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Easy peasy. Democrat, progressive, left leaning - I will look and listen closely and with interest. If what they are talking about makes sense and aligns with my own life, values and interests, I will act.
GOP, Moderate (Can't think of one who qualifies. Most are dead.) - I will listen. Any other kind - I dismiss.
Thinkers, Writers, Academics (other than from Fox and other GOP aligned institutions) - I will listen/read their works.
My "process" is to first understand that those that hold differing views, opinions, and preferences as to how things should be, are not "embracing falsehood".
Second ...I understand that there is ultimately no such thing as Absolute Objective Truth...as nothing is infallible.
Very little that actually matters can be placed so high on The Scale of Probability that everything rests upon, to be determined As Surely True As Can Be.
For 99.999% of human history we had very little of this knowledge...and we survived. Without all the environment wrecking & climate changing we now have. And THAT'S the truth.
As we can see...this thread is very much a political statement, with stuff like, "How important it truly is to separate the facts from the nonsense, or we end up with people believing, pursuing and insisting on a dangerous battle with windmills that affects all of us. Brings us all down."
BTW...electricity generating windmills do produce EMFs that have been found to cause cancer. And then posting pictures of the water-pump windmills in The Netherlands, with a caption under them "Causes Cancer", is what's indicative of "nonsense to pursue a misguided agenda".
Your bias & hate toward others that have differing Beliefs & preferences from you is showing again.
There is most certainly absolute objective truth. AKA universal truth. Not to be confused with the infallibility of man that prevents some (or even all) from recognizing the absolute truth and/or distinguishing absolute truth from the falsehoods.
..., "you have a hard time believing...", so what??...proves nothing...
...like i said, you obvious know little of the Jesuits, what they are and who their allegiance is to...you have an axe to grind with the catholics, okay...i'm a 'recovering catholic as well but i'm way, way past throwing stones at others who are on a different path...have a great day...
Would be nice if we could keep from throwing the stones, because this too tends to distract from the simple cause to reveal the truth of these matters.
Even what is at any given time touted as "Scientifically Verified Truth" that people know as "facts", can turn out to be "embracing falsehood".
The OP notes even Political views.
And most of that is simply preferences as to how one would like things to be...and not "hard truth or falsehood". Most policy concepts...domestic, foreign, social, military, economic, etc...are not even "true---false" type things.
Being very familiar with the Members' posts and position...it was mostly just a way to further criticize those that embrace Abrahamic Religion and the Theologies themselves...and other views they don't agree with.
Again the absolute truth is what it is regardless whether it is "scientifically verified" or not. It is what it is whether we get it right or not, but of course we can get it right at some point, and to that end is what we MUST always try to do. That or we are all the more susceptible to embrace the falsehoods.
You could not be more wrong about me and/or my intentions with respect to this thread, and your insistence to focus on me personally is another great example of what keeps people from recognizing the simple truth of these matters. To you too, please stick to the facts and leave me out of it.
"Follow the money" is also one good rubric. Particularly when some observed behavior seems irrational or senseless. Who has $, and who wants $? Who has given $, and what is expected in return? Often, completely batpucky crazy behavior suddenly makes perfect sense if you understand where money (and power) is flowing and why.
Obviously - in fact, it could not be more glaringly obvious - my issue is not with the poster's grammar but with the dichotomy of the poster's lament of mythical bygone days of a grammatical ubiquity alongside his churning out of a grammatical disaster (despite professing to have been taught grammatical wonders in the aforeclaimed golden age of grammar).
But by all means, feebly whack away at your silly strawman. Other than tossing regular word salads, you do little else.
The irony was not lost on me and though I don't take any unnecessary insults at all seriously in this forum, I'm always hopeful threads like this don't turn into one big silly childish food fight. Critical thinking is not really about being critical of one another personally...
I don't have a problem with differing views...just about any views, no matter what they are. You have often criticized me for that.
I am noting those that do take issue with differing views and beliefs...and rag on about it for years.
Especially those that purport that they lack a view & beliefs...but get on the case of those that hold them. On a forum titled so as to be about the very type of views & beliefs they claim that they lack.
Sure seems to me the truth is that we all have opinion about differing views, and how we address those differences is also a big part of the mix that makes some opinions a fair bit easier to consider over others.
Back to OP's question: The only way to tell truth from lies is to develop critical thinking. How? Let's see. . .
Let me concentrate on how to tell what's true and what's not in our everyday lives, in politics, in Covid. Religion is for another time. There are two pathways to critical thinking in those areas: the long one and the short one.
The long one:
1. Get a business degree (or at least take many online courses in statistics, marketing, human behavior, etc.). It is essential to learn how things work, e.g., can government create jobs? You would be more educated than the reporters who don't know what they are saying.
2. Take trips to the poor countries and to the poor areas of the US, to see how the other half lives. You will quickly see the difference between the two. You will see some real, not made-up, racism, real (not SNAP-supplemented) poverty.
3. Read the novel "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, to see how government and big business conspire against the people and small business.
The short one (one month):
Take a one-month break from the MSM, the NPR, the TV. Watch only the Fox News between 8 and 10 pm. Get a 1-month subscription to the WSJ (or read the editorial pages in a library). Online read only The Gateway Pundit, Breitbart, Bongino Report, Newsmax. No peeking at anything else -- a total detox. After one month, return to your CNN or whatever. Hopefully, by that time you will start screaming at the screen, "Why are you keep talking about this? Why are you silent about that?" That would be the beginning of your critical thinking.
One of the more interesting comments I've read in this forum in quite awhile. Thanks!
Regarding the "long one," I've got an MBA and I've done plenty of #2 as well. I haven't read "Atlas Shrugged," but I've read a good deal about the influence of government and big business as you describe. Important to factor into our thinking. No doubt.
Your "short one" really throws me for a loop however! I review a good many news sites every morning before I begin wasting a little time in this forum. Local, national and international. Everything from Al Jazeera to the WSJ, and also Fox News -- every morning. What I like to call "triangulating for the truth." In that process, I am forever amazed, dismayed and disappointed about how Fox News reports the news as compared to all the others. Amazing to compare the headlines and slant. There is no other major news network that does what Fox News does in this respect. It concerns me no end that so many people follow Fox News at the expense of all other sources of news.
How you conclude what you do does not seem like the result of critical thinking you had me thinking you were initially describing...
It's beyond me.
People will take an anti-parasite medicine meant for horses because they've been told it will prevent covid, but they won't take a vaccine actually designed to fight covid.
I used to be a great optimist about humanity. I believe I wrote posts about my optimism on here. The last 5 years have put paid to all of that. The stupidity of people is breathtaking.
Chin up, and remember it's quite common to become more and more cynical with age. I used to share this before, as part of the effort to better understand what is happening around us...
Has the U.S. motto become ‘In Nothing We Trust’?
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