Critical thinking

Every religious movement and "camp" is built around a desirable ideal. However, when this core value becomes an end in itself and love—the hallmark of the Christian faith—is pushed into the background, tensions turn into open conflicts.

By their very complexity, situational moral decisions demonstrate that there is an absolute good that we seek. Moral principles work together for the absolute good.

Critical thinking is not a cure-all, but it proves very useful in dealing with, clarifying, and solving some decision-making problems, as well as the thought and belief disputes which occupy our minds.

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

The ability to imagine alternatives to events that have already occurred distinguishes humans from other creatures and machines—artificial intelligence has not yet succeeded in creating a device that can devise counterfactual scenarios. The fact that we can travel in an imaginary time and rewrite our actions and their outcomes can prove to be an advantage or can lead to dysfunctional emotional and cognitive...

A few years ago, the American Statistical Association carried out research on the history of statistics, tracing their use throughout the course of human society’s development. The results of the study are displayed in the form of a chart called the Timeline of statistics, available on the association's website.

The appeal to ignorance (argumentum ad ignorantiam) is an error in thinking which argues that a conclusion is true because there is no evidence against it, or that a conclusion is false because there is no evidence in its favour.

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.

Fundamentalist movements, extremist and sectarian religious beliefs, manipulations of the mass of believers, conspiracy theories within religious sects, and other such threats, emphasise the need for critical thinking.

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...

Even if we have not been to Eden, the longing for innocence draws us back to a time when we had not yet tasted the forbidden fruit.

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?

Conspiracy theories and fake news are not the same thing, although the two categories have much in common.

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.

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.