Restating...

Some folks who read the following
http://www.astronomy.net/forums/god/messages/19072.shtml

might say to themselves,"Ah, defense of lying!'
And they will say to themselves,"Well, if he is a liar, then I feel free to lie to him and about him !"

But not so.
What is Truth? Pontius Pilate asked Jesus
and nobody has really answered the question on this forum.

Does truth require constant self-disclosure on demand from anyone who asks you for the truth?
It could not ! Mark Twain was exactly right on one thing: "Truth is such a valuable commodity that we must be economical in our use of it."

Truth is important but "truth on demand" would
serve evil more than it would serve good.
Would evil use your self-disclosure ethically?

So then what is evil? I think it probably comes as a result of poor circulation of truth. So have I just contradicted myself? No...the rest of the proposition is like a security system:

If you don't have a full set of facts, maybe you should not presume to judge with your partial set of facts except in emergency. And there is no excuse in most cases for not going through a full process of truth-finding if you intend to judge. That does not mean giving the 3rd degree to your political rivals to look for dirt. That means becoming a Philosopher and Scientist of the Natural Laws while also deeply considering the Theology of the world to see where these have not yet been reconciled...and to be able to explain your reasons and converse, free of coercive influences so that a higher truth emerges.

So I am not excusing "lying" so much as saying

that Truth is not the opposite of Lying but Truth is a high accomplishment that is rarer than we sometimes assume...so in the meantime, I want folks to have the privacy and wiggle room to live a good life in peace, free of badly-conceived Inquisitions.

Mike