There has been an awful lot of banter about logical fallacies, particularly ad hominem, occasionally strawman, and a few other of the more common logical fallacies on the board lately. Almost always they are cited as a means of managing a conversation into ostensibly more cordial tones and dignified conversational technique. However, careful analysis also indicates that this technique has become the very thing it purports to rectify---A means of name calling, ostracizeation, unfavorable grouping of a certain class of debaters, and insinuations of intellectual compromise…under the guise of encouraging uplifting conversation. However, is there more to the story in light of critical thinking skills and how they might be used to manage Gospel discussions?
When I first went to college in the early 80’s, I never recall any classes that I was required to take which focused on the concepts of critical thinking and it’s child Ethical thinking. However, when I returned in the early 2000's they were required for graduation. I am not sure if they did not exist prior, but subsequent research, albeit limited, seems to reinforce that modern ideas concerning critical thinking did not begin to mature and define themselves into college curriculum in a big way until the late 1980’s.
It should be noted that under the banner of critical thinking come the ideologies of logical fallacies. It should be noted that both come under the banner of philosophical disciplines. To start the discussion I submit the following quote to stimulate those philosophical neurons into action:
Is there a reason why some individuals might be drawn to strongly hyper focus on demands of avoiding logical fallacies more so than others? Are constraints of operating within the expectations of logical fallacies conducive or detrimental to Gospel Discussions. I have much more information to introduce but let's see where this goe4s first.…new research suggests that whether we believe may also have to do with how much we rely on intuition versus analytical thinking. In 2011 Amitai Shenhav, David Rand and Joshua Greene of Harvard University published a paper showing that people who have a tendency to rely on their intuition are more likely to believe in God. They also showed that encouraging people to think intuitively increased people’s belief in God. Building on these findings, in a recent paper published in Science, Will Gervais and Ara Norenzayan of the University of British Columbia found that encouraging people to think analytically reduced their tendency to believe in God. Together these findings suggest that belief may at least partly stem from our thinking styles. (Grewal, Daisy, How Critical Thinkers Lose their Faith in God, Religious belief drops when analytical thinking rises, May 1st 2012 accessed from this site: https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... faith-god/.)