Mistake of Generalisation

Mistake of Generalisation One form of faulty thinking is what can be called ‘Making a generalisation.’ It is to take one particular example and project it as a general phenomenon and, on that basis, to present a generalised opinion about a subject as a whole. Making generalisations is so common that only a few people can be said to be free from it. Consider the following case. In the Bible (Mathew 10:34), Jesus is quoted as having said, ‘Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.’ Now, this saying attributed to Jesus has the status of an exception in the entire corpus of utterances attributed to him in the Bible. Most of the other utterances attributed to him in the Bible are based on teachings such as love and ethics. This being the case, to take the above words and claim that Jesus’ mission was to pick up the sword, is to project what is an exception as a general rule. This would be a completely wrong generalisation, which would be academically unacceptable. This same sort of wrong generalisation has been made with regard to the Quran. Taking some verses about war in the Quran, some people claim that the Quran is a book of war and violence. Now, this is actually a very erroneous generalisation. The fact of the matter is that more than 99% of the verses of the Quran are those that are related to such