Critical thinking an essential tool, especially when talking about complex issues like religions. Here is a sketch of what I mean by that.
The rubbery bedrock of belief
Knowing is hard work. We “know” when we can express good reasons for believing.
Opinion is not knowledge: thinking you know doesn’t mean you know.
Believing in something that happens to be true is not knowing. Believing in true things for bad reasons makes you right, in a trivial sense, but it doesn’t mean that you know what you are talking about.
Everyone has a right to their opinion. But opinions deserve little respect if they are not supported with solid evidence and good arguments.
Blind trust – like censorship – kills autonomy. If you can’t or won’t check what people and sources tell you, then you are open to lies and manipulation.
Trust is earned. You can’t trust if you can’t assess what you are told.
Ignorance becomes a structural problem in societies where people are not taught how to think critically.
Every point has a point-of-view, but not every point-of-view is distorted.
Everything is not relative: some claims are stronger than others. Some “knowledge” is more firm and some less. It is your job to find out which is which.
Faith can make you strong. Faith can make you a better person. Faith can get you to a better afterlife (depending on which religion you follow and whether you follow it well). But faith is not a trustworthy path to knowledge about what is going on in this world.
The basics
Primary sources are those from a group, period or context that you are looking into. Examples: religious texts and rituals, historical documents, archaeological materials, peer-reviewed scientific research articles, eye-witness accounts, government statistics, raw data, trustworthy photographs / videos of events. By definition, primary sources are raw materials that require processing
Secondary sources are the results of research about a topic. Examples: books & articles about a religion, an historical period or a scientific issue; expert opinions (talking heads); journalism; reference works (encyclopedias etc.), most websites. By definition, secondary sources are interpretations of primary sources. They have to be assessed critically.
Knowledge is justified true belief: believing something that is true and believing it for good reasons. This quickly gets complicated, because we can be mistaken about we think are good reasons. All we can do is keep looking deeper, recognizing that knowledge is always relative, always open to correction. New evidence can appear at any moment to change what we think we know.
Justification happens with accepted reasons for believing that claims are true: support, evidence, proof etc. Conceptions of justification vary by cultural, religious, historical and social contexts. Most information we receive appeals to various types of justification: we need to assess these criteria as well as the information itself. Religions have an extremely wide range of justifications (Revelation, Scripture, tradition, statements of leaders, intuition, mystical experience, dreams and visions, miracles, divination techniques like tarot cards or reading “signs” in the world, pure faith etc.). Science works because it has a very narrow range of justification, based on scientific method and peer review. (Both these aspects of science have been weakened by corporatization and politicization in recent decades, which adds to the challenges of informational self-defense).
Informally, an argument consists of your point, plus the reasons you give people to accept your point. In formal terms, those two parts (support + point) are assessed in different ways. Premises (P) are the starting points or foundation, usually statements of (alleged) facts. You need to ask whether these are true or probable. The conclusion (C) is where you end up after taking those into account. You need to ask how it is related to the premises In a valid deductive argument, the conclusion is guaranteed to be true if (and only if) the premises are true. (Here’s a valid argument: P1 – all Presidents after JFK were puppets of the US deep state; P2 – Biden is a post-JFK President; C – Biden is a puppet of the US deep state. Whether that argument is sound or not depends on whether both premises are true. This argument is valid, even if it is false, i.e., unsound.) In inferential or abductive arguments, the conclusion is what seems the most likely interpretation or the best explanation, given the premises. (Sherlock Holmes didn’t deduce anything: he used induction and abduction.)
Key point: the only way to come closer to knowing is to do your homework, to use – not trust – relevant sources. That means assessing their trustworthiness and making sure that they lead where someone tells you they lead.
Work your sources
Do not trust, and avoid where possible, biased secondary sources. The only way to know which are biased is to do your homework with better sources.
Examples: anti-cult sites, information from governments with an anti-religious stance, newspapers, TV news, news sites, Wikipedia, fact-checking sites, blogs, podcasts, Youtube channels, rumours, “common knowledge,” friends/family etc.
Key point: ALL news reports from all media and from all political positions are guilty of falsehood before proven innocent. Since its origins, journalism (as opposed to news) has been financed by ideological and for-profit players. Trustworthy, objective, fact-driven reporting is part of the game, but never its driving force. Journalism can be a tool for avoiding or for imposing censorship: that means we must always take it with a grain of salt. Check out how Hollywood (It Happened One Night; Citizen Kane; His Girl Friday, etc.) portrayed journalism before the visuals of TV news gave a misleading impression of objective truth. It is easy to create fake news. Journalism can be trusted only after you look at better sources. If you learn that a particular journalist can usually be trusted, that is hard-earned gold.
There are many truths and many lies, many trivial truths and many distorted half-truths, in secondary sources. The only way to know which are which is to go beyond, to better sources.
Other sources are where you start. In a while, you might be in a position to learn which of these secondary sources can be trusted (to some extent) and which cannot.
These types of sources can flag open questions, not give clear-cut answers. They can be useful for getting a very general sense not of “the facts” but of questions that you will need to answer by using better sources. Looking at a wide variety of these types of sources and comparing them is a first step: you start to see the biases, ideological positioning, distortions, partial presentation of evidence. But that can lead to useful questions for further research. An initial sense of the issues, based on more trustworthy sources, is useful.
Key point: if what you think you know comes from these sorts of sources, you don’t know anything (even if you happen to be right about some things).
Double-check supposedly trustworthy secondary sources.
Examples: scholarly books, journals, websites; “experts” (including teachers and scholars), talking heads/pundits on TV, NGO and corporate websites/press releases, political position statements etc.
Key point: calling a person an “expert” or a book “specialized” doesn’t make it so, and it doesn’t prove that they are telling the truth. (In the same way, labeling something a “conspiracy theory” doesn’t mean that it is false: maybe it is and maybe it isn’t — decide after you do your research.)
Use primary sources to ground your views and for assessing secondary sources when they are about public phenomena.
Examples: religious and historical texts, interviews/autobiographies, government statistics and other data, official government agency websites, peer-reviewed scientific articles, tested and reliable experts
Key point: once the quality of primary sources is assessed, they can be used to assess secondary sources. (For example, if someone evokes “the science” like a magic spell, don’t trust them until you have looked at and assessed relevant peer-reviewed research.)
Be extremely cautious with primary sources that promote/defend or critique their own or other organizations.
Examples: religious leaders, converts or former members; religious groups’ adherence statistics; “elite” and normative statements (which often do not reflect common/popular views and practices); “clarifications” and polemical responses that defend against criticism.
Key point: bias, self-interest and ideological distortions are a potential feature of all sources, including primary sources. Some sources that most people think are trustworthy are not (including some governmental and international organizations): you need to do the work of assessing their information. Challenge primary sources.
Critical questions
How is a source relevant? How does it bear on the question or sub-question that you are investigating?
Does a source provide trustworthy evidence? Does it just provide “data” or does it take a certain position? If the former, where did that information come from, and is it complete and trustworthy (used its own sources well, collected and analyzed data properly, relevant time frame, strong study design). If the latter, does it make a strong or weak case? Does it just assert its viewpoint? Does it cite all relevant information or leave some out? Does it present evidence clearly, without distortion or obscurity? Does it oversimplify? Does it contradict itself or other sources?
Does a source use unacceptable techniques of persuasion? Examples: emotional appeals (including fear-mongering); cherry-picking supporting points and ignoring non-supporting ones (a broader sense of relevant evidence is needed here); appeals to authority (e.g., “experts conclude” or “”the science is clear”); attacking people not ideas (blaming the messenger); restating opposing views in a way that makes them weaker than they actually are (straw doll attack); smuggling in conclusions as assumptions, or just asserting a position as “obvious” or “incontrovertible” (begging the question); claiming to speak the truth without giving adequate support etc. (saying not showing) etc.
Do sources contradict each other? You might already know enough to judge which is more trustworthy. Otherwise, trust neither: look further.
Does a source repeat a dominant narrative in a distorting manner? Is new evidence rejected because it doesn’t fit the narrative? Is the narrative presented as obviously true, without supporting evidence? Is the support (if any) biased? If “yes” to any of these questions, reject the source.
Is the issue you are looking at politically polarized (for example, with “left / progressives” on one side and “right / conservatives” on the other)? If so, do not trust either perspective: look for less biased sources. Look for ideological bias in journals, publishers, newspapers, TV/Youtube channels, websites, podcasts etc. Polarized voices cannot be trusted: they might be right; they might be lying (or deluded) to promote their cause; you need to do more research to decide which.
Best practices
Assess and challenge information – don’t trust blindly. Passive consumers of information can’t tell lies from truths.
Compare your sources. As you research, you learn to recognize (to a good degree of likelihood) distortion, ideological bias, partial truths, lies, incoherence, selective and incomplete presentation of information, etc.
Question your own views. When you find information that does not fit with what you believe (what you think you know) there are various possibilities: you are wrong; it is wrong; both are wrong. Always consider the possibilities: decide only when you have good evidence to do so. Try not to reject new information from anxiety that you might need to change your mind.
Understand your own biases. It is better to admit that you don’t know than to pretend that you do. There are obvious problems with imagining that your knowledge is solid when it is not. Do you let yourself be persuaded because issues are framed in ways that resonate with your politics, even if this is not relevant? Do you trust people or sources because they are telling you what you want to hear, or because they use familar buzzwords? What is your own personal investment in an issue? If you like to show off your knowledge, or feel a need to be right, or are uncomfortable admitting that you are ignorant or wrong, this can get in the way. It is not wrong to have these qualities. But it is a mistake to let them undermine your critical thinking. Don’t let your emotions or your ego drive your thinking.
Zoom in and dive deep. It is impossible to get secure and safe knowledge of everything going on in the world, not even the stories in a single TV news program. Admit that you just don’t know about most issues. (Don’t trust bad sources just so you can pretend that you know.) Do your homework on selected topics.
Keep records. Keep track of what you find on a topic you are looking into: e.g., source citations, quotations, key points, summaries, browser bookmarks in a dedicated folder, screen grabs from books, links to peer-reviewed articles etc. Try to sum things up at different points in your own words, in a couple of sentences. This helps you grow your knowledge base, and it can help you to (try to) persuade someone else, if you think it likely that they don’t know what they think they know (that their views are less justified than yours).
Adopt critical thinking as a defensive posture, not an occasional chore. In this world (perhaps in the next), you will never be able sit back, put your legs up and say “Finally, I have arrived at ultimate truth!” Information is always less-or-more trustworthy — making it more takes effort.
Protect yourself. Ignorance is bliss. Well, yours is, for those who can use it to sell you their product, to indoctrinate you, to manipulate you…