Top 5 Lessons from Psychology for Critical Thinkers

Submitted by Sheldon Helms Thu, 10-05-2018 : 02:09

Your Nervous System Can Fool You

I was recently asked to join the James Randi Educational Foundation’s “Education Initiative,” whose purpose is to promote JREF Logothe teaching of critical thinking and skepticism. As part of this effort, I will be writing articles geared toward teachers, offering them tips on how they can encourage reason and scientific literacy…

Please CLICK HERE to read the first in my five-part series called “The Top 5 Lessons from Psychology for Critical Thinkers” published on the James Randi Educational Foundation’s SWIFT web site. Titled “Your Nervous System Can Fool You,” this article briefly provides some tips for teaching people not to trust their own personal experiences as valid evidence. It contains several links to web sites that can be used to demonstrate pareidolic effects, and references for helping people understand how they are created.

Enjoy!

Sheldon Helms's Blog

Virtual Skeptics in the Pub

WHAT: Virtual Skeptics in the Pub

This is a casual night of socializing with fellow skeptics. If needed, we will have a number of breakout rooms for quieter conversations.

Please join us! This is a free event brought to you by Bay Area Skeptics. All are welcome.

WHEN: Wednesday 24 April 7-9pm Pacific (GMT-7)

HOW: Zoom. Join HERE. Passcode: 1023

May SkepTalk

Susan & William Trollinger

WHAT: From Creationism to QAnon: Answers in Genesis and the Culture War

Our book, Righting America at the Creation Museum, came out in 2016. In the intervening years, the creationist organization Answers in Genesis has opened Ark Encounter, remodeled the Creation Museum (in some places as a response to our book), opened a K-12 school, and dramatically expanded its online presence. At the same time, AiG has doubled down on the culture war rhetoric, dismissing climate change (or, as AiG CEO Ken Ham refers to it, “the climate cult”) as a hoax, rejecting the reality of a COVID-19 pandemic (in the process attacking vaccination mandates as oppressive), and working hard to appeal to QAnon devotees (to the point of opening the Ark to the filming of a QAnon video).

To expand on what we said in the “Introduction” to our book, all of us have a stake in understanding what is happening in the world of AiG – including the museum and the Ark – and its role in preparing and arming crusaders for the ongoing culture war that polarizes and poisons U.S. religion and politics. As bizarre as the world of AiG may seem to many Americans, what happens there matters to all of us.

WHO: Susan Trollinger is Professor of English at the University of Dayton. She earned her Ph.D. in Rhetoric from the University of Pittsburgh, and is the author of Selling the Amish: The Tourism of Nostalgia (Johns Hopkins, 2012).

William Trollinger is Professor of History and Religious Studies at the University of Dayton. He earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, and is the author of God’s Empire: William Bell Riley and the Making of American Fundamentalism (2nd ed., Tennessee, 2025).

The Trollingers have co-written, among other publications:

Righting America at the Creation Museum (Johns Hopkins, 2016)

“Creationism,” Oxford Handbook of Christian Fundamentalism (Oxford, 2023)

“The Bible and Creationism,” Oxford Handbook of the Bible (Oxford, 2017)

and

“From Creationism to QAnon: The Culture War Conspiracism of Answers in Genesis,” which will appear in Isis in the summer of 2025, and from which this talk is taken.

WHEN: Tuesday 9 May @ 7:00 PM Pacific (GMT-7)

WHERE: Online. (Link to come)

Top 5 Lessons from Psychology for Critical Thinkers

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