Critical thinking

When one wants to justify the harm one has done by saying that others have done the same or that this evil was only a reaction to the harm done by someone else, they commit the logical error of appealing to hypocrisy.

What we call an “irrelevant conclusion” is an argument that gives the impression of having something to do with an idea it aims to support, but which actually shifts attention to something else.

It is crucial to realise that while words can be seductive and magnetic, they can also put us in great danger if we let ourselves be carried away by their charms, driven by emotional impulses without reason.

We live surrounded by words—spoken with confidence, written with authority, and shared at astonishing speed. Yet behind many of them lie confusion, prejudice, and unexamined assumptions. From everyday conversations to public decisions, gaps in reasoning and expression reveal something deeper than mere slips of the tongue: they expose deficiencies in education. In such a climate, critical thinking is no luxury; it is a...

The false dilemma fallacy presents an issue as if there are only two ways to solve it—often, two opposite ways—when, in fact, there are more ways than that. The conflict between the two ways presented is also false.

The biased sample is a kind of unrepresentative sample, either for quantitative reasons (as is the case with the too-small sample), or for qualitative ones, when its structure does not represent the structure of the real population that is the object of the research.

In everyday life, whether we like it or not, we rely on the information provided by experts or specialists. However, no authority deserves blind trust. When we take someone's word for granted simply because that person is an authority, we make the logical mistake called "appeal to authority."

A circular argument is an argument forming part of a thesis which has not been established, but still needs to be argued for.

In our everyday lives we ​​often resort to simply repeating what has been said or done before. But not everything that is old is authentic or correct. When we refer to tradition with full confidence that the way it was understood and acted on in the past is self-evident, we are committing the logical error of appealing to tradition, or false induction.

What we think about ourselves, over time, becomes our reality. This is a good enough reason to identify thinking errors left running in the background and to seek out strategies for healthier thinking.

Arguments must be convincing and, in order to convince, they must be valid—the minimum requirement of persuasion.

As Christians we are interested in a perpetual spiritual, moral, general human perfecting. But can we really succeed without perfecting our way of thinking, our capacity to understand, and thus without increasing our intellectual capital?

From television stories to personal experiences, we live in a world where honesty seems to be an increasingly rare commodity and suspicion and scepticism become protective shields.

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, […] who correctly handles the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)

The fact that we are able to anticipate most of the consequences of our actions is undoubtedly a blessing. However, we can also allow fear or over-cautiousness to make us anticipate events that are not likely to follow. This edges us toward a common error of judgement: the slippery slope.