Moral Absolutism

America's prisons are full of convicted criminals. Correct? Convicted criminals have almost all committed acts that society has deemed illegal because those acts are undesirable. Correct?

Could any sensible person imagine that no incarcerated individual in America believes in God? Of course not. Are all atheists in America convicted of criminal activity? Of course not.

If those who commit crimes believe in God, can we assume that religious belief is a guarantee that the believer will not commit a crime? Of course not, because the evidence indicates otherwise.

Are all acts that society considers immoral punishable by incarceration? Of course not. When was an adulterer last jailed in the West purely for having sexual relations with another consenting adult? I don't have the date, but it would have been some time ago.

Are all atheists/agnostics/non-Christians in America responsible for all the immoral behaviour that occurs? Of course not.

If even a single fundamentalist Christian commits an acts that society, by current consensus, deems either immoral or criminal, then the contention of religious dogmatists that the Bible dictates absolute moral truths and that fundamentalist religious belief is the guarantee of moral behaviour, then religious dogmatists are grossly mistaken.

How then could religious dogmatists be correct in their oft-repeated fallacious slippery slope arguments that "moral relativism" will inevitably lead to moral chaos? Of course their arguments are ridiculous. Fundamentalist religious belief is no guarantee of "good" behaviour, while lack of religious dogmatism is no guarantee of moral decline.

Moral relativism is a bigot's buzzword for any moral view that differs from the rigid and narrow proscriptions of the ancient tribes of Israel. This phrase has become a hot favourite with the bigots who take the high moral ground and presume to dictate, as did the Calvinists and Puritans, on all behaviours of others.

Ironically, Christ was a liberal and preached tolerance. Too many Christians conveniently this fact. Jesus would be horrified by the bigotry and intolerance of many religious fundamentalists.

Morality:
ɷ We, the Products of Blind Evolution

Quo Vadis?
...section index...

Slippery Slope

Slippery slope fallacy, thin end of the wedge, camel's nose

The slippery slope fallacy consists of claiming that one thing will inevitably lead to another when there is no good reason to believe that such a sequence will necessarily occur.

The slippery series can be based upon causal or upon semantic relations. In the causal, non causa pro causa, series event "1" leads to outcome "n" by way of a series of steps, which may be explicit, but are often implicit.

Thus, music may lead to dancing, which may lead to sex, which may lead to unwanted pregnancies, which may lead to unwanted children, which may lead to child abuse, which may lead to criminal activity. All because someone turned on the radio!

In the semantic version, two terms that lie on a continuum are treated as though there is no point of distinct transition. Thus, doctor-assisted suicide at the request of a mentally competent, suffering, terminally ill patient is depicted as transitioning directly to physicians playing God and murdering patients at will.

The slippery slope fallacy is commonly employed in the arguments of religious dogmatists who erroneously claim that "moral relativism" will lead to moral decay, and ultimately to moral mayhem. Equally erroneous, and tied into creationist awareness that Darwin was the first to shed light on the actual mechanisms of biological evolution, religious dogmatists like to link Darwinism to moral laxity. The Wedge Document anonymously decries "the catastrophic legacy of Darwin, Marx, and Freud—the alleged fathers of a “materialistic conception of reality” that eventually “infected virtually every area of our culture.”"

Conversely, civil libertarians might claim that an increase in governmental controls would inevitably lead to a police state. While it might be quite justified to anticipate that extra surveillance powers given to the authorities after 9/11 could be employed to infringe upon the civil liberties of some innocent citizens, it is not necessarily the case that most or all citizens will suffer intrusion.

It is not a slippery slope fallacy, on the other hand, to point out that permitting creationist intelligent [sick] design theory into science classrooms would lead to a further deterioration in the standards of science education.

Quo Vadis?
...section index...

QV FOL-ly

ɷɷ FOL-ly/Fallacies of Logic
ɷ FOL-ly
ɷ ad hominem
ɷ Argument from Ignorance
ɷ Argumentum ad antiquitatem
ɷ Argumentum ad nauseam
ɷ Argumentum ad numeram
ɷ Appeals to Emotion
ɷ Appeal to False Authority
ɷ Argumentum ad novitatem
ɷ Circular argument
ɷ Fallacy of Composition
ɷ Denial
ɷ Doublespeak
ɷ Fallacies of Association
ɷ Fallacy Fallacy
ɷ False Dichotomy
ɷ God of the Gaps
ɷ Irrelevance
ɷ Red Herring
ɷ Shifting the Burden of Proof
ɷ Shifting Etymons
ɷ Slippery slope
ɷ Sweeping generalization
ɷ Straw Man Fallacy

...section index...