I like logical fallacies. Well, let me clarify. I don’t like “doing” logical fallacies. I like recognizing them and knowing that they have names and cool things like that. Heather is much better at identifying logical fallacies when they pop up, as they do so often in public discourse, but I find my fair share. There are all sorts of logical fallacies out there, some of the more common are: the Straw Man, Appeal to Authority, Slippery Slope, to name a few. The one that is top of mind today is the Law of the Excluded Middle, also know as the False Dilemma or Bifurcation Fallacy. This fallacy occurs when we decide that it is necessary to choose between two options when there are actually more than two. This isn’t to say that there aren’t times when there are only two options, for example a woman is either pregnant or she is not pregnant, a person is either alive or they are dead, but frequently when we are presented with two options it is worth looking at the larger picture to see if there is another one, two or more options.
Knox Presbyterian Are we worth being found?
St. Mark’s Presbyterian Are we worth being found?
The other way to think of this fallacy is, as alluded to in the post title, is to be binary. Binary is a descriptor for anything that has two values: on/off, left/right, either/or, etc. Computers are all based on binary, 0 or 1, which demonstrates clear value for binary thinking . . . it its correct place.
Blessings,
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