It wasn't calculated to put him on the defensive, it was a valid question and an honest one.
Actually what I said was that homicide is just as evil as lying (you put it the other way around -- is "just as evil" commutative?), and I probably should have said "at least as evil". You failed to change my mind, but you did change my language, so that ain't bad.
Don't exactly know what you're getting at here, I quoted you verbatim from post #153. I copied and pasted your own words into the discussion between you and I.
If I didn't change your mind, are you saying that you are in disagreement with the Church? Please explain your position further.
I am not a "recent" convert in normal uses of "recent". I converted over a decade ago. And I've been reading this stuff, off and on, since, Oh Lord help me, 1966 - so 40 years! Get me my Geritol! NOW!
LOL!
I've been doing this a while. I make mistakes, sometimes in thought, often in expression. And often I don't have time to choose my words carefully. Now is one such time. I have to feed some animals then clean myself up to go to a friend's wake. So I may seem brusque or make an error -- like writing "just as" when I mean "at least as", and I hope we won't have to go into whether I have certain feelings, like being upset, and why I have them (too much coffee? not enough Glenlivet?) but can look at the case before us, which is, as far as I can tell: Whether or not Mr. Harvey done good.
Wow, I'm sorry about your friend. May God grant them eternal rest and may He give you comfort.
You quoted me, but then you said:
...but the Church doesn't agree with you about lying being just as evil as homicide ...
which led to my asking if "just as" is commutative.
But my argument works not much worse even if lying were as bad as homicide. That is, if sometimes you gotta kill a human, how can it be a priori true that it is never okay to lie?
You write:
It wasn't calculated to put him on the defensive, it was a valid question and an honest one.
I respond: Asserting the contrary is not an argument. It's just stating what the argument is about. It may not have been calculated to put him on the defensive. I have no more a window into your soul than you have into his, and e-communications on fora are not a good environment for picking up on the vibes of someone's feelings.
But his upsetittude or non-upsetitude is not to the purpose. My mood is one thing, my arguments another. They neither stand nor fall on my emotional state at the time I present them.
And whatever your intention, if he responds to the question, "What are you so upset about?" what will we learn about his thinking on the morality of lying? I'm upset, somewhat, because a friend died earlier than I would have liked and there's this big hole here where she used to be AND I think her husband is one of the world's truly good guys and I hate to see him suffer,
But I'm just as much of a pedantic, nit-picking, argumentative logic chopper when I feel good. (And thanks for your prayers for the deceased, Ann, and her excellent husband, Richard.)
I think Locomotive Breath has been bear-baited by many of us pro-lifers. I regret it because clearly he has tried to think well about both abortion and telling the truth. I think he has reached the wrong conclusions, but I have reached plenty of wrong conclusions in my life, I mean PLENTY!, so I don't hold that against him. He even has the nerve (da NOIVE!) to think that I have reached the wrong conclusion -- which just shows how out of touch with reality he is.
I want to hear him make his argument against being subtle as a serpent in the Colorado legislature.
Of course, my personal opinion is that if one DIDN't lie to a politician he'd feel all lonely and disappointed. But that's just me.