Slippery slope

Economics professor Glen Whitman says "pointing out a logical fallacy is a way of removing an argument from the debate rather than just weakening it… if you can show that the original argument actually commits a logical fallacy, you put the opposition in the position of justifying why their original argument should be considered at all."

Thus in debates pitting the enlightened heroes of modernism against the Cro-Magnons of tradition, you'll hear the modernist refrain, with a pretense of sophistication: "That's a slippery slope." Smart bois have been levying the slippery slope fallacy at sound arguments against the spiritual erosion of the West for generations. It's a conditioned response, and who can blame them? It's worked without fail.

Francis Schaeffer wrote a book describing this, called How Should We Then Live?, one of the great books of the 20th century whether you're Christian or not. The original premise of Western Civilization is the God of the Bible. Some people did not like the conclusions of that premise. So they came up with a new premise to reach the conclusions they wanted. Except the premise they came up with led to other conclusions no one wanted, conclusions that transformed civilization. Now all that's left is a veneer of the past.

This is the slippery slope in action. A thing on level ground is stable. You can build upon it. Tilt the ground, and the whole structure falls. The lesson is intuitive once you've been exposed to it. To quote a popular hymn, "all other ground is sinking sand."

So when a smart boi points out your slippery slope "fallacy," burst his conceited bubble with a rhetorical needle. Who denies the law of gravity? Not even Flat Earthers are that dumb.

It's not enough to merely beat back the philistines. People crave art that speaks to the truth of their created nature. That's what I and many other writers are trying to do. I've linked to some of them in the blog roll on the right (click here for the site's desktop version).

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like hard sci-fi, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.