lies and ethics (and getting preachy about doctrine)

I highly recommend the radio show "radiolab".

One of the more recent episodes is about deception: What is a lie, how do people manage to lie, and what results from lies. In that respect, the claim of the final segment on the show is that to be deceived in a fundamental way (the kind of deception that is like learning that your wife of 2 years is actually a con artist with 3 other husbands in various parts of the country) causes a real deep scar in the fragile psyche of a human being. And this result might or might not be categorical. A big lie causes a big hurt, a medium lie causes a medium hurt, and a little lie causes a little hurt (on average). But that hurt, big or small, can be long lasting and can negatively affect the human interactions of the victim for the rest of her life.

I'd never given the matter much deep thought, but the radio program's topic led me down that path (as many of these radiolab episodes tend to do). I thought about what a society which finds lying acceptable would look like? Could such a society even exist? I posit that it couldn't, that if a group of people living together could not trust one another and thus depend on one another would soon cease to exist. This might sound like an obvious conclusion but it has pretty serious implications.

You see, I was reminded of lying's 9th place on the list of 10 commandments and this reminded me about the argument often made by many middle-of-the-road believers about the fundamental truths we receive from the holy books.

It goes like this (an argument I've actually heard my own ears being made on at least 2 occassions): There are folks who believe that a world free of religion would, much too quickly, descend into chaos because it is the Bible (qoran, torah, etc) which provides those critical lessons of morality. If we stop looking to the holy book for moral guidance, we could lose morality altogether as it is not a knowledge that can be acquired innately or through day to day experience.

I have always looked at a counter-argument from the basic perspective that morality can be achieved through non-religious means, but this train of thought about a society of liars made me think of a similar, but more effective counter-argument. If it is the case that morality is not innate and that it is actually interlinked with the inception of, just for one example, the ten commandments provided on mt Sinai to the Israelites, then we must assume that during the Israelites' wondering of the desert, post-exodus, none of them had a problem with lying to each other. Similarly, if one of them intentionally killed another, the rest of the tribe would not cast the murder away but would find that act simply morally ambiguous at worst (best?). But, lucky for them, once God provided the laws, order was established, that murderers and victims of lies suddenly knew who was right and who was wrong.

Even from a naive sociological perspective, we must admit that

• if lying is accepted within a society, then people would quickly cease to communicate in a meaningful way, that no critical information exchange would take place, and that the members of such a society could never depend on one another
• if intentional killing was acceptable within a society then all of the mild benevolent members would quickly die off leaving rage addicted psychopaths to slowly kill each other off.
  
• if adultery was acceptable this would quickly lead to a generation of illegitimate children for which no one, except for their mothers, could feel responsible. And that such a social problem would lead to the death of many of these children (or their mothers) from poverty.

A society like this would quickly collapse. Therefore we cannot assume that the Israelites (or the Egyptians, or any other group), pre-ten-commandments, were exactly such a culture. So we cannot assume that the 6th-10th commandments really told the Israelites anything that they didn't already know/believe about a moral way to behave.

Critical thinking alone should give one plenty of ideas about where, other than a holy book or religion, morality might come from. But until today, I haven't really thought about what the old testament would tell us about morality if we assume a priori that morality does come from God by way of two stone tablets or spoken word directions to the chosen people.

Of course, one can still argue that our innate sense of right and wrong is a divine gift, but if you are willing to accept that then you really couldn't attribute anyone's immoral behavior, as many people do, to not reading the appropriate biblical passage or attending the right church.

So, the question is, if we are innately moral (whether through divine intervention or as a result of living in a functional society) then what else do we have to learn from the qoran (or torah, or bible, etc) that we can't learn from each other?

PS. One of the problems with bible literalists is that they are easily persuaded to believe that homosexuality is a sin. There are a couple of passages in the bible that, pretty unambiguously say that man-on-man and woman-on-woman sexlove is not acceptable. But this can lead to a paradox involving the fifth commandment (about honoring mom and pop), from what I can tell. Because what happens when the gay man or woman is your mother or father? Has anyone ever asked these crazy protesters, who hold up signs that say "jesus hates fags" what he would do if he found out his father was gay?