It seems, especially now, an active practice of critical thinking is essential. Thinking alone won’t solve our most pressing and distressing issues, but without it we’re stumbling and bumbling along.
This week’s column addresses the critical need to take rational analysis seriously, and presents something I call CTT.
Excerpt from “Critical Thinking is Critically Important”
Let’s take something we might call: Critical Theological Theory (CTT). Many would object to a critique of God, but we’re really talking about doing a deeper dive into what people mean by “God.” I’ve got my opinions, distilled over many years in ministry and beyond. Yet, my concern here is to shine a spotlight on the dark-gray areas of “god-talk.” People, including many clergy, assume we know what they mean when they repeat god-words over and over. What someone has in mind when they speak of such nebulous things as spirit and god, may be very different from what another individual hears. Education matters, as does culture, language and family upbringing. Until we engage our brains and practice CTT, all other theories that relate to religion drift into irrelevance.
Read the full column this weekend in your local e-newspaper from USA Today, or here.
Friendly Freethinker 
Good morning Chris. Troubling times in your country. I must say I am very content to be living in Canada with all of the guns, polarization and hot social media in the USA, my birth country. I left in 1981 to avoid living under the Reagan administration which we in academia suffered under when he was governor of Calif. Glad I did.
I tried to open the link to your article on CTT but was unable to do so. Perhaps you can resend it or just send the article in an attachment. I think critical thinking has escaped or was never in use by many voters in the USA. For politicians, ministers to say that Trump was saved by God and is the American Messiah is almost as bad as how the German Christian Church viewed Hitler and his imperialism and purge. If you want to learn more I highly recommend the Twister Cross a book by a German NT scholar in North Carolina. She writes in the book that the GCC removed all Jewish texts including the entire OT and any references to Jesus being a Jew. He was of course an Aryan and the Germans were his decedents and a special place in the afterlife with Hitler their guardian angel and messiah. I wish more people read stuff like this and made their comparisons. Trump is not as sociopathic/militaristic as Adolf but the narcissism and rhetoric justifying trying to make this MAGA country more a theistic-ideology and politically has similarities. Fortunately DJT can’t speak or motivate people as well as AH but their call to action to separate out their country from the global political and pluralistic world are also similar plus appealing to people who believe they are being marginalized by secular movements. But given the assassination attempt the Demos are going to have to pull in their attacks and resist calling him a” fascist” now but already the GOP is calling it a Biden lead attempt to eliminate DJT. Can you believe this shit!
If you send me a new link I will try to read your approach to “god” and make a comment or two.
Cheers from a safer and saner, Canada
Marty
Dr. Marty Shoemaker AHC Accredited Humanist Chaplain KPU-VGH
Always good to hear your thoughts, Marty. Sometimes I envy you Canadians, especially at moments like this (not that there have been moments just like this!). We’re in deep trouble, and personally I’m not convinced Biden will succeed. We survived one Dumpster Fire Don term, and unsure how we’ll fair, along with the world, during another. Serious business. How people can so uncritically join the Cult of Republicangelicals is mystifying. Their messiah already came back from the dead, so they believe!
The column won’t be published or posted until this coming weekend. Then you can access it through the Essays page.
Cheers and try to stay cheerful. . .not easy for us (US) right now!
Chris