Post by Radrook Admin on Aug 11, 2023 2:48:19 GMT -5
The Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc Fallacy: “After This, Therefore Because of This”
The problem with this way of reasoning is that it doesn't necessarily follow that temporal precedence proves causality. For example, lighting occurring before I sneezed doesn't prove that the lightning caused my sneeze.
Or wearing a red shirt and I win a game of chess, doesn't prove that the shirt endowed me with special chess ability. Nor does my arrival at a store just before it is robbed prove that I caused the theft.
Simple enough? Right? Well, unfortunately, such reasoning is very common and leads to all kinds of invalid conclusions. For example it causes religious superstitions. A person offers a sacrifice to a supposed god asking for rain and the drought ends. The god was either immediately pleased or eventually pleased as in the case of the Mayans and Aztecs with their offering of human sacrifices in or to assure the rising of the sun and a successful harvest.
In reference to the Bible it is being used to claim that because certain myths were written before the biblical narrative, that they are the source of the biblical account when they are merely twisted versions of what really took place and which the Bible accurately describes.