I guess you can lie.
I could tell almost immediately what was going through Christine O'Donnell's mind this week during the First Amendment controversy in her debate with Chris Coons.
O'Donnell is a literalist. She was trying to argue, like many conservative Christian politicians do, that the words "separation of church and state" are not in the constitution.
She is right, in a literal sense. But everyone who thinks beyond the literal words knows that the Establishment Clause ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion") are the words that effectively separate church and state. If the constitution prohibits congress from making laws regarding religion, there is no way the state can establish a state religion. Every reasonable person with a minimum of intelligence understands this, including almost every judge.
But I wonder why no one in the Media pointed this out. All the liberal talking heads on MSNBC simply laughed at O'Donnell and never actually explained her literalism. Rachel Maddow came close, but she didn't explain it the way I did above.
O'Donnell's literalism is a kind of logical fallacy, similar to equivocation. It is similar to the fallacious reasoning of the Birthers, who think that President Obama's "Certificate of Live Birth" is not his "Birth Certificate" because it isn't called a birth certificate.
But by O'Donnell's reasoning, one could argue that it's okay for Christians to lie because there is no Commandment among the famous Ten that uses that word, no commandment that literally says "Thou shalt not tell a lie.". According to this line of reasoning, "bear false witness" is not the same as "tell a lie."
And O'Donnell still doesn't seem to understand the difference. She thought she had caught her opponent in a gaff, not that she was simply misunderstanding the meaning of the Establishment Clause.
O'Donnell is a literalist. She was trying to argue, like many conservative Christian politicians do, that the words "separation of church and state" are not in the constitution.
She is right, in a literal sense. But everyone who thinks beyond the literal words knows that the Establishment Clause ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion") are the words that effectively separate church and state. If the constitution prohibits congress from making laws regarding religion, there is no way the state can establish a state religion. Every reasonable person with a minimum of intelligence understands this, including almost every judge.
But I wonder why no one in the Media pointed this out. All the liberal talking heads on MSNBC simply laughed at O'Donnell and never actually explained her literalism. Rachel Maddow came close, but she didn't explain it the way I did above.
O'Donnell's literalism is a kind of logical fallacy, similar to equivocation. It is similar to the fallacious reasoning of the Birthers, who think that President Obama's "Certificate of Live Birth" is not his "Birth Certificate" because it isn't called a birth certificate.
But by O'Donnell's reasoning, one could argue that it's okay for Christians to lie because there is no Commandment among the famous Ten that uses that word, no commandment that literally says "Thou shalt not tell a lie.". According to this line of reasoning, "bear false witness" is not the same as "tell a lie."
And O'Donnell still doesn't seem to understand the difference. She thought she had caught her opponent in a gaff, not that she was simply misunderstanding the meaning of the Establishment Clause.