Meticulous Honesty: Why Dishonesty Is ALWAYS wrong

Preface:
Very popular, again, is the view that there are no inherent moral truths. Various thinkers state that moral realism isn’t true, that sometimes lying is good, etc. Often this outlook on ethics emphasizes that the end justifies the means and that “love” is the only rule.

Unfortunately, words such as “love” are empty-bucket terms meaning contradictory acts and are almost meaningless. For instance, the famous Roman Catholic leader, Augustine, in the 4th century wrote, “Love and do what you will. (on the First Epistle of John, Homily 7 on 1 John 4:4-12)

But Augustine was the same Christian leader who brought hard determinism into the Christian religion, condemning all human infants as being guilty of Original Sin, claiming that only a limited number of humans were predestined to be rescued, billions of others left to damnation.

Augustine also used the power of the Roman state to persecute others. And he abandoned his common law wife/concubine of 10 years, and planned, instead, to move to Rome and marry a high-class lady. At least he didn’t abandon his son from his common-law wife.
Etc.

Other Christian leaders have gone even further. Christian theologian, Episcopal priest Joseph Fletcher, in the late 1960’s wrote the book called Situation Ethics which claimed that loving could mean to lie, to commit adultery, to blackmail, even to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians!

According to Fletcher, “nothing is inherently right or wrong” (page 134). Allegedly, later, Fletcher promoted abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, etc. in the name of “love.” (according to Wikipedia)

Paul Tillich, the famous Lutheran philosopher and theologian, wrote that “love is the ultimate law” (Systematic Theology, Volume 1, page 152) then repeatedly committed adultery, etc. The long scholarly biography of Tillich shows how dishearteningly wrong Tillich behaved, like so many others, by holding to the semantically vague idea of "love" as the only guide.
ETC.

Even many Christians who claim to believe in objective ethics (not situation ethics) argue for very strange moral views such as the American Christian leader who declared that the atom bomb is “God’s gift to America”!

Or the millions of Christians (over 78% of American Evangelical Christians) who defend President Trump’s forcefully taking little children under 4 from their refugee mothers and sending the crying toddlers off thousands of miles away from their mothers to U.S. government facilities!

And ALL of those ethically wrong actions happened because the American Christians lied about the nature of the refugees, claiming they were criminals, drug dealers, enslavers, etc.

Even if--let's hypothesize--no bad results came from lying (or what ever other violation of moral truths), that lying would still be contrary to what is good and right.

Tragically, humans who think that morality, justice, human rights, etc. are inherently real and true, not subject to situations seem, often, to be in the minority.

MAIN POINT:
DISHONESTY/LYING is ALWAYS wrong.
Theft, adultery, infanticide, killing, and so forth are ALWAYS WRONG…
AND
Meticulous honesty, sharing, generosity, infant care, compassion, justice and so forth are ALWAYS RIGHT.

WHY:
1. Without meticulous honesty, fields and professions such as science, technology, architecture and construction, medicine, criminal justice, education, and so forth can’t function well or successfully.
Human history and current events are strewn with the millions of cases of scientists, law enforcement officers, politicians, architects, doctors, teachers, etc. who in the name of what ever ethics they followed, lied, deceived, or shaved the truth.
When a doctor lies, it might mean only deeply harming a patient. But when a scientist lies, it could wreak havoc on an entire society causing the suffering and death of millions of humans.

2. Unfortunately, the vast majority of humans have a penchant toward viewing the world from their own advantage point. We tend to justify what looks good for our group or our nation. Consider cases such as how the leading intellectuals and brilliant scholars of the various opposing nations of 1914 led us into the completely wrong Great War, which caused the slaughter of at least 15 million humans.

See Manifesto of the Ninety-Three German Intellectuals
https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Manifesto_of_the_Ninety-Three_German_Intellectuals


See Preachers Present Arms by Ray h. Abrams

As various writers have emphasized the first fatality of war is truth. Lies are the immoral “body-guards” (to twist a phrase of Winston Churchill who infamously claimed that lies are bodyguards who protect truth!)

Another lesser case is the official lies—especially the Gulf of Tonkin lies-- told by the American government which led to over 2 million humans slaughtered in Vietnam including over 50,000 Americans.

Of course, most of these humans lied, deceived, were dishonest from the best of motives (though their motives you notice were based in the group egotism of their particular nation and society).

3. ALL lying, all deception, all dishonesty is to state contrary to reality. For instance, the construction boss needs to get the building finished by October 1st for many good reasons. Yet the inspector has been slow in coming out to certify, so the contractor hedges the truth. After all, in other situations, the minor deception hasn’t resulted in anything bad.

But regardless of whether or not his dishonesty catches up with the construction contractor (even though he meant it for good), the lie is contrary to what is true and real.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE EXTREME CASES?

Extreme cases are, admittedly, difficult. And so various thinkers have stated that honesty must be relative to end results.
People say, wouldn’t it be good to lie to a Nazi, to lie to a murderer?

However, as I’ve already pointed out, these extreme situations don’t normally happen. Yet they are often pulled up to justify more common situations in which many people think a lie is also “good” in their particular difficulties.

Second, lying is always wrong even in desperate situations.
But what if an abused child hides at your house?
Will you lie to protect the innocent child from the abusive father?

What if you can discover no other option?

In that case since no alternative seems available, you can't find a good way to deal with the crisis, then you may choose to do what is wrong, the least wrong action.

Notice, the lying, is still WRONG, BUT COMPARED TO A CHILD BEING FURTHER ABUSED, LYING IS THE LESSER EVIL.

And after the crisis passes, you well-meaning liar, will still need to admit your wrong-doing, and emphasize that you will make whatever amends you need to for your deception.

No where is any well-meant lie—itself--justified.

If only all humans would choose such moral realism, the vast majority of evil actions in the world would be lessened and eventually stopped.

Meticulous honesty, compassion, generosity, defense of human rights, etc. are ALWAYS RIGHT.

In the LIGHT of TRUTH,

Daniel Wilcox

The Debacle of Empty-Bucket Words

Like in the old days of English literature when books had really long phrased OR titles:

The Debacle of Empty-Bucket Words
OR
How I Learned to Love Humpty-Dumpty
by Shoving the Egg-Head of a “God” off the Wall
OR
How I Learned to Stop Using the Vacuous, Empty-Headed Term, “Love”

Preface:
“Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't — till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
http://sabian.org/looking_glass6.php

First, the last. I suppose for centuries, “love” has been empty-headed, empty-bucketed, meaning whatever any one in changing centuries applied to the term. Like all words, “love” that chameleon’d-squiggled-word changes in time and place and comes to mean whatever any particular human means it to mean.

Need I give many examples from history, literature, and media, especially movies, to show how ambiguous, contradictory, and empty-bucketed, “love” has been?

Heck, even Christian leaders can’t agree. Millions of them disagree about what “God is love” means. And some leaders get etymological, scholarly, and cite Greek, speaking of the over-inflated word, “agape.” But even in Greek, they don’t agree! (It's Greek to me;-)
Because even then they often mean something entirely different from other Christians.

For instance, Augustinian-Reformed Christians claim that God both loves and predetermines billions of humans to eternal damnation. What?! How could God lovingly torture billions of humans for ever?

And God "loves" some humans so much, he wills for them to get cancer, die in car accidents, drown, burn to death, and so forth!

OR take a look at how the Anabaptist leader Chuck McKnight claims that multiple sexual partner relationships—polyamory--are based in “love,” in “agape-love”!

Huh?!
According to McKnight, and others, the only rule of Christianity is “love.”

We've heard this before!

Paul Tillich, the famous Protestant theologian claimed, "Love is the ultimate law” while himself committing adultery, etc.
Tillich, Systematic Theology, v. 1, p. 152

And Christian ethicist Joseph Fletcher wrote an infamous, controversial book, Situation Ethics, in 1966.

It closed with this view:
“When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the plane crew were silent. Captain Lewis uttered six words, "My God, what have we done?" Three days later another one fell on Nagasaki. About 152,000 were killed, many times more were wounded and burned, to die later. The next day Japan sued for peace. When deciding whether to use "the most terrible weapon ever known" the US President appointed an Interim Committee made up of distinguished and responsible people in the government. Most but not all of its military advisors favoured using it. Top-level scientists said they could find no acceptable alternative to using it, but they were opposed by equally able scientists. After lengthy discussions, the committee decided that the lives saved by ending the war swiftly by using this weapon outweighed the lives destroyed by using it and thought that the best course of action.”

Supposedly, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians was more loving in the long run and therefore more justified!

Whew…Talk about Orwellian…yes, war is peace, hate is love, slaughter is kindness…
--
LOOK at this STRANGE DIALOGUE BETWEEN JOSEPH FLETCHER AND A CONTRARY CHRISTIAN LEADER:

"This book is a transcript of the February 11, 1971 dialogue between Montgomery and Joseph Fletcher (who wrote Situation Ethics: The New Morality). Here are a few examples of their exchanges:

FLETCHER: "I think there are no normative moral principles whatsoever which are intrinsically valid or universally obliging.... If we are, as I would want to reason, obliged in conscience sometimes to tell white lies, as we often call them, then in conscience we might be obliged sometimes to engage in
white thefts
and white fornications
and white killings
and white breakings of promises
and the like." (pg. 15)

FLETCHER: “I want to suggest that methodologically there are basically only three alternatives strategies… the three options open to conscience at work are to be simply labeled as legalism, antinomianism, and situationism… In between these [first] two extremes lies situationism… and a mediating position in the spectrum. The situationist enters into troubling moral situations armed… [with] some reflective generalizations about what is ordinarily and typically the right thing to do. But unlike the legalist he refuses to absolutize … any normative principle… he is prepared to depart from a usually applicable generalization if in the particular case the consequence of following the rule is to minimize rather than to optimize … the first-order value to which he’s committed.” (Pg. 19, 23-24)

MONTGOMERY: “The insurmountable difficulty is simply this: there is no way… of knowing when the situationist is actually endeavoring to set forth genuine facts and true opinions, and when he is lying… Why? Because deception is allowed on principle … .as long as the ultimate aim is love. Consider: if Professor Fletcher acts consistently with his premises… he can to this end introduce any degree of factual misinformation, rhetorical pettifogging, or direct prevarication into the discussion… Our restatement goes: ‘If a situation ethicist … tells you that he is not lying, can you believe him?’… [This leaves] the audience entirely incapable of ever being sure that Professor Fletcher means what he says.” (Pg. 31-32)

MONTGOMERY: “This is precisely the claim of the historical Christian faith: that biblical revelation constitutes a transcendent word from God establishing ethical values once for all… Absolute moral principles are explicitly set forth; these inform love and guide its exercise.” (Pg. 44)

FLETCHER: “Are you saying, sir, that we must in conscience always tell the truth? And if there are exceptions, when might we prevaricate and why?... are you saying that tyrannicide is never justifiable? If it might be, when and why?... were you or weren’t you saying that interruptions of pregnancy are always wrong? But if there are times when it might be done, why would it be?... Christian ethics … have never allowed that human rights are anything but… relative and contingent.” (Pg. 49)

MONTGOMERY: “the greatest difficulty in situation ethics is revealed exactly at this point. The situation ethicist properly recognizes the ambiguity of situations and the extreme difficulty, often, in knowing what ought to be done; but he endeavors, in these situations, to JUSTIFY HIMSELF. In terms of the ethical approach that I outlined, one CANNOT so justify oneself. If, concretely, I were put in the position that you described of either informing a killer as to where a child was hidden or lying about it, it's conceivable that I would have to lie. But if I did so, I would be unable to justify this ethically; in short, I would be unable to get off the hook. In Christian terminology, I would have committed a sin which should drive me to the cross for forgiveness. This is what I find almost totally lacking in your writings: no one is driven to the Cross.” (Pg. 51)

FLETCHER: “you have said in reply to my question ‘Is it always wrong to have an abortion?’---‘Yes, it always is.’ It seems to me absolutely unbelievable that anybody could say that… Since the tragic complexities of life sometimes call us to do what we might call the ‘lesser evil,’ you WOULD be an instrument because the alternative to the abortion would be greater evil than the evil of the abortion.” (Pg. 52-53)

FLETCHER: “It is ethically foolish to say we ‘ought’ to do what is wrong! What I want to argue philosophically… is that the rightness or the wrongness of anything we do is extrinsic, relative, and dependent upon the circumstances, so that to have an abortion out of loving concern for everybody’s best interests involve, is not an excusably evil thing to do, but a good thing to do.” (Pg. 53-54)

FLETCHER: “And I have to say in all candor that when I examine the Gospel account of Jesus’ teaching in light of our question… he said nothing directly or even implicitly about it one way or another. Jesus was a simple Jewish peasant.
He had no more philosophical sophistication
than a guinea pig,
and I don’t turn to Jesus
for philosophical sophistication.” (Pg. 55)

MONTGOMERY: “Well, sir, I think that’s your trouble.” [Laughter and applause from the audience.] (Pg. 55)

FLETCHER: “Aren’t you in effect telling us that in your ethics we are sometimes morally obliged to do what is wrong, and does that make any sense in terms of ethical analysis?” [Applause from the audience.]
MONTGOMERY: “No, obviously it does not make any sense in terms of YOUR ethical analysis, but that’s what we are trying to determine---whether that ethical analysis is right… What I’m saying is that it may be necessary to choose a lesser of evils. But such a choice still remains an evil.” (Pg. 69-70) Situation ethics; true or false?: A dialogue between Joseph Fletcher and John Warwick Montgomery (Dimension books)
Quoted by reviewer Steven H. Propp on Amazon
--

Even the word "LIGHT" means various contradictory things to different humans, including different Friends.

No, we can't escape semantics, so it behooves us to very carefully define words when we use them. And give very lucid examples.

Daniel Wilcox

Wise Words

Nothing does reason more right, than the coolness of those that offer it:
For Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders, than the arguments of its opposers.
-William Penn

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.
Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.
-Immanuel Kant

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
-Albert Einstein

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.
-C.S. Lewis

Human beings are the only creatures who are able to behave inrrationally in the name of reason.
-Ashley Montagu

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, and the children of men, as a whole, do not experience it... Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
-Helen Keller

The sense of duty is the fountain of human rights. In other words, the same principle which teaches the former bears witness to the latter. Duties and rights must stand and fall together.
-William Ellery Channing

Spend 10 billion on the welfare of others, not on warfare against others.
-from Dave Traxson

A nation that continues year after year, to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift, is approaching spiritual death.
-Martin Luther King Jr.

-Returning violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars...
Hate cannot drive out hate:
only love can do that.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Since armies are legal, we feel that war is acceptable...In fact, we have been brainwashed. War is neither glamorous nor attractive. It is monstrous.
-Dalai Lama

Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and apartheid, it is man-made and can be removed by the actions of human beings.
-Nelson Mandela

One of the ironies of human worldviews is that ‘law and order’ individuals who reject civil disobedience often in the end accept violent war and rebellion;
in contrast ‘civil disobedient’ individuals who break unjust laws as wrong and believe in nonviolent resistance usually reject violence, war, and rebellion.

One would think that 'law and order' individuals would oppose war, especially the slaughter of civilians, but historically that hasn't been the case.

Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.
-Thomas Jefferson

What you commit yourself to be will change what you are and make you into a completely different person. Let me repeat that.

Not the past but the future conditions you, because what you commit yourself to become determines what you are – more than anything that ever happened to you yesterday or the day before.
-Dr. Anthony Campolo

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
-W C Bryan

To be educated means to have the ability to be aware of yourself and your worldview, and thereby be able to make corrections when you are wrong; then you will be lead to new insights.
-Lit Insight

Man's ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.
-Paul Tillich

Morality is doing right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.
-H.L. Mencken

You don't get to advertise all the good that your religion does without first scrupulously subtracting all the harm it does and considering seriously the question of whether some other religion, or no religion at all does better.
-Daniel C. Dennett

Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind and within the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.
-Alfred North Whitehead

The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.

The power of God is the worship He inspires....The worship of God is not a rule of safety — it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable. The death of religion comes with the repression of the high hope of adventure.
-Alfred North Whitehead

Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of human life is to grasp as much as we can out of the infinitude.

Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development.
-Alfred North Whitehead

I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality.
-Gandhi



True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.
-Alfred North Whitehead

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-George Bernard Shaw

The artistic representation of history is a more scientific and serious pursuit than the exact writing of history. For the art of letters goes to the heart of things, whereas the factual report merely collocates details.
-Aristotle

There are sports stars who make 10 times the annual salary of the President. They are national heroes. Why, exactly? There is something here transcending the diversity of political, social, and economic systems. Something ancient is calling.
-Carl Sagan

The hero is an individual who gets up when one can't.
-Anon

Why listen to the pithy maxims and aphorisms of various thinkers?


As the Teacher said 2,500 years ago:
12 "...be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body."

11 Sayings from the wise are like cattle prods and...well-driven nails."
-Ecclesiastes 12:12 and 11, Hebrew Bible

I actually like endless books--both the writing of them, and the reading of them; and the studying of them and the reflecting on them, and then the meditating on them, but
there is a grain of insight in what the teacher said, especially when like him, one becomes discouraged.

Wise phrases can inspire hope.

Pointed statements do break through our daily rituals, cognitive biases, and tendency toward ethnocentricism.

In the Light of Reason, Truth, and Justice,

Daniel Wilcox

Part #1: Stories of Truth

Unlike so many Christians and other religious people of the present time who fixate on how they belong to God and are good Americans (insert your own nation) unlike "them out there"--whoever that "them" happens to be: undocumented workers, those preordained to eternal torment, people of enemy countries, heretics, those of other races, creeds, or ethnic backgrounds, the down and out, homeless transients, druggies, criminals, prostitutes...

Jesus was just the opposite--he spoke of how he had come to call all the "thems," all the lost. If anything, he tended to criticize the very religious us'es, the ones who outwardly look like they are good. Notice in the story of the rich young leader in Mark 10:17-22 and Luke 18:18-23 that Jesus reserves the adjective "good" for God alone. He won't accept the term for morally upright religious people or even for himself!

Jesus, the Son of Man loves the rich young leader who is so morally upright, but he is not impressed! Shock of shockers! It isn't enough for a human to keep all the 10 Commandments from his youth up!

Imagine the consternation and chaos and church splits, if the ministers at some of the mega-churches in the U.S. got up and said "Jesus is calling all rich Christians to give their money away for outreach to the countries where most people only earn less than a dollar a day, where millions of children die for want of basic clean water and food, where many don't even have one Bible to read"?

Of course, some individuals do heed Jesus' call to live sacrificially for God. The millionaire founder of Habitat for Humanity gave sacrificially of his large resources. R. G. LeTourneu the inventor of earthmoving equipment, allegedly was giving 90% of his income away by the time of his death!

Then is the meaning of the story of the rich young leader that we are "in" if we give up all our money?

No, Jesus is speaking much more broadly and much more deeply than that. He is speaking to our inner heart, our deepest motivations, our ultimate concern (to use the phrase of the theologian Paul Tillich). Until each of us gives up putting some finite thing, interest, person--including ourself--as ultimately important...and give our all to God, we are lost and have no opportunity to live in God's presence, the ultimately Good.

God the Truth and Love must come first. Even nice people fail to measure up to such Truth, even those who try and keep all the 10 Commandments.

Some of us, if not all of us, at this point may feel that this is an impossible demand of Jesus.

But it's not. Jesus says we must come to Truth like a little child comes to her loving father or mother--openly, sincerely, spontaneously, humbly... We need to realize that such little children are what God's reign is like. And we need to remember, contrary to how most religious people spend much of time putting down others different from themselves, that Jesus is not willing that any human should perish, be lost. Jesus is seeking those who are are spiritually needy.

And he emphasizes that God rejoices when even one person "changes his mind" (metanoia in Greek). This is far more important than all the seemingly nice people in the Christian churches who seem to, at least outwardly, need no repentance.

To emphasize this, Jesus tells the story of a rancher who has lost a cow and is trying to find it.(Well, that's my version since I used to work in Montana and grew up in Nebraska--the beef state;-)

To be continued

In the Light of the limitless love of God,

Daniel Wilcox