Are we even talking about the same thing right now?
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 #4 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 #4 of thinking critically about
any message is CHECK the DEFINITIONS.
See, sometimes words that sound the same can 
carry multiple meanings.
For instance, I used to work at a greenhouse,
where one day, I remember, a gentleman walked
up to me and asked, “Do you have time?”
Now, he might have been asking whether I had
time to answer a question, but I thought he
might have been checking what time it was.
So I said, “Oh yes, sir, it’s quarter to three!”
And he said, “No, no. TIME.”
So I said, “yes, sir!
It’s quarter to three!”
So, he started spelling, “T-H-Y-M-E,”
and I realized that he was looking for the
PLANT called thyme.
Now TIME and THYME are different words, even
though they sound the same, but sometimes
even the same word can have multiple meanings
which need clarification.
Words carry different ideas in different contexts
or they mean different things to different people.
And some words, like person, science, religion,
and evolution are prime examples.
I took entire classes about evolution, and
when my textbooks gave examples of “evolution”
we can see happening, it was always “evolution”
in the sense of what we, from a biblical perspective,
would view as variation within the original
kinds of living things that God created.
Like finches.
In my biology classes, we talked about how
mutations and natural selection can let finches
with long beaks give rise to finches with
short beaks.
That’s cool, but, like you can learn more
about through other Answers in Genesis resources
(including some of the ones linked to this
video), mutation and natural selection can’t
actually produce the types of changes required
to evolve one kind of living creature into another.
So, while my textbooks called variation in
finch beaks “evolution,” it’s not an
example of “evolution” in the sense of change BETWEEN 
kinds, like dinosaurs evolving into finches.
But, you know, textbooks will tell you these things are equal.
They’ll say, “We can see finches evolving
into finches, therefore
we know dinosaurs evolved into finches.”
But did you catch what happened there?
The definition of evolution switched.
If you notice a definition switching like
that during an argument, you’ve detected
a type of fallacy (a faulty form of reasoning) called
Bait and Switch or equivocation.
And another really common word besides “evolution”
that often gets equivocated is “SCIENCE.”
As you can learn more about in the links provided,
people often use “science” as a catch-all
word, when there are really two very important
different types of science.
The first, observational science, involves
making measurements in the present, using
the scientific method to describe what we’re
seeing in the world around us right now.
This type of science deals with facts.
Historical science, on the other hand, involves
interpreting facts from the present to draw
conclusions about the past.
This type of science deals with assumptions.
For instance, while the size and mass and
species description of a fossil would be facts
from observational science, the assumption
that the fossil formed millions of years ago
would be an interpretation from historical science.
Textbooks often blur the lines between these two
types of science; for instance,
one of my own textbooks said that evolution is “as
much a scientific fact as the atomic constitution
of matter or the revolution of Earth 
around the Sun.” (ref. 1)
Now, the earth’s revolution is something that we 
can measure with observational science,
and even prominent evolutionists
like Ernst Mayr have pointed out that a lot
of evolutionary biology is historical science. (ref. 2)
So, watch out for equivocation, 
and always define your terms.
That’s Check #4 of the 7 checks of critical thinking.
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 here.
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Thank you so much!
