Devil or Divine

How can someone distinguish whether an influence or the cause of something is from evil or from God?

Its commonly considered that the devil can be very deceiving and manipulative, so it seems likely he would often attempt to pretend to be a positive influence, or perhaps even pretend to be a Godly influence. This seems like it could make it difficult to tell whether an influence is from the devil or from God. 

It could be hypothesized that a way to determine God’s influence is to consider what seems good and helpful in general, or what seems to follow the Bible. But if the devil is as deceitful and manipulative as could be, then he would likely create an illusion of good as a method of deceit for someone that wants to do good. He could do the same with the Bible by manipulating someone into thinking something is implied by the Bible. This might explain many bad deeds in history which people have done, claiming it is in the name of Christianity. 

Perhaps the main difference for capability of influence between the 2, would be that God is superior and capable of overpowering. This in itself doesn't make the source of an influence distinguishable for a person, but combined with a genuine request from God, it could. In a post from a few yrs ago; Willing Gods Will, I considered how and why God would influence our thoughts and decisions if it is our will for him to do so. So if someone requests God’s will, God would have the superior power to influence that person. The way God would then influence that person would differ depending on the person and perhaps their typical way of thinking, as further considered in a post from a few yrs ago; Method of Guidance. 

So since humans are flawed and their perception and interpretations are included in that flawness, assessing by themselves, whether something is good and from God could be taken advantage of by the devil. But if someone is able to interpret an influence after asking for God’s guidance, this seems like an effective way to distinguish any influence of being from the Devil or Divine.

Conscious Commonalities

Besides the basic function of consciousness, what more detailed aspects come in common with various forms of consciousness?

Hypothetically, other forms of consciousness besides human consciousness could occur in animals, AI, aliens, and God. It could be considered unproven and unverified that any of these have consciousness (which could potentially also be said for humans, but I would dispute), but if they did have consciousness, either regularly or sparsely, what details would likely be similar to human consciousness? 

As for the basic function and definition of consciousness, I’m basing this from my hypothesis that consciousness is at minimal memory access of factors and their interaction (as further outlined in this previous post; Conscious Comprehension). 

Consciousness could occur without general intelligence in isolated instances, such as may be the case with some smarter animals when they somewhat understand that an action or object causes a reaction, but this is rare, otherwise they would continue to learn concepts using general intelligence. 

For an entity to recurrently have consciousness using general intelligence, it seems likely to have a subconscious memory bank with a lot of data, and some form of reinforcement triggers (such as instinct) in order to learn. For an entity to access memories of factors and the function of cause and effect between them, general intelligence would make this significantly more likely to recur, as a result of generally learning new things in it’s environment and how things cause one another (or interact).

Without a memory bank of recently perceived data, it seems unlikely memory access of interacting factors of data would ever occur naturally, such as with humans, animals or potential aliens. And assuming memory access of perceived data develops through natural selection as an advantage for survival while interacting with the environment, reinforcement triggers would be required to influence the individual to have certain reactions to variables within the environment. 

A potential difference with consciousness that develops artificially, is data can be downloaded to the memory bank, rather than the memory of factors being acquired through perception of the environment. Since this type of consciousness wouldn't be developed through natural selection for survival, it wouldn't necessarily have reinforcement triggers to influence its reaction within an environment. It would still need reinforcement triggers if it was to learn and become more intelligent, but these triggers could reinforce another goal other than survival. 

Additionally, artificial consciousness could be programmed to occur and recur without the ability to learn and without reinforcement triggers, if it is programmed to simply access memory of data and the interaction of factors within that data. That form of consciousness seems less significant, meaningful, and relevant without reinforcement triggers of positivity (such as emotions for humans), and without any capability of learning, advancing, or adapting. 

In all, from hypothetical examples of naturally developing and recurring consciousness, it seems general intelligence is required. Including the additional potential of artificial consciousness, memory access to a data bank of recently perceived data, learnt using subconscious reinforcement triggers seem to be the meaningful Conscious Commonalities.

What is critical thinking?

Considering each word of the concept separately, “critical” is generally understood as analyzing and outlining problems (connected to the word “criticize”), or alternatively can mean extremely important (such as “critical infrastructure”). “Thinking” refers to the brain's memory access, usually consciously, rather than subconscious. Putting these 2 terms together should give a fairly straight forward understanding of the concept of Critical Thinking as; important conscious analisis and distinguishment of problems. 

In order to determine problems in any given circumstances using critical thinking, generally the best method is to take an unbiased objective perspective and use rationality to evaluate which components cause a less preferable outcome. Understanding cause and effect is “critical” for determining the cause of a variation to an outcome, such as a variation that is less preferable. 

In complex circumstances, many components are involved, so understanding the cause of an alteration of outcome, involves perspective isolation of particular components and their cause and effect. Once this objective perspective has been taken of an understanding of the isolated component which causes the less preferable outcome (or problem), alteration to that particular component can be intuited for a more preferable outcome (or solution). 

The alternative to critical thinking could be considered; being emotionally reactive or using intuition. Since it is an alternative to critical thinking, basically by definition it would be a method without using rationality and understanding of cause and effect. Using intuition is more of a concept of subconscious memory access which is less effective and accurate for complex scenarios. 

This overall concept of thinking in a way of being critical, by analyzing problems through the process of objectively determining the particular cause of such problems and consecutively determining solutions, can be applied to such a vast array of situations in one's life, that it should suitably be considered vitally important, or critical.