critical thinking unit 1 question a4 christians slide share

Encouraging Critical Thinking Online

Unit 1

Checking Facts and

Gathering Opinions

How many Christians are there in the world today?

• Find three websites that provide an answer

• Fill in the boxes on the worksheet for each of them

• Comment on any notable features of the sites or answers you discover


• It’s virtually impossible to arrive at an exact figure, so any answer will be an estimate– Though some sources may not

explicitly acknowledge this

• Estimates will differ for a variety of reasons


• Estimates may vary in precision– The first hit for a Google search for “

How many Christians?” gives an answer of ‘more than one billion’

– This isn’t wrong, but it’s easy to find estimates for more than twice this number

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=how+many+Christians&btnG=Search&meta=

Results of Google search for ‘how many Christians’

Retrieved 6 June 2008


• Other first page hits give higher figures– Wikipedia says there are ‘between 1.5

billion and 2.1 billion’

– Adherents.com suggests 2.1 billion, or about 33% of the world’s population

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity

http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html

Extract from Wikipedia article on Christianity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity Retrieved 5 June 2009


Adherents.com’s figures

http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html Retrieved 6 June 2008

http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html


• The Wikipedia article has notes which show where the figures were taken from– A key source is Adherents.com– So these two sites shouldn’t be cited

as independent sources of the same figure



• Figures may vary because of different methods of calculation – but websites rarely give full information about this

• Some figures may be more up to date than others

• Another Adherents.com page gives a wide range of possible figures

http://www.adherents.com/Na/Na_173.html


• The answer will also vary depending on the definition of ‘Christian’ used– ReligiousTolerance.org lists a number of

possible criteria– An article from the Christian Century notes a

wide disparity between those self-identifying as Christian and those who go to church

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_defn.htm

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_5_120/ai_98754720

Extract from ReligiousTolerance.org

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_defn.htm Retrieved 8 August 2008



Extract from a Christian Century article on FindArticles.com

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_5_120/ai_98754720 Retrieved 8 August 2008

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_5_120/ai_98754720

Summary - key things to note

• Answers may vary because of– Variations in precision– Different calculation methods

– Variations in how recently the information was gathered

• Important terms need to be defined

Why might we find conflicting answers to a question?

• There may be real uncertainty about the answer

• Authorities may disagree

• There may be multiple ways of interpreting a question

Why might we find conflicting answers to a question?

• Some sources may be more up to date than others

• Answers may vary in precision

• Some sources may simply be wrong

Questions to ask when assessing sources

• Who is the author?– An individual or an institution?– What are the author’s credentials?

• Is this a scholarly resource, or a more informal one?

• How up to date is this source?


• Are there reasons to doubt the reliability of this source?– Does it include information I know to

be false?– Does it contradict itself or use poor

reasoning?– Is it biased towards a particular view?


• Is the information provided confirmed by other sources?– Are references provided?– Do other websites agree? (A major

advantage of the Web is that many sources can be compared quickly and easily.)

Remember the three Ws

• WHO wrote this site? – Is the author a trustworthy source?

• WHEN was it written? – Is it up to date?

• WHY was it written?– Does the author have an axe to grind?

This slideshow is part of

Encouraging Critical Thinking Online,a set of free teaching resources

designed to develop students’ analytic abilities,

using the Web as source material.

For the full set, please visit Intute Training:

http://www.intute.ac.uk/training/

http://www.intute.ac.uk/training/

critical thinking unit 1 question a4 christians slide share

Education