How to Be Bold Without Overclaiming

[Calm]

Ben Spackman pointed out this gem on FB:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/answering-my-gospel-questions-teacher-material/4-appendix-a/25-microtraining-9?lang=eng#figure8_p7

Quote

Let students know that there are certain things we can do so that we are appropriately bold and avoid coming across as being ashamed but also avoid the pitfalls of being overbearing. Display and read aloud the following cautions:

We overclaim when we assert knowledge beyond what the Lord has revealed through both ancient and modern prophets. We underclaim when we present the basic truths of the gospel in ways that are unclear, tentative, or uncertain.

We are being dogmatic when we express our opinions as if they were indisputable facts and are intolerant of ambiguity when there are not clear answers. We are timid when we fail to stand up for what we know to be true.

If we don’t know an answer to a question, the best response is simply to say something like “I am not sure,” “I don’t know,” or “Good question; let’s learn more about that together.”

There are several other interesting examples.

[MrShorty]

This "Answering My Gospel Questions" course looks like it could be intriguing. I know it has been around for a few years now. Is this a new "micro training" that they have added recently, or has this been a part of the course since its inception and we outside of CES haven't noticed? I think it would be really interesting if anyone who has taken the course would share their chosen topic and the research they did on it, sources chosen, sources rejected, answers found, answers rejected, and so on.

As far as "overclaiming/underclaiming" goes, it is my opinion that overclaiming (especially when prophets/apostles/GAs are doing the overclaiming) is one of the biggest difficulties. Based on the official position that the church has always had (specifically -- no position at all), we would never have had any real internal difficulties between evolutionists and creationists because both sides would recognize that there is no official position. But, because a few, like Elder McConkie in his 7 Deadly Heresies speech, decided to come down hard on the creationist side, creation/evolution has long been one of the most contentious debates in the church.

IMO, the hardest part sometimes of the overclaiming/underclaiming is recognizing when we are overclaiming or underclaiming. For example, as one who doesn't have a testimony of the church's stance that "marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God" being interpreted to mean that other marriages are excluded from God's approval, I find the given example in the lesson about same sex marriage to be an interesting problem. How do we know which variation of this example is underclaiming and which is overclaiming? Depends mostly on how we determine what is and isn't right and good and true.

It is an interesting microtraining. IMO, overclaiming tends to be worse than underclaiming, but the real problem is in the epistemology behind how we determine what is and isn't right and good and true.