Do religious ideas arise from fallacies?

Using proper definitions are necessary for debate. Let check Oxford, the definitive english language source... Spot on....The OT flood, babel, creation are myths per this definition. You just believe the myths are part of reality and history. Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

Again, sure, if you define the debate in such a way as to validate your own argument before it's argued, and define mine out of existence, there is no debate. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

If you have no method for checking your work, all you're seeking is certainty.

I was only commenting on the goals. I was not commenting on whether they could succeed.I think I have stated in other threads, that truth is a human invention. Thus truth-seeking, as a goal, is about as likely to succeed as is searching for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

Funny how much progress you can make by dismissing that source of 'truth' and starting anew. It's almost as if that 'truth' is a load of crap.

quote:

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Myth: A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society: the myth of Eros and Psyche; a creation myth.

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Yes, you were. You discussed myth as a literary genre and your description was spot on. Faith is oblivious because she understands the word 'myth' only in the popular sense of 'something not true.'As a practical matter, I find that if you call an ancient story a 'folk tale' or even a 'mythic story' you can usually get your meaning across much faster with far less of the static. It's clearer to the general reader that you are discussing genre.C.S. Lewis thought very highly of myth as a story form and did not hesitate to refer to the Genesis creation accounts as 'folk tales.'_Edited by Archer Opterix, : Clarity.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

If the stop parameters don't coincide with reaching the stated/inferred goal, can it really be the goal?"My goal is to make this post 30 pages long."
However, I'm declaring this post to be a success... now.

Many people find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.It's just not a literal pot, not literal gold, and not a literal rainbow.But it's real enough..

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

I would prefer to stick to the original descriptions of the fallacies. I'm not sure if considering myths as true really is reification. Another thread might be a better place for this ongoing debate.I would be very interested in any other fallacies I did not include, further examples, reasons (if any) why they are not fallacies in religion and anything else relevant to the OP.I have seen allusions to work by Pascal Boyer that indicates that we have an innate tendency to personification, but I haven't yet managed to lay hands on his writings myself. Would anyone who has read his work care to comment?Another notion that Jar's post brought to mind is that, in the absence of real knowledge, fallacies may be all one has to fall back on, unless aware of and willing to admit ignorance. Any comments? Edited by Woodsy, : grammar correction

I was thinking about how one deals with the factual truth of a proposition. These fallacies can be used very well in an artistic or rhetorical way to make an emotional point, but the actual statements involved would still be nonsense as statements of fact.
The "joy of pebbles" might be effective poetically, but in itself has no reality.Edited by Woodsy, : grammar correction

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This puzzles me. Please provide examples that match the description given.Edited by Woodsy, : No reason given.

Deleted. Ashamed of my own pedanticism.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

The description given was "thinking of an abstraction or process as an object or substance."Here are a few examples

atom
quark
mass
gravitational field
magnetic field
electron
gene

I'm just warming up. You could not have science without reification.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

As far as I know, of these, atoms, quarks, electrons, and genes are thought to be real things, not abstractions or processes. Mass, the gravitational field and the magnetic field are not treated as objects or substances; they are not thought to persist when whatever posesses or is causing them is removed.
I see no reifications here.
Are you sure you know what an abstraction is?

But atoms and quarks, electrons and genes, are real things. We know they exist; they're not concretified abstractions, they're the exact opposite - concrete objects that are abstracted in our models.Reification is the fallacy of assuming that a modeled abstract is a concrete reality. Magnetic and gravitational fields are modeled abstracts, but scientists don't believe fields actually exist. A field is just a way of modelling the theorietical behavior of a theoretical particle at every different point in space.When 19th century scientists assumed that the movement of heat between objects was the result of movement of a "caloric fluid", that was reification. We know now that temperature is not the presence or absence of caloric fluid, but rather a phenomenon of the kinetic energy of atoms. Kinetic energy and atoms are both real; we now recognize that temperature is just a modeled abstraction of all those atoms and their kinetic energy. We don't reify temperature any more.About reification - I don't think it's far off the bat to suggest that this is the origin of a lot of religions. More recently, a community of people with anorexia nervosa actually reified their disorder, personifying it into an avatar called "Ana." These people discuss their relationship and friendship with Ana in ways I found very reminiscent of the rhetoric of evangelical churches. (Of course, if you talk to your eating disorder, you're crazy. If you talk to your imaginary sky buddy, you're a moral leader.)But imagine how it could happen. These are people suffering from compulsions that they find hard to control. From their perspective, an agent or force beyond their own will is having an effect in their life, on their behavior. Of course they're going to eventually personify that force, if only as a way to relate to it. It's akin to obsessive-compulsive behavior. I imagine that, in fact, probably most of the world's deities were first imagined by those with psychological compulsions like OCD, hypersexuality, compulsive eating, or even alcoholism. If you were suffering from such disorders, you might easily feel as though some other force was taking control of you. Anyone who has looked on while someone suffered from these aliments is aware of the vast personality changes and swings that occur, so it would be very easy to corraborate the sufferer's account of someone taking control of his body, to speak through him and compel him to behaviors.From those stories gods emerge. Venus and Ishtar emerge from those with sexual compulsions. Gods of wine and revellry emerge from those addicted to alcohol. Gods of feast and famine emerge from those with eating disorders. Highly ritualized worship emerges from those with OCD.Of course, once you've done it for one apparently-capricious source of mischief, it's easy to do it for all of them. Weather and water, sun and soil, life and death all become the province of gods in lieu of any other understanding from them.Gods emerge because that's a really simple way to make sense of a universe where causes may be vastly beyond our knowledge but have incredibly profound effects on our lives. And it's why the number of gods declines as scientific knowledge expands.