Relativism and skepticism are logical suicide

[Freddy]

AlNg:

So you will burn in hell or in purgatory if you tell your child about Santa Claus?
And you will also burn in hell or purgatory if you tell the Nazi you are not hiding a young Jewish (innocent) girl, who is about to be sent to the gas chamber?

Every lie is a sin, but only some lies are mortal sins. What determines the gravity of the lie is the intention, the object and the circumstances. If one or more of the three aspects is/are grave, the lie is a mortal sin, otherwise it’s a venial sin.

I don’t see a problem here at all. The gravity of the sin is relative to the conditions. And telling your wife she looks great when she doesn’t (I’m sure some posters here are not married) is a sin according to Catholic teaching. OK. Fine. Roger that. Message received and understood. I think we can move on now.

 

[AlNg]

And telling your wife she looks great when she doesn’t … is a sin

Do you say that an all merciful and all gracious and all loving God would punish a man because he wants to keep peace in the family and his wife happy? The man knows that his wife is very sensitive about her looks, so why punish him for trying to cheer her up?

I think we can move on now.

No. I don’t think so. Because family life is the cornerstone of society and as such, a main goal of the father is to create a warm, loving and joyful environment for the wife and a nurturing environment for the children.

 

[AlNg]

if you do not your house will be searched.

Maybe, maybe not. There are documented cases during the occupation of the Channel Islands, that two Nazi policemen asked if there were weapons in the house and the owner said no. The Nazis simply moved their heads around at the door and said OK, and then left.
Further, the girl may not be hiding in the house. She may be at a hidden location in the barn where it would be very difficult to find her.

 

[Dan123]

Well I guess I meant you could flip it to being asked to make a positive admiration which would prevent a “shrug” response.

 

[AlNg]

Please tell us how you know that this is so. What you say is completely contradicted by an article written by Father Paul O’Sullivan and posted on EWTN. This report has the approval of his eminence the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon.

Read Me or Rue It.

According to this article:

there is no hunger, no thirst, no poverty, no need, no pain, no suffering to compare with what the Souls in Purgatory endure

It is very possible that some of our own nearest and dearest ones are still suffering the excruciating pains of Purgatory and calling on us piteously for help and relief.

the Poor Souls are suffering unutterable agonies on their beds of flame.

WHAT IS PURGATORY?

It is a prison of fire in which nearly all [saved] souls are plunged after death and in which they suffer the intensest pain.

Here is what the great Doctors of the Church tell us of Purgatory:

So grievous is their suffering that one minute in this awful fire seems like a century.

St. Thomas Aquinas, the Prince of Theologians, says that the fire of Purgatory is equal in intensity to the fire of Hell, and that the slightest contact with it is more dreadful than all the possible sufferings of this Earth!

Please read:

Read Me or Rue It | EWTN

EWTN is a global, Catholic Television, Catholic Radio, and Catholic News Network that provides catholic programming and news coverage from around the world.

www.ewtn.com

All the poor man did was lie to protect an innocent young girl from being sent to the gas chambers in Auschwitz.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Relativist: “Nothing is always true.”

Generally relativism is shorthand for moral relativism. In that case, the assertion is correctly phrased as: “no ethical claim is always true.”
We now have a meta-ethical claim about ethical claims, and so we avoid the contradiction:

Me: “No ethical claim is always true.”
You: “Is this always true?”
Me: “Yes”
You: “You are contradicting yourself. You said that no ethical claims are always true, but if you are right then what you said can’t be always true.”
Me: “My claim is not an ethical claim, so it is not required to be sometimes false.”

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Skeptic: “We can’t know the truth.”

You are right-ish about this. The problem is that the skeptic is also right in a sense: no one can actually have a good a-priori reason for believing in the reliability of their reason. All such reasons beg the question insofar as we rely on our reason to come up with and evaluate reasons in the first place. Appeal to God does not save you. Appeal to science or philosophy does not save you. Everyone implicitly assumes their reason is reliable by the very act of reasoning.

The way I think about it is that we are all standing on a stool with a noose around our necks. The stool is the reliability of reason/the senses. In a debate, if anyone “kicks over the stool” by questioning the reliability of reason, everyone hangs, including the person who kicked over the stool. The game board has been flipped, and the discussion is over.

So in your simulated dialogue, the instant you ask the question “how do you know your reason is telling the truth,” the skeptic can actually respond “We literally don’t know if it is telling the truth.”

 

[esieffe]

Could one say that relativism is the mother of modernism?

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

And telling your wife she looks great when she doesn’t … is a sin

Do you say that an all merciful and all gracious and all loving God would punish a man because he wants to keep peace in the family and his wife happy? The man knows that his wife is very sensitive about her looks, so why punish him for trying to cheer her up?

I think we can move on now.

No. I don’t think so. Because family life is the cornerstone of society and as such, a main goal of the father is to create a warm, loving and joyful environment for the wife and a nurturing environment for the children.

Sorry, I think you missed my point. I agree with you. I’m sure God isn’t at all that interested in some familial interplay. That it might be termed a sin is a mere technicality.

 

[AlNg]

“how do you know your reason is telling the truth,” the skeptic can actually respond “We literally don’t know if it is telling the truth.”

The skeptic can say anything he wants to but there are some things that everyone agrees are truthful and it is by reasoning that we know them to be true. However, there are certain things that you can never know whether they are true or false, such as the statement:
Time existed before the Big Bang. I don’t see how you can know whether or not that is true.
OTOH, you can know for sure that in Euclidean geometry (i,e, plane geometry), the base angles of an isosceles triangle are equal.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

but there are some things that everyone agrees are truthful and it is by reasoning that we know them to be true.

This sounds irrelevant. @LeonardDeNoblac set up his strawman as a strong skeptic, so the existence of things that most people agree on doesn’t matter.

My point also stands: you cannot prove the reliability of reason in an a-priori way, because reason is the only tool you have. A better description of the skeptics position would likely be this:

If my reason is unreliable, I cannot know the truth.
If my reason is reliable, I may know the truth.
Reason is the only tool I have for determining the reliability of my reason.
Therefore, I cannot know if my reason is reliable without assuming my reason is reliable.
Therefore, I cannot know if my reason is reliable.
Therefore, I cannot know if I know the truth.

 

[Dan123]

In the case of triangles what you said is true by definition. It’s true because we defined it to be true.

 

[AlNg]

In the case of triangles what you said is true by definition. It’s true because we defined it to be true.

No, even though it may seem obvious, but it is not the definition. An isosceles triangle is one with two equal sides. That is the definition. The claim is that in the case of a triangle with two equal sides, the two base angles are equal.

 

[AlNg]

This shows that morality of an act can be relative to the circumstances. It is implied that in some circumstances a lie is gravely wrong; in other circumstances it is not gravely wrong. Whether or not a lie is gravely wrong is relative to the circumstances under which a lie is told.

 

[Freddy]

This is like saying that any temperature can be described as hot. Relative to absolute zero of course. One reaches a point when it becomes nonsensical to use the term even if it is techically accurate.

 

[AlNg]

No because:

In serious situations, you can resort to mental reservation,

Mental reservation is not a sin but it is a lie. It is not a sin because of the circumstances of the lie you are telling. It is a lie because you are not telling the truth.
Look. You know that John is in your house. You have seen him and you know he is there.
Case I. John has just committed a robbery and has murdered several people. You know this to be true. The police come to your door. They ask you: … Is John here. You say no. John is not here. That is a lie and a sin.
Case 2. John is a 12 year old Jewish boy. He is an innocent boy and a decent person. Nazis come to your door and ask you if John is here. You make a mental reservation and say no John is not here. Your mental reservation is based on the fact that first you do not think that the Nazis have the right to know this and secondly you know that john will be sent to Auschwitz to be gassed. It is a mental reservation which is justified by the circumstances.
In both cases you say the exact same lie: John is not here.
Case 1. It is a sin because you know John is guilty of terrible crimes and your duty is to tell the truth so that justice may be served.
Case 2. It is not a sin because you are making a mental reservation. Even though you are lying and not telling the truth, you are permitted to make a mental reservation in such a serious case. Although you lie and say John is not here you add mentally and only in your mind so that the Nazis do not know, you add mentally that John is not here as far as you are concerned,. But that is not what you said. That is only a mental thought which justifies the use of a mental reservation. You have lied when you said John is not here but in virtue of the rule of mental reservation under extreme circumstances, you have not committed a sin.
So to sum up, whether or not a lie is a sin depends on the circumstances. Sometimes the lie is a mental reservation, and as such, the lie is not a sin.

 

[AlNg]

Now you are claiming that there is time in the afterlife. Can you please verify that there will be time in eternal life?

 

[AlNg]

I don’t think so. Take for example the case of St. Francis of Assisi.
He once saw a man fleeing from a murderer. When the murderer then came upon St. Francis, he demanded to know if he saw the victim or if the victim had passed that way. St. Francis of Assisi answered, “He did not pass this way,” sliding his forefinger into the sleeve of his cassock. The murderer was misled and the life of the victim was saved. In other word, the mental reservation was justified in this case.
Further: The Spanish Dominican Raymond of Penafort has said that you may say to the murderer: He is not at home. and it is not a sin.
" I believe, as at present advised, that when one is asked by murderers bent on taking the life of someone hiding in the house whether he is in, no answer should be given; and if this betrays him, his death will be imputable to the murderers, not to the other’s silence. Or he may use an equivocal expression, and say ‘He is not at home,’ or something like that. And this can be defended by a great number of instances found in the Old Testament. Or he may say simply that he is not there, and if his conscience tells him that he ought to say that, then he will not speak against his conscience nor will he sin. Nor is St. Augustine really opposed to any of these methods."

Brother, I seriously recommend reading St Raymund of Pennafort if you are going to try to understand what is meant by a mental reservation and why it is not a sin.

 

[LeonardDeNoblac]

That’s not how mental reservation works. At least, any form of mental reservation wich doesn’t involve equivocation has been condemned in the past at least once.

 

[LeonardDeNoblac]

I don’t think so. Take for example the case of St. Francis of Assisi.
He once saw a man fleeing from a murderer. When the murderer then came upon St. Francis, he demanded to know if he saw the victim or if the victim had passed that way. St. Francis of Assisi answered, “He did not pass this way,” sliding his forefinger into the sleeve of his cassock. The murderer was misled and the life of the victim was saved. In other word, the mental reservation was justified in this case.

Ah, yes, my account wasn’t accurate. Sorry.