Member Training – Critical Thinking Part 1

Member training from April 14th, 2025.

This presentation, Critical Thinking Part 1, introduces the foundational principles of critical thinking through a biblical lens, emphasizing the pursuit of objective truth over subjective opinion. It outlines four core skills: evaluating arguments, recognizing personal biases, constructing sound arguments, and making wise decisions. The session distinguishes between objective and subjective truth, encourages the use of correspondence, coherence, and pragmatism tests to assess claims, and stresses that truth is knowable and essential for both personal integrity and societal freedom. All of this is framed within a spiritual mission to resist deception and uphold godly principles.

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TRANSCRIPT

You want the prayer first, right? Yes, please. I'm sorry. Father in heaven, we're here for another meeting of the Tree of Liberty Society, joined in our united efforts to preserve our freedoms, to do the work that thou has assigned for each of us to do. And we're very grateful for the leadership that we have to show us the way, to point the way of how we're to be doing these things. And Father, we ask thee now to open our minds that we may be able to have the wherewithal, but get up and go to do those things that are required. Please bless. And for his patience with us. Father, help us to exert more effort to get the things done that need to be done. We ask now this blessing. We invite the Holy Ghost here to attend us. And please guide Ben and those that counsel with him. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. Amen.

So I want to, if you've already seen this, just again. I hope everybody remembers as we go through this, what we're trying to do here, trying to build understanding of the principles that have built free nations, expose the satanic conspiracy, and build an effective resistance to that conspiracy. So tonight, it's going to cover a little bit about the conspiracy because, of course, you need the critical thinking skills because of what the conspiracy has done. But really what we're doing here is we're doing the first and third. We're building the understanding of critical thinking. And that will be a part of it. If we have critical thinking, we will be at an effective resistance to the conspiracy. And so that's why we're covering this tonight. I didn't share the audio. Okay. If you've seen this video already, don't give it away. But this is a really important one to understand the principle that I'm talking about tonight. So I'm going to play this. Despite what you might be thinking, these two circles are not equal. I repeat, these two circles are not equal. One is in fact larger than the other.

What I need you to do is determine which one that is. So, please raise your hand if you believe the blue circle is larger than the red. Alright? Please raise your hand if you believe the red circle is larger than the blue. Alright, very good. Now, before I said anything about these two circles, what was your first instinct? Equal, right? Because they look equal. And the reason why they look equal is because in fact they are equal. These two circles are identical. Yet I got just about every one of you to raise your hand and say that they're not. So what did we learn? That you can be manipulated like that to believe in something that goes against your natural instincts. Just imagine, just imagine as a child you're taught that the blue circle is larger than the red. If you say it enough times, you convince yourself that's the truth. So that's something that we get all the time, right? And we can see that just in that example right there of when we're told that it's what they want us to believe, then even if, because we're given an illusion of choice, we're manipulated very easily into thinking that there is an option, that these two things are different and that they're not the same size. They are different colors, of course. And we see that all the time. He talked about at the very end there.

He says, That, you know, if we're told from a very young age something, we believe it. But also just in, you know, in three seconds, it was, you know, we're like, oh, it's not the same size. Okay, which one is? We thought about it for a second. And that happens to us when we listen to the radio, when we're in school, when we watch TV. Anytime anything happens, really, that there is somebody nefarious involved in either the... of the materials or in the presenting of the materials, you will be there trying to manipulate you in some way or another. And so understanding critical thinking is vital because that's how so many people fell for the fake pandemic. That's how come we have people falling for these ideas that the Supreme Court decides what laws are constitutional or not. All these different lies that we're told every day is not because we thought critically and we came to the conclusion that was wrong. Most of the time, it's because we, or the public at large, I should say, didn't engage in any type of critical thinking. So I'm going to go over some tools that help us to start to recognize, you know, how do we critically think? Make sure we know and so that we can put it into practice. But this idea of, you know, critical thinking and understanding truth is very, very important. The Apostle Paul talked about in Colossians. He says, beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit.

After the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. And so through the idea, right, we have the philosophies of men mingled with scripture. They're using so-called logic. You have these philosophy classes at universities. that they try to manipulate the way you think and the questions that they ask you and directing you in a certain way. And then they use vanity and deception to get you all mixed together to believe a lie. And so to follow after the world. And of course, that we've left that foundation of Christ that is needed because he is the truth. And then in Ephesians, he says, and he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists. and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive. And so he's warning us of this idea of what's going on is when we just listen to all these different voices out there, that then we become, we just get, you know, somebody comes up with a good idea. We're like, yeah, that's true.

And then somebody else says, oh, but you missed this hidden truth. Oh yeah, that's true. And then just every new thing that pops up, we're like, oh my goodness. Yes, that's a new truth I came up with. And they're all contradictory and they're all wrong because they are done through slight, through cunning and through deceit. They are purposely deceiving us. And if we don't understand critical thinking, then it'll be easy for us to be deceived. And even as we learn these skills, there will be times that we are deceived. And so it's essential that we're continually... over these principles to make sure what other things that we've been deceived about and we start to unravel those deceptions that we've grabbed onto our entire lives. So I want to ask the question, what is really the principle? What is the definition or what is the concept of critical thinking? So critical thinking is the general term given to a wide range of cognitive skills and intellectual dispositions needed To effectively identify, analyze, and evaluate arguments and truth claims. To discover and overcome personal prejudices and biases.

That's a big part of critical thinking right there. And to formulate and present convincing reasons in support of conclusions. And to make reasonable, intelligent decisions about what to believe and what to do. Because if you've come to a conclusion... don't act upon it, then you've really wasted your whole time of figuring out what the truth is because who cares if you're not going to do anything with it. So there are four dimensions of critical thinking that we're going to learn throughout this series and go in depth in throughout the series. And the first one is the skills that are required to evaluate arguments and truth claims. The skills required to overcome personal prejudices and biases. The skills required to clearly formulate good arguments. and the skills required to make intelligent decisions about what to believe and what to do so i'm not going to tell you what to believe i'm just going to you know show you how to think i'm going to show you what to think just how to think so the first one we have the skills required to evaluate arguments and truth claims so of course you have to be able to identify and then analyze and evaluate claims prior to accepting them as true you what i'm doing tonight Shouldn't just be accepted.

We should go through and we should identify and analyze and evaluate what we've talked about so that we can decide what the truth is and what we can throw out maybe. So the second one is the skills required to overcome personal prejudices and biases. We needed the ability to identify our own prejudices and biases as they affect our ability to evaluate truth claims. Because if we, you know, this happens all the time. I catch myself doing it at times where I've got a preconceived notion. And so I said, oh, well, then because that contradicts this, I have to throw out this new idea or vice versa. I have to accept it because it contradicts this other idea I had. So we have to be able to recognize our prejudices and biases and how they affect our ability to decide if something's true or not. We really there's a lot of times we really want something to be true because it would affect us greatly. Right. There's things that we see. We're like, man, if that's true, people talking about like they think Trump is going to get rid of the IRS and because they think that's going to lower their tax bill, they want it to be true.

And so they pass it around or it makes their political enemy look bad. So they want it to be true. And so they're because of how it will benefit them. They they want it to be true, whether it's true or not. We believe the personal organization making a claim. And so we don't give the claim due consideration. We're like, well, you know, I like that guy and he usually tells me what's up. And so I don't need to really question what's being taught. And that's also a thing we need to overcome, a part of prejudice and bias.

And then we also, you know, what can prejudice us is we may fear the consequences of rejecting or accepting a truth claim. be afraid they're like oh well if that's true that means i need to change what i do on this thing or i might have to stick my neck out and so i don't want to believe that's true because i'm gonna have to change my behavior or or you know if that's not true i mean if that and if they reject it they're like if that if that is true and i reject it then it's going to hurt me and so i better accept it because i don't want to be wrong so we have these these prejudices that get in the way of us really analyzing something and the truthfulness of it personal prejudices also keep us from being objective in our evaluations of truth claims so we got to make sure and check those at the door the next is the skills required to clearly formulate good arguments not only do we have to be able to you know it's our it's our responsibility to warn others once we've been warned we have to be able to once we've learned something to be able to learn how to articulate that and share with others right we need the ability to present truth claims of our own and we need to be able to communicate the truth in a valid sound and coherent arguments you know we can't just say this is true because i said so or because you know the communists this or you know something because so and so did something we can't just say glenbeck told me you know we've got to be able to elucidate it ourselves so but also there will be some that reject the truth no matter what we have to recognize that and no matter how clearly and effectively that we do the job there will be people that follow in the other two areas and they will find a reason to reject what we've claimed so we've got to be able to do a good job right to accurately present the information so that we can find those and affect those that are actually honest and hard and the fourth are the skills required to make intelligent decisions about what to believe and what to do right doesn't mean that all of our choices will be perfect since we often find ourselves having to make decisions without access to all of the information we need to do so intelligently and so that you know again like i said earlier is that learning something is should affect the way we behave nevertheless even in those situations we can minimize the potential for bad consequences and maximize the potential for good ones because we are analyzing things.

If we have done a good job of using our critical thinking skills, that is going to minimize the mistakes that we make as much as possible. So it's very important that we recognize that and we don't turn into this fear cycle of not doing anything because we're afraid of doing something wrong. We can boost our confidence that we're going to do the right thing because we are exercising these skills. and understanding critical thinking when we're being present where you know we're critically thinking about facts and truths so there are two kinds of truth out there we have one true that well just the concept the overall concept is that truth is a property of propositions that correspond to the way things are so david rockefeller stated that he was part of a cabal in his autobiography okay So its truthfulness is not dependent on you observing it. It's not on anybody's opinion. It is a fact. It is an observable fact. You can read his autobiography and you can see that he wrote that, that he said that. It's not relevant to your belief or your disbelief or your opinion. It is an objective truth. It is an objective reality that he said that in his autobiography. So just giving you some examples of objective truths, right? We have two plus two equals four.

The earth revolves around the sun. Water is composed of one molecule of oxygen, two molecules of hydrogen. God exists. We learn God's will. in the scriptures, okay? All of these are objectively true and not dependent on anyone's opinion. So, you know, I've mentioned the Declaration of Independence now. It talks about self-evident truths. And if somebody's going to argue with you about two plus two equals four, then there's not enough common ground that you can have a discussion, right? And so there are some basic objective truths that all parties in the discussion have to be willing to accept. Otherwise, you're not going to have a fruitful conversation. Objectively true statements lead to productive conversations. So if we focus as much as we can on objective truth, things that are undebatable to a reasonable person, then you will have a much more fruitful and productive conversation with that individual than you would if you focused only on subjective truth which i'm going to get into you know your opinions your feelings and that's what you get a lot is well that that that makes me feel bad that makes me you know feel icky and so i don't want to believe it that that is there is no fruit there's nothing to produce out of such a conversation okay so now we get this one right here we have football is the most exciting thing to watch what kind of truth is that right that's that's a matter of opinion Some people love to watch other sports. Some people find it to be a modern version of Roman Colosseum style distractions of the masses.

Okay, so this is subjective truth. You might find it exciting, but somebody else might not. And so that is not an objective fact. That is a subjective truth. Go ahead, Moses. It might be objective that it's a modern version of Roman Colosseum. Sure, you can debate that. So subjective truth we have here. Rainbow Sherbert is the best dessert ever. 69 degrees is the perfect temperature to set the air conditioner to at night. Women look better with the beehive style hairdo. Being a doctor is the most rewarding career. Going to church is boring. Truth in this sense is dependent on the opinion of the person instead of the object itself. Like myself, the church is not boring. I don't think that being a doctor is the most rewarding career, right? And so these are going to be things that are opinions and not objective of themselves.

So I'll give you, right, arguing about subjective truth is fruitless. If you're going to argue with someone about the perfect temperature or the best style of hair, you're going in circles and it's maybe it could be more fun. But if you're trying to come to a truth, that is not what you're going to do. Our focus should be on the pursuit of objective truth, right? So objective, another example of objective, objective versus subjective. So it's an objective truth that ice cream is edible. Okay. And then, but it is subjective, right? Ice cream is delicious, right? That's going to be subjective to the opinion of the person consuming the ice cream. So let's, we're going to go through some tests of truth. How do you, you know, how do you, how can you test a claim? using critical thinking to be able to come to a reasonable conclusion. So the first one, we have test of correspondence, test of coherence, and test of pragmatism. So those are the three different areas to test a claim to find out if it's reasonable to believe it. So we have tested of correspondence. What does that mean? We have the way to physically verify the claim.

Okay. So somebody says my house is four and a half miles from my office. Can I physically verify that claim? How would I verify what they're telling me is true? You get their home address, you get the address of their office and you put it on a map, a GPS, and you can have objective truth to say. yes that is true or no that is false because you have a way to be able to physically verify the claim another way right another claim somebody says my knife is sharp so how can you physically verify that there if you cut yourself maybe you're like okay i'm going to test it out on cooking some or cutting some fruits and vegetables um you know there are ways to verify the claim that your knife is sharp so when we think about any claim out there these are just you know I guess, more frivolous claims out there, but they illustrate an example that we can apply to things that are more serious. And so if somebody makes a claim, you know, President Trump just announced that he wants to send American citizens to South American prisons. Okay, that's a claim I just made. Is there a way to verify it?

Is there, you know, is there a video of him saying it? Is there a written statement by the... the white house that makes that that i can use to verify the claim that i just made okay just give you an example of something of here's a claim is there a way to physically verify that claim so now we have test of coherence and this is something that there's there are times out there where you don't have the ability to actually physically verify something but you still have to come to a conclusion if it's true or not and and so there but there are ways that we can say okay through the preponderance of evidence this is likely to be true or this is likely to be false so i'll give you an example you have a husband and wife they rented a beach house and the husband took off for the day on their boat and he said he was going to be back by noon But then he wasn't back, and it comes to be dinner time, and he still hasn't come back home, and his wife is worried, and he's not returning any phone calls. And so she calls the police, or in this case, maybe the National Guard, to go do a search and rescue. So the search and rescue has gone out.

They've looked at the boat. He wasn't robbed. All of his valuables are still in the boat. His wallet's there. His jewelry's there. His watch is there. His phone is there. So it wasn't a robbery. There's no evidence of anything like that. And so they do a search. He's out in the middle of the ocean. There's no evidence that there have been other people around. No evidence of any kind of foul play. And so the Coast Guard comes and declares the individual dead. If you've gone through all those things, the most reasonable conclusion there that was made was that he somehow fell or jumped out of the water and somehow he drowned. And we're not able to verify that, though. We don't know that. We don't have the physical evidence. We can't verify that he's drowned and that he's dead. But there's enough evidence surrounding the situation that says that's the most reasonable, most logical conclusion to what happened here. And so this is the same thing that happens in a jury.

There are a lot of times, a lot of cases that there isn't some way to 100% verify that. someone committed a crime but they looked at all of the evidence and they said beyond a reasonable doubt there was enough circumstantial evidence there were enough surrounding items that said based on all of this different these different criterias we can come to a conclusion that they're guilty and so and if those things don't happen of course they say that they're not guilty or that they're at least you know that circumstance they they they didn't believe that there was enough evidence to say that they were guilty they can still be guilty even if there's not enough evidence to make that claim And so there are lots of different times in our lives that we can't have physical evidence to prove something. And so we have to be able to go off of the preponderance of evidence, the other things that are surrounding us, maybe not physically evidence, but we can use deductive reasoning to come to a reasonable and rational conclusion that would actually hold up in a court of law. So that's the test of coherence.

Now we have the test of pragmatism. okay so is the claim livable in real life so somebody says something and one way that you would verify if you would ask yourself is this something that you can actually would this actually work so you have here tupac shakur he says if you don't know me don't judge me right you have this this this phrase out there in the world today of you can't judge me and so right if we can't judge behavior How could we have a free society? Does that work in real life? Because that means we can't judge, you know, assault. Is that right or wrong? We can't judge. And so we have to allow it. How about theft? If we can't judge the rightness or wrongness of theft, we have to allow it. How about murder? Well, if we're not, you know, I can't, I don't know you, so I can't judge you. Therefore, I have to allow you to murder people because I can't judge you. Right? If there's no right or wrong. then you have to let people do whatever they want.

And that's not viable in the society. You can't just allow people to hurt people, to steal from others, to kill them, to murder them. So it's not viable in society. So don't judge or there's no right or no wrong. We can say that that's false because it does not work in real life. So we know that we can say that, oh, that's an opinion. No, that's not an opinion because... It's not something that is livable in real life, which makes it an objectively false statement to say that we can't judge. We have to judge in society. So we also have this idea in the world that, well, truth is subjective. There's no way. There's your truth. There's my truth. Kind of goes back to the previous concept of you can't judge me, right? They want you to think that truth is unknowable. It's subjective. And we know that that's false. We have the truth himself saying that, and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free, the Savior says. So the truth is knowable, and the truth is something that makes you free. Now, of course, how does truth make you free, right? Well, if you know something, now you can make a reasonable decision on what to do.

You're free to make an action based on the best data. which means you are now going to have the best conclusion possible, which makes you more free. Whereas if you don't know what's going on, you're going to be less free and you're going to have maybe a 50-50 or less chance, if you don't know the truth of something, of making a right decision. So of course, when you can come to the conclusion that's true, you are going to have more freedom. And so truth is knowable and it has a consequence of freedom. the savior talking to the sad the pharisees talked about this he says you are of your father the devil and the lusts of your father ye will do he was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him so truth is knowable but of course satan and his followers are against the truth there is no truth in them when he speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own for he is a liar and the father of it. So you can't have lies if you don't have truth. And so we have a liar, Satan and his followers, are trying to deceive people and so that they can take away their freedom.

Deception takes away your freedom and also deception can affect your soul and affects the things that you do in your day-to-day life. And so, of course, Satan and his followers want to fill you with deception, want to fill you with doubt, want to fill you with questions and make you think that there is no truth. But of course, there is truth. There is deception. And there are individuals that want us to not know the truth and want to deceive us and get us away from that so that they can enslave us. You can think of most of the things that people, you know, lie about are things that give them control over you. That's why they lie about it. And so truth is real and so are lies, of course. So with that, that is the end of our part one of our lessons on critical thinking. And so I'd like to open it up now, go through the questions, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. I went through that a little bit faster than I thought I was going to, but I'd like to get some feedback.

I've got your questions, your thoughts, your additional comments on... um this first section of these ideas of different truths and are you know these two different kinds of truths of subjective versus objective and the different methods of being able to come to a truth about something um i'll go through these real quick and anybody raise your hand when you want to uh you've got something to say yeah mark go ahead oh let me let's see here um yes okay you should be able to can you hear me now yep yeah i'm sorry uh so much i'd like to uh add to the discussion here yeah but let me start with test of coherence so what we're talking about there is uh empirical uh well observation the empirical empirical evidence is uh observable and uh experiment experimental where you test something and you test it beyond you know to a scientific standard the scientific standard the highest one is a 97 certainty There's also a 95% certainty. But that falls into that category. Also, physical observations are empirical as well. So experimentation meets a scientific standard. And that standard is an important word here. We talk about most logical. That's the standard you made. Oh, what was it? the bulk of the evidence suggests this of the law at 50 certainty uh what was the term used to start with the p yeah the um um so pragmatism right no no not pragmatism coherence yeah that okay so what you're doing there is you're taking oh did you did we lose you mark You froze. Lost your picture. 7%, 95%. Those are the standards.

So you also use the standard beyond a reasonable doubt. Now that standard is up there 95% above. Some claim it has to be 98%, 99% certainly. But that's still, you know, there's a little bit of subjectivity there too. But these are different standards of reason. So that's important. Reasoning alone isn't enough. in terms of identifying what is true you have to apply a standard to it to it as well and one last point you made about uh and this is it is such an important point uh this i it's a philosophical belief and it's come from some of the tops of all philosophers in the last 300 years one was emmanuel kant and that is to say it literally i mean pretty much what you said uh reality or facts are in the mind of the beholder what you believe is true is true and um aristotle uh and neo -aristotle people just collapse that all over the place so if you have a wall you look at a wall in your room uh that wall is not there if you don't believe it's there and that is so destructive to civilization as just so destructive to liberty to believe that truth is only what you believe then there is no right or wrong too because it's what you believe and uh and nitchi i think a couple of philosophers uh embraced this but mania comp was one of the very very worst and it's completely counter to what aristotle was and who was the father of logic uh a is a is what he said it's not b it's not c it's not anything else a is a so that's important all of us to know that because this creeps into discussions i i get into debates and discussions and i start seeing somebody saying saying this in several ways um uh oh back to the example of knife uh knife is sharp so there's an you that's not a really great example because there you have it also has to be it's a relative term is it sharp enough to cut a tomato Or is it sharp enough to cut through steel?

So you have to go a little farther than that because that's still subjective. But all the objective points you made were really good about opinions. I wanted to see if I could get a couple other things in here. Oh, this is kind of important. You're talking about the standard or the tool of critical thinking. You're absolutely right. We have to. Let me make my point. critical thinking there is a poison pill in it i've read seen the curriculums i attended a presentation and the vast vast majority of all the curriculum steps in it are sound and they're based on logic but there's one poison pill and i have to go back through it and find it because i it was a long time ago when i got the presentation that's why i don't use critical thinking i use logic what man has been using since the beginning what uh aristotle was the father of logic and and it doesn't have that uh poison pill in it so i i suggest we we examine that because that can make a difference the vast majority critical thinking is fine they just put one thing in the curriculum that wasn't fine and i'll go ahead and leave it at that because others might have things to say i'd be curious what your thoughts are on the what the poison pill was if you think of it but um and also when you talk about the scientific method And what's happened is we've been brainwashed, you know, especially in the last five years, we've heard this term over and over again of trust the science.

And so we have this assumption in our minds, right, this going back to our preconceived notions, where we can cease our critical thinking of, oh, okay, if there's a scientific standard and somebody says the science is settled, that means that standard has been met, therefore I can trust it. But they didn't actually do that. And so if somebody's lying to you and saying the science is settled, when it doesn't meet the scientific criteria of the data being met, then we have to make sure we're not making that same critical mistake of using our biases and our preconceived notions. We have to apply your logic to it. And what they're really saying, and we should expose it, you're not saying to trust science, you're saying to trust you.

Because the science, Fauci, COVID-19, global warming, the science... is uh factual and it says you're a bunch of lawyers or you're deceiving us through all sorts of tactics and techniques and disinformation yeah yeah just reading the comments says ben doesn't lie and will always tell the truth i would i mean i hope and i try but you shouldn't just trust me just because i said something but it's still subjective definitely definitely use the this critical thinking and this logic to be able to verify anything that i've said yeah and that's that's an example of a fallacy that we i think i brought this up to you one time uh this idea that there you can't prove a negative and actually you can in a very rare situation so the negative that ben never uh lies is is uh you can't prove because you don't have that's like you don't have all the examples of whatever he said throughout his life to back it up yeah yeah very dangerous to say that you know nobody's ever you know an individual has never lied to us the point there you can almost never prove a negative but you actually that's right in logic if you study logic there are certain control situations where you can yeah anybody else whoever's thoughts or comments or questions this is mark again on the uh constitution yeah so There is a very narrow range.

Can you hear me? Yeah. There is a very narrow range where the Supreme Court does judge Constitution, pellet cases, and so forth. It's just a paragraph in Article 3 of the Constitution. It spells it out. But what they are doing is they're passing judges about over 90%, no doubt, where they have no authority. And they gave that authority to themselves. Generally speaking, they can only rule on a specific case if your rights were violated. And very limited cases. And Congress can take all their authority away if they want to. But they certainly can't rule on the president. They don't have authority to rule on Congress, no authority to rule on your state government, and no authority to rule on individuals that aren't followed within the authority specified in appellant authority in the article. uh three yeah the point is they're not legislators which you know which limits their their jurisdiction yeah well it's right now it's way beyond just legislatures but congress they're really on the president and they have no authority over the president if they had authority our family fathers weren't idiots they would give the third uh the judicial authority to to enforce the rulings who enforces the rulings at the executive level the executive level so it's really illogical and and so wrong actually well yeah britney you had your hand up um i was just gonna comment about um i feel like we should have a critical thinking class that we should teach our youth um because i don't think they know how to critically think whatsoever um i think a lot of um like literally uh and i only say that because okay i teach math okay so so the basis of math is logic okay like it should make sense your answer should make sense everything should make sense and if it doesn't make sense you ain't critically thinking and that's the point i make 24 7 with these kids like Um, you just multiplied with millimeters, um, and your answer isn't in thousands. Does that make sense? It's a really small object. Probably not.

So that, I just don't know, like, how exactly to get that whole concept out there. Um, especially since eventually I don't want to be in the public sector. Obviously, like, that's not my end goal right now. I mean, that's just a means to an end at this moment. Um, but, uh, Yeah, I've been scratching my head as you were talking and trying to figure out how do we get this to the youth? Because that's who's going to be the next people to move on with this stuff. We have to be able to get them to critically think and to be able to know how to make the right decisions about what's truth and what is a lie. Because I think that with all this plethora of information that's at their fingertips 24-7, they're just seeing what the conspiracy wants them to see. Not anything else. So I just think it's kind of a project there, Brittany.

Well, you know, I actually was thinking about writing a book. And yeah, so I don't know how to go about that. But, you know, maybe we can have a conversation. Yeah, absolutely. That'd be great. I love it. Mark. Yeah. In response to what you are asking, Brittany, first of all, putting aside the site. difference between critical thinking and logic that one little error that's in the curriculum putting that aside and i'm gonna my bias is logic you have to teach logic you have to teach it every moment i when i debate all the time i'm using logic and i i bring it up this is not logical and i i pointed out i use analogies to point it out i i you know so we uh it in your conversation with you that but to go further you got to teach logic you know you can learn a lot online the basic uh principles of logic that you know right from aristotle uh and all the principles around way before aristotle was around and and we need to learn those and it's and you're actually absolutely right it it's one of the tools that are exposed what's not true it's one of the tools used to to clarify and expose what is true we have to know logic uh and uh so you go go online if you learn a lot but there's books on it you can study logic the study of science of logic has improved some since aristotle they've added to it but the founder fundamental principles of logic were right laid out by aristotle and that's a really good place to start uh aristotle's uh principles of logic So Mark from Canada said something funny.

He says, everything I say is a lie. That's one of those classic circular things, right? So if everything I say is a lie, that's a lie, which means everything I say is the truth, which means everything is a lie and just goes on into infinity. So you made the point people need to make the argument. Let's see his argument. How is he going to prove everything? He can get out of the first 30 seconds to prove that. Let's go ahead and have a closing prayer, and then we'll go ahead and have open forum for a few minutes. Brittany, would you be willing to say our closing prayer for us? Sure. All right.

Our kind, gracious Heavenly Father, we're grateful to be able to gather together as like-minded individuals to be able to discuss and talk about the things of truth and all the ways that we can discern the truth in all things. We ask that thou may bless each of us, that we might be able to carry this mission out into our daily lives, that we may find others that are like-minded and be able to share these truths that we learn together at our trainings. And we ask that thou may help us to find those that are ready and willing to be able to accept these truths and to be able to hear us out and be able to do the things you would have us to do. And we ask that thou may bless us the rest of this week, that we may be able to find the goodness that is around us and be able to emulate that towards those in our lives. And we ask that thou may encourage and uplift us in these times of trial, that we may seek the good, even though we are surrounded in chaos. And we say these things humbly in the name of thy son, Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Thank you.