[split] Critical Thinking Skills

[Whateverist]

No Darkstar, you are wrong. When someone shows you evidence that they have collected, really they are making an argument from authority, unless you see the original form the evidence takes in scientific journals and know exactly how to deal with it.

If you see an image of a fossil, that is not evidence. You must actually understand all the issues surrounding fossils before you have a direct experience of the things they are supposed to tell you about.

Now, it may be reasonable to trust that the people who are digging up fossils combined with the facts they present line up to tell a story. But they are establishing their credibility, and essentially arguing from their authority, unless you are reading the really technical stuff.

Most people will never experience real science in their life, their knowledge of science comes from appealing to scientific figures, whether it is directly an argument from there authority or some amount of information supporting the theories they support is gained, people do not really have the ability to do that much critical thinking without doing a ton of work.

What you say is true to a degree. In this day and age there is so much knowledge that specialization is required. So even an accomplished scientist in one field may have to rely on the conclusions of scientists in another field which .. as you say .. they are not in a position to fully vouchsafe directly themselves. But that is where peer review comes in. The fact that we rely on the experts in each field to provide the scrutiny we are unqualified to provide for ourselves can be seen as an appeal to authority. But even to the degree what you say is true, an appeal to the consensus of the best scientists working in a field carries more weight than an appeal to the experts in theology or literature. Someone who understands the scientific method, peer review and a little philosophy of science is not on the same epistemic footing as someone who places their confidence in the inerrancy of the bible.