Of Logic and Naivety

Firstly, the trivial stuff. Yes, I've changed the layout of the blog yet again. I couldn't resist the new options WordPress introduced lately, so I've decided to give it a test drive. The header image is of one of my favourite places on this sweet earth – Tobermory, Ontario. Why do I like it so much? I don't know, it's the beautiful water, the excellent family vacation I had there, the things to do in that region… in the words of someone who enjoys something in an indescribable way, "it's in the way it all comes together". But now onto the meat of this post.

I've been pondering about two abstract concepts lately. The first one happens to be the slippery slope fallacy. Here's a definition from wikipedia (tweaked) for those too lazy to look it up: "an argument for the likelihood of one event given another/others". Everyone's definitely heard of this device in action before. For example, take gay marriage. One crucial argument against legalizing gay marriage is unfortunately, the slippery slope argument. It goes something like "if gay marriage were to be legalized, people marrying their pets will be next!" Those who are for gay marriage have the upper hand here, because while the slippery slope argument is not necessarily fallacious, the very name carries a stigma for all people vaguely familar with rules of logic and debate. The problem here is that it's difficult to prove that people marrying pets will actually happen in a logical manner.

On a tangent, a while back I've wondered about whether logic was perfect as an ideal, something that could be embodied in God. I wanted to believe that the world could strive to be perfect by striving to be logical. Later on, I realized that logic can only get you so far in this fallen creation. Though it's been said many times, humans are emotional and irrational creatures. If humans were perfectly logical, we'd be machines. Even the coldest rational businessman has a logical weakness, be it a harem of mistresses or fancy sports cars. It's here that God reveals His genius strategy by co-opting a perceived weakness of mankind (love) in order to rescue His creation. Does God sending his own Son to die for our salvation make logical sense? Relating it to my small group studies, I can see what the Bible meant by "[God] will destroy human wisdom and discard their most brilliant ideas." (1 Corinthian 1:19 NLT) But I digress.

As the debate about gay marriage rages on, keep an open mind on any slippery slope arguments you may hear. While logic dictates in most cases that the argument is fallacious, one only has to look to human history to see how easily the sins of generations past can be committed once more by those in the present.

The other thing I've been thinking about is the principle of absolute honesty. Don't even bother googling it – you'll get some trashy sites talking about corporate accountability and whatnot. My working definition of absolute honesty is "to be as close to 100% honesty as possible in all situations". Now that I've grown up, I'm starting to realize how truly naive this principle is. In a world full of half-truths and false promises, taking people at their word can get you seriously hurt. Nothing new to any of you, I'm sure, but my life lately (I only wish it were just the job search) has definitely made this common sense wisdom truly profound. So I'd just like to conclude by saying that people can say all the empty words they want, but in the end, justice will come for all.

Good night.