{"id":4727,"date":"2018-05-03T05:55:57","date_gmt":"2018-05-03T11:55:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/?p=4727"},"modified":"2018-05-03T03:57:01","modified_gmt":"2018-05-03T09:57:01","slug":"national-day-of-reason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/2018\/05\/national-day-of-reason\/","title":{"rendered":"National Day of Reason"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let’s start with a prayer<\/del> a poem by Kevin Young, Ode to Big Pun<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m not a prayer
\nI just wish a lot<\/p>\n

Wishful thinking<\/a> maybe just as bad as prayer at achieving specific results.\u00a0 Maybe prayer is just ritualized wishful thinking?\u00a0 Or maybe prayer is a mashup of wishful thinking and meditation.\u00a0 There has been some research<\/a> about the effects of praying and there doesn’t seem to be much benefit.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0Daniel Dennett<\/a> stated in the Portable Atheist<\/em>, “Surely it does the world no harm if those who can honestly do so pray for me! No, I’m not at all sure about that. For one thing, if they really<\/i> wanted to do something useful, they could devote their prayer time and energy to some pressing project that they can do something about.”<\/p>\n

Back to the reason (pun intended) I am writing this post.\u00a0 Reason<\/a> is the capacity for consciously making sense of things, establishing and verifying facts, applying logic, and changing or justifying practices, institutions, and beliefs based on new or existing information.\u00a0 Sounds like a useful thing to do.<\/p>\n

Easier said than done.\u00a0 We are inundated by so much information, it is difficult to separate facts from fake news.\u00a0 That is where critical thinking<\/a> comes to the rescue!\u00a0 Unfortunately this skill is not taught in U.S. public schools like it is in other parts of the world. \u00a0 John Dewey<\/a> is one of many educational leaders who recognized that a curriculum aimed at building thinking skills would benefit the individual learner, the community, and the entire democracy.\u00a0 So I used Dewey’s system to find some resources at the Denver Public Library about critical thinking such as Critical thinking skills success in 20 minutes a day <\/em><\/a>and A field guide to lies : critical thinking in the information age <\/em><\/a>along with several hundred others.<\/p>\n

I think it is the duty and responsibility of every citizen to promote the development and application of reason, not just today but everyday!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let’s start with a prayer a poem by Kevin Young, Ode to Big Pun I’m not a prayer I just wish a lot Wishful thinking maybe just as bad as prayer at achieving specific results.\u00a0 Maybe prayer is just ritualized wishful thinking?\u00a0 Or maybe prayer is a mashup of wishful thinking and meditation.\u00a0 There has … Continue reading “National Day of Reason”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-our-community"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4727"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4729,"href":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4727\/revisions\/4729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.secularhub.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}