I agree with everything you said here about the benefits of critical thinking and the drawbacks of lazy thinking and I thought your postscript at the end warning anti-religion bigots not to twist your words was spot on. You and I are both not religious and regardless of our beliefs are both spiritual (as I define spirituality--see my https://medium.com/p/ff45cb53eaf2) in that we think critically and for ourselves and act and write with love (for ourselves and others), compassion (for ourselves and others), honesty, and empathy, just to name a few spiritual principles, and religion can be a great path for those that think critically and take what resonates and leave the rest. I always recommend this piece that I read very early in my Medium experience, https://medium.com/@leahcastellon/which-religion-is-right-f0bd30e714a2, and Jodie Helm’s recent series of channeled discussions of various Biblical tales are enlightening to any critical thinker (see any story in her profile with the words “Bible Series” in the title), and Graham Pemberton’s exhaustive explorations of the first three chapters of Genesis with reference to works written about the original Hebrew text will interest any scholar or other person looking for the potentially most uncorrupted meaning of these chapters — here’s a summary he published of his many essays on the topic — https://graham-pemberton.medium.com/what-do-the-first-three-chapters-of-genesis-really-mean-summary-and-concluding-thoughts-9439b97f666d.

That is not what I came here to say but now having decided that I will publish this comment to my profile, I felt some broader context for my subscribers was needed.

I comment to supplement your essay with a subset of thinking that is neither lazy nor critical yet avoids accepting as truth, despite evidence, things that are just too prone to turn one's life upside down, as Alan Arkin writes in his book Out of My Mind (Not Quite a Memoir), which I have written about (https://medium.com/p/7582ce0bad14) and one day will write more about.

My essay did not discuss this quote from the book:

"We hang onto our belief structures as if they are real and tangible things. These beliefs. These huge hunks of granite edifices in our consciousness upon which we base our lives. It's enough most of the time that our beliefs comfort us, make us feel part of a group--help us get through the day, never mind whether or not they are true."

(That seems to reflect the concept of epistemic communities I read about in the comments here.)

Now I need to give context to Arkin's statement. There was a man in Brazil known as Arigo. He had no medical training. Through some metaphysical processes affecting both him and his patients, he was able to perform surgeries such as removing tumors from an eye with a pocket knife and no anesthesia, and the patient wouldn't even bleed. Arkin and his wife traveled to Brazil and interviewed many people and confirmed that and so much more about this man and his accomplishments.

Arkin had first heard of Arigo and the surgeries I mentioned above when a reporter showed him a 16mm movie filmed by some American doctors in the 1970s. Arkin recounts the following story just before the quote I inserted above:

"One night I showed it to a few friends, who reacted in awe, and afterwards, the wife of one of them said, 'Well, I refuse to believe this.'

'You refuse?' I asked with some incredulity.

'I refuse,' she repeated. She had been shaken by the film--that was clear. Her voice and emotional state made it obvious that she had witnessed not a piece of theatrical manipulation but an event. But she refused to believe it.

'How can you refuse?' I asked. 'I don't understand. Either what you saw seemed real or it didn't.'

'No, I refuse to believe it,' she repeated it again, but she went on. 'Because if I believe this I'm going to have to believe a lot of other things, and I refuse to do that.'"

Douglas, I can connect this to pragmatism. Not only would it not be practical for her to believe what she saw, it would be immensely impractical as it would unnecessarily turn her belief systems upside down. She wasn't being lazy. At some level, she knew that critical thinking would not expose what she saw as untrue. She was being practical for self-preservation. Her worldviews didn't need to be turned upside down and she didn't need to gaslight Arkin like my mother once did to me when I told her I have had conversations with the dearly departed through my psychic medium and my mom told me to stop consulting Anne and see a psychiatrist.