Arguments against euthanasia, too, can be framed in slipperyslope terms. Let's invent an imaginary quotation from a moralphilosopher: 'If you allow doctors to put terminal patients out oftheir agony, the next thing you know everybody will be bumpingoff their granny to get her money. We philosophers may have grownout of absolutism, but society needs the discipline of absolute rulessuch as "Thou shalt not kill," otherwise it doesn't know where tostop. Under some circumstances absolutism might, for all thewrong reasons in a less than ideal world, have better consequencesthan naive consequentialism! We philosophers might have a hardtime prohibiting the eating of people who were already dead andunmourned - say road-killed tramps. But, for slippery slopereasons, the absolutist taboo against cannibalism is too valuable tolose.'

The God Delusion On page 285 Monday, November 5, 2012 @ 1:54pm