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Religious Cherry picking-yay or ney?

Which of these better describes you?

  • I don´t cherry pick in my religion, but I don´t see anything wrong with it

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    37

Riverwolf

Amateur Rambler / Proud Ergi
Premium Member
While this is obviously a selection procedure, I don't believe it rises to the level of cherry-picking very often.

Just to make clear what cherry-picking is, I came across this rather nice explanation on Wikipedia.
"Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. It is a kind of fallacy of selective attention, the most common example of which is the confirmation bias. Cherry picking may be committed unintentionally."

Notice the necessary rejection of evidence that contradicts a position. This is key to cherry picking.

Actually I gave the concept of cherry picking that we were gonna use in the OP >_>

Duly noted, but often the common usage of a term can differ from the intended usage. I was unaware of the above intended usage, and was under the impression that it's the definition Me Myself provided.
 

Skwim

Veteran Member
Actually I gave the concept of cherry picking that we were gonna use in the OP >_>
Okey dokey. Then I stand corrected in trying to use the common concept of it. But I have to ask why you chose to call "Choosing in what you agree or not of any religion, point by point and not as a whole," "cherry picking." It doesn't even have the defining element of cherry picking: the necessary rejection of evidence that contradicts a position.
 

Falvlun

Earthbending Lemur
Premium Member
Okey dokey. Then I stand corrected in trying to use the common concept of it. But I have to ask why you chose to call "Choosing in what you agree or not of any religion, point by point and not as a whole," "cherry picking." It doesn't even have the defining element of cherry picking: the necessary rejection of evidence that contradicts a position.

I've never heard your definition either; it sounds like a formal fallacy. In regular usage, "cherry-picking" just refers to picking out the bits you like and discarding the rest.
 

Falvlun

Earthbending Lemur
Premium Member
In as much as cherry-picking in religion is a matter of picking out those passages that support your beliefs and regarding them as evidence, and discarding those that don't support your beliefs and usually stand in opposition to your evidence, just how is this a healthy way to approach religion?
Intellectually, it probably isn't the strongest method. But, in general, I don't think that tends to be the point of religion anyway.

Cherry-picking allows a practitioner to create a personalized spirituality for themselves. Creating a box that fits is likely psychologically more healthy than forcing oneself into a box that doesn't.

And it also has the added benefit, at least in modern trends, to create more inclusive and less strict/fundamental interpretations.
 

MatthiasGould

Alhamdulillah!
Cherry-picking to my mind indicates that far from conforming our will to that of Allah, we are bending Allah's wishes to our our will. For me, there will be times I struggle with some aspect of my religion, but that does not mean I should abandon it or find something else that suits my own personal wishes.
 

Skwim

Veteran Member
I've never heard your definition either; it sounds like a formal fallacy. In regular usage, "cherry-picking" just refers to picking out the bits you like and discarding the rest.
That's understandable. Where I come from it's understood as the definition I gave.
 
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