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.

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.

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...

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.

Many news programmes, speeches, or press articles refer to at least one poll. When designed and conducted well, polls are an excellent means of measuring public opinion on a particular topic. Unfortunately, not all surveys are well compiled, relevant, representative, or honest.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

We live in a polarised world where conspiracy theories proliferate, but some people are more inclined than others to consume and propagate these theories rather than ignore or demystify them.

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."

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

“Yeah, I understand what you’re saying about Christianity. I’ve been there, a long time ago, but now that I’ve moved on, I have a different relationship with the universe and things are going much better for me on all levels.”

No one has ever seen a thought, not even a neurosurgeon. However, today we know more about the way we think than what we were able to visualise, yet still less than we would like to know.