Where is a persuasive message coming from?
Welcome to Critical Thinking Scan, where we
look at HOW you can think about ANY faith-challenging
message and arrive at a biblical, logical
conclusion yourself.
I’m Patricia Engler and today I’m going
to unpack Check #3 of the 7 Checks of Critical
Thinking, which any Christian can use, based
on the techniques that helped me a Christian
student at secular university.
And Check #3 of thinking critically about
any message is CHECK the SOURCE.
Who’s telling you this message?
Now, there are three questions you can ask
to get a good sense of what kind of source
you’re dealing with.
First you can ask, “What’s the source’s
credibility?”
How trustworthy are they?
Sometimes, valid information comes from 
less-than-credible sources,
and sometimes invalid information 
comes from credible sources.
Still, a source’s credibility can lend you
solid insight into how seriously you can take
their message.
And the most credible HUMAN source is an expert
in a relevant field.
So, a message about microbiology will be a
lot more trustworthy coming from an expert
microbiologist than from someone who’s an
expert in another field, like chemistry, or
from some random guy on the internet.
Trying to back up a statement by citing a
non-expert, like a random guy on the internet,
is a type of fallacy, or flawed logic, called
Appeal to False Authority.
There’s also another fallacy called Appeal
to Authority, which involves saying a message
is true just because an expert said so, without
supplying any other evidence.
Like “Dinosaurs evolved into birds, because
my paleontology professor said so.”
Well, a paleontology professor might know
a lot of information about dinosaurs, but
remember, even experts can believe wrong information,
and everyone is biased by the worldview assumptions
that we start with.
So, the second question to ask is, “What
is the source’s worldview?”
Are they interpreting the world through the
lens of man’s word or God’s Word?
Remember, the worldview that we start with
helps determine the assumptions that we use
and the conclusions that we end up with, so
knowing the source’s worldview will be really
helpful for separating fact from assumption
later on in the critical thinking process.
Finally, the third question to ask is whether
the source might have ulterior motives for
saying what they’re saying.
See, people say and do things for a lot of
different reasons, not all of which may be obvious.
News reporters, for instance, often have to write in a way 
to keep their readers and advertisers happy.
So, what gets published and how it’s worded
can be very financially and politically driven.
That’s all really helpful to keep in mind
when considering a message’s source.
But sometimes, part of checking the source
involves not just thinking about the person
sharing the information, but also how they
collected that information.
For instance, once when I was writing an article
about evolutionary beliefs in Britain, I nearly
wrote that only 3% of English science teachers
believe that God created humans and did not
use evolution while He was doing it.
But then, I realized that the study where
that statistic came from only looked at 55
teachers in four schools, out of tens of thousands
of science teachers in the UK.
The study still uncovered some pretty interesting
information, but its sample size—that’s
the number of teachers it looked at—was
too small for me to write that 3% of all British
science teachers accepted creation.
In the same way, a report from 2017 has suggested
that a lot of studies about natural selection
don’t necessarily use big enough samples
to draw accurate conclusions.
Now, as you can learn from other Answers in
Genesis resources, natural selection can’t
produce the types of changes required to evolve
one kind of living thing into another anyway.
But my point is that sometimes, researchers
can make mistakes.
Studies do get reviewed to catch as many mistakes
as possible, but like that 2017 report showed,
even widely accepted research practices don’t
always yield accurate results.
And frequently, the popular press and social
media circulate information and statistics
without explaining where that data came from,
or how it was collected.
So, it’s often worthwhile to go back to
the original source to see for yourself
where the information came from, how it was
collected, and if it’s being reported right.
This is all under Check #3 of the 7 Checks
of Critical Thinking – Check the Source.
For more on how to think critically about
any faith-challenging message, you can access
my other CT Scan videos packed with tactics,
tips and tools that helped me as a Christian
student at secular university.
Thank you for watching!
Hey – It’s Patricia.
Just wanted to let you know that if you like
these videos, a free, easy way to help Answers
in Genesis Canada produce more content and
equip more people to defend their faith, is
to hit that “like” button, subscribe to
our channel, click the bell, and, of course,
share these resources.
I know you might hear that kind of thing a
lot but the reason these actions are so important
is they inform social media algorithms to
help these videos reach more people who can
benefit from them.
That’s especially helpful because advertising
is super expensive.
But this way, even media platforms which are
often unfriendly towards biblical content
become tools to promote gospel outreach for free.
And, if you’re onboard to share this message
of biblical authority and want to give, you
can also make a one-time donation or become
a monthly supporter by clicking the link below.
Thank you so much!
