Why logic is important

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So two stories came out over the last few weeks which for me highlighted the importance of what I’ll call ‘logical trajectory’. The first is around the legalisation of gay marriage (i.e. not civil partnership but actual marriage), and the second is around ‘after-birth abortions’.

Gay marriage

So the standard definition of marriage is something along the lines of ‘a lifelong covenant between one man and one woman’, but some in power would like this to be updated because of ‘equality’. It all sounds absolutely lovely, caring and tolerant until you apply a logical trajectory to this. If two men or two women can marry each other then the line has been moved, but what should therefore stop the line being moved to allow a man to marry two women and call that ‘marriage’? How about if a guy wanted to marry his dog? Or his television? Or his sister? Or his Dad?

Logically speaking, if the definition of marriage can be changed for the sake of equality to allow same-sex marriage then it should easily allow polygamy, and most likely incest and bestiality among other things.

After-birth abortions

Now this is so ridiculous it would be laughable if it wasn’t actually true. A bunch of so-called ‘experts’ have concluded that parents should be allowed to abort newborn babies because ultimately there’s no difference between a baby and a foetus. Funnily enough, I agree with their logic – here’s how it works:

Pro-life groups have always said that abortion’s wrong because it’s ending a human life, therefore is murder. Pro-abortion groups said no, foetuses aren’t actually human…but then changed their mind and said well ok, they’re human, but they’re not people. A person is self-aware whereas a foetus isn’t, so doesn’t have human rights. Sounds a bit like Nazi Germany but apparently we have to stick with it.

But newborn babies apparently aren’t self-aware either, so logically speaking these experts are now recommending we abort newborn babies too. Let’s just call that infanticide, ok?

Again, logically speaking, if newborn babies are officially recognised as not being people then the end result could end up with a baby trapped in a burning building and the fire service being told not to rescue them because ‘there are no people in there’. Or someone could kill a child because they considered the situation dangerous but that wouldn’t be murder because no person was killed. Or a baby could become sick so the parents could take him to the hospital to be put down.

For both of these situations I think I’m just going to stick with the Bible. When murder becomes morally acceptable (and, let’s face it, it already has) we need to question where we’re laying our society’s foundations.

Related articles

• Anti-abortion fanatics are threatening free speech, warns academic (guardian.co.uk)
• Infanticide is repellent. Feeling that way doesn’t make you Glenn Beck | Andrew Brown (guardian.co.uk)
• Slaughter newborn kids, say academics (thesun.co.uk)
• ‘After-birth abortion’ is logically sound: that’s why it will boost the pro-life movement (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)