Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Right Wing Professor
If they tell lies about others it's right. If others tell lies about them it's wrong. The idea that it is lying itself that is wrong doesn't occur to them.

No, it is not right to lie. Those folks who do it I don't approve of. I don't even really believe that you are deliberately lying. (Other than the sex stuff I have argued elsewhere, for you are a front line witness to this decadence everyday in your culture in academia and remain .... silent; that is called aiding the enemy via lies of omission).

So, I think you are committed to your version of the truth, but only b/c your horizon of experience, you believe, is fixed at about 12 miles at sea level.

So, lying itself is indeed wrong. I'm wondering how you learned that, and why you believe that too ...

For this Christian can easily state why lying is wrong; but a logician has never been able to defend the statement 'all lying is wrong'.

For though I think you are really out to lunch on almost everything you have written, I'll say this much: you set a great example of what it means to be a black and white defender of the truth. It would be our loss if you really thought you were wasting your time.

699 posted on 01/26/2005 7:35:01 AM PST by gobucks (http://oncampus.richmond.edu/academics/classics/students/Ribeiro/laocoon.htm)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 693 | View Replies ]


To: gobucks

If your Mom was dying of cancer, but telling her she would get better would extend her life and give her strength, would you lie to her?


700 posted on 01/26/2005 7:37:23 AM PST by shubi (Peace through superior firepower.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 699 | View Replies ]

To: gobucks
Other than the sex stuff I have argued elsewhere, for you are a front line witness to this decadence everyday in your culture in academia and remain .... silent;

What reason do you have to believe I remain silent?

If you want a non-theistic reason why lying is (generally) wrong, try Kant's first categorical imperative

Kant said that any maxim is ethical only if it can be made into a universal law. So, if you adopt the maxim "I lie when to do so will further my argument"; if everybody did that, then nobody would trust anybody's argument, and arguments themselves would become useless. This would render the maxim contradictory, since if no argument is useful, lying to further one is useless.

715 posted on 01/26/2005 9:55:06 AM PST by Right Wing Professor (Evolve or die!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 699 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson