Lying for the Lord

[JoeMama]

Do true believers accept the biblical teaching to "be ever ready to give a reason for your faith," (1 Peter 3:15), even if it means accepting and promoting as the truth something they intellectually know is probably false, as long as it helps maintain faith and the glory of God?

Would God approve of you lying to save a person from being cast into the fiery pits of eternal damnation?

[JehovahsWitness]

Would you lie to a person if you thought it would increase her chances for salvation?

Absolutely not, NO.

[JehovahsWitness]

...would you tell a dying loved one she could increase their chances of being granted eternal life by accepting Jesus as Lord and her savior, even though you know that scripture teaches that one's fate is determine prior to her birth, and that nothing she can do will affect their fate?

Well of course I don't believe that one's fate is determine prior to her birth but if I did believe in absolute predestination (which I do not as I'm not a Calvinist) I hope I would have the decency not to lie about it.

Or, would you tell her there's nothing she can do? Her fate was long ago determined. Maybe she's going to heaven, maybe not. Time will tell.

Yes.



JW



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FREE WILL, SELECTIVE FOREKNOWLEDGE and ... PREDESTINATION

[TRANSPONDER]

Would you lie to a person if you thought it would increase her chances for salvation?

Absolutely not, NO.

I was going to stay out of it but this one pushed me. I am sure that lying goes on. Not JW's exclusively, but in support of the Faith. Not so much to save the other person, but to try to get people to convert, because it is unsettling to the believer that there are people out there who don't have Faith. It is an atavistic desire to have the tribe in power and Others eliminated, preferably. They will settle for a god - believer or even a religious believer, but even those at daggers drawn will stand together against one who does not believe in a god nor see the value of religion (1).

I am also convinced that 'Lying for the Lord' (Lying for Jesus as the method is known) is endemic, in denial of science, reason and even what the Bible actually says. I know this every time a discussion gets left in silence, because they ought on logic and evidence to admit they have the less probable view, but that doesn't matter because they operate on Faith, which says that if what we know conflicts with the Faith (and I mean their faith, not what the Bible says, if necessary) then what we know is wrong (see the 'maybe there will one day be evidence..' ploy).

Which is the basis of the epistemology argument or 'Everything we think we know is wrong' which is a faithbased mental trick designed to make us distrust and reject science in hopes to make ONE particular faithclaim (not All by any means) more credible. Clearly this is wrong, logically and evidentially, but you try telling them.

I was looking just now at the Monty Hall (VonSavant) problem - the three doors? I'd swear that opening the third door with the goat makes no difference to the original 50/50 odds if there were just two doors. I'd even ask..so the third door changes the odds of the second door? So which is that?

'Well the one after the first of course'.

Who said? If I now say that the door in the middle is door no 1, is that now the door with the better odds? I may have my doubts about basing natural physics outcomes on mathematics, but it has worked, and I gather that NIT actually carried out a test and found it was as Von Savat said.

But the point is, Theist apologists even when not trying to use paradoxes like that (the baby on the line moral dilemma is a favorite) to make us doubt our knowledge in hopes to pop God's laws in there (not that it makes things any better) will deny the validity of science even with its' track record of being right, on the grounds that it had to be mistaken (like in denial of Von Savant's solution) before they got it right (until they consider my question) while Faithclaims are supported with self -serving and actually deceitful tricks like 'It doesn't actually say that' . The self - servingness (special pleading) being shown by (e.g) my saying 'Where does it say 'Slaves are my neighbours?'. That trick is only valid when they do it; not when I do it.

So Lying is itself arguable. Is it lying if they believe or have faith (since belief and faith are not the same ) in what they are saying? I prefer to say that they are being denialist if all the evidence is against them, biased (if the atheist case is at least credible in which case, burden of proof kicks in - and they deny which way that goes as well) and dishonest if necessary in maintaining their own position, even at the expense of the Bible. Like for instance proposing a local Flood to make the Bible Flood more possible, even though so doing totally discredits why the Bible says there was a flood at all.

So the elements of deception are there, even if Lying is not actually what's going on. Some of the worst is in Creationism, e.g when Ken Ham presented a map of the clade of canines but leaving out half the evidence, which we'd already seen in Bill Nye's presentation. Ignorance or dishonesty? The one that is the stake through the heart was 'Lucy's spine entered at the back - like an ape'. This is simply not true ,it enters the skull from below like a human. I'd love to hear someone ask 'didn't you know that was wrong or did you lie to support the Faith?'

I could go on at length (e.g. in well known logical fallacies like 'Lord, Liar or Lunatic') but I'll just note (or bang away about it ) that the three stages of such apologetics is:
(1) argue on the evidence
(2) argue the evidence away
(3) 'sauce' (includes various ploys for escaping without having to admit they were wrong)

Because I believe Faith requires the believer to think that Faith establishes a hotline to God, and so everything they say is true on Faith. And that explains everything, even why God changes His mind when they do. As a former opponent showed when he gave up ET for UR and still acted like God was inspiring his knowledge.

(1) saw that when a Jew, a Muslim and a Christian walked together into a bar - after the Tsunami because they had to make a show of theistic solidity against the shout of doubt.