Help

How to use Atlas Apologia

Dr. Samuel Mensah · Your guide

Use this app as a map for careful thought. First understand a worldview or an issue, then examine how the argument is built, then discuss it with precision and charity.

The core habit

Don't begin by asking which side you're on. Begin with three questions.

What exactly is the claim?
What reasons support it?
Where could a reasonable person disagree?

Browse social issues

A path through the app

Karim · Finding your way

Each place to start is for a different kind of work. Pick the one that matches what you need today.

Explore

Study a tradition across shared concerns: God, self, purpose, evil and destiny.

Open Explore

Social issues

Each issue laid out as claims, syllogisms, sources, assumptions and objections.

Open social issues

Compare

See how beliefs differ across common categories, without ranking them.

Open Compare

Groups

Bring an argument, ask a precise question, and answer premises, not people.

Open Groups

How to work through a social issue

Anjali · The method

Here is how to work through a social issue. Six steps, taken in order. Open each one when you are ready.

Step 1 of 6

Start with the issue, not a side

Read the overview and the big questions before you open any claim.

The goal is to understand what is being argued, not to vote immediately.

Reasoning checklist

Grace · Reasoning and the AI Teacher

Before you decide, run through seven questions. They come in three groups: structure, pressure and charity.

0 of 7 checked

StructureWhat claim is being made?Which premises support the claim?Does the conclusion follow if the premises are granted?

PressureWhich premise would a thoughtful critic challenge?What sources are being used, and what kind of support do they give?What assumptions about life, dignity, justice, freedom, law or truth are doing the work?

CharityCan I explain the opposing view in terms its defender would recognize?

AI Teacher modes

Grace · Reasoning and the AI Teacher

The AI Teacher is a reasoning coach, not an authority. It will argue for or against a claim when you ask, but it never votes.

Neutral guide. Explains what the disagreement turns on.

The figures on the Explore map

Population, income, poverty, life expectancy and child mortality come from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Political regime is the Regimes of the World classification from the V-Dem project, as processed by Our World in Data, used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence; our table of it is offered under the same licence.

We changed the figures in three ways: they are sampled every five years, taking the nearest published year where one is missing; they are rounded; and they are grouped into bands for colouring. Poverty is measured by occasional household surveys, so many countries have no figure in a given year.

Two things on the map are our own drafts and have not been checked against a source. The list of communist-party states names the years a country was governed as a one-party state by a party that called itself communist; it leaves out Germany and Yemen, where only part of the country was. And where a tradition was found in earlier years is a coarse selection, drawn on today’s borders: “in the area of today’s Turkey”, not a claim about a state that did not yet exist.

The figures describe whole countries. They say nothing about the followers of any tradition, and a tradition being present in a country does not explain that country’s figures.

Something not working?

If something is broken, confusing, or missing, . It goes straight to the people building Atlas Apologia.