2. Logical Fallacies: Reification

The Fallacy of Reification

So here's the first logical fallacy we're going to go over. It's called the fallacy of reification. And reification is attributing a concrete characteristic, usually personal, to something that is abstract.

Perhaps you've heard the old saying, it's not nice to fool Mother Nature, right? They give a personal attribute, Mother Nature, to the natural order. This is an example of reification, because nature is an abstraction.

It is simply the name we give to the chain of events of the universe. Nature is not a person and can't literally be fooled, since nature doesn't have a mind. So this expression would not make sense if taken literally.

There's another one. The evidence says evolution is true. Does evidence say anything? No. One of the apologists that I listen to, he says, science doesn't say anything. Scientists do. Now, if you've gone through the book Always Ready, up until this point, you recognize that no one is neutral, right?

They're all coming at it from a certain point of view. So when the scientists say something, it's going to be skewed by their underlying presuppositions. When you talk about a miracle, well, miracles can't happen.

Well, why? Science. Well, wait a second. You're ruling that out because your worldview doesn't include an immaterial realm, right? Another example would be, the evidence speaks for itself. Evidence doesn't speak.

We interpret the evidence, and we try to come to a conclusion. Natural selection caused this. How can natural selection, which is just a natural process, cause anything? It doesn't cause anything. It's the description of what happened.

Let's see. Oh, you've heard this one. Follow the evidence where it leads. Does evidence lead us in a direction, or is it just there, and it's up to us to interpret the facts and put them in order, right?

So this is the fallacy of reification, assigning personal attributes to an impersonal thing.