Inspect what a source found, what it did not test, and where the argument goes beyond it.
Challenge a claim
Room for Why challenges religious claims and authority that make doubt dangerous or treat emotional relief as proof. It also asks what benefits religious participation can provide. A position that ignores inconvenient evidence would fail its own test.
“Certainty as a sedative” is a metaphor about a belief’s possible function, not a diagnosis of believers. Autonomy is an ethical commitment. Research findings, philosophical arguments, and teaching examples are labeled so that those roles remain visible.
Our workshops and field plan have not yet been evaluated. A useful correction identifies the claim, provides the strongest original source, and explains what should change. See how to propose a correction.
The experiment compared reappraisal, suppression, and a control condition. It found different effects on emotional experience, expression, and physiology. Lecture 4 uses this distinction to explain why reconsidering an interpretation differs from hiding a reaction. Application depends on the situation; the brief attention exercise here is a separate practice.
Inspect the sourceNCCIH summarizes findings across varied practices and conditions. Some programs show benefits, while study quality, mixed results, and adverse experiences affect interpretation. Lecture 4 offers a short optional attention exercise, with permission to stop and without a treatment claim.
Inspect the sourceFleming reviews how people judge their own thinking and how confidence can diverge from performance. The curriculum uses this distinction to ask whether confidence is supported by evidence and to separate workshop enthusiasm from demonstrated learning.
Inspect the sourceKunda describes how motivation can influence the information and reasoning used to reach a desired conclusion. The lectures apply this framework to selective scrutiny and protected beliefs, concentrating on evidence standards that can be observed in an argument.
Inspect the sourceIn an online college course, students improved on source-evaluation tasks after instruction that included lateral reading. This informs the source-checking exercises. The study examined that course and its assessments; our field program will need its own evaluation.
Inspect the sourceThis meta-analysis examined instructional approaches to critical thinking, including dialogue, practical problems, and mentoring. It supports deliberate teaching and practice while leaving implementation and assessment dependent on the particular learning setting.
Inspect the sourceThis educational guide explains how to examine a study’s question, methods, and results. The curriculum applies those distinctions when checking what was measured, who was studied, and how far a conclusion can travel.
Inspect the sourceThe APA definition describes inconsistency among cognitions and the motivation to reduce the resulting discomfort. Lecture 2 separates that concept from motivated reasoning and examines how a person resolves a conflict among commitments.
Inspect the sourceThe declaration sets out values involving dignity, freedom, reason, responsibility, and human welfare. It is a philosophical source for the project’s ethical position. Those commitments are argued openly throughout the curriculum.
Inspect the sourceNineteen devout Mormons participated in the analyzed sample. Reported spiritual feelings were associated with activity in reward-related and other brain networks during religious tasks. The dependence framework in lecture 1 is the project’s interpretation of emotional relief, authority, and the costs of doubt; this study supplies a narrower observation about religious experience. Shared reward activity does not establish addiction, damage, or the truth or falsity of a belief.
Inspect the sourceYoung children from different religious backgrounds differed in judgments about characters in religious and fantastical stories. Religious exposure was not randomly assigned; family and educational differences remain relevant. Lecture 3 uses the study for the narrower issue of background and testimony shaping judgments, alongside a separately argued position on children’s autonomy.
Inspect the sourceIn Israeli-Palestinian negotiation scenarios, material incentives could intensify opposition when proposed compromises involved sacred values. Lecture 7 uses this specific result to examine resistance to bargaining and the power of nonnegotiable commitments.
Inspect the sourceThe investigation documents forced assimilation in the federal Indian boarding school system, including participation by religious institutions. It is a historical case for examining how state and religious authority acted on children, families, and identity. The linked release provides access to the report and its appendices.
Inspect the sourceUSGS explains the evidence for an Earth age of about 4.54 billion years, including isotopic work involving meteorites. Lecture 6 uses the result and the method to show how a claim about the physical world can be examined.
Inspect the sourceDifferent radioactive isotopes provide clocks suited to different timescales and materials. Carbon-14’s half-life is about 5,730 years. Lecture 6 distinguishes radiocarbon dating from the longer-lived systems used for very old rocks and Earth-history questions.
Inspect the sourceThe Smithsonian explains how fossil, genetic, and other evidence supports human evolution. Lecture 6 introduces converging lines of evidence and asks critics to address the particular observation or method at issue.
Inspect the sourceAdolescent religious participation was associated with several favorable later outcomes. The cohort was predominantly white and relatively advantaged; self-selection and unmeasured differences limit causal interpretation. Lecture 1 includes this as evidence against portraying religion as uniformly harmful. The study does not test religious doctrines.
Inspect the sourceAcross 87 studies, food, monetary, and erotic rewards recruited overlapping networks, with additional differences. This provides context for interpreting religious reward activation: shared circuitry alone does not identify an experience as an addiction.
Inspect the sourceThe book became a famous account of belief persisting after a failed prediction. Lecture 2 identifies it as the authors’ account and places it beside the archival challenge in note 20. A widely repeated example is still open to correction.
Inspect the sourceKelly argues that archival records contradict major parts of the published narrative, including the group’s response and the observers’ influence. This challenges the case’s use as a clean demonstration; it does not by itself settle the wider experimental literature on dissonance.
Inspect the sourceThe address treats the Big Bang and evolution as compatible with belief in creation. Lecture 6 uses it to avoid assigning young-Earth creationism to all religious people. It is evidence of a theological position, not scientific evidence for creation.
Inspect the sourceCraig grounds moral values in God’s nature and duties in divine commands. Lectures 7 and 10 address that position rather than assuming its defender endorses arbitrary cruelty. The source represents the argument, not an empirical finding that resolves it.
Inspect the sourceThe kalām argument concerns things that begin to exist, rather than asserting that everything has a cause. Lecture 10 separately examines its premises and the further steps from a cause to a particular religion.
Inspect the sourceThis formulation compares physical necessity, chance, and design. Lecture 10 asks what probability assumptions and independent predictions support that comparison. The teaching dialogue does not pretend those questions settle contemporary cosmology.
Inspect the sourceThis is a defender’s presentation of historical evidence and explanatory reasoning. Lecture 10 examines the move from reports and early belief to the proposed supernatural explanation. Listing the source does not endorse its claims as scholarly consensus.
Inspect the sourcePaul reports appearances, including one to more than five hundred people. A report about a group of witnesses is not the same evidence as independently preserved testimony from each person. Lecture 10 distinguishes those claims without dismissing the text as irrelevant.
Inspect the sourceThe guidance flags risks connected with religious activities abroad. Lecture 11 requires checking current destination rules, entry conditions, and local exposure before travel. This general source is not permission to conduct any particular activity in any country.
Inspect the source