In his post, Bovice compared the mindset of the general populace in Columbus’ day with the mindset of the general populace in our day.

He cited Columbus’ assertion of
“locales with darker skins = wealth (thusfar in experience)
ergo
darker skins = locales of wealth”

in comparison with the admittedly similar fallacious modern assumptions that
“individual Muslims = rioters/terrorists
ergo
all Muslims = bad

“communists = atheists
ergo
atheists = communists”.

He concludes that “A bias will still exist without the lengthy analysis the average individual is unwilling to undertake. Most things are viewed at face-value, creating a situation much akin to that of Columbus.”

I disagree with his assertion for one reason. In Columbus’ day, the kind of logic demonstrated above was far and above the norm. Columbus was not alone in reasoning that darker skins = locales of wealth, and nobody called him out on that statement. It would not be unfair, I think, to state that the vast majority of Westerners in Columbus’ time agreed with that sort of logic, or at the very least with the conclusion.

In our time, however, we deride those who use such obviously fallacious reasoning. For Bovice’s atheism example, pointing out how more people distrust Atheists or think that they (we) are out of touch with American values than any other minority (39.5% think atheists don’t share American values according to this study), there is still the other 61.5% to consider.

Sure, 39.5% of the people might be happy to jump at the chance to use fallacious reasoning such as that of Columbus – but 61.5% are most certainly not, at least in this very narrow example.

So, yes, our way of knowing is better than Columbus’ way of knowing. Then, people presented false logic, and that was that. Now, people present false logic, and many agree with it, but even more point out just how incorrect and dangerous that false logic is.