
Great thing about science. Physicists occasionally develop theories or observe phenomenon that seem to violate some fairly fundamental laws of physics. When this happens, they reevaluate those laws. How is it they're being violated? Are the laws wrong? Are the observations wrong? Do we need to make exceptions or changes to our 'laws' based on new evidence? The world was believed flat. We observed that it's not. New fundamental law. We thought that what goes up must come down. But if you go up enough, you won't come down. New theories about gravity.

Religion doesn't allow for that. Religion is simply always right.

Second vatican council. Seems to disporve you claim quite well



I see. So unless I can prove that nobody actually saw Jesus come back to life, you'll assume that he did? Or that he walked on water? Or was born of a virgin? Your proof is that it's written in a book? You'll go against everything you know about the way the world works because of claims that date back to a much less enlightened time?

My postion is irrelvant unless you want to comit the false dillma logical fallicy. Assuming that he did not (and remeber that the god of most modern relgions quite effectivly gets round the physics probelm) is illogical. Saying god does not exist is illogical. Say that some god do not exist is logical. Say that there is no evidence for for god may or may not be logical. Say that the evidence does not convince you that god exists is logical. However concluding from this lack of evidence that you find convincing that no god/s exist is illogical.

[COCT]

Originally posted by geni
My postion is irrelvant unless you want to comit the false dillma logical fallicy.

The false dilemma logical fallacy doesn't apply. To the best of my recollection, that's the one where you consider only two options, and come to one conclusion by discounting another, right?

Scientists didn't come to their conclusions by rejecting religion. Scientists came to their conclusions through observation. If observations supported divine creation, that would be the conclusion. Where does the false delemma fallacy fit in?

You say it's illogical to say God doesn't exist simply because there's no evidence that he does. Um... You can't just come to conclusions without any evidence to support them. If you're using the bible as your evidence, you need to reexamine it. It's far from an accurate document.

[c4ts]

Originally posted by COCT


The false dilemma logical fallacy doesn't apply. To the best of my recollection, that's the one where you consider only two options, and come to one conclusion by discounting another, right?


It is essentially presenting two options, neither of which are correct. You don't have to eliminate one in order to single out the other.

http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/distract/fd.htm

[geni]

Originally posted by COCT
[B]

The false dilemma logical fallacy doesn't apply. To the best of my recollection, that's the one where you consider only two options, and come to one conclusion by discounting another, right?

Scientists didn't come to their conclusions by rejecting religion. Scientists came to their conclusions through observation. If observations supported divine creation, that would be the conclusion. Where does the false delemma fallacy fit in?

In that you you seem to want to know my postion. There is no reason for thois since wheathr it is correct or not has no bering on whether you are correct or not. Since does not reach a conclusion about god. Questions about god do not make sense in a scientific context. There may be no evidence but there is no reason why there should be any evidence. Modern relgion very neatly manages to side step science and there are no shortage of other posible god that do the same. Thinking that science or the scientific method somehow disproves god means you've just boight into fundie thinking.


You say it's illogical to say God doesn't exist simply because there's no evidence that he does. Um... You can't just come to conclusions without any evidence to support them. If you're using the bible as your evidence, you need to reexamine it. It's far from an accurate document.

Where did I say it was logical to belive in god? God sits on the edge of ocams rasor it's just as logical to belive in god as to not belive in god. You've come to a conclusion (that god does not exist) without the evidence to support it.

[T'ai Chi]

Originally posted by COCT

Great thing about science. Physicists occasionally develop theories or observe phenomenon that seem to violate some fairly fundamental laws of physics. When this happens, they reevaluate those laws. How is it they're being violated? Are the laws wrong? Are the observations wrong? Do we need to make exceptions or changes to our 'laws' based on new evidence? The world was believed flat. We observed that it's not. New fundamental law. We thought that what goes up must come down. But if you go up enough, you won't come down. New theories about gravity.

Religion doesn't allow for that. Religion is simply always right.


Yet the great thing about religion is that it tends to assimilate science. Science's limitation is that it cannot assimilate religion.

[Iacchus]

Originally posted by COCT

Not if it holds up to critical examination. I'll refer you to the JREF's million dollar challenge... And yet what is the point of spirituality if not to teach us that there's something more to life than what is purely physical? You don't think it's possible to discover if we have a spiritual nature within ourselves and to derive any truths therefrom?

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

To account for spirituality we can create the "Church of Buddysts who don't believe neither in Karma nor Reincarnation" :)

[neutrino_cannon]

Originally posted by Iacchus
And yet what is the point of spirituality if not to teach us that there's something more to life than what is purely physical? You don't think it's possible to discover if we have a spiritual nature within ourselves and to derive any truths therefrom?

Neg, there is no reason to assume the spirit is anything non-physical.

I'll steal from Sagan's Demon haunted world (and myself),

The world spirit comes from a latin word meaning air, thus the other derivatives such as aspirate.

When we say spirit or spiritual, why could that not refer to the physical fealings we encounter?

I am as yet unaware of any reason to believe in the supernatural. I've heard it asserted that there are good reasons, but I've never seen them presented to me.

Our spiritual nature, if you want to call it that could easily be summed up as the study of how our brains work, quite an interesting and impressive field.

Trying to derive truth or value from that which does not exist is a sure way to frustration and strife.

[fishbob]

And yet what is the point of spirituality if not to teach us that there's something more to life than what is purely physical? You don't think it's possible to discover if we have a spiritual nature within ourselves and to derive any truths therefrom? You are saying that the point of something that may be felt but can not be observed is to teach us that there is something more to life than what we can observe. Something that can only be felt but not seen or measured. This logic may feel good, but is circular and dishonest.

[Iacchus]

Originally posted by fishbob

You are saying that the point of something that may be felt but can not be observed is to teach us that there is something more to life than what we can observe. Something that can only be felt but not seen or measured. This logic may feel good, but is circular and dishonest. Hey, did you hear that the truth was stranger than fiction? ;) By the way, what is the point of setting up a church if not to allow for the possibility that something might exist? Isn't that what freedom of religion is supposed be about it? And what if Big Brother decided to step in and stamp everything with the stamp of Atheism on it? Then what? There goes our beloved freedom. Of course this would be fine with the Atheists, since they don't believe man was ever free in the first place. Which, is why they wholeheartedly embrace the machine -- in devotion to their god Big Brother -- for they believe man is merely an automaton, and this is the best way to control things -- in the mechanistic sense.

I don't know, does this sound honest to you? Or, do you think free will is just too sloppy and no man should be allowed to make up his own mind on the matter? Doesn't this sound the least bit cowardly? And by the way, what if there really was a God? ;)

[Phrost]

Originally posted by Lucifuge Rofocale
To account for spirituality we can create the "Church of Buddysts who don't believe neither in Karma nor Reincarnation" :)

You mean Buddhists? The true concepts behind Buddhism are to question everything, believe nothing. True buddhism is the religion of the critical thinker, if it can be called a religion at all.

[COCT]

Originally posted by Iacchus
By the way, what is the point of setting up a church if not to allow for the possibility that something might exist?
Um... it's not a real church.
And what if Big Brother decided to step in and stamp everything with the stamp of Atheism on it? Then what? There goes our beloved freedom. Of course this would be fine with the Atheists, since they don't believe man was ever free in the first place.

1) I support your freedom to believe whatever you want to believe. I support my own freedom to try to make you realize how wrong you are. Similarly, I support your freedom to try to pursuade me that I'm wrong. I don't support religious views influencing my government to restrict my freedoms.

2) Who said atheists don't believe man was ever free? What's all this automaton nonsense? Quite to the contrary, man is free to do whatever he wants. I'm not sure how you conclude that atheists don't believe in free will. Care to elaborate?