Most Religions Commit the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy!!
A Few that Don’t Are Mentioned Herein If You Want to Follow Them
I discussed my realization with Advanced Google Gemini, and it credited me with a contribution to the dialogue!!
I recently learned about the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy with you. But, for the record, can you state it, please?
The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy is a logical fallacy where you focus on similarities and ignore differences to come to a faulty conclusion.
It gets its name from an analogy:
Imagine a Texan firing a bunch of random shots at a barn wall. He then walks over and draws a bullseye around the tightest cluster of bullet holes, proclaiming himself a sharpshooter.
Of course, he isn’t skilled; he’s just picking out the hits and ignoring all the misses.
Here’s why it’s a fallacy:
- Cherry-picking data: The sharpshooter only focuses on the data that supports his desired conclusion (being a sharpshooter) and ignores the data that contradicts it (all the other bullet holes).
- Ignoring randomness: Clusters and patterns can happen by chance, but the fallacy assumes…