Critical thinking

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.

In scientific research, sampling is the primary method used when research cannot be conducted on a one-to-one scale. The facts discovered at the level of the sample are presumed to apply in general.

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

When what someone says can be interpreted in multiple ways, we are in danger of coming to an understanding which is different to their intended message.

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.

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.

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

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.

The false analogy or the faulty analogy consists of the incorrect use of the analogy argumentative scheme without first meeting the requirements of a correct comparison.

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.

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?

Almost a century ago, writer Virginia Woolf noticed people’s tendency to approach books “with clouded and divided minds, asking fiction to be true, poetry to be false, biographies to be flattering and history to chime with prejudices.”

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.

When we consider that a conclusion is founded only if a lot of people consider it true, we fall into the trap of the argumentum ad populum or the appeal to popularity.

Needing to process a multitude of complex information in a short amount of time can lead to erroneous reasoning. When a conclusion is supported by weak or irrelevant arguments, the reasoning falls into the category called non sequitur—does not follow, or irrelevant argument.