On May 21st of 2023, President and Sister Oaks gave a worldwide devotional to the youth of the church. Much of what they said is not new to any longtime member of the church, but there were a few key moments worth commenting on. The title of this episode is inflammatory, but give the episode a listen and decide for yourself if I misunderstood what President Oaks said in his address.
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Scott, I don’t understand why you took issue with the comment about God being more interested in the growth of his children than their comfort. Not only that, but then you went on to insinuate that a loving God would not hold that attitude.
Could it be that your response was an emotional one rather than practical or logical?
Maybe just consider your own children…… if you had to choose between their comfort and their growth, which would you choose? Which of those two choices would result in happy, healthy, independent, intelligent adults 10 to 20 years from now?
I realize this is a false binary, however it does often apply in real life.
I read your comment, and I plan on doing an episode about the talk in question. I had a few other listeners reach out with thoughts about the talk as well and I want to highlight them.
I’m puzzled by your assertion about it being a false binary but life is like that…
I’m paraphrasing of course.
If something is a false binary, then anything that comes from that binary is false.
Can you explain your work around for that equation?
The false binary or sometimes called the false dilemma is when an idea is presented as having only two solutions or outcomes. I don’t recall exactly what I said in the episode, but the criticism of a false binary is saying that there should be more options than two to the given situation. For example saying the church is true or false is a binary that doesn’t allow for the option that it could be true in part or false in part. The false binary is a fallacy of oversimplification.
Does that help?