To Lie, or Not To Lie: That is the Question

Reginald Finley, aka The Infidel Guy, has contributed to and posted an article entitled How Are Atheists Moral Without Absolute Morality? This article was provided by Matthew Davis and borrows a hypothetical scenario from Dan Barker with the intention of demonstrating that since it is pragmatically infeasible to subscribe a belief in absolute morality, then absolute morals must not exist.

Reginald Finley

The article states that "If there are absolute morals_then they should always apply to every situation." Thus, they rhetorically ask, "Is it always wrong to lie?" They then proceed to argue that this is necessarily the case by referencing the following texts which they are certain support their premise:

Exodus 20:16 "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."
Leviticus 19:11 "You shall not steal, nor lie, nor be deceitful to one another."
Deuteronomy 5:20 "And you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."
Proverbs 12:22 "Lying lips are hateful to Jehovah, but those who deal truly are His delight."
Ephesians 4:25 "Therefore putting away lying, let each man speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another."
Revelation 21:8 "But the fearful, and the unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, will have their part in the Lake burning with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."

Once they feel they have established their premise, they proceed to knock it down by presenting "a paraphrase of Dan Barker's story about the 'blood-drenched' woman" (from Barker's book "Losing Faith In Faith-From Preacher to Atheist" 1992, p. 345) which is a hypothetical scenario:

"Suppose a woman in blood-drenched clothing comes to your front door, in tears, begging you to let her in because her husband is beating her. You let her in and give her water and console her and, all of the sudden, there is a knock at your door. It's the woman's husband and he wants to know if you've seen her. Do you lie and break 'god's absolute morals?'"

Dan Barker

They offer the following response (not to the husband but to you who believe in absolute morals):

"If you are a truly moral person.......YOU BETTER LIE TO HIS FACE!!!"

They therefore conclude thusly:

"morals are_relative to the situation_just common courtesy and common sense most of the time."

Assuming that they have once and for all dispensed with absolute morals, they confidently proceed to disparage the influence that biblical morality has had over the millennia with the following flawed comment:

"Do you really think the bible is what keeps everyone from wandering about killing people and stealing? Of course not."

They may want to consult with David Berkowitz aka The Son of Sam and millions of others who have lived through the millennia.

They also make a statement that comes to demonstrate that the sort of atheistic morality that they are arguing for is merely pseudo-morality. It boils down to a set self-serving procedures or rules for human interaction with the sole objective of maximizing benefit to the adherent himself and those within the circle of benefactors to the adherent. There is no motivation for attaining to satisfy or achieve a higher moral plane of existence with the goal of emulating that which is ultimately good:

"if one does horrible things to people, that person will eventually have horrible things happen to him."

Please take a moment to understand the point here: what happens to other human beings is irrelevant, the real purpose of this pseudo-morality is to keep anything horrible to happen to yourself.

Getting back to Barker's "blood-drenched women" scenario, let us make one thing clear and that is that Dan Barker began with a logical fallacy which appears to have slipped by Reginald Finley and Matthew Davis.

You have invited the blood-drenched woman into your home and then her husband knocks on the door and wants to know if you've seen her. We are then asked if we would lie and are finally told that a truly moral person would lie "YOU BETTER LIE TO HIS FACE!!!" But why? Why would a truly moral person lie in this case?
Because these three particular atheists have committed, and are perpetuating, a logical fallacy. The fallacy is that they have created a false dichotomy since they imply that you could only possibly answer with a "Yes" or a "No." But why should we only answer with one of those two answers? Because that way, having stacked the deck, Dan Barker, Reginald Finley and Matthew Davis could attempt to persuade you that the moral thing to do would be to lie.

But what could you do or say in such a case?
Well, you could say "Yes, I have seen her and I have also called the police."
You could say, "Yes, I have seen her but I don't know where she went." This may be merely semantic but keep in mind that a lie is not simply stating something that is not true, it is stating something that is not true and knowing that it is not true (see our essay It Truth True?). Imagine that you let her into your home and you are both in the living room. Next you both hear her husband knocking on the door. She runs down the hallway. You answer "Yes, I have seen her but I don't know where she went." This is true since you do not know where she went-she may have gone into the bedroom, the bathroom, the closet or the kitchen you really do not know.

What else could you do?
You could not open the door and not say anything.
You could tell him to get off of your property.
If he breaks the door down, you could also schedule a prompt meeting between his cranium and a baseball bat in self-defense.
There are a myriad of things that one could do in such a situation. The one thing that we aught not do is be led astray by logical fallacies.

However, we have been getting very far ahead of ourselves: if lying is a virtue, particularly when doing so will save our skins, perhaps the woman was blood-drenched because she had just murdered his own children and her husband and he wants to know if you've seen her so that she does not get away. By believing her lie and protecting her you may have just ensured the safe getaway of a mass cold blooded murderer.

Another important topic of interest here is that atheists should be encouraged to continue making arguments against absolute morals-they should shout them from the rooftops. We would encourage them because two more of their logical fallacies comes to light in an increasingly clear way when they do so. Atheists literature is peppered with condemnation of evil done in the name of religion, God, Jesus, Christianity, etc. They reason that religion, God, Jesus, Christianity, etc. are discredited because of these evil deeds. Not only do they have to borrow from absolute moral theistic systems in order to condemn but they are committing the logical fallacy known as the ad hominem: they are attacking the source of the argument and not dealing with the argument itself. Evil done in the name of, for example, Christianity functions to discredit Christianity about as well as terrible things done in the name of freedom discredits freedom. Secondly, the more that they argue against absolute morals the more that they loose the ability to condemn any actions. They cannot condemn the past because those people were following the morality of their day and they cannot condemn the present because for all they know morality is evolving as we speak. Disproving absolute morality knocks the legs from under every atheist argument against religion's moral evil deeds (see our essay Arguments That Atheists Should Not Use and also Morality's Reality).

Some atheists are so committed to a lifestyle that is based upon besmirching the beliefs of those with whom they disagree that they end up discrediting themselves. The Bible urges us to "Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" (2nd Timothy 2:15). Whether we seek to discredit or accredit the Bible we aught to deal with the issues carefully and fairly.

Allow us to engage upon a circumlocution:
The Bible teaches that we aught not murder but that we can kill. How is that? There are two moral categories into which taking a life fits: murder is the immoral taking of an innocent life while killing is the moral taking of a life. If a thief takes your life while robbing you that is a murder but if you take his life while defending yourself that killing. Certainly the terms are sometimes interchanged in fact, some Bibles translate the commandment as "Thou shalt not kill." Yet, context determines meaning and so regardless of what particular word is used the context informs us that there is a category difference between moral and immoral taking of a life such as an unjustified crime versus self defense. The body of the Old Testament text makes these distinctions very clear.

With regards to North American politics there is an interesting quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln, "The Constitution is not a suicide pact." The basic point of which is that the letter of the law is not to be followed if it leads to our deaths-practicality aught to win over laws that may turn out to be idealistic when confronted with particular and or peculiar circumstances.

Likewise, the Bible's moral system offers not only the word of the law but the spirit of the law and examples of how the word and spirit are to be employed. Take for instance the following example of times in which Jesus' disciples and King David and his men were hungry and "broke the law" by eating:

"At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. And His disciples were hungry, and began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, 'Look, Your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath!' But He said to them, 'Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the showbread which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless? Yet I say to you that in this place there is One greater than the temple. But if you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. Now when He had departed from there, He went into their synagogue. And behold, there was a man who had a withered hand. And they asked Him, saying, 'Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?'-that they might accuse Him. Then He said to them, 'What man is there among you who has one sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value then is a man than a sheep? Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. Then He said to the man, 'Stretch out your hand.' And he stretched it out, and it was restored as whole as the other" (Mark 2:23-28).

This is the event to which Jesus referred:

"NOW David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech was afraid when he met David, and said to him, 'Why are you alone, and no one is with you?' So David said to Ahimelech the priest, 'The king has ordered me on some business, and said to me, 'Do not let anyone know anything about the business on which I send you, or what I have commanded you.' And I have directed my young men to such and such a place. Now therefore, what have you on hand? Give me five loaves of bread in my hand, or whatever can be found. And the priest answered David and said, 'There is no common bread on hand; but there is holy bread, if the young men have at least kept themselves from women.' Then David answered the priest, and said to him, 'Truly, women have been kept from us about three days since I came out. And the vessels of the young men are holy, and the bread is in effect common, even though it was consecrated in the vessel this day.' So the priest gave him holy bread; for there was no bread there but the showbread which had been taken from before the LORD, in order to put hot bread in its place on the day when it was taken away" (1st Samuel 21:1-6).

Should the disciples have gone hungry in order to keep the Sabbath? Should and King David and his men have gone hungry in order to keep the law of the Temple? No. But what does this say of the law? Does it not prove that it is relative after all? Let us first see what God Himself has to say about following the law the higher purpose of which is obviously to convert the heart:

"Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, As in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams" (1st Samuel 15:22).

"'To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me?' Says the LORD. 'I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams. And the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls, Or of lambs or goats_Bring no more futile sacrifices; Incense is an abomination to Me. The New Moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies-I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting_Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, Learn to do good; Seek justice, Rebuke the oppressor; Defend the fatherless, Plead for the widow. "Come now, and let us reason together,' Says the LORD" (see Isaiah 1:11-18).

"Therefore the Lord said: 'Inasmuch as these people draw near with their mouths And honor Me with their lips, But have removed their hearts far from Me, And their fear toward Me is taught by the commandment of men'" (Isaiah 29:13).

"For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, And the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings" (Hosea 6:6).

James Kingsley posted a reply to the original post by Reginald Finley and Matthew Davis (and Dan Barker by proxy) that succinctly states the following:

"Wow! Interestingly enough your example of when you think it should be ok to lie takes place in the Bible. And guess what? God doesn't disagree with this. (Paraphrase of Joshua 2) Joshua sends two spies to the house of a prostitute, and the king of Jericho hears words of this and sends men to capture the spies. When the men come to the prostitutes [sic.] house, the prostitute says that the spies were at the house but had left when it was time to close the city gate. She then tells them that if they hurry that they can catch them, but she's not sure which they went. All awhile, the spies are still safely hidden inside. The Bible is an enormous volume. You cannot take isolated passages and make them maxims. Christians use scripture to interpret scripture. So this above example would be reason for it to be ok to lie in the right situation. All of God's Laws and commands are superceded [sic.] by righteousness. Ultimately, it is your heart that God will judge. If God wanted just a list of absolutes the Bible would be only a dozen pages long. Instead, God paints a colorful portrait of what is right and wrong, also known as Jesus. The Bible isn't as close minded as you might think."

What is really significant to understand is that we aught to carefully consider the practical balance between the word and spirit of the law. Clearly, it is not an invitation to purposefully deceive people for our personal gain at will.

The obvious lesson is that it is one thing to concoct emotionally charged false dichotomies. It is quite another to break the mold of the restriction that the fallacious argument is attempting to trap you into. It is still another to think for yourself and not let the arguer restrict your logical responses. And another yet to take the time to actually understand the whole of what the Bible is teaching rather than posing logically fallacious arguments that even people who agree with your ultimate point should reject.

Kyle Butt, M.A. has written a very telling article entitled, What "We All Know" about a Lie. In it he makes the following point regarding the relative morals for which Dan Barker argues:

"Putting Dan Barker's statements together in logical form: (1) he considers it moral to lie in order to 'protect someone from harm;' (2) he considers religion to be harmful; (3) then it must follow that Dan Barker would lie in order to dissuade a person from believing in God or religion."

I am much obliged to my friend D.M. for his advice regarding this essay.