The Worrying State of Medicine

I spent about four hours today at a local Urgent Care facility. Without going into too much detail, the reason I had to do this was because the doctor's appointment I had scheduled for yesterday got canceled because my doctor got sent to cover ER shifts because of labor shortages in the medical industry. The immediate problem I was seeing her for is that my oxygen saturation levels, especially early in the morning, were getting worryingly low, and after starting a new medication I had gained six pounds in a single week, which could be seen as visible swelling in my legs. Since I was measuring my O2 levels with my own pulse/ox, I used the patient portal to say, “This is what I'm measuring. What should I do for the next two weeks before our rescheduled appointment?” Thus, today, I received a call where my doctor informed me I should go to the Urgent Care facility to get examined to make sure there wasn't anything major going on.

Now the fact that my primary doctor wasn't available for a scheduled appointment due to workplace shortages of medical professionals isn't the main focus here. It is certainly worrisome, but I think what might even be more so is the exchange I had with the doctor at the Urgent Care clinic. Since I wasn't getting enough oxygen and had obvious fluid retention from swelling, he ran a litany of tests on me including EKG and a chest X-Ray, even the universal COVID test, all of which came back as “good news” (thank God). But after he got the results back and he was explaining them to me, the doctor mentioned at one point that they'd had a little difficulty with one of the tests because my chest is so large. He then immediately said, “Not that I'm saying there's anything bad about being so large.”

And this is the point I want to bring up. I actually immediately said, “No, I know it's bad. In fact, the increased weight is precisely one of the very things I pointed out to you that had me so concerned.” I immediately saw his demeanor change, as if he was relieved to be able to speak honestly instead of being terrified of offending me, and he said, “Yes, if we could get rid of that weight, it would almost certainly help across the board with everything else here.”

So why did I find this exchange so problematic that I decided to write a blog post about it, especially given that it means I had to divulge (albeit obscurely) some health details I'd rather not talk about? Because I just experienced a doctor telling me something we both knew was a lie because he was afraid that I might be offended had he told me the truth.

There's real danger in this, though. I could have easily come away from that conversation telling everyone, “I went to Urgent Care and the doctor said my weight is fine” when the reality is the exact opposite. If he was so unwilling to state the objective fact that being overweight is detrimental to one's health, then what else are doctors afraid to tell patients? It's extremely worrisome if doctors will lie for the sake of one's ego instead of telling the truth for the sake of one's life.

In the meantime, I still have a case of “We Don't Know”, but at least I know my heart and lungs are sound right now, and I don't have Wuhan Bat Lung either. Prayers would be appreciated that someone in the medical field discovers what the proximate cause is. Or, God could just zap me. I'm fine with that too.

Demonic deception

jay-dog asks an intriguing question in this post:

I have noticed that when presented with miracle claims from other religions, Christian apologists will suggest the possibility that they could just be attempts by demons to deceive us. However, couldn't people from other religions say the exact same thing about the evidence for the Ressurection? Here are some blog posts where I heard this idea and I wanted to get your response. Thank you.

Sorry I didn't read through the posts you linked to, but I think there's enough material in your question to address. Here are my thoughts on the question:

Is it always wrong to violate a confidence?

A friend asked me whether it's always wrong to violate a confidence. Sharing a confidence involves a two-way trust. It carries the implicit condition that the individual sharing a confidence not abuse the trust or take advantage of the person he confides in. 

There's a prima facie obligation not to divulge information shared in confidence. But that's not absolute. For one thing, you don't know in advance what someone will confide in you, so you can't render informed consent to keep it secret. A person can't unilaterally obligate you to keep their secret. They don't have that coercive moral authority over you. You can't reasonably be expected to make a commitment when you're in the dark. Indeed, open-ended commitments can be unethical. 

There may be other the concerned parties who also have rights. Keeping a secret may unjustly harm them. So we have to balance competing duties. In case of conflict, some duties override other duties. 

To take a hypothetical case, suppose I know the pastor's son is a closet homosexual. I suspect that, and at some point he confides in me.

Normally I'd protect his identity. I'd cover for him (without lying), because he has a struggle, and he needs a straight friend to talk to, where he's free to let down his guard. To out him would be gratuitously harmful to his reputation and his faith. 

If, however, he decides to follow his dad's career path by going into the family business, as a youth pastor (say), that changes things. Now he's inserting himself into a situation which will, at the very least, expose him to unnecessary temptation, and at the worst he's deliberately exploiting the situation to seduce vulnerable young men. At that point, all bets are off. 

Minimally, I'd warn him to stay clear of Christian ministry and other venues where he works with other young men. I'll also tell him that if he doesn't heed the warning, I will be obligated to out him for the protection of the innocent. At that point he forced my hand. 

Just to clarify, there are situations in which I'd lie for someone to cover for them, but in the hypothetical situation I raised, I don't owe him that. All other things being equal, I'm prepared to cover for him short of lying for him. There's a difference between concealing and deceiving. Sometimes both are justified, but sometimes concealing is justified while deceiving is not. 

Suppose I know a classmate cheated on an exam. Suppose he knows I know. But he's now remorseful about his action. 

I'm not going to rat him out, in part because I'm not personally responsible for what he did, and he's contrite about his wrongdoing. At this stage it would be more harmful to rat him out. In that sense I'll cover for him. I'd keep it between us. 

If, however, his action was exposed by someone else, I'm not going to lie for him. He did wrong. It's not my duty to lie to coverup his wrongdoing. He can't reasonable expect that from me. Having taken a risk, he must be prepared to face the consequences. 

People of the lie

What does Rev 21:8 mean? It can't mean anyone who ever lied is doomed to hell. That would mean there's no point in unbelievers converting to Christianity. Most pagan gentiles lied on a regular basis. It can't mean it's too late for them to become Christian because their behavior as liars damns them in advance. 

In the larger context of Revelation, it has reference, not to tactful lies or altruistic lies (e.g. lying to protect the innocent). Rather, the "lie" in Revelation is false worship. Counterfeit religion. Diabolical heathenism, in defiance of the true faith. In Revelation, the "lie" is paganism. Idolatry. To be a devil-worshiper, under the guise of polytheism. You live in service of that lie. You live in service to a systematic lie about God. 

Not coincidentally, that's how the word is used in 1 Jn 2:22 & 5:10. A religious lie. Likewise, Jn 8:44. If's not as if Satan tells altruistic lies. That's not the kind of lie in view. Rather, he lies about God. He deceives people about God. He leads them astray from the one true God. 

Erasing Catholic teaching

The teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (here after CCC) has undergone substantive since its initial publication. I wonder how many Catholics compare different editions to register the changes. In addition, there's a distinction between print editions and electronic revisions. Nowadays the CCC can be revised or updated without formally issuing or announcing a third edition, fourth edition, &c.. 

The official edition is at the Vatican website. While it's convenient to be able to read the CCC online, a downside of the electronic version is that whenever it's revised, that erases the prior history of the CCC's teaching. 

It's also becoming harder to check the online version against print editions because libraries are eliminating print books. They take up space and fewer borrowers check them out. 

Another complication is that the "canonical" text is in Latin, so the wording of English translations may vary a bit. Likewise, when the Latin text is revised, there might be lag time to revise translations. All these factors make it harder to compare different editions of the CCC back-to-back. Unless you happen to own a print copies of the first and second editions, it's hard to make a direct comparison from the primary sources. Sometimes you can get the text from secondary sources that discuss changes to the CCC. 

I see some Catholic apologists offer the face-saving explanation that the first edition was "provisional". But the first edition wasn't a draft copy. It was approved for publication by Pope John-Paul II and Cardinal Ratziger, then Prefect for the CDF and chairman of the CCC committee. It contains the foreword ("Apostolic Constitution") by John-Paul II, where he declares is "declare it to be a sure norm for teaching the faith":

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/aposcons.htm

Let's compare two examples where the teaching of the CCC has undergone substantive alteration. 

1. Lying

Original edition

2483 To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead into error someone who has a right to know the truth. 

Revision:

2483 To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead someone into error.

2. Capital Punishment

Original edition:

2266 Preserving the common good of society requires rendering the aggressor unable to inflict harm. For this reason the traditional teaching of the Church has acknowledged as well-founded the right and duty of legitimate public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime, not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty. 

First revision (John-Paul II)

2266 The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people's rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and the duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. 

Second revision (Pope Francis)

2267. Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.

Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.

Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”,[1] and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide. 

3. Taking stock

In the case of lying, the revision eliminates the proviso: someone who has a right to know the truth

In the case of capital punishment, the first revision eliminates the proviso: not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty. 

While the second revision rules out capital punishment in principle. 

These are fundamental issues in Catholic moral theology, so it's striking to see the teaching of the CCC undergo substantive change or reversal in the course of a few years. 

4. For further reference:

Catechism of the Catholic Church (1995 print edition)

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/11/what-counts-as-lie.html

https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2018/08/02/180802a.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20130312145145/http://old.usccb.org/sdwp/national/criminal/catechism.shtml

Covering for your enemy

In this post I'd like to consider the ethics of lying from two different angles:

i) One objection to lying is pragmatic: If you know someone lied to you, how can you trust them? I've discussed that before in relation to friendship, where one friend covers for another if his friend got into trouble even though his friend did nothing wrong.

But let's consider the opposite case. Suppose you're a high school student. There's a classmate who hates your guts. And he makes his animus evident at every available opportunity. He's your enemy. Needless to say, you're not very fond of him either.  

One day he uses a "homophobic" or "transphobic" slur when talking to an LGBT student. He does it in your presence. The LGBT student reports this offense to the Vice Principal. It violate the student handbook. Students guilty of "homophobic/transphobic" slurs face suspension, "sensitivity training," or expulsion. 

Next day the three of you are called into the Vice Principal's office. The LGBT student accuses your enemy of using the slur. Your enemy denies it. The LGBT student calls you as a witness. Since you overheard what was said, you're the tiebreaker. 

Your enemy expects you to back up the allegation. Here's your chance to get even with him. But instead, you cover for him. You deny hearing him use the forbidden slur. Your enemy is surprised. Indeed, he's pleasantly shocked. Later, that gives you an opening to share the gospel with him. He respects you for standing up for him when you had every reason to be vindictive. 

ii) Now it might be objected that even if this had a good result in the case of your erstwhile enemy, it hardened the LGBT student against you. And that may be true. Sometimes we have to make choices. What benefits one person will offend another. 

iii) The illustration doesn't show that lying is sometimes justified. That wasn't the purpose of the illustration. It was simply countering a pragmatic objection with a pragmatic justification. Lying could still be (inherently) wrong for other reasons. 

iv) But here's another dimension to the hypothetical. In this case, it's not merely a question of whether or not to lie. Rather, it's a question of being pressed into the service of someone else's agenda. In this situation, if you rat out your classmate, you are allowing yourself to become a tool of the LGBT agenda. A weapon for an unjust cause.

So there's more than one moral issue in play. On the one hand there's the ethics of lying. Is it always wrong? If not, what are the exceptions? On the other hand, there's the duty not to let yourself be coerced or commandeered into facilitating an ungodly movement. 

None of this proves that lying is ever justified. But it introduces some moral complications that are often overlooked by the absolutists. 

God of life and truth

The ultimate reality of which Moses was the shadow, the archetype of which Moses was the ectype, now appeared. The true light (John 1:9), the true grace were now manifested.’ It is in this sense that we are to understand our Lord when he said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life’...He is the God of truth and all truth derives its sanctity from him. This is why all untruth or falsehood is wrong; it is a contradiction of that which God is... The necessity of truthfulness in us rests upon God’s truthfulness. As we are to be holy because God is holy, so we are to be truthful because God is truthful. The glory of God is that he is the God of truth; the glory of man is that he is the image of God and therefore ‘of the truth’ (cf John 18:37). It is not without significance that the arch-enemy of God and his kingdom is the father of lies; ‘he does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, because he is a liar and the father of it’ (John 8:44).

https://www.the-highway.com/truth_Murray.html

There are some problem with this inference:

i) Not only is God the exemplar of truth, but as Murray mentions, the exemplar of life. Conversely, Satan is not only the archetypal liar, but the archetypal murderer. 

Likewise, humans are life-givers, through the power of procreation. In that respect, we emulate God–at a finite, derivative level. 

But where does our duty lie if we can save innocent life through an altruistic falsehood? Which of God's exemplary attributes provides moral guidance in that situation: the God of life or the God of truth? Is our primary obligation in that situation to safeguard truth or to safeguard life? Does the preservation of truth take precedence over the preservation of life? So Murray is arbitrarily selective in his appeal to God's nature. 

ii) I don't think we can automatically extrapolate from what's right for God to what's right for us. God is not exposed to the vulnerabilities that lead human agents to lie, to get out of the situation. Of course, that doesn't justify lying in general. But we can find ourselves in dangerous or unjust situations through no fault of our own, where a lie may be the only escape. God is never in that desperate position or predicament. So it's not analogous. God is not in every respect our role model. In some respects he's a radically different kind of being, with some unique prerogatives. 

Altruistic lies

This is a sort of sequel to my previous post:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/02/can-god-lie.html

In my observation, many apostates leave the faith because they feel God betrayed them. God broke his promises in the Bible. God "lied" to them.

Put another way, they think prayer promises are a lie. The Bible disappointed their expectations. So they conclude that God doesn't exist. 

When someone angrily says, "You lied to me!", that typically involves a sense of betrayal. Not just that you lied to me, but that your lie was a breach of trust. Where the act of lying is tantamount to stabbing me in the back (or equivalent metaphors).

Now, this post isn't based on the assumption that God actually lies to anyone, or that God ever lies to Christians in particular. However, let's consider that scenario for the sake of argument.

It's easy to dream up hypothetical situations in which one person lies to another person for the sake of the other person. That's sometimes called an altruistic lie. 

I'm not discussing the morality of lying. I'm not discussing whether altruistic lies are ever justified. Rather, I'm just discussing whether a lie is ipso facto tantamount to an act of betrayal. As a matter of principle, is that the case? 

And as I say, it's easy to imagine hypothetical situations in which you might lie to someone to protect them. Suppose you have a teenage son who's high on drugs. And he's holding a loaded pistol, which he gestures at his head. Suppose you lie to him to get the pistol away from him. 

Or suppose Muslims convince a 10-year-old boy to wear a suicide jacket. And you talk him out of pulling the string by making him a promise you have no intention of keeping. But you do that to prevent him from killing himself.

Or suppose you have a friend in high school who's vying for a sports scholarship. His heart is set on getting that sports scholarship. There's one other student who's competing for the scholarship. Unbeknownst to your friend, you find out that his rival is the son of a Mafia don. They intend to break your friend's kneecaps the day of the competition. For some reason you can't share that information with your friend. Therefore, you lie to him, so that he shows up too late for the competition. His rival gets the scholarship by default.

Or suppose you know the referee was bribed to throw the game. Your friend doesn't know that. If your friend wins, that will expose him to reprisal, so you tell a lie that messes with his head, causing him to lose concentration and play badly. 

Now suppose, in each case, they find out that you lied to them, but they don't know the reason. They will be furious. At that stage they will feel that you double-crossed them. That will destroy the friendship (or parental bond).

And suppose this is aggravated by the fact that you wish you could explain it to them, but the true explanation would put them at risk. So you have to accept the fact that they will misjudge you. They will think the worst of you. They will hate you. It poses a dilemma: you must lose the friendship to save the friend. 

But suppose at a later date, they discover on their own the true reason you lied to them. That changes everything. Now they realize that you didn't betray them. Just the opposite. You lied to spare them. To save them from terrible harm. You were such a good friend that you were prepared to sacrifice the friendship for their benefit.

At that point they seek you out and reconcile with you. Indeed, the friendship is stronger now than it was before you lied to them. Ironically, they trust you much more than they did before you lied to them, because the friendship was put to a test in a way that proves what a steadfast friend you are. 

Point being: even if, for discussion purposes, we grant that God might lie to his people or lie to one of his people, that, in itself, isn't equivalent to divine betrayal. In a roundabout way, God might be acting in their best interests. It was for their own good, even though it didn't seem that way at the time.

Of course, God doesn't have the same limitations we have. The fact that we might find ourselves in situations where we're tempted to tell an altruistic lie doesn't generally have parallels in divine providence. However, it's a complicated world with a multitude of agents who have competing interests. Not all possibilities are compossible. So there are some restrictions on God's field of action even if everything is planned in advance. 

Can God lie?

In my experience, Calvinists typically contend that while God can and sometimes does deceive certain people through secondary means (e.g.1 Kgs 20:23), God cannot lie directly. He can deceive through the instrumentality of others (e.g. Ezk 14:9-10) but he can't personally lie. 

On the face of it, that's a makeshift distinction, but in fairness, they simply attempting to adhere to biblical distinctions. And freewill theists are in the same boat. Take stock prooftexts that God cannot lie:

God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? (Numbers 23:19).

The Glory of Israel will not lie (1 Samuel 15:29).

in the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time (Tit 1:2).

God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie (Heb 6:18).

I'll revisit these momentarily, but let's consider a different passage:

Then God said, Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you (Gen 22:2).

1. On the face of it, didn't God lie to Abraham? No point getting bent out of shape by my asking the question. This is not a minor passage. It's from a famous, major incident in Scripture. And it's just as inspired as the contrary prooftexts. 

2. Perhaps someone will object that it's not a lie because it's just a command, whereas a lie must be a declarative sentence. Commands can't be lies because they don't assert or deny anything. Only propositions can be lies. But there are problems with that deflection:

3. It's a hairsplitting distinction that appeals to modern philosophy of language, but why assume Bible writers were operating with that dichotomy? Why assume they confined lies to propositions rather than other kinds of verbal deception? (Or even nonverbal deception?) We can't just impose that stipulation on Scripture.  

4. For that matter, the concept or definition of lying didn't fall from the sky. Even from a philosophical standpoint, it's not a given that lying must be propositional. For instance:

Against the statement condition of L1 it has been objected that the making of a statement is not necessary for lying. Lying to others may be defined as “any form of behavior the function of which is to provide others with false information or to deprive them of true information” (Smith 2004, 14), or as “a successful or unsuccessful deliberate attempt, without forewarning, to create in another a belief which the communicator considers to be untrue” (Vrij 2000, 6). Importantly, this entails that lying can consist of simply withholding information with the intent to deceive, without making any statement at all (Ekman 1985, 28; Scott 2006, 4). Those who make this objection would make lying the same as intentionally deceiving (Ekman 1985, 26).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lying-definition/#ObjTraDefLyi

1. According to Gen 22:2, God issued a command that's verbally deceptive. On a related note, Scripture contains divine predictions of judgment, yet God sometimes relents. Did he keep his word or go back on his word? 

2. This is, in part, an issue about theological method. Assuming inerrancy, when we have apparently discrepant statements in Scripture, what statements function as the benchmark in relation to which we harmonize the other statements? Is Gen 22:2 paradigmatic–or Num 23:19? 

3. One principle is that when Scripture has passages of the same kind, where some are qualified while others are unqualified, we treat the unqualified passages as implicitly qualified by the qualified passages. So, for instance, some oracles of doom are formally unconditional while others are contingent on contrition, so we treat unqualified oracles of doom that don't come to pass, not as false prophecies or failed predictions, but implicitly conditional threats. And that's something to keep in mind when it comes to passages about divine veracity and deception. 

4. A problem with simply quoting 1 Sam 15:29 to settle the issue is that 1 Sam 15:11 says the opposite:

I regret that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions (1 Sam 15:11).

If we take both statements at face value, that generates a contradiction. The standard orthodox explanation is that 1 Sam 15:11 is anthropomorphic. And I agree with that. 

5. Heb 6:18, as formulated, is not an absolute statement, but a specific claim about two unchangeable things: God's promise and oath. That's consistent with either of two positions:

i) It's intrinsically impossible for God to lie, and these two examples are special cases of that general principle. 

ii) It's impossible for God to lie about these two kinds of things, but the statement doesn't address the larger issue of whether God cannot lie under any circumstance whatsoever. 

6. When you look at the prooftexts, there's a common theme. God cannot lie about certain kinds of promises. God cannot lie about his commitment to the ultimate welfare of his people. Here's another example:

What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written,

“That you may be justified in your words,

    and prevail when you are judged.”

(Rom 3:3-4)

That unpacks lying in terms of infidelity. For God to lie, in this context, would mean God was unfaithful to his covenantal obligations. 

Minimally, what the biblical data indicates is that God can't be deceptive about promises of salvation (or damnation). Paradoxically, even in the paradigmatic case of Gen 22, the deceptive command facilitates the covenant with Abraham and other parties to the covenant (future Jews and Gentiles). So the verbal deception is benevolent rather than malevolent. That's like the proverbial white lie, which has a beneficial aim or intent. Telling a necessary lie to do someone good.

Entrapment

I've see a few Christians object to Kavanaugh's confirmation, not because they think his youthful indiscretions are disqualifying, but because he lied about them. I'm discussing this because it raises some general ethical issues over and above the Kavanaugh psychodrama. 

A terminological clarification before I proceed. I use "disqualifying" as shorthand for conduct deemed to disqualify someone from certain types of employment. Although "youthful indiscretion" is sometimes a euphemism, I'm using it, not in a minimizing sense, but to classify misbehavior that's not deemed to be serious enough to be disqualifying. Misbehavior that's disqualifying is more serious than a youthful indiscretion. 

For people who take the aforesaid position, I have the following question: 

If a youthful indiscretion isn't disqualifying, why is lying about a youthful indiscretion disqualifying? 

Let's consider some possibilities:

1. Perhaps they think lying is intrinsically wrong. Therefore, while the youthful indiscretion is insufficient to be disqualifying, lying in itself is disqualifying. 

i) On that view, even if the individual committed no youthful indiscretions whatsoever, lying would preemptively disqualify him from further consideration.

ii) Although I don't have any scientific stats at my fingertips, it's my impression that most people lie some of the time. If lying is permanently disqualifying, that would result in massive unemployment. Or is it only disqualifying for certain kinds of jobs? If so, what kinds of jobs? 

2. Perhaps they think that while the youthful indiscretion is insufficiently disqualifying in its own right, and lying is insufficiently disqualifying in its own right, the combination crosses a threshold. 

3. Does lying automatically mean a person is dishonest? Some people are habitual liars. Other people are truthful if you don't threaten their family or livelihood. Many people will lie in predictable situations. Whether lying is always wrong is different from whether lying makes the liar generally dishonest or untrustworthy. Those are separate issues.

Sometimes people can get into trouble for doing the right thing. Suppose I know that someone won't cover for me if I'm at risk of getting into trouble for doing the right thing? Paradoxically, his honestly would make him untrustworthy in that situation. I know he won't lie to protect me, even though I did nothing wrong. 

Once again, that doesn't settle the question of whether lying is ever morally permissible (or even obligatory). But it does complicate the issue of what make someone a friend you can rely on in pinch. If they're so honest that they'd expose you to harm for doing the right thing, are they friendship material?

4. Suppose a person is questioned under oath as part of a background check. Supposed they're asked if they ever engaged in sexting. Suppose they did engage in sexting when they were a teenager, but they outgrew that. But the question poses a dilemma:

i) If, on the one hand, they lie, that might be a crime. If, on the other hand, they tell the truth, that might be confessing to a crime. On the one hand they risk perjury while on the other hand they risk self-incrimination.

ii) Suppose it wasn't a crime. Even so, that's asking them to divulge embarrassing information that could still be used against them. And it may be completely irrelevant to the job they're seeking. 

Why should they be required to answer unfair questions on pain of perjury? Why should they be punished for lying in response to a question that the investigator had no right to ask in the first place? Why should they be disqualified for lying when the question is unfair and harmful to them, while there's nothing in their past conduct that will be harmful to others in the future? 

Even–or especially–if you think lying is intrinsically wrong, then entrapment is wrong. Pushing someone to the limit, then blaming them for the situation you put them in. They wouldn't do that if you didn't corner them. If you induce them to lie, who's at fault? They wouldn't lie if you didn't ask them unfair, damaging questions.

I'm not talking about someone who already did something gravely wrong, and you're questioning them to find out more. Rather, I'm talking about a scenario in which the interrogation itself is threatening to the respondent, quite apart from past behavior. 

Stats on rape allegations

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/brett-kavanaugh-accusations-rape-claim-statistics/

Divine deception

in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began (Tit 1:2).

so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us (Heb 6:18).

And if the prophet is deceived and speaks a word, I, Yahweh, have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel (Ezk 14:9).

19 And Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left; 20 and the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ And one said one thing, and another said another. 21 Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, ‘I will entice him.’ 22 And the Lord said to him, ‘By what means?’ And he said, ‘I will go out, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And he said, ‘You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do so.’ 23 Now therefore behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has declared disaster for you” (1 Kgs 22:19-23).

Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false (2 Thes 2:11).

On the face of it there's a point of tension between these two sets of statements. God is not a liar, but a deceiver. How can that tension be resolved? Let's consider some possibilities: 

1. Lying is typically verbal deception whereas there are nonverbal forms of deception. Admittedly, that doesn't seem to be morally significant, but it's not a contradiction. Yet I'll granted you that it's a is pretty superficial explanation.

2. God never lies to his people, but he sometimes deceives the wicked. 

3. Apropos (2), it's possible that God does lie, but only to the wicked. The context of Tit 1:2 and Heb 6:18 concerns God's relation to his own people. So perhaps the point of contrast is not that God never lies, but that he never lies to his own people. And that explains his modus operandi in relation to the wicked.

On the other hand, it's possible that these passages state a universal principle, and the contextual distinction is just a special case of that universal principle. But that leaves the prima facie point of tension unresolved.

4. It might be a distinction between mediate and immediate agency. God doesn't lie, but he sometimes delegates the task of deception to secondary agents. Whether that's a morally significant distinction is a different issue, but it's not a contradiction. Again, though, that's a pretty superficial explanation.

5. However, we can approach this from a different, rather neglected angle. Let's consider the nature of deception. In general, deception involves a relation between the deceiver and the deceived. Sometimes the deceiver makes the primary contribution but sometimes the deceived makes the primary contribution while the deceiver's contribution is incidental. Let's consider some examples:

i) In our culture, two males teenage or adult kissing on the lips is generally an indication of homosexuality. There are, however, exceptions. There are families in which a father will kiss his teenage son or adult son on the lips or vice versa. Likewise, there are families in which two brothers (teenagers or adults) will kiss each other on the lips. In that context, while that's a sign of affection, this is by no means an erotic kiss.

There may also be exceptional situations in which two biologically unrelated straight men kiss each other on the lips. Suppose your best friend is dying. You're by his deathbed as he's about to expire. You kiss him on the lips just before he dies. Or maybe you do that right after he expires. A parallel example would be a military setting where a wounded soldier is dying.

Now, to an onlooker who doesn't know the relationship or the circumstances, this appears to indicate homosexuality. The onlooker is deceived by what he sees. Does that makes the individuals who convey that impression deceivers? Only in a very roundabout sense. Their actions aren't directed at the onlooker, but a family member (or dying friend or comrade). There's no intention to deceive the onlooker. That's a side effect. 

In addition, the source of deception in this case is primarily due to the onlooker's preconception. How he misinterprets the situation. The onlooker's projection.

ii) Suppose, in response to a hostile question, I say homosexuality is sinful, homosexuals should not be allowed to marry each other, join a church, or be ordained. The hostile questioner will infer that I'm a bigot. I'm motivated by homophobia. It's impossible for me to have any rational or ethical justification for my position.

What the questioner has done is to filter my answers through his biased, preconceived narrative about Christians. In a sense, he's deceived by my answers because he assumes the worst about my motives. In that respect, it's possible for truthful statements to be deceptive. However, that's not because the Christian respondent had the intention to deceive. The deceptive effect is an incidental consequence of the questioner's prejudice. 

iii) Suppose someone asks me if I'm a Calvinist. If I say yes, that's a truthful answer, yet it may be deceptive inasmuch as he and I don't mean the same thing by that designation. He has a preconceived notion of what Calvinism represents. A twisted caricature of Calvinism. It might be better for me to say, "Before I answer that question, I think we need to define our terms. This is what I mean by Calvinism". 

It's possible to deceive someone by speaking or acting in a way that has that adventitious effect. The deception is largely due to their own assumptions and inferences. My statement or action creates that ancillary impression in combination with what they contribute to the observation. 

I'm not saying that's necessarily what's meant when Scripture says that God sometimes deludes the wicked. The point, though, is that by simply putting some people in a certain situation, given their malicious mindset, they will, in a way, be self-deceived by what they see and hear because their warped outlook places the worst construction on that incident. 

Choosing the lesser sin

I'm going to comment on an essay by Wayne Grudem: Christians Never Have to Choose the “Lesser Sin”, J. Frame, W. Grudem, & J. Hughes, eds. Redeeming the Life of the Mind: Essays in Honor of Vern Poythress (Crossway 2017), chap. 19.

Some Christian writers claim that people sometimes find themselves in situations so difficult that they are faced with a choice between disobeying one of God's moral commands or another, and in those situations they are forced by circumstances to choose the "lesser sin". 

i) Freewill theism generates moral dilemmas because God must play the hand he's dealt. God can't guarantee that we will always in a position to do the right thing.

ii) But that doesn't necessary imply that we are forced to choose the lesser sin. If no moral options are available, through no fault of our own, it could well be argued that we are blameless if we choose the least evil course of action. 

That's not my own position. But it's coherent, given the framework. 

Is there a Santa clause?

Recently, in response to a question, I got into a debate over Santa Claus. It's striking how emotionally invested both sides can be in this debate. I don't think the Santa Claus mythos is a big deal one way or the other, but it raises some significant, perennial questions about parental duties and Catholic morality: 

Parents who do this certainly mean well, but they do not do well, because lying is always wrong. Not always gravely wrong, to be sure, but still wrong. That is bad enough. But there is also the bad lesson that children are apt to derive from this practice, even if the parents do not intend to teach it – namely, the immoral principle that lying is acceptable if it leads to good consequences. There is also the damage done to a child’s trust in his parents’ word. “What else might they be lying about? What about all this religion stuff?”

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/11/there-is-no-santa-clause.html

Hays

i) Feser's objection depends in part on the assumption that lying is universally wrong. And that's certainly an issue worth discussing. That, however, is a separate argument, because it turns on a general principle. "Lying" about Santa is wrong because lying about anything is wrong. "Lying" about Santa is just a special case of that general prohibition. 

If that's the basis of the objection to the Santa mythos, then we should shift the debate to whether lying is absolutely wrong.

ii) Notice that Feser's logic precludes any form of espionage involving spies who assume a false identity. That's how radical his position is. We're not allowed to send agents into a hostile country who pretend to be someone they're not. 

iii) Then there's his pragmatic objection. But that cuts both ways. What if your parents are Hindu or Buddhist or Muslim or secular humanists? Is it not beneficial in that context for kids to doubt the wisdom of their parents?

I strongly believe that Christian parents should not lie to their children about the existence of a supernatural, all-knowing being who is watching them and holding them morally accountable. Once they find out that you have lied to them about Santa’s existence, how can doubts not also arise that you have been wrong as well in telling them that God exists? Maybe the whole Christmas story is a myth which thinking adults should outgrow.

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/question-answer/P90/should-parents-let-their-children-believe-in-santa-claus

Is lying ever right?

http://www.craigkeener.com/is-lying-ever-right-exodus-119-21/

Better to let the whole world burn

The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one willful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse. 

http://www.newmanreader.org/works/apologia65/chapter5.html

There's a brittle absolutism you encounter in some theological circles. It's often found among Catholic ethicists like Elizabeth Anscombe, Alexander Pruss, Germain Grisez, and Christopher Tollefsen. A Protestant exponent is Lydia McGrew. 

In Lydia's case, I suspect her absolutism is driven by her commendable opposition to abortion and euthanasia. Now perhaps she'd say it's the another way around: her absolutism is driving her opposition to abortion and euthanasia. 

However, Lydia has said:

Suppose that a general has ordered a military strike against a certain location and that there is some outcry that this was unethical because it was not a military target but a civilian target. The general had a lot of statistics and facts showing precisely this question, showing why this question arose, but he still chose to order the strike despite the doubts. Later, he sees pictures of the children who have died in the airstrike, precisely as predicted by the statistics he had available to him about the civilian population at that location. He is filled with remorse and offers a deep statement of grief and repentance. We should certainly not say to him, "You had the statistics in advance. You knew that it could plausibly be regarded as a non-military target. What did you think you were doing? Why do these pictures change anything? You should make your decisions with your eyes wide open or not make them at all!"  

We know perfectly well that sometimes people have a notional commitment to doing a particular action but then have their minds and hearts changed by being viscerally confronted with the reality of what they have chosen. And this is not a bad thing but a good thing. It is on the many subtle interactions between conscience and the real world that our hopes for repentance often turn.  

http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2016/10/dont-tell-people-to-harden-their-hearts.html

One the one hand, criteria can select for corresponding examples. On the other hand, examples can select for corresponding criteria. Like Chisholm's distinction between methodism and particularism. 

Presumably, then, she doesn't think a person must begin with deontology. Rather, they might begin with some paradigm-examples. They then turn to deontology to supply a formal justification for their moral intuitions.  

I suspect her brand of absolutism is based on the concern that once you make allowance for exceptions, that becomes a wedge issue. Where do you draw the line? Any position short of saying that abortion, suicide, and euthanasia are always wrong is a foot. And once they get a foot in the door, you can't stop it from swinging wide open. 

Now I myself subscribe to moral absolutes, although my list of moral absolutes is shorter than Catholic ethicists. But the brittle absolutism I'm assessing has counterintuitive implications. 

Take the cliche of the ticking timebomb scenario. The absolutist will say torture is intrinsically wrong. By contrast, the "pragmatist" or "consequentialist" has no compunction about torturing one terrorist to extract information about the location of the bomb that will save thousands or millions of innocent lives.

Take the cliche of lying to Nazis about Jews you're harboring. The absolutist will say lying is intrinsically wrong. By contrast, the "pragmatist" or "consequentialist" has no compunction about lying to Nazis to save his Jewish neighbors from the gas chambers. 

The question that raises is, what is the moral absolute? Is the moral absolute protecting the innocent? Is the moral absolute protecting the vulnerable? If that's the moral absolute, then ironically it's the "pragmatist" or "consequentialist" who's acting on that that principle while the absolutist is so uncompromising that it prevents him from protecting the innocent. Prevents him from protecting the vulnerable. The absolutist will sacrifice millions of innocent lives rather than violate a moral absolute. But, then, what is the moral absolute? Evidently, it's not protecting innocent life. It's not protecting the most vulnerable members of society. Rather, there's some overriding concern that prevents the absolutist from doing what's necessary to protect the innocent from harm. Is it the consequentialist who's violating moral absolutes–or the absolutist, by his failure to intervene? 

Perhaps the absolutist will say that while protecting the innocent and the vulnerable is a moral absolute, that's not the only moral absolute. There's an absolute prohibition against torture. There's an absolute prohibition against lying. 

But in that event, their absolutism generates moral dilemmas. A conflict between equal duties: an absolute duty to protect the innocent and the vulnerable over against an absoute duty not to lie or torture. And that, in turn, leads to moral paralysis. Wringing your hands in the face of preventable evil.  

Consequentialism is the bugbear of deontology. But brittle absolutism drives conscientious people into the arms of consequentialism, because their absolutism is so theoretical, and ineffectual, and counterproductive.