Rev. Cwirla's Blogosphere
"For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men." (1 Cor. 1:25)
Slip Sliding Away
Posted On: October 28th, 2005 at 12:40 am
“Give him an inch, and he’ll take a mile.” Well, not necessarily. Maybe he’ll just take a foot or two. There’s a big difference between an inch and a mile.
Welcome to the “Slippery Slope” Fallacy. Another name for this fallacy is the “Camel’s Nose.” Let the camel stick his nose through the door of your tent, and pretty soon you’ll have a lot more camel than you bargained for.
The Slippery Slope fallacy is a favorite among folks with extreme positions or extreme personalities. The far left and right, along with zealous religious types of all stripes, love to employ the threat of the slippery slope to defend their cliff-hanger conclusions. Here are a few examples:
“If we legalize marijuana, pretty soon we’ll be legalizing heroin, crystal meth, and crack cocaine.”
“If I make an exception for you, then I have to make an exception for everyone.”
“If we question the six 24 hour days of creation in Genesis, we’ll soon be questioning every verse of the Bible.”
“If we take “under God” out of the pledge of allegiance, we’ll be a nation of atheists.”
“Let a guitar accompany a hymn on Sunday, and before you know it, there will be a praise band and projection screen in the chancel.”
“National health insurance is the first step toward socialism.”
“If we allow physician-assisted suicide, pretty soon doctors will be killing burdensome patients who do not want to die.”
“Requiring parental notification for a minor girl’s abortion is the first step back to the days of back-alley abortions.”
“Displaying a cross on government property amounts to state sponsored religion.”
Even the famous attorney Clarence Darrow slid down the slippery slopes at the Scopes Monkey Trial:
"If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lectures, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After while, your honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots (burning torches) to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind." (
Scopes Trial, Day 2)
Remember that the issue at stake in the Scopes trial was whether evolution could be taught in the public schools! Today the evolutionary shoe has shifted to the other foot, as has the slippery slope. Consider this op-ed comment from the York Dispatch:
"If the ID campaign is successful in court, it will lead the nation down a dangerous, slippery slope. If science classrooms are opened to their teaching, fairness requires that the views of countless other religions and denominations be taught as well. This would make a hash of science education, confusing our students and undermining the process of objective scientific research that has brought so much benefit to so many people." (
Alan I. Leshner, Oct. 5 op-ed piece in the York Dispatch)
The Slippery Slope fallacy sounds reasonable because it mimics a valid line of argumentation called “reductio ad absurdum” (reduction to the absurd), in which you show how one thing inevitably leads to an absurdity. (“If that’s true, then I’m a monkey’s uncle.”) The famous apologist JW Montgomery once noted in a debate with an atheist, who questioned the reliability of the NT documents, that if the NT texts are not reliable historic documents, you may as well close the entire classics department at the university because no ancient text is reliable. At this point, the chairman of the classics department jumped up and shouted, “No!” This was not a slippery slope, but a valid argument to an absurd conclusion. If we can’t trust the new testament documents as reliable, 1st century historic documents, we have no basis to accept any text from antiquity.
With the slippery slope fallacy, the conclusion you’re trying to avoid has no necessary correlation with the premise. It plays on fear, ignorance, and defensiveness. I raise it here because well-intentioned Christians often slip onto the slippery slope when confronted with arguments that threaten a cherished belief. Being passionate about our beliefs, we sometimes fail to check the logical connections of our defenses. One thing doesn’t always, inevitably lead to the next, and our sharp-penciled opponents are quick to point out the less than felicitous inconsistencies.
The way to get logical traction on a slippery slope is to ask yourself, “Does A necessarily lead to B?” Do guitars inevitably lead to praise bands? Does legalization of marijuana inevitably lead to crack? Does the exception always become the rule? You’ll find, more often than not, that the answer is, “Not necessarily.” Usually, the camel is just sniffing around the tent.
Edited on: November 01st, 2005 10:51 am
Comments:
Re: Slip Sliding Away
Posted On: October 29th, 2005 at 11:24 pm by Orycteropus Afer
Nice analysis: Please pick up your Aardie at your convenience.
OA+
