Thinking Critically

CARL SAGAN ONCE SAID that in America, there is no shortage of intelligence, but only a lack of education, a failure to inculcate critical thinking skills. Let's teach people to pay attention, gain knowledge, organize it, prirtitize it, and arrive at sound conclusions to important questions by using the best method avery available: trial and error. Mistakes are goo, for they lead to truth. No need for divine intervention, or holy sctiptures, only for good, ole fashioned, solid, critical thought and analysis. My mother, when I told her that one day computers will drive cars, and no one will ever die on the highway again, said: "we already have too many people on the world." I left it at that. There's gotta be a better way, I left unsaid. Then too, try telling a conservative that there are more Mexicans heading south than north these days, realizing that its no better up here. America is being abandoned by its illegal immigrants, and there isn't a damned thing we can do about it, except to build a wall, and keep them in. But nobody in this country understands that. Carbon absorbs and retains heat. Try telling that to the republican party. So, because of our lack of willingness to embrace critical thinking, we end up, in the twenty first century, with belief system in which some big invisible sky being wrote a rule book, in it are ten things not to do, and we do them on penalty of eternal torment, from a deity who loves us. We end up with this sort of thing. A deep breath, and a bit of critical thinking, and we're back in business. By now, for instance, we should know, one way or the other, what ghosts, UFOs, and all that other stuff really are. All we need is some careful observation, and critical thought. By now shouldn't we be humbly admiring the four forces of nature, or the speed of light, rather than worshiping some psychotic, serial killing, mass murdering sky deity? Must we still torture someone to death to achieve salvation? Have we reached the point where we can stop tossing salt over our left shoulders, or begin walking under ladders? The training of the human mind, not the stifling of it, is what the doctor is ordering.