“Critical Thinking” as a Materialist Fraud

I recently became aware of a YouTube video family purporting to teach “critical thinking”. This was interesting enough to me that I invested the 2 hour + download time over our frail country phone lines in order to see a 9 minute video called “Open Mindedness”, which is only one of maybe 8 or 10 “instructional” videos by someone called “QualiaSoup”.

It turns out to be a good starting video, because it clearly and in no uncertain terms spells out Qualia’s Philosophical Materialism. The entire video is dedicated to two concepts: Rule #1, one must not believe anything without evidence. Rule #2, if you don’t obey rule #1, then you will be open to believing anything and your mind will be filled with rubbish.

As might be expected, “Science” is mentioned reverentially throughout, as is the implication that science is the only critical thinking that is possible. If the evidence for a certain premise is not scientific, aka material, then one must not accept the premise but must reject it with at least an “I can’t know”.

This is reinforced with the standard references to believing in fairies, ghosts, paranormal experiences and so on: fear-mongering blatantly aimed at limiting reality to physical, material, measurable "scientific" entities.

But as we know, Truth does exist and can be known. Further, it cannot be tested physically since it is not material. And further still, science never, ever produces Truth, science produces only contingent factoids. This means that material evidence - via science - does not give us Truth and even its factoids are vaporous. And any implications to the contrary are false. This does not mean that science is false. It means that using science as a limit to reality is a philosophical error.

There are no tools presented by Qualia’s video to implement evaluation of the materialist “evidence filter” touted by Qualia, either for the actual evidence, its source, nature and validity, nor for the discernment process required for the actual screening and cognition of evidence. Nor induction with its limitations and deduction with its limitations. Nor falsification as a screen for non-material propositions. Nor axioms, their source and validation. Nor the difference between hypothesis and theory. Judging from the titles of the other video family members, I doubt that any reference to these are made anywhere in any of these videos.

These videos, based on viewing the Open Mindedness video, are not based in any principles of logic, nor the principles of rational thought, nor the apprehension and comprehension of the First Principles. They are purely philosophical, not rational. And, again judging from titles, they are purely a tool of Atheism.

But what these videos do demonstrate quite vividly is the principle that one must question EVERYTHING, especially if it is on the web. (And that includes what one finds on this blog, too). Question everything, study the principles, introspect and intuit. That will take you beyond science, and into the realm that actually contains Truth.

The pity of these videos lies in the comments section, where gratitude flows for having been given the materialist process of “critical thinking”. Those folks who believe what the videos teach now are shut out of the path to apprhending full reality, and are confined to the materialist box.