Thursday, February 3, 2011

There Are No Such Things as Dilemmas

More on fallacies. One of my favorites -- false dilemma. This is the argument where two choices are given as being the only two choices, but there are in fact other choices. I heard this back in 2009 when someone at church said "You can't be Christian and vote for Obama." The argument that there are only two choices, you can chose to be Christian or you can chose to vote for Obama, is a fallacy of false dilemma. I also heard it in 2010 after the ELCA churchwide assembly -- "you can't believe the Bible and think homosexuality is OK." False dilemma.

But the more I think about it, ALL dilemmas are false dilemmas. Are we really so uncreative as to imagine a situation where there are only two choices?

Cake or death!?

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