Summary:
• Science is a method for investigating the physical world by forming hypotheses, testing those hypotheses with experiments, and then refining them into theories. Science is not designed to investigate anything non-material, such as God or the soul.
• Science is designed to answer questions of how. Religion and spirituality try to answer questions of why. Confusing these two different questions sometimes leads to misunderstanding.
• Although the scientific method is designed to be self-correcting, sometimes individual scientists or even entire scientific communities can be wrong. This is because scientists are human: they have biases and this can cause them to make mistakes.
• The worst wars and genocides of the twentieth century were driven by political ideologies that claimed to be scientific. Any belief system—scientific or religious—can become dangerous when the ego turns that belief system into a rigid group identity.
• Ockham’s Razor is a scientific tool that can help simplify materialist explanations, but it cannot settle questions definitively about a non material God.
• Although science and religion are different from each other, they are not always in opposition. Throughout history, many great scientists were deeply religious. New technologies, derived from the benefits of science, often raise ethical questions that require moral and spiritual reasoning.
• To search for truth, critical thinking uses logic, evidence, skepticism, and humility. Critical thinking is not hostile to religion. For example, both Jesus Christ and the Buddha encouraged people to question ideas rather than accept those ideas without question.
• A conspiracy theory that ignores contrary evidence tends to collapse due to its own complexity. The more variables a theory depends on, the more likely something will go wrong, weakening the theory. Critical thinking can identify those variables.
• The REASON framework teaches practical critical-thinking skills: review what you truly know; require strong evidence for big claims; remember that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; practice genuine skepticism; consult opposing sources; and consider the full context and variables. These steps can expose misinformation and reveal if a theory is poorly supported.
In most European languages the word science comes from the Latin word scientia, meaning knowledge, although science is not the entirety of knowledge, only a type of knowledge. Science consists of logical deductions based on observations and investigations using the scientific method, a system for exploring questions. The method first identifies a problem or mystery, then collects data about it using observation and relevant experiments, identifies patterns, forms a hypothesis of how something happens in a particular way, tests that hypothesis with more experiments, analyzes the results, and then gradually transforms the hypothesis into a theory. A good scientific theory is predictive, which means the theory will reliably predict the same outcome as long as the same conditions are present; otherwise, the theory is flawed. A good scientific theory also includes a feature called falsifiability. This means the theory can be tested in ways that might prove it to be false, or at least not complete. Most scientific theories are never really confirmed; instead, they are supported by a lack of evidence against them despite many experiments used to test them. In other words, scientific experiments and tests are used to filter out those hypotheses and theories that have flaws.
Materialism includes everything physical, from the smallest atoms and subatomic particles to the largest galaxies, and even the Universe itself. Science, using the scientific method, is excellent for investigating materialism because science is designed to do that. Our scientific knowledge about nature and the Universe helps us in countless ways, including improving our physical health and helping us to develop new technologies.
Religions likewise talk about materialism, meaning physical existence, but religions also have ideas about non-materialism. That is because most religions believe that a non-material realm exists, including non-material souls. Science is not designed to investigate non-materialism. Scientific instruments, such as microscopes, cannot detect anything non-material like a soul. They say there is nothing there. This does not mean a non-material realm does not exist. It means the scientific method is not designed to investigate non-materialism, and therefore a non-material realm may exist or it may not, but there is no definitive physical proof.
Some people claim that science can provide absolute certainty about literally everything, both material and non-material, but that claim is false—and an arrogant abuse of science. Typically, that abuse is committed by people who want to disguise their opinions in the credibility of science. The reality is that science cannot prove the existence of a non-material realm. Science cannot disprove it, either. Science is not designed to.
Many defenders of science argue that unless people become free-thinkers enlightened by scientific knowledge, they will be vulnerable to being manipulated by religious dogmas. Those defenders of science generally acknowledge that religions have done much good, but they also point out, accurately, that religious dogmas have been used to justify violent atrocities, including religious wars. Proponents of science argue that the scientific method is more objective because it tests hypotheses and theories and, therefore, science is self-correcting.
That comparison between religious dogma and the scientific method is true to an extent, but it neglects to mention that a belief system can become a religion without being called a religion. An ideology is also a belief system, and many ideologies are based on scientific theories. An ideology might not be called a religion, but it can become a form of religious dogma. It can become a group identity.
The twentieth century was the bloodiest century in human history—and that century’s most brutal wars and genocides were waged for scientific theories. Marxism-Leninism, what many people call Communism, is based on a theory called “scientific socialism” and it arose from the social sciences of economics and sociology. National Socialism, what many people call Nazism, emerged to emphasize the natural sciences of biology and genetics. Fascism and its offshoots, including the political aspects of Nazism, arose from the academic disciplines of history, geography, linguistics, military science, and political science. Nationalism, for example, is an idea born of political science. Nationalism arose from the classical liberal idea that people sharing the same language and culture should govern themselves. Fascism argued that people sharing the same language and culture should govern themselves like a military organization, so that the State can pursue imperialist ambitions.
Those ideologies were not really created by science, they were created by people. Yet, those ideologies do emphasize materialism, and that emphasis convinced their believers that those ideologies are completely scientific. By claiming to be absolutely factual, those theories seemed to offer their believers absolute certainty. The ego, wanting to believe that it is always right, can become attracted to an ideology that claims to be absolutely factual and absolutely certain. That belief can transform that ideology into a dangerous group identity.
Yet, absolute certainty is not scientific at all. Genuine science must always assume that there is no certainty, because a scientific theory that is popular today might be disproved tomorrow.
Scientists are human; they have biases, preconceptions, and agendas like everybody else. The ideal of science is to interpret enough data from objective experiments to overcome any bias, and thereby discover patterns that can confirm, disprove, or refine a hypothesis. However, the scientific method cannot overcome the bias of a human scientist who is psychologically unwilling to accept some unfavorable findings. The human scientist decides which experiments to use, how to collect the data, how to interpret the data, and how to apply the data to a hypothesis. No matter how objective the scientist tries to be, all of those decisions are subjective to some extent. Over time, with the help of other scientists, the data can be verified, the tests can be confirmed, and a theory can be developed and refined. But does the theory really represent reality? A scientist can be wrong. Many scientists can be wrong. Sometimes the scientific community of an entire country can be wrong. This has happened before, several times.
Furthermore, not every person is a scientist and not every person wants to be a scientist. Many people, perhaps all people, have some spiritual needs that are non-material. The scientific method is not designed to satisfy those. Even the strongest supporters of science admit (or they ought to) that science is focused on materialism alone. Discoveries of how the material Universe works can be fascinating and may even inspire awe. Discoveries revealed by science can have spiritual meaning. However, not everyone is satisfied with those discoveries or with science, and so science cannot provide spiritual meaning for everyone. Science is not designed to.
· Science, religion, and the freedom to disagree.
We humans are naturally curious about ourselves, about nature, and about the Universe. We want some explanations. We want to know if our species is special; and if so, what makes us special? We want to understand how and why terrible things happen, and what we can do to protect ourselves. We want to improve our lives, physically and emotionally.
That is why both science and religion exist.
Science offers us guidance based on our physical environment.
Religion offers us guidance based on our moral environment.
If scientists represent science and theologians represent religion, then the difference between scientists and theologians is similar to the difference between police detectives and lawyers. Police detectives work in the realm of physical evidence, investigating crimes. Their job is to solve a physical mystery, such as how a crime was committed and by whom, and so they detect physical clues and then devise a theory of how those clues fit together. The detectives then present their theory and evidence to explain how the event happened, an analysis that might be contrary to what most people would like to believe. Scientists do much the same, trying to solve physical mysteries by presenting theories and evidence. Lawyers, by contrast, focus on legal principles and the specific wording of laws. Lawyers offer arguments about why a particular law exists and how it may or may not apply to a particular situation, especially if the law was written during a very different era. Theologians do the same using religious scriptures, including the ethical principles implied by those scriptures. Many lawyers hope to use laws to create a better world, and many theologians hope to do the same using religious scriptures.
Police detectives sometimes work with lawyers, and scientists sometimes work with theologians, but each profession is different. That does not mean that if one profession is right, then the other profession must be wrong. Each profession is different, with different objectives.
Some physical things that we sometimes associate with religions, such as the accuracy of prophecies derived from Tarot cards, can be investigated by the scientific method. Supernatural miracles are considered supernatural when they violate what science has learned about physical existence. For that reason, science should investigate them.
Some supernatural miracles can be surprisingly difficult to disprove, however. That does not mean the miracle is true; it means that investigating the miracle might be very difficult using the scientific method. For example, if a miracle was reported long ago in history, then the only evidence we have today might be reports from witnesses who are long dead. Reports from witnesses, dead or alive, might be fascinating, but science does not treat those reports as reliable evidence that a supernatural miracle genuinely occurred. (Even if a witness is not lying, the witness might be mistaken or was deceived by a trick.) If not enough evidence exists to conduct a thoroughly scientific investigation, then the scientific method cannot prove nor disprove that the supernatural miracle occurred.
Human beings are entitled to basic rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion. When a government does not respect these rights, it may claim that it supports science and it may even spend money on scientific research, but to some extent that government fears science—because scientific discoveries are unpredictable. A dictatorship dislikes changes that it cannot control. Scientific progress can bring changes that are very difficult to control.
Science often flourishes in societies where religious tolerance prevails because those societies allow a wide variety of ideas to be openly discussed. Some religious organizations fear a variety of ideas, especially ideas that could encourage some religious upheaval. Yet, change in some form is inevitable. When new ideas feel threatening, religious people should consider the core values of their religion. Those core values are their religion’s best ideas. The best ideas will attract people.
When science flourishes, new technologies emerge. Sometimes those new technologies create new situations that cause people to ask new ethical questions. Then people discover that the skills of ethical reasoning, skills originally developed by ancient religions, are still needed.
Science and religion are different and sometimes they disagree, but they are not always adversaries. Throughout history, many great scientists were very religious. They treated science as a way to learn about the Universe, which they believed was either Divine or created by the Divine. For some, their discoveries strengthened their faith. For others, their scientific discoveries gradually weakened their religious faith. For a few, their discoveries created a new faith and a new religion. In ancient India, Siddhartha Gautama observed that physical change is inevitable. If a person’s happiness depends on desiring physical things, then the result can be a lifetime of suffering because those desires become a form of psychological slavery, which he called attachment. He devised a method to free oneself from those desires and so achieve lasting happiness. He is now called the Buddha, which means the Awakened One, and his teachings became the religion of Buddhism. He encouraged people to try his method to discover if it really works. By inviting that curiosity, he encouraged an ancient form of scientific investigation.
From approximately the eighth century to the thirteenth century, C.E., the city of Baghdad was a major center of scientific research and discovery. Baghdad’s Great Library was called the House of Wisdom. Many historians call that time the Islamic Golden Age. The Abbasid Caliphate ruled an empire that covered central Asia, most of the Middle East including Persia (now Iran), Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Arabia, and Egypt, and also the northern coast of Africa. Islam was the empire’s primary religion, but Muslim scholars in Baghdad worked alongside Christian and Jewish scholars, many of them translating ancient Greek manuscripts about science, religion, and philosophy. Those ancient manuscripts had survived the decline of the Roman Empire and were now in Baghdad, where their lessons encouraged additional scientific progress that continued for centuries. Manuscripts from India were also translated. The subjects included mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics, chemistry, and engineering.
Baghdad’s House of Wisdom existed at a time when science and religion were combined. Today, however, trying to combine science and religion would be dangerous because religious scriptures would be treated like scientific textbooks, which they are not, and scientific theories would be treated like religious doctrines, which they are not. Science and religion are different. When they are independent of each other, they can advise each other more honestly. They need the freedom to disagree.
In Europe, science and religion began to diverge in the sixteenth century, during the second half of the Renaissance. The word renaissance means “revival” or “a return to.” In history, the Renaissance was an era when much of the classical art, literature, and philosophy of the ancient Greeks and Romans became fashionable for Europeans to study and learn from, despite the fact that the creators were ancient pagans, not Christians. Curiosity was strong during the Renaissance, and curiosity fuels science. Furthermore, the printing press, invented in the fifteenth century, was mass producing books, including about scientific subjects. That encouraged more people to adopt the scientific method because it increased their credibility as scientists. Other scientists could check the information in a scientific book by repeating the experiments the book described. Reliable information became more widely available. Other inventions that transformed science at that time included the mechanical clock, the magnifying glass, and the telescope.
Historians call that era the Scientific Revolution. The revolution was gradual, occurring over centuries as people learned that having the freedom to disagree is essential to scientific progress. That freedom was a revolutionary idea. When religious authorities hold political power and they rule the scientists, the consequences tend to stall scientific progress. Scientists become afraid to discuss the truth of what their scientific instruments are really showing them, especially if that information contradicts the religious beliefs of the authorities. During the Renaissance, this happened to some of Europe’s greatest astronomers.
Today, we know that the planet Earth orbits the Sun. We accept this as a fact, but it was a radical idea in the sixteenth century—and was treated as subversive. The Roman Catholic Church, which at that time was very politically powerful, supported a popular belief that the Sun orbits Earth. In Poland, however, a brilliant mathematician and astronomer named Nicolaus Copernicus devised a theory that Earth orbits the Sun. Copernicus thought of the idea in the year 1510, although he was not the first; it was first proposed by some Greek philosophers in ancient times, and later by Arab astronomers during the Islamic Golden Age. Yet, Copernicus’ theory was so contrary to what the Church believed that he was afraid to publish it, fearing the consequences could endanger his reputation and even his life. So, Copernicus delayed publishing it for more than three decades, until just before his death in 1543.
Copernicus’ theory did upset some Church officials. Others ignored it. Nevertheless, the danger was real. Years later, an Italian astronomer named Giordano Bruno had a theory that stars might have planets orbiting them and that people might be living on those planets. He also had some unusual religious beliefs, possibly including a belief in reincarnation. Even his scientific theory had some religious implications. The Church condemned Bruno for heresy and executed him in 1600.
Years after that, another Italian astronomer, Galileo Galilei, began using a new invention that would transform the science of astronomy: the telescope. Using one, Galileo discovered that the Moon has mountains and that Jupiter has moons. Those things were not supposed to exist, according to the Church. The Church said the Moon is a heavenly body and therefore the Moon must be perfect in form; its surface is not supposed to be rough with mountains. Everything visible in the heavenly sky is supposed to orbit Earth, including the Sun. Galileo saw moons orbiting Jupiter, and he became convinced of Copernicus’ theory, that Earth orbits the Sun.
Church officials probably knew that Galileo was right. (He was not the only man with a telescope.) They warned him, however, that the Church would need time to confirm his observations and then need more time to adjust its theology. In the Holy Bible is a story that God once caused the Sun to not move, a Divine intervention that gave an Israelite army enough daylight to win a battle (Joshua 10:12-15). The story implies that the Sun orbits Earth. The Church would need time to explain to the public why accepting Copernicus’ theory, and likewise Galileo’s observations do not disprove the Bible.
Galileo insisted he had made some major discoveries and he wanted the credit—immediately. Instead, in 1616, the Church condemned him for “vehement suspicion of heresy.” The word suspicion (implying doubt) allowed Galileo to avoid the death penalty. Years later, Galileo published a fictional book in which the characters argue Copernicus’ theory versus the old belief that the Sun orbits Earth. Church officials interpreted the book as an attack upon the Church, although Galileo may not have intended that. In 1633, the Church put Galileo under house arrest for rest of his life, though he continued to write about scientific subjects until his death in 1642. Today, many scientists treat Galileo as a symbol of science threatened by religion.
By the twentieth century, the political power of the Roman Catholic Church had greatly diminished. By then, the theory of Copernicus and the observations of Galileo were fully accepted, as were the later discoveries and theories of Isaac Newton. It was the century of the astronomer Edwin Hubble and of the physicists Albert Eisenstein and Werner Heisenberg. Each of them was religious to some extent, though they abandoned a literalist interpretation of the Holy Bible.
In the late 1920s, Hubble discovered that the galaxies of the Universe are moving away from each other. Using data from Hubble’s discovery, a Belgian mathematician named Georges Lemaître theorized that everything in the Universe once began at a single point, a point as tiny as an atom. Billions of years ago, that point exploded and the expanding material became the Universe. The Universe is still expanding. Scientists now call that explosion the Big Bang, although that name was originally used to mock the idea. Lemaître based his theory upon physical evidence and mathematics, not upon the Holy Bible, although he certainly knew the Bible: Lemaître was a Roman Catholic priest. This fact about Father Lemaître caused some scientists to criticize his theory as being perhaps more religious than scientific, but his theory has survived the tests of the scientific method and is now widely accepted. Yet, Lemaître discouraged talk that the Big Bang theory somehow proves anything about the Holy Bible. Lemaître once said psychology, not cosmology, is the scientific field that comes closest to religion.
There are dictatorships that call themselves scientific, but the consequences of too little freedom tend to make scientific theories too political. Instead of relying upon honest experiments to test a scientific theory, a theory might be accepted or rejected as a result of a political struggle for power. That happened in the Soviet Union during the twentieth century. The most notorious example involved a man named Trofim Lysenko, a Soviet scientist who specialized in agricultural production—but he refused to believe that genetic biology influences plants. Lysenko believed in theories that other Soviet scientists knew would be proven false if the scientific method were used to test them. But Lysenko was a very powerful official in the Soviet Union because his theories supported its Communist ideology. The results were catastrophic: Lysenko forced thousands of Soviet scientists out of their jobs, destroyed the study of genetics in the Soviet Union, ordered policies that resulted in disastrous harvests across the country, and millions of people starved to death. The Soviet government was avowedly atheist, cared little about the country’s religious clergy, and cared little about the arguments of scientists who opposed Lysenko.
Science and religion are different, but ideological dictatorships want to control both science and religion. The Soviet Union claimed to be scientific, but it persecuted religious believers and it also persecuted scientists, including scientists who believed in the ideology’s ideals. They were persecuted because the ideology had become a group identity ruled by people who were extremely ambitious and fearful, even paranoid, and they allowed their own egos to drive their actions as they directed the collective ego of their ideology.
Today, some people believe that science and religion should never interact. However, that is unrealistic and can be dangerous. When religious doctrines teach inaccuracies about physical existence, people of science should explain what is factually accurate about physical materialism and what is mistaken. When a religious group is controlled by someone driven by his ego, preaching outright lies, practicing greed, and abusing believers as if they were slaves, then people who understand science and knows how to conduct an unbiased investigation are probably the best qualified people to expose the hypocrisy, fraud, and any criminality in that group.
Not all abuses are religious. Sometimes abuses and even atrocities are committed by people associated with science; those people may even claim they are pursuing scientific progress. That is when religious people must object by emphasizing morality and ethics, universal values and basic rights. Otherwise, science allows for harm without constraints.
· The difference between why and how.
When a question is not clear enough, it is not well phrased. A question about scientific matters, or about religious or spiritual matters, should be clear enough to avoid any misunderstanding. A question may seem reasonable until you interpret it literally, every word. What mystery triggered the question? When a question is not clear enough, it may attract a reply but not the correct answer.
For these reasons, knowing the difference between why and how is crucial. These two words ask different questions and so they should receive different answers. For example, consider these two questions:
“Why did you do that?”
“How did you do that?”
These two questions are so different that an answer to one cannot answer the other (unless the answer is “I don’t know”). To a question asking why, the answer should provide a reason. To a question asking how, the answer should explain a method.
Between these two questions the difference is obvious, but sometimes the difference between why and how is not obvious. Some questions that include the word why are meant to be questions asking how.
“Why does the Sun rise?” This is a why question. A scientific reply might say that Earth is a rotating planet and that a full rotation lasts exactly one day. People on the planet’s surface can see only a distant horizon where the surface and the sky appear to meet. Somewhere on the planet at this very moment, people can see the Sun appearing to rise above the horizon. But the Sun is not really rising; instead, Earth is rotating, and so people are seeing the Sun again after hours of darkness when their location on Earth faced away from the Sun.
“And that is why we can see the Sun appearing to rise, right?”
Wrong. This scientific reply is an answer to how. It is not an answer to why. It explains that Earth is a rotating planet and how the perspective of someone on the surface changes as the planet rotates. But this answer does not explain why God created this particular system. Instead of creating an entirely different system, why did God choose to create a rotating planet called Earth, orbiting a star?
Questions of why are questions about intentions, about decisions made amongst options and about the advantages and disadvantages of each option. Those decisions involve deliberate reasoning. If there were no options and therefore no decision was necessary, then the question of why might not exist. If God does not exist, then some questions of why become irrelevant; and an answer to how might be good enough. However, a situation supposedly without any options may still be a situation that was deliberately created. It becomes a question of why because a deliberate decision was made to create the situation. This makes efforts to disprove the existence of God essentially impossible because God can both exist and be hidden.
Questions of how are questions about methods or mechanical behaviors. Science is designed to answer how. The scientific method investigates materialism by measuring and counting things and looking for patterns. Typically, when the same methods or mechanical behaviors occur repeatedly, a pattern can be observed. For example, if a physical object cannot fly but it falls to the ground every time you drop it, that is a pattern. How does an object, being dropped, change its location from up in the air to down on the ground? That is a question of how—and the answer is gravity. Gravity has no motive and never makes any decisions.
After observing a pattern of behavior, scientists then try to explain that pattern by devising a theory. Then scientists create experiments to test if the theory works. (Scientists may not know for certain why gravity exists, but they are confident that they know how gravity works.) A good experiment tests for only one variable because the experiment is designed to remove all other variables. Testing for only one variable should result in only one outcome, despite running the experiment many times. But if different outcomes do result, then more than one variable may exist—and then the experiment must be re-designed to test for only one variable. If a pattern remains the same in multiple experiments and also in different experiments that are designed to test different aspects of the pattern, then scientists can feel some confidence that they have discovered how the pattern works. Knowing how a pattern works is called a scientific fact.
Yet, knowing how a pattern works is not the same as knowing why that pattern was created to work that way. For example, scientists can explain how gravity works, but gravity never makes any decisions, gravity has no consciousness, and therefore gravity is not a proper answer to the question of why. The scientific method is designed to answer questions of how.
Scientists sometimes ask questions that include the word why, but most of those questions are really questions of how. And because scientists are asking the questions, the scientific method is used to find some answers. In other words, scientists use techniques designed to investigate materialism in search of an answer that might not be materialist. Still, using the scientific method to investigate questions of why can be worth doing. Investigation produces knowledge even if questions of why are not always answered. Humankind has accumulated a vast knowledge of how the Universe works and has used that knowledge to invent a vast number of beneficial technologies.
Social scientists study human behavior. (They are called social scientists because they study social behavior.) When they ask questions of why, some of those questions can be investigated scientifically by studying physical clues. “Why did you do that?” A scientist may ask you a version of that question, or else look for clues in your past actions and statements. Then the scientist attempts to answer the question by interpreting those clues. Some scientists ask many individuals the same set of questions and then identify the most popular answers, a technique called surveying or polling. A scientist conducting polling might get an answer to why in regard to a particular topic, but that answer is only an opinion, despite being supported by statistics derived from polling. Almost any system of polling has limitations and weaknesses, and the statistical answers are almost always controversial.
Can a theory include a role for God? Yes, but unless that theory can be tested using scientific techniques, it does not qualify as scientific. Scientists want physical proof, they want material evidence they can test with experiments. God is under no obligation to provide us with any material evidence that God exists. This includes near-death experiences, which can be fascinating but do not provide any material evidence that scientists can repeatedly test and confirm using experiments.
Imagine two identical twins who, unfortunately, suffer a deadly accident together and both are declared clinically dead. Later, however, both twins are successfully revived. One of them reports having experienced an NDE. The other twin does not. Science can investigate how the human brain might experience an NDE, but science cannot answer with certainty why one twin might have an NDE while the other twin would not, despite both twins having so much in common, including the same accident. Their material bodies are nearly identical, but they are also two different people with individual spiritual needs.
“Why does the Universe exist?” If we search for the answer to this question by investigating materialism, we may never find the answer—because the scientific method is not designed to answer this question. “How did the Universe come to be?” This second question is better focused on a mystery that the scientific method can investigate.
· Ockham’s Razor.
The word variable refers to anything that can influence something else. The workings of nature results from variables. When developing a theory of how nature works, the principle of Ockham’s Razor asserts that simpler explanations are more likely to be accurate than more complicated explanations. Therefore, the principle encourages constructing the simplest theory that can work as an explanation. The term Ockham’s Razor refers to removing unnecessary variables from the theory. Centuries ago, a common saying among European philosophers was, “It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer.” The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote, “Nature operates in the shortest way possible.” The great physicist Albert Einstein said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Those statements describe the principle of Ockham’s Razor.
William of Ockham was a Christian monk and philosopher who lived in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. An Englishman, William was born in a village named Ockham (also spelled Occam), although he lived most of his life in various European countries. During his era, paper was rare, and so most writers wrote on parchment or vellum. If a writer needed to erase a small mistake, the writer used a razor to gently scrape off the ink. For this reason, the phrase “Ockham’s razor” is another way of saying “the eraser that belongs to Ockham the monk.” Today, the term Ockham’s Razor is an important principle of science and philosophy. William of Ockham did not invent the principle, but he did help to popularize it.
Imagine some water flowing down a smooth hill. That outcome—the flowing water—is caused by a combination of variables. One variable is gravity, pulling the water down the hill. The hill is smooth, which is another variable because nothing blocks the water. There is enough water that it flows down the hill continuously. The temperature is warm but not hot, which means the water is not ice but also does not quickly evaporate. The ground is firm enough that the water does not seep into the ground. Nothing is disturbing the water, nothing is blocking its flow, nothing is changing its direction.
When you imagined some water flowing down a hill, did you imagine so many variables? Each variable contributes to the outcome. Additional variables can alter it. For instance, an earthquake could affect the hill’s firmness, smoothness, and the water’s source. Each additional variable increases the number of possible outcomes, perhaps multiplying them, but removing a variable can reduce the number of possible outcomes.
There are also variables that have no influence—but somebody may believe that those variables do have influence. Is water flowing down a smooth hill because a person commanded the water to do that? Or because a person prayed to the water, asking the water to do that? No, the water would flow down the hill regardless of those variables. If a theory includes variables that have no influence, then the principle of Ockham’s Razor encourages you to remove them (erase them) because they are not necessary for the outcome.
When Ockham’s Razor is used to investigate something scientifically, this principle is often combined with other principles, such as measuring whatever can be measured, including the variables and their effects. Measuring means collecting data. Testing the theory means recreating the same conditions to see if the same outcome occurs. That form of testing is called an experiment. If the outcomes of the experiment are not always the same, then either the conditions are not exactly the same or else an additional variable is affecting the experiment, a variable you might not be aware of but must discover.
Ockham’s Razor is one of the reasons for the reluctance of many scientists to accept NDEs as proof of life after death. NDEs are extremely difficult to monitor or replicate in scientific experiments, which makes them very difficult to investigate. Explaining an NDE as the brain’s imagination is a much simpler explanation than the more complicated explanation that an NDE is a supernatural experience. If everyone believed that an NDE is a supernatural experience, that conclusion would radically change human society and scientific beliefs. Most scientists refuse to adopt such a radical conclusion unless and until they can investigate it based on solid material proof—and that proof must convince them. That is a prudent scientific attitude that is meant to avoid getting deceived by not having enough material evidence.
Ockham’s Razor can be abused, especially when the principle’s purpose and limitations are not fully understood. It is meant to help answer questions of how, not questions of why—but in some situations our daily language mistakenly encourages us to say why when we mean how. “Why does water flow down a smooth hill?” Most people asking that question do not mean, “Why did the Divine Creator of the Universe decide that water, under particular conditions, should flow down a smooth hill?” The short version of the question includes the word why, but the long version of the question is what is really being asked. “How does water flow down a smooth hill?” The grammar of that question might feel a little awkward, and so people prefer to use the word why instead of how. A more precise question is: “Under what conditions would water flow down a hill?” That question asks, quite directly, what the variables are.
Ockham’s Razor can be abused to supposedly prove the existence of God. For example: “Water flows down a smooth hill because God wills it.” That answer involves only one variable, God, and therefore Ockham’s Razor appears to be satisfied. But an answer of “God wills it” does not reveal much about the behavior of water. And because this answer can be applied to almost any question about anything, it does not reveal much about anything. If “God wills it” is the answer to every investigation, it becomes an excuse for ignorance, leaving no reason to investigate anything. It shuts down our human curiosity and reasoning abilities. Our survival as humans depends on us learning about the workings of nature and using that knowledge to create technologies to help us live better. Therefore, most scientists and philosophers do not accept “God wills it” as an acceptable form of Ockham’s Razor.
Using Ockham’s Razor to try to prove the existence of God is a religious abuse of the principle. Using Ockham’s Razor to try to disprove the existence of God is an anti-religious abuse of the principle.
There are scientific theories that the Universe came into existence by itself. Instead of saying that God created the Universe, such theories erase a step by suggesting that the Universe created itself. This use of Ockham’s Razor is actually very scientific. It also encourages curiosity by trying to determine how the Universe might create itself from literally nothing. However, when somebody insists that God cannot exist because the inclusion of God in the theory would add an unnecessary variable, that is an abuse of Ockham’s Razor because it is not really scientific. Something can exist without being included in a scientific theory. Scientific investigation focuses on investigating materialism. God is not material. God is non-material, and science is not designed to investigate a non-material Deity. Ockham’s Razor does not negate the possible existence of God. It is a principle for refining a scientific theory, nothing more.
Ockham’s Razor also has an inherent weakness: the principle assumes that nature is lazy and unthinking, always following the path of least resistance in every situation. When you investigate nature, nature is not trying to out-smart you. Nature follows consistent patterns that we call natural laws. Ockham’s Razor succeeds as a principle because nature is consistent.
What if nature were not consistent? When police detectives investigate the behavior of a human adversary, they know the adversary may try to deceive them by concealing real clues and creating false clues. The adversary wants to avoid being detected or anticipated. Ockham’s Razor cannot always explain the behavior of that adversary because that adversary might behave in ways that deliberately violate Ockham’s Razor.
When scientists investigate nature and the Universe, they tend to assume that their research methods are not competing against a Divine Creator who thinks and anticipates everything we do. If an all-knowing, all-powerful Creator exists, then the Creator is vastly more intelligent and cunning than any person or computer. The Creator can decide what we are allowed to discover about the Universe and what we shall not. If the Creator does not want us to detect the Creator in a particular way, such as by using scientific instruments, then we never will. We will never out-smart a Divine intelligence. And we do not need to, fortunately. We do need to acknowledge the real limitations of what scientific investigation can detect and discover.
The principle of Ockham’s Razor does not give us an advantage in detecting whether or not God exists. Yet, there are people who insist that God does not exist because their scientific instruments cannot detect God. Their theories seem to work without including God and therefore, they say, the existence of God would supposedly violate Ockham’s Razor. That is not scientific. If the behavior of an ordinary person can violate Ockham’s Razor, why not the behavior of God?
William of Ockham was a very religious man, but he never attempted to prove or disprove the existence of God by using the principle that is now named for him.
· Reasoning, Reasonable Skepticism, and Critical Thinking.
Before the invention of farming and what we now call civilization, our ancestors lived in hunter-gatherer societies. The typical society was a small tribe in which most people were related, and everyone knew everyone else. Cooperation was essential and privacy was rare, and therefore lying was probably quite difficult. If you lied, the people around you knew you well enough to sense it. If you lied about someone, others could easily check the truth. Deception was mainly a tool for the hunt—hiding from prey—not for manipulating fellow tribe members. The incentives to lie were small, and the risks were high.
Civilization changed that. As societies grew larger and more complex, the average person increasingly interacted with strangers. Someone could move to a new place and hide parts of one’s life. With less shared knowledge and less personal familiarity, deception became easier—and sometimes profitable. Today, we live in a world where information is abundant but trust is often scarce. You consume information from people you may never meet. What you know about most politicians, journalists, scientists, commentators, and celebrities probably comes from media sources instead of from direct experience. Wealth and power as incentives have made lying very common. In this world of mass communication, you need skills for detecting lies and misinformation. You need critical thinking.
Critical thinking is not the same as criticizing for the pleasure of criticizing. The term critical thinking refers to a disciplined way of thinking that uses logical reasoning, evidence, skepticism, and humility to detect and avoid false assumptions. Critical thinking is loyalty to finding the truth. It is not loyalty to your ego, your political tribe, or your favorite opinions. It is loyalty to the process of unbiased discovery.
Critical thinking rarely produces absolute certainty. Instead, it identifies possibilities and probabilities, compares explanations, and distinguishes strong claims from weak ones. It does not compromise for the sake of compromise. If the evidence strongly supports one conclusion and not another, combining truth with falsehood does not produce wisdom. But when the evidence is ambiguous or incomplete, critical thinking resists the temptation to claim certainty. If opinions clash, critical thinking can reveal which opinion is most logical based on the available evidence—while acknowledging that even the most logical opinion may not be the actual answer. The truth might be something no one has yet considered. Critical thinking brings you closer to it.
Some people claim that critical thinking is hostile to religion. That claim is false. Critical thinking can reveal logical flaws in a complicated religious doctrine, but also in an atheist ideology. Hypocritical behavior by religious people has harmed religion far more than scientific arguments have. Many religious leaders have encouraged critical thinking as a form of moral reasoning. In Christianity, Jesus of Nazareth used critical thinking to debate some of the most educated men in ancient Judea. He did not avoid difficult questions. When he said, “The Sabbath [Day] was made for Man, not Man for the Sabbath,” he did so in a discussion, answering questions with logic and evidence. In Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama, the first Buddha, explicitly cautioned his followers against accepting teachings—even his own—on the basis of authority alone. Instead, he encouraged them to test ideas through personal experience and reason, famously saying that one should not accept something simply because a teacher said it. Any religion that is based on the truth of universal values will welcome critical thinking, not fear it.
Still, some individuals resist critical thinking. They may fear losing an argument, losing status, or losing an illusion of certainty. Others have simply never learned how to question their own assumptions. When people stop questioning assertions, lies spread easily. Tell a lie often enough and people start to believe it. That is what happens when critical thinking is neglected.
There is no single universal definition of critical thinking, but the following set of guidelines can help. The set can be remembered by using the English language acronym REASON:
- Review what you really know, instead of what you assume.
- Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
- Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
- Skepticism includes a willingness to risk being wrong.
- Opposite sources reveal more than one side.
- Nothing happens in isolation. Consider the context and variables.
These principles are not difficult to understand, but they do require practice, patience, and some humility.
· R… Review what you really know, instead of what you assume.
The word critical comes from a Greek term meaning “to separate” because an excellent way to analyze something is to study it in pieces. To think critically about a topic, separate whatever information you know for certain from any beliefs that are only assumptions. An assumption is a belief but without enough evidence to prove it. Many human beliefs—political, cultural, even personal beliefs—are based on assumptions that we rarely question. You might be surprised by how many of your own beliefs are not facts but only assumptions.
Even experts make assumptions and are often humbled when they count how many assumptions they made without much evidence. You should respect expertise, but do not treat expertise as perfectly wise and always without errors. Ask what evidence supports an expert’s claims and what uncertainties remain.
Personal bias can be very subtle. For example, imagine that a friend sends you an article to read. Since it came from a friend, you are probably inclined to trust it. If you like its title, its headline, you are likely to trust it. If it resembles a news article, it may look very credible. So, by the time you begin reading it, your skepticism may already be lowered. This is when critical thinking matters most.
Review the information very carefully. Maybe the article is completely accurate—or maybe its author is mistaken about some facts. Maybe it reflects a political bias. If it is deceptive, it might be deliberately deceptive, what experts call disinformation. The original definition of “fake news” refers to a deliberate lie so extreme that, in some countries, the perpetrator can be sued for libel or slander.
Consider the article’s tone. Is the tone neutral? Or does it sound emotional, angry, fearful, or flattering? Genuine news reporting is usually calm because the facts speak for themselves. An article about a natural disaster may report numbers of people dead, injured, or missing. Those numbers do not require emotional language to convey the seriousness of the event. Does the article cite any statistics? A reputable article will identify the source of those statistics. Is the source reputable? What do you know about it? Does it have any critics? What do they say about it? Do you trust the critics?
Emotional language often signals an effort to persuade you rather than simply inform you. The author may exaggerate or select only those facts that support a preferred message. Or the author may mix lies with facts to appear credible.
Does the article come from an organization that openly supports a particular political view? If so, it is admitting its bias. Who runs the organization? Some are run or funded by governments, and it may say this if you check closely. Does it ever publish stories that contradict its preferred view?
Are you reading or watching a blog? A blog is a commentary. A commentary might be truthful, perhaps even insightful, but it is not an objective news source. It may offer some news stories, but the blog chose those particular stories to persuade you. Does the blog include any news stories that contradict the blog’s general message?
What you assume is not the same as what you really know. Remember that.
· E… Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
An extraordinary claim is an idea so radical that, if true, it would dramatically change our understanding of something important. Accepting such a claim requires evidence strong enough to persuade most qualified experts. A few dissenters may remain, but dissent alone does not make them right. A few people still insist the world is flat. Standing on the ground, the world looks flat, but that is not extraordinary evidence. It is a small observation with a simple alternative explanation. Even in ancient times, some philosophers who studied nature and astronomy realized that Earth is not flat but a sphere, a planet.
Unfortunately, there are some people who not only lie, they lie frequently and without shame. They make extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence. Some possess power, but power does not make them right. Be skeptical. Examine their evidence. What flaws have critics found?
· A… Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
A theory supported by evidence is better than one without evidence. But a theory without evidence is not necessarily false. It remains possible until it is disproven.
Police detectives understand this well, because criminals are actively trying to deceive them. Imagine that a notorious gangster is arrested and put on trial for the crime of murder, but the evidence against him is only circumstantial, not direct. The judge instructs the jury that if they have any reasonable doubt, they must vote “Not Guilty.” The jury acquits him. But despite the lack of evidence, the gangster may indeed have committed the murder. He escapes a guilty verdict but not suspicion.
When people favor a particular answer to a question and there is no obvious evidence against it, they may feel frustrated that the question remains open. Nevertheless, our knowledge of events is limited. Mistakes happen when people rush to an early judgment. An absence of evidence today might change tomorrow.
· S… Skepticism includes a willingness to risk being wrong.
You should value the truth more than your ego. Change your beliefs when they are proven to be mistaken. Accept new facts and learn from them. Your ego may be embarrassed, but your knowledge will grow.
Unfortunately, some people cannot tolerate being wrong, even in little ways. They insist they are always right, even when they are obviously wrong. To them, being mistaken feels like a massive personal failure, and so they cling to their beliefs even when facts contradict them. Arguing with such a person will not change the person’s beliefs. Instead, be respectful and ask how the person arrived at those beliefs. This question invites the person to explain the person’s process of reasoning. The explanation might be interesting. Perhaps, only perhaps, the person might move closer to the truth by reconsidering every variable and possibility. Or the person may refuse to explain. The person’s beliefs may represent part of that person’s psychological identity. The person cannot change those beliefs without disrupting or destroying that identity.
Skepticism is not cynicism and not naïveté. Someone who is cynical assumes the worst no matter what. Someone who is naïve assumes the best no matter what. Show them the same evidence and they will interpret it in ways that protect their existing beliefs. They emphasize the parts they like and will try to explain away the parts they dislike. They might even be quite intelligent, but they are not open-minded because they cannot risk being wrong. That means they are always biased.
Skepticism requires a careful balance as life experiences push your beliefs toward one extreme or the other. Some people demand quick decisions and sweeping assumptions, especially when driven by the ego. A skeptic pauses to ask difficult questions and considers the answers carefully. Being a proper skeptic takes practice. Ask yourself, “Am I genuinely skeptical? Have I become cynical? Or naïve?” Be loyal to the truth by always searching for it.
· O… Opposite sources inform you of more than one side.
Politics can be humorous, but sometimes it should be treated as seriously as a jury trial. In a trial, both sides are heard. Opposite sources reveal more than one side of an argument.
Never limit yourself to one news source. Even an accurate news source is limited to whatever its editors consider to be important. Since news organizations compete for your attention, let that competition broaden your views. When researching important issues, especially political ones, explore more than one perspective. That does not mean believing every side, but the truth might be scattered in pieces.
Compare what each source includes and what it ignores. Beware of choosing only sources you already prefer. They may all lean in the same direction. Research the same topic using at least two articles, including one from the opposite side. Look for gaps. Which facts appear in one article but not the other?
If an article makes an extraordinary claim, remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Search for other coverage of the same claim. Has anyone examined or debunked it?
Some organizations specialize in fact-checking. Critics may accuse them of bias, but their methods and conclusions are still worth considering. Typically, they explain how they investigate, what sources they use, and how they apply logic. Apply critical thinking to their work as well. Do they explain their methods clearly? Do they address the strongest version of a claim or only a weak one? Do they acknowledge uncertainty when the evidence is ambiguous? A good fact-checker shows their reasoning, not just their conclusion.
Some people reject any political opinion not endorsed by their own party. But isolating yourself that way is dangerous. By refusing to practice critical thinking, you can deceive yourself. You may shut out perspectives that contain important facts. People you agree with might be lying—or repeating lies told to them. Understanding another side’s perspective strengthens your own thinking, even when you disagree with that side. So, investigate. Trust yourself to be properly skeptical. Confirm claims independently. Opposite sources are essential for this.
· N… Nothing happens in isolation. Consider the context and variables.
The world is complicated. Actions that seem simple in one’s imagination can be extremely difficult in reality. Context and variables make them difficult.
Context and variables cause most conspiracy theories to collapse. Not all do, because some conspiracies are real. The assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was part of a conspiracy. But most conspiracy theories make extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence. Things can go wrong, easily, especially in a conspiracy. The plot to kill Lincoln also targeted Lincoln’s Vice President and Secretary of State, but it succeeded only against Lincoln. Later, in Nazi Germany, many German officers secretly opposed to Adolf Hitler tried to assassinate him. They tried many times. Every plot failed because a minor variable went wrong. A plan that contains too many variables contains too much risk. Remarkably, those German officers against Hitler knew very well how to run a military operation. They knew to keep every plan simple. Their plots still failed.
Variables matter. Imagine driving an automobile to a destination that you have never been to before, driving on roads you have never driven on before, using a map you have never seen before, and without any navigation computer to help you. Which route would you prefer: simple or complicated? The simple route is usually better because it contains fewer chances to make a wrong turn. In other words, fewer variables. Every variable adds more than an additional risk, it adds an entire set of risks. In other words, every additional variable multiplies the risks. This principle is called Ockham’s Razor: if you can reach the same result with fewer variables, cut out the unnecessary variables.
Many conspiracy theories violate Ockham’s Razor in extreme ways. They imagine conspiracies and plots that never go wrong, never leak information, and remain secret forever—despite supposedly leaving clues that only the conspiracy theorists have noticed. Considering the context and variables means asking what could go wrong and then explaining why it did not.
There is an old conspiracy theory that astronauts from the United States did not really land on Earth’s Moon in July 1969. The reality is that the United States made six Moon landings with human astronauts between 1969 and 1972. According to this conspiracy theory, however, either the first Moon landing or all six landings never happened. It claims that the lunar photographs and movies are forgeries produced in movie studios on Earth, that the Moon rocks brought back were fake, and that this enormous conspiracy was perpetrated to deceive the world into believing that the United States won the Cold War’s Space Race against the Soviet Union.
The supposed evidence for this theory is extremely weak. For example, the photographs of astronauts on the Moon do not show stars on the black sky, and therefore some conspiracy theorists conclude that the photos must be fake. The real reason the stars are not visible is because the Moon’s surface was lit by the Sun when the photos were taken. The camera settings had short exposures that captured the astronauts and the lunar landscape but not the much fainter stars. If a studio on Earth had staged a fake Moon landing, why would the filmmakers forget to paint stars on the backdrop? The theory imagines conspirators clever enough to fool the entire world but too careless to add stars to a black sky.
Consider the context: the Soviet government had numerous ways to confirm that the American lunar landings were genuine, including monitoring the radio communications beamed to Earth by the American spacecraft. The Soviet Union had an enormous political incentive to expose the landings as fake, but never did. Instead, the Soviet government officially acknowledged that the landings were genuine and never disputed them throughout the rest of the Cold War.
Billions of dollars were spent on the Moon program, involving hundreds of thousands of people: scientists, engineers, technicians, and workers. If the program was a deception aimed at the American public, the Congress, and the world, how could such a massive secret be kept for decades? Even today, scientists in many countries are using the Moon rocks and data collected during the missions. Powerful telescopes can see some of the equipment left behind on the Moon. How can that be? Are the telescope operators part of the conspiracy too?
Consider Ockham’s Razor. How many variables does this conspiracy theory require? Too many to count. It would mean that the world’s journalists and news media failed to uncover the most important story of the twentieth century, despite a vast multitude of possible sources. Even a single individual with some insider information could expose the massive fraud and, by doing so, become a hero. In comparison to the actual Moon landings, this conspiracy theory would be far more difficult to execute, including maintaining its secrecy—forever.
Since absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, some conspiracy theories can be hard to disprove completely. Still, Ockham’s Razor applies to odds as well as variables. As more variables are added, the odds against success rise sharply. A theory that violates Ockham’s Razor in extreme ways makes its success incredibly improbable.
Mysteries will always fascinate people. If a mystery can be imagined, some people will invent a theory to fill the gap. But their theory is rarely a simple explanation that withstands Ockham’s Razor. More often, it is an extremely complicated theory that, if true, would generate countless clues that never appear. It jumps to an extreme conclusion by ignoring ordinary facts.
Critical thinking requires skepticism, logic, a willingness to accept facts that you may not like, Ockham’s Razor, and plenty of curiosity. Curiosity does not mean be reckless, but it should encourage you to ask questions using critical thinking. Too many adults assume that they already know everything they need to know about almost everything. By never questioning their assumptions or what others tell them, they suppress their curiosity and shut off their willingness to think critically. Some even demand that nobody else use critical thinking. But who would gain by not using critical thinking? Who would lose by becoming dangerously gullible?
A person who asks careful questions, notices when answers lack substance, checks a variety of sources, and is willing to revise beliefs based on new evidence is very difficult to mislead. That is the power of critical thinking. It also keeps your mind active and deepens your understanding of the world. Critical thinking does not promise certainty, but it offers a disciplined way to get closer to the truth, one question at a time.