Critical Christianity

What is Critical Christianity?

Critical Christianity is the kind of Christianity that emphasises the use of Critical Thinking to assess any belief or claim to see in what sense and to what extent it is true or false. Critical Christianity looks not only at beliefs and claims found in Christianity but also the beliefs and claims found in other worldviews such as Atheism and Buddhism.

Critical Christianity takes human fallibility seriously. Human fallibility means we can be mistaken in what we believe or disbelieve. Hence Critical Christianity takes the stance that we ought to be prepared to change any of our convictions or beliefs (including the belief in the existence of God), if strong evidence arises to warrant a change. Hence in principle, there is no unchangeable conviction or belief as long as our human fallibility renders us unable to infallibly know Objective Truths. For this reason, Christianity ought to be continuously open to being shaped by Critical Thinking.

Critical Christianity is thus a Christianity being shaped by Critical Thinking, because Critical Christianity values truth over comfort and conformity, and takes seriously our human fallibility.

Why Critical Christianity?

This is because having a reasonable belief supported by evidence is not enough, if our goal is truth.

Whether we are Atheists, Buddhists or Christians, we are all fallible human beings with blind spots and biases. Hence we would usually see our own beliefs to be very reasonable because

(1) we tend to easily notice data that seems to support our beliefs

(2) we tend to fail to notice data that seems to contradict our beliefs and

(3) we tend to lightly or quickly dismiss data that seems to contradict our beliefs, such as by coming out with creative ad hoc reasons to explain them away (confirmation bias at work).

As a result, it is not uncommon to see such phenomena: Conservative Christians using special pleading and creative ad hoc reasons to explain away certain errors in the Christian bible,  liberal Christians being quick to dismiss miracles by naturalising biblical accounts of supernatural incidents, atheists straw-manning sound deductive reasonings that prove the existence of God, and religious believers applying stringent criteria of authenticity to reject miracles reported in other religions while accepting easily their own religion’s reports of miracles as authentic.

Therefore it is not enough for our beliefs to be reasonable and supported by evidence. We also need to be critical of our beliefs. We need to use Critical Thinking bravely, honestly and consistently to assess our beliefs, including our beliefs that certain beliefs are false.

Hence the need for Critical Christianity – a Christianity being shaped by Critical Thinking.

What is Critical Thinking?

Critical Thinking is the brave, honest and consistent use of reason/evidence and ACTIVE SCEPTICISM in assessing a belief or claim to see to what extend and in what sense it is true or false (notice the nuances!). In applying Critical Thinking, we need to seriously and genuinely accept the possibility that our beliefs or disbeliefs in a matter could be wrong due to our biases, blind spots and human fallibility.

A belief is true or probably true if

(1) it is well-supported by evidence/reason, and

(2) it passes the test of falsification (active scepticism).

Criteria (1) is relatively easy, given that our confirmation-biases tend to enable us to easily find reasons/evidence to support our beliefs. Hence what is especially important in Critical Thinking is Criteria (2) on passing the test of falsification.

The test of falsification entails we ACTIVELY seek out evidence/reasons that seem to contradict our beliefs, and engage bravely, honestly and consistently with such contradicting evidence, and see if that our beliefs pass the test of such contradicting evidence/reasons. This should be done with a genuine acceptance that it is possible we could be wrong in our original beliefs and disbeliefs.