Not necessarily. Whether lying is intrinsically evil (or more precisely, whether asserting something false with the intention to deceive is necessarily lying regardless of circumstances) is a point of debate within Catholic moral theology.
But rape, for instance, is always wrong. So is deliberately killing an innocent person.
Edwin
I didn’t read the whole article, but I did read enough to see what I feel are mental gymnastics, like saying “justified untrue assertion” is not lying. That is not the ordinary, everyday meaning of the term, which simply means telling an untruth. It also leaves open the question of when it is justified or not. Any Buddhist will agree that telling an untruth is sometimes justified, and so the question of whether it should be called a lie or not when it is justified is simply a question of semantics.
(One could also get around the dilemma by saying that it isn’t lying to the Nazis when you say there are no Jews in the basement, because the image of “Jew” that exists within the deluded mind of the Nazi does not correspond to reality. There is no such inherently inferior creature anywhere, including in your basement. Stuff like that can be fun, particularly for philosophers, but I am not sure of its general usefulness.)
I am not sure what the examples such as rape and killing of innocents are supposed to prove. I cannot imagine any situation where I would find rape acceptable. Does that mean it is “inherently wrong”? I don’t even know what that means. In the usual meaning of the word, rape is wrong, for instance, because it causes great mental and physical distress for to the person who is raped. It is a violation of numerous rights we agree that we should all have in a society. But cultures don’t always agree what rape
is. In some parts of the world, for instance in my country, it is perfectly acceptable for an 18 year old to sleep with a 17 year old as long as it is volitional. In other countries this is considered rape, even though the couple is in love, and it could result in some pretty harsh (as in life long) prison sentences in certain US states for the 18 year old rapist who slept with her boyfriend. In some cultures it is considered rape if a woman is married without her father’s consent, while arranged marriages where she is not willing are not viewed as rape.
I would also call the following text both rape and murder of innocents, and yet there is nothing to suggest that Moses is doing something wrong in it.
Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who returned from the battle. “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man. Numbers 31:15-18
When I talk to other Catholics, who are more conservative than I am (and believe in an inerrant Bible, which I do not), I am told this was a different culture. Things were different back then. I cannot use my 21st century glasses to judge an ancient culture. Well, are morals absolute or are they not? As it turns out, I am more of an absolutist than they are, because I am willing to condemn this kind of behavior as immoral, even if a deity allegedly commands it or if a prophet says it is ok.
When I think about Buddhist ethics, I am still not certain is relativism is the best term. Given the Buddhist philosophy of emptiness (of essence or substance), perhaps contingent ethics would be a nice word. Whether or not an action is wrong is contingent on numerous factors including human nature. Even natural law is based on the way things are (if they were different, the law would be different), and so it isn’t absolute in the sense that it exists independently.
. That’s the most straightforward answer I can give. There are so many different kinds of Buddhism and I will admit that my knowledge about the intricacies is very limited. What I see consistent throughout it, though, is in overwhelming sense of self-reliance, rather than surrender to the Almighty. There are buddhists who will call on bodhisattvas, like Amitahba, to intervene in their lives, but even then, it’s a celf-centred path. The bodhisattvas merely help you on your way to attain enlightenment-- like a stepping stone.
