Truth: the Golden Heresy: Ethics for Human Nature

By Elizabeth Ward Nottrodt

The author quotes freely from her college ethics text, a solid-gold reference for the suitability of human acts to human nature. Truth: The Golden Heresy was written in response to the alarming decline in moral standards, and with the thought that not everyone has learned these things from their families, schools, and religious institutions as they did in times past. Some subjects are listed below:

— Natural Law

— Babies

— Conscience

— Happiness

— Forgiveness

— Logic

In the second work, Writing Class, the author includes some personal stories written for this class, a weekly gathering of writers that gave her the final impetus, skill, and pressure to put long-held ideas down on paper.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: May 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781512785197

Elizabeth Ward Nottrodt

Elizabeth Ward Nottrodt is an independent thinker, prolific writer of letters-to-the-editor, and long-time defender of conservative causes. She graduated from Mt. St. Agnes College in Baltimore, MD with a degree in Medical Technology and worked in clinical and research laboratories, including Johns Hopkins, the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and a stint in public health at the World Health Organization in Geneva,Switzerland. After her marriage she turned her attention to nursery schools where she taught science in kindergarten for more than 40 years. Besides shell collecting, geology, and government ethics, her interests include Irish music. She played the concertina in an Irish band for five years and traveled to Ireland to study the instrument. She and her husband live in Baltimore. A person of deep convictions, much of her spare time is devoted to the support of conservative causes.

Book preview

Ethics

Ethics is an art, a branch of philosophy that deals with the morality of human acts, whether they are suitable or not suitable to the dignity of man and whether they advance or detract from the purpose of human existence, the eventual union of the soul with its Creator.

Ethics is also a science because it has basic, immutable laws. In physics, gravity always pulls down, fire always burns; in mathematics, two and two are always and everywhere four; in thermodynamics, things proceed from order to disorder, never the other way around. If you clean your house and put everything in order, after a time it becomes dirty and disorderly and becomes clean again only with positive intervention. Breaking the laws of ethics always has negative consequences.

Ethics deals with the natural, not the supernatural, and ethical conclusions can be arrived at through reason alone.

Before the revolution of the ‘60s, right and wrong were learned in the home, in religious institutions, and in the schools. This solid trio of family, church, and school produced individuals with a clear understanding of the difference between good and evil, individuals who didn’t swallow new-age ideas such as moral relativism, and who could give a reasoned explanation for not doing so. If an individual abused this knowledge, he at least knew that his choices were not sanctioned.

Family, church, and school no longer support and reinforce each other and all three institutions have been under constant attack. This has undermined the social and spiritual well-being of two generations of children—children who have grown up and who will grow up to be responsible in their turn for the well-being of society and of the world.

Because society has an overwhelming vested interest in the well-being of its young and is dependent on their being productive citizens, a body of laws was designed for their protection and the protection of the marriages so vital to their nurturing.

At one time this was too obvious to mention. Intact marriages were the norm, religious institutions cared for those children deprived of parents, and extended families looked after children who had lost a parent.

Divorce was rare and a last resort. Whatever interfered with the ability of a family to raise its children in a secure environment was frowned upon by society in general and discouraged by the state.

Taxes were low; men were held in high esteem and respected as responsible heads of households. Women were not obliged to do double duty as mothers and wage-earners to make ends meet. Responsibility was a way of life. People didn’t lock their doors at night; they left their car keys in the ignition; no one raised an eyebrow at coming home alone on a streetcar at midnight after a party.

Whatever furthers these ideals contributes to an ordered society, and whatever undermines them is a social evil. Without standards, chaos reigns, whether it be in a family, a school, a church, or a nation.

Truth

Let us rejoice in the truth wherever we find its lamp burning.

Albert Schweitzer

When we were growing up, my brother, sister, and I were never allowed to use the word liar. It was a word worse than a swear word because it was a serious insult. No one wants to be thought of as a liar, and to be called one is a fighting matter. As adults we reserved this word only for a serious indictment of a person’s character. No one wants a friend, a spouse, or a public official who cannot be trusted to tell the truth. To be called a liar is an indictment of one’s moral worth.

Fr. Higgins sees a moral splendor in veracity; it sets a truthful person apart as one who can be trusted, and he condemns lying as wrong by its nature always and everywhere without exception. He recognizes it as the most common of all human failings. It is wrong because it is destructive of trust and not consistent with the peaceful functioning of society. It is a perversion of the faculty of speech, which is meant to convey thoughts and ideas. Shame is always associated with being caught in a lie.

People lie for fear of punishmen, for pride, to brag, to deceive, out of anger, envy, lust, or even if the unadorned truth is thought to be uninteresting. One lie begets another, as others are required to cover up the first. Sir Walter Scott agreed, Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

Words can convey two meanings: one intended by the speaker and the other understood by the hearer. This is ambiguous speech as the speaker intends the hearer to misunderstand (abortion is called choice to make it more palatable, permissiveness is called kindness or charity, lust is called love).

Truth is a rare commodity in public life. The meaning of words is changed to smooth over inconvenient facts, to lure the hearer into agreement with what is essentially not agreeable. Truth gets in the way of political ambition; falsehood seems to be the default setting in human affairs. James Russell Lowell, in his poem The Present Crisis, referred to truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.

To get at the truth requires work, and telling the truth in spite of the consequences requires character.

But discretion is the better part of valor, and truth is something separate from indiscrete frankness. People who always say what they think are, according to Fr. Higgins, semi-idiots and troublemakers. King Solomon observed that there is a time to keep silence and a time to speak. Modern-day thinker and prolific writer Thomas Sowell said that the only ways to tell the complete truth are anonymously or posthumously.

Mental reservation may be used if some legitimate secret is at stake, but this applies only to a reasonable fear that serious consequences would ensue if the truth were known. Intent to deceive is allowed only with gravely sufficient reason. When we are faced with a choice between two evils, we are obliged to choose the lesser of the two.

Mental reservations are a no-no for parties to a serious contract, for persons questioned by a judge or someone in authority, and between parent and child. (Fr. Higgins does not even approve of the Santa Claus tale.)

A defendant may use a mental reservation to avoid convicting himself, a la the Fifth Amendment, but he may not lie by saying that he can’t recall if that is not the truth.

Truth is not always immediately obvious and often requires thinking on several deeper levels. It is not always superficial. This is where education comes in with attention to those who had the leisure and the interest to delve into the questions of existence. Fr. Higgins relied heavily on Aristotle, St. Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, whose major work, the Summa Theologica, is one of the most influential books in Western literature.

Literature is replete with references to veracity, from Plato (Speech contrary to the mind is evil.) to Ian Fleming (Looking into the heart of a pure blue-white diamond is like looking at truth and beauty., opening sentence of Diamonds Are Forever).

The Johns Hopkins University motto, Veritas vos Liberabit (The truth shall make you free.), is from the gospel of John. In vino veritas (In wine there is truth.) is also a piece of truth.

Truth is timeless; it is a fixed star, according to the Irish ballad Eileen Aroon.

Castles are lost in war,

Chieftains are scattered far,

Truth is a fixed star, Eileen Aroon.

Pure truth is a thing of great value. It is central to character, which is central to happiness. It can be ignored, it can be tiptoed around, but it should never be denied.

Logic

Ethics is separate from religion. The understanding of why some acts are good and others are bad can be arrived at through reason alone.

Aristotle was born in the fourth century BC, in the 400 year gap between the Old and New Testaments. There was no Christianity, and he may have been unaware of the Ten Commandments. He was able to arrive at the same code of ethics contained in the Commandments by logical thinking on the nature of man and his purpose in life. He introduced the syllogism, the basic tool for logical thinking that has had unparalleled influence on critical thought ever since.

The syllogism has a major premise, which is a general statement, a minor premise, which is specific, and an inevitable conclusion.

All men are mortal.

Socrates is a man.

Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

At first this seems too obvious to even mention. But it isn’t. Not everyone can proceed easily from line A, the major premise, to line C, the conclusion.

Some people can look at a simple truth and draw opposite and inappropriate conclusions. This is not always because of a defect in intellect but because other things—strong things—get in the way: emotion, fear, greed, or just serious inconvenience.

Sometimes this inability stems from a misunderstanding or mis-statement of line A of the syllogism. In the above example, no argument can be made against the major premise, All men are mortal., or the minor premise Socrates is a man. The conclusion is correct.

Consider the following:

Arsenic is a lethal chemical element.

Our drinking water contains arsenic.

Therefore, our drinking water is poisonous.

The premise in line A is false. Arsenic trioxide in trace amounts is present in the seeds of citrus fruit (and probably other seeds). It is necessary for the germination of these seeds, without which there would be no orange juice, a healthy drink that could never be considered lethal.

But arsenic is a murderer’s poison of choice in mystery lore. As in most questions, the answer lies in the degree or, in this case, the amount. In order to be logical, the syllogism should read, Arsenic is lethal to humans above a critical level. Line B is true; our drinking water does contain trace amounts of arsenic. But line C is egregiously false.

If the major premise is wrong, the conclusion is wrong. Some of the most evil ideas in history have come from false major premises. Examples would be: the divine right of kings, the holocaust, slavery, etc

Killing is wrong.

War involves killing.

Therefore, war is wrong.

It is vital that the premises are true and comprehensive enough to cover all cases. This syllogism does not take into account the distinction between murder and killing, or the instinct for self-preservation which justifies killing in some instances. Western law makes the distinction between first and second degree murder and also justifiable homicide. Just wars are not wrong.

It is possible to reason correctly from a false premise and come to a logically correct but untrue conclusion. Lawyers often say something is predicated on a false premise when attacking the logic of an adversary.

Fr. Higgins relied heavily on a major work of Aristotle’s, Nicomachean