How to Build Your Own Critical Thinking Tools

Here goes, I thought and hit the power button. The sander buzzed awake, rattling like a live thing in my hands. I took a breath, leaned forward, and began applying the tool to scratch the glossy paint off my newly purchased car.

I sure hope this works. I’d never prepared a car for a paint job before, but there was no turning back now. Paying a professional to do all the labour wouldn’t have been feasible. However, a local autobody painter had agreed to transform the vehicle’s colour from mediocre grey to daring green at a reduced price—if my dad and I could handle the sanding and masking first. So, there I stood, brandishing a sander.

Aren’t tools empowering? By learning how to use them correctly, we gain an independence that unlocks brand new portals of possibilities. In my case, learning how to sand a vehicle let me not only afford to paint one car, but also develop a skill I could apply to painting any other car.

Biblical critical thinking tools work a similar way. But instead of empowering us to paint any vehicle, they empower us to think through any faith-challenging message. In a world where we’ll always have new questions, these tools help us reach biblical, logical answers ourselves.

In other articles and the Answers TV series Critical Thinking Scan, I share the tools that helped me think through messages at university—tools I still use to assess information and write apologetics resources. These tools, including the 7 Checks of Critical Thinking, serve as an all-purpose resource for evaluating information—like a mental version of the basic hammers, screwdrivers, and other must-haves you’d find in almost any toolbox.

You can accomplish an awful lot with the basics, and you need them to tackle most DIY projects. But depending on the work you’re doing, you may need more specialized tools too—say, a power sander. So goes critical thinking. The basic tools will take you a long way, but specialized ones may also come in handy for evaluating certain kinds of information. Let’s see how you can add to your critical thinking toolset by developing your own tools.

Two Steps to Build Your Own Tools

The secret to developing your own critical thinking tools comes down to two simple steps:

1. Look for patterns. Start by examining messages which you already know are true or false,1 or which contain good or bad logic. What are some common denominators or recurring themes in those messages?
2. Ask questions. Once you’ve identified patterns of good or bad logic in known messages, come up with questions you can use to recognize those common denominators in unknown messages.

If you take a close look at the 7 Checks of Critical Thinking, you’ll notice they all work this way. That is, they’re all based on questions which identify common patterns in many false or illogical messages. Here’s a table to summarize the details:

This same two-step system of seeking patterns and asking questions can help you identify specific fallacies. For instance, the common denominator of either/or fallacies is that they all claim either one possibility is true, or another is true, when really, both could be true, both could be false, or other options could exist. So, you can recognize either/or fallacies by asking, “Are there really (only) two mutually exclusive options?”

You could also use this system to identify fallacies which haven’t been named yet—or to outsmart fallacies without knowing their names. For instance, this blog post describes a class of faulty logic called fallacies of irrelevant premises. There’s a long list of these fallacies, but you can recognize any of them using a critical thinking hack based on the two-step system:

Common denominator: All fallacies of irrelevant premises make arguments based on something that isn’t related to the truth of the message’s content. For example, ad populum fallacies say a message is true because many people believe it; ad nauseum fallacies say a message is true because it’s repeated often; and genetic fallacies say a message is true (or false) based on the types of people who communicate it. But none of these factors is relevant to whether a message’s content is true.

Question to spot the common denominator: Ask, “Is this message true or false because . . . ?” For instance, is a message true because many people believe it? Not necessarily.

DIY Apologetics Tools

This two-step system is how I develop tools for new episodes of Critical Thinking Scan. For instance, to write the episode titled “Does the Bible Contain Contradictions,”3 I browsed a list of alleged Bible contradictions, looked for patterns of faulty logic in the claims, and outlined tips for thinking through “contradictions” based on these patterns.

With this same system, everyday Christians can develop their own tools for thinking through specific messages they encounter—messages I may never hear, and tools I may never write. For instance, while I haven’t yet written about how to recognize arguments that Christians should avoid using, you could develop such a tool yourself by scanning this list of shaky arguments, looking for common denominators, and formulating questions to spot those common denominators in new arguments.

Notably, this two-step system applies to other purposes too, way beyond critical thinking. For instance, by looking for patterns in healthy relationships, you can develop tools for strengthening interpersonal connections. By noticing patterns in historic examples of countries which lost their freedom, you can recognize warning signs of similar processes unfolding in culture today.

In the end, looking for patterns and asking questions can help you build your own empowering tools—including brand new biblical critical thinking resources for processing unique messages you encounter. Now that’s even cooler than a power sander.