Tag: idolatry

Critical Thinking #5:
My Analysis of That Conversation

After releasing my previous article, I felt the Holy Spirit leading me to write an analysis of Jake’s assertions using the principles I listed and discussed in in the first three parts of this series on Critical Thinking. In obedience, we will now analyze that encounter so you can take that knowledge into any future discussions with Christianity’s ideological opponents.

All this stuff can initially come across as dry, academic, philosophical double-talk, but as you can see from that encounter, there are lost souls at stake. And that’s not to mention church pews — and sometimes even platforms! — populated by spiritually immature, scripturally-illiterate Christians who are being propagandized into apostasy by pop culture narratives at this very moment.

You may not be called to be a full-time Christian apologist as the primary focus of your ministry, but all Christ-followers are called to be apologists-on-demand as the Holy Spirit brings us into divine appointments with those He is wooing to Himself (1 Peter 3:15).

In other words, we are safely standing beside the road to Hell and the Holy Spirit occasionally uses one of us to wave folks down who are blindly racing headlong towards an excruciatingly painful forever. All it takes is influencing one person away from such a fate to make it worth all the effort. There but for the grace of God…
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My Analysis of That Conversation”

Critical Thinking #3: Logical Fallacies

So far in this series, we’ve explored the concepts of critical thinking and a hindrance to it, cognitive biases.

In this article, we will discuss a second hindrance: “logical fallacies.”

What is a Logical Fallacy?

Again, let’s define some terms:

logic
reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity
fallacy
a mistaken belief, especially one based on unsound argument; a failure in reasoning which renders an argument invalid

So putting them together, we arrive at this:

a mistaken belief, especially one based upon unsound argument, caused by a failure to accurately assess reality.

Accordingly, such arguments and their conclusions should always be regarded as invalid. The use of logical fallacies as rhetorical devices are one of the primary tools of propagandists to exploit biases, both real and imaginary, within their hearers.
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Critical Thinking #2: Cognitive Biases

In the previous article in this series, we discussed what defines the term “critical thinking” and why Christ-followers should care about it. In this installment, we’ll discuss the topic of cognitive bias.

Bias is easy to grasp because we’ve all encountered them in others, especially those of us who are not Caucasian, though we all tend to be completely oblivious to biases within ourselves. We who have performed some serious self-examination during our getting free from various addictions, abuse/neglect, or a bad marriage or two have been brought face-to-face — often quite painfully! — with their presence in our own thought-lives so those barriers to our recovery can be removed.

But before we proceed further, again let’s establish some solid definitions to work with:
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