[ExI] The void left by deleting religion

[Jef Allbright]

On 5/5/07, Russell Wallace <russell.wallace at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/5/07, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
> > When would you lie?  Presumably you would  lie to protect your own life,
> > the lives of those you love or  humanity.    So what are the
> > extenuations on your ethical prohibition against lying?
> >
>
>  *shrug* It hasn't been put to the test yet - most of the time telling the
> truth is the right thing to do in all ways, after all. At a guess, I'd say
> it's when the harm to be averted by lying is sufficiently direct and
> immediate to, in the colloquial sense of the words, constitute "fact rather
> than just theory"; from a utilitarian viewpoint, one could look at it as "is
> this definite enough that the usual fallibility argument for ethics doesn't
> apply"?

We teach our kids that telling the truth is good, and lying is bad.
Because that's how much depth and subtlety they can grasp.  When will
we as a society be ready to grow up a little and realize it was never
about speaking the truth and lying -- it was about the deeper
principle of cooperative advantage, and the deeper principle behind
that of the adaptive advantage of synergistic, positive-sum
configurations?  And the deeper principle... Never mind.  We're not
ready.

- Jef