Every so often in my daily life I try to slip people better critical thinking skills.  I find myself prompting people with, 'how do you know that is true?' or, 'what's your source on that?' when they present information.

Do any of you have any favorite go-to prompts or skeptic lessons for people?

Did you go here, yet?

http://atheistforums.org/forum-11.html

I made these videos to try and promote the idea, and to explain why it is important.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX7mdUh9yUE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOrP9nb-yrk

WTF will usually start a conversation, although not always productive.

Unfortunately some people will never get it.

A family member of mine would point out Jan Brunvalds (sp?) The Vanishing Hitchhiker series at work all the time to dispel break time talk on urban legends.

Closely linked to this is falsifiability. You'll find most woo/religious claims are unfalsifiable and as such, useless.

https://youtu.be/JRdP5GpCeuE

In regards to skepticism of religious matters, I recall a science essay from Isaac Asimov I probably read in the early 70s where he complains about a noisy AC installation on a nearby Christian Science building. He notes the Christian Science folks pray away all manner of illness and eschew physicians. And then he points out, the sensation of heat should be an especially easy thing to pray away compared to cancer or pneumonia, yet they don't even seem to try.

Got me thinking about such things.

In regards to skepticism of religious matters, I recall a science essay from Isaac Asimov I probably read in the early 70s where he complains about a noisy AC installation on a nearby Christian Science building. He notes the Christian Science folks pray away all manner of illness and eschew physicians. And then he points out, the sensation of heat should be an especially easy thing to pray away compared to cancer or pneumonia, yet they don't even seem to try.

Got me thinking about such things.

On the subject of claims of the miraculous, I try to present people with this idea:

"If you are looking for (or expecting) a miracle, you will always see one."

This essentially means, that if you are already assuming or expecting that a miracle will occur, then anything that even remotely seems extraordinary or lacking in a simple explanation will be immediately ascribed to the miraculous.

I would compare this phenomenon to seeing images in clouds. If I tell you I see a whale in the clouds (even if I'm lying) and tell you to look also, odds are many people will find a whale in the clouds. This is because the minds sees what it wants to see. If it's looking for a whale in the clouds, it will find a whale. If it's looking for a miracle, it will find a miracle.

This isn't even claiming the miraculous isn't possible, it's a very conservative claim that simply asks believers in particular miracles to take a step back and TRY to look at it objectively. This could have been useful in the case of one of the alleged miracles ascribed to the intercession of Mother Theresa where a woman in India (Monica Besra) claimed to be miraculously healed despite the counter-claims from her doctors who said it was a result of naturally explainable medical treatment and not a miracle. Of course, Catholics ran with the claim of the miraculous anyway.

I think high schools should have mandatory critical thinking and "defining science" classes. So much misinformation has been spread about what science is and how it works. It would be nice if "It's just a theory" was met with "I see. You don't understand how science works" by high school kids.