Talk:Wishful thinking
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Under the "See Also" heading, someone has stated that "The historicity of religious figures is a field that may be conducive to some wishful thinking [SIC](compare the Historicity of Jesus Christ)." The meaning is somewhat unclear and no specific example is given. It seems like little more than a pot-shot taken by someone with a personal agenda of discrediting religion. Which is fine, but it serves no purpose in furthering the reader's understanding of wishful thinking except to nebulously link the fallacy with belief in the Hitsoricity of Christ. Many other, specific examples of Wishful Thinking are already present. I am striking the comment in order to eschew private agendas, whether they be pro- or anti- religious.
Hume summed up wishful thinking as the temptation to derive an "is" from an "ought".
A good example is the notion of the afterlife as providing an opporunity for divine justice to be served (ie by rewarding the good and punishing the evil) as we can plainly see that such justice rarely operates in life. That is, there OUGHT to be an afterlife - therefore there IS one. Or the Marxist belief that a workers' revolution is inevitable. Well, Marxists may think there OUGHT to be a revolt of the working class against their bourgeois oppresors - but we're still waiting for it. Exile 22:34, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
