(July 3, 2013 at 8:14 pm)paulpablo Wrote:(July 3, 2013 at 7:06 pm)Inigo Wrote: Mary's husband is dead. She loved him and thought they had a great relationship and has many cherished memories that provide her with enormous comfort. However, unbeknownst to her he never loved her (just did a good impression of loving her) and was having lots of affairs. You know this, she doesn't. Telling her will not make her happy. It will distress her enormously. She'll be in touch with the truth, but it will make her unhappy. Would you tell her?
Personally, I think it would be horrible to tell her. I think you'd be a bad person.
Now imagine that in addition to loving him etc, she also believes that he wanted her to remain faithful to her even after he died. He never actually said this to her - she has no direct evidence. She just suspects this is what he would have wanted. Because she loved him so much she foregoes important relationships in order to honour thee wishes she assumes he had.
What do you do now? Do you tell her he never loved her -that her whole relationship with him was a sham and that he was having affairs all over town? That would certainly release her from her commitment to stay faithful to him. But it would also distress her enormously. Wouldn't it be better - more moral - to try and persuade her that he did not really wish her to forego important relationships?
I think so. I think it would be wrong to smash all those memories of hers and totally destroy her worldview just in order to free her from her commitment to honour her dead husband's supposed wishes. It is unnecessary and cruel. Just try and persuade her that her dead husband wished no such thing.
I think a lot of atheists behave in ways that are analogous to telling Mary her husband was a git and never loved her.
I still think it's strange, the original question says
Quote: Do you tell her he never loved her -that her whole relationship with him was a sham and that he was having affairs all over town? That would certainly release her from her commitment to stay faithful to him.
Then you changed it to her being on her death bed.
What commitment is she being released from if she is on her death bed? If she were uncommitted at this stage would she feel the urge to be getting randy with the nearest passer by while the cancer is eating away at her, or whatever the cause of death is?
No, I altered the example to try and extract the relevant moral intuition.
First, the example was supposed to show that truth isn't the only thing that matters and that we regularly recognise that it would sometimes be immoral to tell someone the truth. Often this is when telling someone the truth would cause the person great suffering without preventing any greater quantity.
Second, in one of my examples her (false) belief has led her to have other false beliefs that are dangerous to her (and perhaps to others). Here the point was that it would be immoral and imprudent to challenge her original false belief. All one needs to do is challenge the worrying false beliefs, not all of her false beliefs.
Most - many - atheists have problems with the religious primarily because the religious often have rather worrying moral views combined with a greater motivation to behave morally. But rather than challenge that such moral views are correct, the tendency is to challenge the entire world view instead. This is imprudent and unnecessary.
