Lying liars

Teresa Nielsen Hayden has a long post about “Lying in the name of God, surveying several instances of scholars who were misrepresented in sleazy, dishonest “creationist” DVDs. You should go read the whole thing (and, as always over there at Making Light, you should read all the comments as well).

Realizing that “go read the whole thing” might not prompt you to actually go and read the whole thing, here are the magnificent final two paragraphs:

Lying about evolution is not evidence of faith. Lying about anything is not evidence of faith. Lying to one’s co-religionists is not evidence that you care about the state of their souls or your own. So why do it? Possibly because it fosters an unwarranted certainty, an us-and-them mentality that can be exploited for political gains. And possibly, just possibly, because it leads believers into distracting thickets of false exegesis, and away from a faith whose basic tenets have never been terribly complicated: Love god. Love one another. Share what you have, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, comfort the afflicted, be humble, love justice, seek peace, tell the truth, pray often, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, recognize everyone as a child of God just like yourself, and forgive trespasses as you hope to have your own forgiven.

It’s a disturbing religion when you take it straight. Heaven only knows what would happen if more of these people started practicing it.

As my seminary classmates used to say, that’ll preach.

My favorite thing in this post, though, is the logical distinction Teresa employs to substantiate the claim that the liars she’s talking about are, unequivocally, lying.

It’s not always easy to classify a false statement as a lie. Lying requires the intent to deceive, which is a difficult thing to prove. Journalists, therefore, are extremely cautious about using the L-word. Yes, they argue, President Bush is, indisputably, on record as saying hundreds of things that are not true. But these hundreds of false statements are not sufficient proof that he is a “liar,” only that he is someone who is very, very often mistaken, misinformed or deluded.

I could applaud this alleged journalistic concern for precision if reporters would follow its implications. Yet despite the abundant evidence, they refrain not only from calling the president a liar, but even from pointing out that his false statements are, demonstrably, false. They do not say that he is prone to stating falsehoods or that many of the things he says are simply not true. That suggests to me that they are not being careful and precise so much as they are simply being cowardly.

All of which brings us to the test Teresa employs to evaluate the false statements made by those creationist documentarians:

It’s not possible to produce such programs honestly. Chopping logic and falsifying arguments like that can only be done by someone who knows that he or she is doing it. To put it another way: if you know enough about the Book of Job or the Tel Dan stela to make up really effective lies about them that will fit into your preordained agenda, you know enough about them to know you’re lying.

Certain kinds of false statements cannot be made without full knowledge of the facts of the matter. Such statements are, by definition, crafted to deceive. They are, in fact, lies.

Apply this test to the myriad false statements made by President Bush — on pre-invasion Iraq, on Social Security, on his tax cuts, on his preference in cheesesteaks — and it is clear that “falsifying arguments like that can only be done by someone who knows that he or she is doing it.” George W. Bush is a liar.