To elaborate some more, I don't think that errors in reasoning are a cornerstone of religion in the present day. Sure, there are some: Creationism, the belief that the earth and humans are important, the illusion of the soul, fantasies regarding the start and end of life, prayer as a placebo, ascribing "evil" where "indifferent" or "unfortunate" are accurate, and so on.
These are definitely traps of reasoning that people fall into, one could do well to debunk them. One could also do well do debunk lesser superstitions such as horoscopes or divination, as well as to expose the practices of purely cynical exploitative organizations, such as the scientology. These definitely should be treated as mistakes or scams.
But if you ask me what kind of beliefs are the cornerstone of Christian religion, I think they are mostly political ones: Patriarchy, submission to a group, righteous intolerance, unquestioned obedience to authority, a culture of adulation (what Hitchens calls "the wish to be a serf"), surrendering of privacy, or an understanding of morals as externally imposed rather than emergent.
These aren't errors, or at least they aren't straightforward logical potholes that people fall into. They are framing issues, where people see the world though a certain set of religious-authoritarian frames, we think this is kind of unfortunate for them and dangerous for others, and we'd like them to swap them for humanist-tolerant frames.
All I'm trying to say here is it isn't just a simple mistake where you show them the right frames and they go "aha!". Well, some might do, but mostly it's a memetic process. You have to point out the bad frames to make them visible, offer the superior alternatives, and hope that by doing this time after time some success will result.
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These are definitely traps of reasoning that people fall into, one could do well to debunk them. One could also do well do debunk lesser superstitions such as horoscopes or divination, as well as to expose the practices of purely cynical exploitative organizations, such as the scientology. These definitely should be treated as mistakes or scams.
But if you ask me what kind of beliefs are the cornerstone of Christian religion, I think they are mostly political ones: Patriarchy, submission to a group, righteous intolerance, unquestioned obedience to authority, a culture of adulation (what Hitchens calls "the wish to be a serf"), surrendering of privacy, or an understanding of morals as externally imposed rather than emergent.
These aren't errors, or at least they aren't straightforward logical potholes that people fall into. They are framing issues, where people see the world though a certain set of religious-authoritarian frames, we think this is kind of unfortunate for them and dangerous for others, and we'd like them to swap them for humanist-tolerant frames.
All I'm trying to say here is it isn't just a simple mistake where you show them the right frames and they go "aha!". Well, some might do, but mostly it's a memetic process. You have to point out the bad frames to make them visible, offer the superior alternatives, and hope that by doing this time after time some success will result.