Apparently theists do not look kindly upon liars but some don’t understand why atheists feel the same. A commenter on this site writes:
Most [atheists] appear to despise lies, falsehoods, and misrepresentations as much as any theist. I’m just a bit fuzzy on why.
So I thought I’d look to their leader for support for this. And it seems to me theists are happy to lie when it suits their agenda:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/17/pope-africa-condoms-aids
“The traditional teaching of the church has proven to be the only failsafe way to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids.”
That is from the head theist at the time, Pope Benedict XVI.
And that is quite simply a lie. Condoms are how you prevent sexually transmitted diseases. I’m sure the objections will be that he really meant that monogamy and marriage are the only way to prevent HIV/Aids but that does not mean that it’s not a lie. It just means that marriage and condoms both work. Therefore it’s a lie to suggest that only marriage does (or whatever is meant by the traditional teaching of the church).
So when the boss theist that many theists look up to for guidance is happy to lie, what am I to make of the argument that theists appear to despise lies, falsehoods, and misrepresentations?
They despise them only when it suits them, I’d suggest.
“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
And yet Adam and Eve are argued to be our ‘parents’. Odd how they could do that being dead.
I also wonder if theists of brand X thinks of theists of brand Y as despising lies because they are a theist also or do they think of the same as atheists?
I suspect the latter. Otherwise why the bitter infighting between sects that split from a common ancestor?
Look at the origin of the North American Lutheran Church for example.
Because lies cause misery and injustice. They have consequences and those consequences hurt people. Some times even ourselves, or people we care about.
There doesn’t need to be any more of a reason than this. Lies are justifiably despised merely for their potential effects and consequences. In so far as there must be a “why” for atheists to despise lies, that is enough.
Most atheists appear to enjoy cake as much as any theist. I’m a bit fuzzy as to why.
+1
The scientific consensus seems to be that religious belief and ethical behavior have little to no correlation.
I’d be interested in scientific support that says something different to that.
Theists, can you supply unambiguous data that shows immoral behaviour is less among theists then atheists?
One study shows that 30 percent of respondents who regard religion as “essential” cheated in college (as opposed to 29 percent for the irreligious).
I think this is another case of a belief they have that makes them feel superior but which has no actual basis in fact.
It’s almost as if there is some sort of objective moral law that holds regardless of our religious belief.
Imagine that 😉
peace
fmm,
Exactly so. Humans share a common history both physically and mentally. It is no surprise that many generations in we have worked out systems that allow us to interact with each other in productive ways.
So while it might seem as if this shared understanding is objective, it is of course not. This is easily demonstrated by the fact that societies exist or have existed that we find some aspects of immoral. If there was such a objective moral law that mattered these societies would not exist.
If there is indeed such a law, it appears that your deity can suspend it at will when it instructs it’s followers to rape and pillage the enemy. Or when female babies are starving to death in ‘dying rooms’. But I’m sure you’ve got a reason (excuse) why all that does not negate the existence of such a “law”.
In addition, if such an objective law exists I would expect all humans to answer moral quizzes in exactly the same way. They do not. Therefore there is no such law.
Fmm, your point is akin to saying that there must be an objective law regarding symmetry because humans are very symmetrical. You take a fact and twist it into ‘proof’ for your claims.
fifthmonarchyman,
It’s almost as if we are genetically related or culturally influenced in some way. Imagine that.
If shared beliefs about morals are evidence for an objective moral law, then differing beliefs and experiences are falsifications of it. You can’t have it both ways.
It’s almost like most of us inherited the same instincts and have learned our beliefs and actions have consequences. But the sad fact is that there are people who don’t.
It’s like me saying that if I bred all dogs worldwide generation after generation, picking the most vicious and unstable each time and when I could not get any more vicious dogs then I now have there is now an objective moral law that states all dogs must be bad dogs because all dogs behave in bad ways! Otherwise how do you explain why they are all behaving in similar ways?
Cause and effect are not friends with fmm.
Precisely. Cherry Picking the evidence that supports your prefered argument is simply immoral.
Oh, wait now.
Don’t forget the support of slavery!
I would say it’s much simpler than that.The vast majority of lies have little to no physical consequences. What nearly all lies have in common however are: 1) selfishness and 2) denigration.
Basically, most lies come from a desire to either cover some embarrassing/unacceptable act or behavior and/or to help bolster some position or personal trait at the expense of some other value or someone else’s personal trait. So of course, the vast majority of lies devalue those who are being lied to, to say nothing of insulting those being lied to due to the behavior that’s being covered for.
Think of it this way: most lies are used to cover the fact someone did something wrong or at least questionable. People lie to avoid conflict and judgment. In other words, most liars are saying (or at least thinking), “I’m considerably more important than you; what I do is above your judgement.”
What makes theistic lies so much more galling though is the hypocrisy. Most theists preach that honesty is soooo important, but then they’re caught in the most ridiculous lies bolstering their position, getting it on with some hottie (or naughty or even nottie), or (far worse by some measures), propping up dubious superstition and dogma over plain old knowledge and understanding.
So yeah…we tend to feel slighted, so we get (justifiably) really mad at such jerk-asses.
If a person is raised to believe words are reality, and they live in a group where words are the the coin of the realm, it is no surprise that they will start printing their own counterfeit currency at some point.
It’s almost as if almost everyone universally dislikes being denigrated. Funny how no moral “law” (objective or subjective) is actually needed…
Would that meal be before or after midnight?
There are white lies, intended to make other people feel better (or to prevent harm to innocents), black lies, intended to harm other people, and dark lies, intended to avoid punishment.
I have never been able to lie successfully. Perhaps as a result, I have never been very forgiving of people who lie to me. I can’t say I’ve ended friendships over lies, but I have allowed friendships to lapse.
Truth can also cause misery and injustice and have consequences that hurt people. So why not also hate the truth?
The Pope Says Condoms Don’t Fight AIDS. Could He Be Right?
This article from a gay Web site reviews the research and suggests that Pope Benedict XVI may have a point – not because condoms don’t work, but because condom users, thinking they are safe, often engage in riskier sex than they otherwise would. An excerpt:
See also: AIDS in Africa: science vindicates Catholic Church by Babette Francis, BSc Hons (Microbiology & Chemistry), National and Overseas Co-ordinator of Endeavour Forum Inc.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that Pope Benedict XVI was lying. Read his words carefully. He never said or implied that condoms don’t work. What he said is that they aren’t failsafe – which is perfectly true.
As for the quote in the OP from Genesis 2:17, please see here:
https://answersingenesis.org/death-before-sin/genesis-2-17-you-shall-surely-die/
Terry Mortenson points out that the word for “day” isn’t the same as the word used for “day” in Genesis 1, and doesn’t normally mean a 24-hour day. Instead, it’s the same as the word “day” in Genesis 2:4, where the word refers not to a 24-hour day, but to the whole Creation Week. I don’t trust Answers In Genesis when it comes to matters relating to science, but I assume they know more about Biblical exegesis than I do.
OMagain writes:
Re correlation between religious belief and ethical behavior (specifically, being truthful):
The value of believing in free will: encouraging a belief in determinism increases cheating by Vohs K.D., Schooler J.W. In Psychological Science 2008 Jan;19(1):49-54. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02045.x.
Given that atheists are more likely to be determinists than religious people (since most atheists don’t believe in libertarian free will and most religious people do), I think it’s fair to conclude that atheists are more likely to cheat, for that reason at least.
Thanks! I’ll take a look.
Because overwhelmingly, it doesn’t. And for the most part, people who tell the truth do not intend, or expect, that it will hurt someone. Intentions matter too.
I of course know that there are exceptions and grey-areas around both truth and lies. Some times it is possible to tell a lie with good intentions that has a net-positive effect, and that it is possible to tell a truth in order to hurt someone (if you had had Jews hiding in your attic during the Holocaust and the Gestapo came looking for them, would you tell the truth?).
I do not have the patience to sit here and develop a comprehensive and exhaustive theory of the ethics of truth and lying that cover all possible cases, I will just note that I am aware there are exceptions to the general statements I made.
Hmmm…never heard it put this way before. Interesting categorization. I like it!
I’m curious about this claim Mung. Can you come up with any example of truth ever causing misery, injustice, or harm? I can only come up with situations where the truth shed light on some lie, and thus harm ensued.
For instance, a number of spies have revealed all sorts of State and corporate secrets throughout the ages. The revealing of the “truth” in those situations didn’t cause any harm; it was the fact that they were lied about to begin with that caused the harm.
Mung,
As a theist, why do you hate the truth?
Somewhat agree. Which means ethics and religious belief could be anti-correlated if you’re talking about muslims. That is to say, being a muslim increases the probability of behaving less ethically:
My understanding is that the prison population is higher with theists. Atheists, who are usually more educated, are less likely to go to prison. That is, they have less incentive to cheat because they can feed themselves better without having to cheat.
Are those numbers adjusted for economic class? They sound suspiciously convenient for certain British political parties.
So at least with respect to lying about their personal practices, priests with AIDS are probably more inclined to lie than atheists.
Even though I self-identify as a Christian, some of the worst individuals I’ve every met were part of the church, some of them in the clergy.
I doubt it, and why should they be? If atheism on the whole is correlated with making an individual more economically successful than being a Muslim, and economic success leads to being less likely to cheat and rape and murder, than the comparison is fair.
I think the evidence is that if one is a Catholic bishop who learns a priest has been molesting boys in the congregation, that an atheist with the same knowledge of the crime would be more likely to act ethically and notify the police.
Sal: “That is to say, being a muslim increases the probability of behaving less ethically:”
I can’t believe that a Christian would make this claim. Do you really want to go through the list of things that we now call unethical (if not evil) that were justified by Christianity? Slavery, jailing of homosexuals, terrorism, forced conversion, crusades, debtors prison, oppression of women, etc.
Because factors like poverty and lack of education might be the actual correlates with criminality while race and religion are not. There is at least one political party in Britain that would benefit from obscuring such facts.
Not if religiosity is (negatively) correlated with economic success rather than vice versa.
Are these numbers from countries that are predominantly Muslim, or in countries with recent immigration of large numbers of Muslims? If they are from western countries then economic status is very important. It is well known that recent influxes of immigrants, especially as refugees, tend to be in the lower economic levels, at least for a generation.
It occurs to me that one could substitute “truths” for “lies” and the categories would still work.
I have always been enamored of looking more closely at results than at rules. I look for unintended consequences and counterproductive actions.
I’m a bit agnostic about immigration. It appears to me that results might be dosage dependent.
I find evangelical Christianity to be obnoxious. I am somewhat impatient with all implementations of religion that promote the concepts of heresy and apostasy. That seems to be widespread in all the Abrahamic religions. Plus Scientology.
But you seem to correlate religion with child abuse don’t you?
I’d say that teaching children that the world is 6000 years old etc is child abuse, yes. How does that prepare them for reality? And from then on it’s really a sliding scale.
I think that understanding the wrongness of lying or deceiving is actually interesting. completely independent of all religious motivations or metaphysical justifications.
The classical argument for the wrongness of lying is that it fails to respect the humanity of the person being lied to. To lie to someone is to intentionally manipulate their behavior. It is to say, in effect:
“If this person knew that p, then they would do X. But I do not want them to do X. Therefore I will prevent them from knowing that p.”
Lying to someone involves deliberately preventing them from knowing something that they would want to know, because of how they would act on it if they knew it.
It’s basically a kind of manipulation, which involves in turn treating someone as an object. In the case of deliberate lying, it is a choice to not treat that person as deserving to be recognized as having an autonomous intellect and will.
I do think that there are cases in which lying is justified to avoid a greater evil, but one should still recognize that the world should not be such that choices like that are forced upon us. Yes, you should lie to the Nazis if you’re hiding Jews in your attic, but it’s also a bad world in which lying is the morally right thing to do.
Made in the image of God and all that nonsense.
The bible teaches that man has a innate idea of right and wrong. its not from religious ideas. otherwise god couldn’t blame man for doing wrong?
the moral code is written on human hearts the bible says somewhere.
Religious teaching just confirms but not the source.
That way we are all blameworthy for doing evil/wrong.
No atheists can’t have any different moral results just because of non belief.
Its only that people of the true faith will have a higher moral curve.
Not exclusively moral though.
Robert Byers,
Yeah.. Tree of knowledge?
Tree of knowledge of what?
If someone wanted to put it that way, I wouldn’t object.
What evidence is there for that then?
God is truth, right?
I would guess most people, both theists and atheists, don’t know whether they are determinists or believe in libertarian free will, or compatibilsm. And they have no idea what those things mean at all.
That was my first thought.
I think the kind of “teaching” you proudly perpetrate on young children in the name of your religion is child abuse, yes. As I made clear the first time you discussed your scam:
“What’s worse is that you use bogus examples like a bunch of coins coming up all heads or dominos standing on their edges without tying those to modern evolutionary theory or even discussing cumulative selection. You use strawman arguments about modern dogs evolving into modern cats. You mock trained, working scientists rather than encouraging the wonder of discovery. You do all this to children who have yet to learn that some authority figures should not be trusted.
What you are doing isn’t teaching, it’s child abuse. You are not behaving like a good person.”