We often think in terms of problems and solutions: what don’t we want, and how to get rid of them. But in many cases, personal and political, the proposed solutions contribute to the problem, instead of fixing it. The solution simply takes the problem in a new direction or to a new level. This is […]
Category Archives: Critical Thinking
Truth & Conviction
One of the most important principles to critical thinking, open-mindedness, and fruitful ideological discussions is that truth and conviction are two different things. Just because you are convinced of a belief does not make it true, nor does it mean that others must accept it to be true. And even if the belief is true, […]
Hasan Is Wrong – Religion Is Not Rational
In a recent online group discussion, an atheist friend of mine accused “religion” of being irrational. I made an attempt to explain that while world religions may not be consistently rational, there are religious individuals and denominations who value reason and science. A Muslim friend responded with a link to an article Mehdi Hasan, a […]
Flying Elephants
Apologies in advance for the lame joke that follows. But there’s a lesson behind the lameness. I promise. Under the dictatorial rule of Saddam Hussein, a science teacher was teaching her 1st grade class about animals. Student: “Miss, I was told that elephants fly.” Teacher: “No, elephants don’t fly. Who’s the idiot that told you […]
Your Ideological Mold
No one ever thinks inside a vacuum, untainted by cultural and cognitive biases. Our beliefs and values are shaped by our life experiences and the thinking we do to make sense of these experiences. This thinking follows a finite set of possibilities, limited by experience and ignorance. Our upbringing plays a major role in how […]
The Biased Burden
I remember watching a Kuwaiti comedy sketch a long, long time ago that went something like this… A male employer was interviewing two women for a secretary job: one was a hopeless bimbo and the other was the closest human approximation to a troll. He desperately wanted to hire the bimbo, and so made the […]