Above is the description of your essay. But there is a conflict. You can't claim to be utilizing the tools of critical thinking to form the conclusion that critical thinking is a worthless endeavor, and that all beliefs are created equally. Which one is it, Lawrence?A Cry From the Heart explains how our personal worldviews affect our ability to perceive and discern, and how inherited mindsets inhibit our ability to think critically today.
http://www.criticalthinking.org/starting/index.cfm
Critical thinking is the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it.
The very essence of critical thinking is that not all beliefs, statements, arguments, premises and conclusions are equally reasonable or valid. This is what the field of critical thinking is about, so if you are claiming to be working towards improving critical thinking skills you must embrace the very core principle of critical thinking itself, which is that every statement needs to be examined and evaluated. Whenever I hear you talk about your essay, or more importantly, the conclusions of your essay, I hear you arguing the very opposite position, and that being that we should throw our hands up in the air and stop judging or comparing all the beliefs of the world, because they're all nothing but beliefs and beliefs are beliefs and beliefs are all on a big completely flat playing field. They're all equal. Well, if this is your argument you are basically telling every lawyer, detective, judge, scientist and critical thinking educator that they need to quit their jobs today because there are engaged in futility.
In my above post Theist #1, who believes that a deity exists, is much safer in a critical thinking debate than Theist #2 who has assigned contradictory characteristics to his God. For the most part, the moment a person opens their mouth and shares their beliefs they have now subjected their beliefs to scrutiny.
I think where you're going astray is that you're assuming that the objects of all beliefs are subjective in nature. But this isn't the case at all. Whether a God exists or doesn't exist is completely objective. If a God exists he exists whether or not people believe in him. Disagree? Well, according to the Christian world religion God created mankind, which means God existed prior to humans existing, so clearly no human willed God into existence. God existed prior and independent of belief. See what I just did? I thought critically about a statement of belief and showed that the idea that God exists independently of belief is more logical than the idea that God exists subjectively. Sure, some people believe and some people don't believe in a God, but that doesn't change the reality of whether or not a God exists.
If we were talking about our beliefs about the beauty or lack of beauty of the Mona Lisa then you'd be correct. Both of us have our own ideas of beauty and they aren't necessarily the same, but when you change the discussion from one of a subjective nature to one of an objective nature our beliefs can then be examined critically. If you believe the Mona Lisa exists and I believe the Mona Lisa is a fairy tale and never really existed in any tangible form we would both be expressing beliefs. More than likely, neither of us has ever seen the original Mona Lisa and never will see it. So our statements are indeed statements of belief, but both beliefs don't have an equal probability of being correct. There is a tremendous amount of evidence supporting the claim that the Mona Lisa exists as an element of objective reality, even though, for all intents and purposes I cannot prove this to you.
Ahh, but we're talking about the existence of a god and not of a painting. Absolutely no difference. The moment a theist says anything that can be examined critically the critical thinker is NOT acting nutty if he or she actually examines and evaluates the claim critically. You seem to be arguing that we should show equal respect for all beliefs and I am saying that this line of reasoning would never work in the real world where daily we are forced to make educated decisions about whether or not a claim is valid.