Not Lying About Lycanthropy

I just want to take a moment to recognise that I have strayed very far from my original vision for this blog. Instead of blogging about a General Conference talk some time before noon, I am now going to blog about two people technically not lying about whether or not a fictional character was a werewolf less than two hours before midnight.

Perhaps I ought to go back to blogging about Conference talks some time soon.

In the meantime, I have a quick character update about Hector, Paladin of Lathander: He is almost certainly a werewolf. The last time I blogged about Hector contracting lycanthropy (again, something I never would have thought I would blog about), it was uncertain whether or not he was one.

In D&D, when a potentially negative effect, like the curse of lycanthropy, potentially afflicts a character, that character is usually allowed to make a "saving throw," which basically means that they get to roll a die and add some numbers to it, and if the total is high enough, the negative effect is lessened, if not totally negated. After blogging about whether or not Hector should kill himself (again, weird blog), he got to roll his saving throw. I told the DM the total, and he told me that Hector did not feel particularly wolfy, which I took to mean that Hector had succeeded on a saving throw and that Hector was not a werewolf, which is what I told others.

However, in my last gaming session, Hector woke up in the middle of the woods naked and covered in some other creature's blood. He is almost certainly a werewolf. But what I think is truly fascinating here is that neither the DM nor I lied about Hector's condition. The DM said that Hector didn't feel like a werewolf, which was true. He implied that Hector wasn't a werewolf, so I might fault the DM for deliberate misdirection, but he technically didn't lie.

And, for the record, neither did I. When I told people that Hector wasn't a werewolf, even though it later turned out that he was, I wasn't lying; I was wrong. I was mistaken. I was confident enough in an incorrect belief that I was comfortable stating it as fact, even though it was later revealed that the opposite was true. And all of this leads me to wonder how many other people aren't lying.

There are some people who affirm that there is no God in this universe, and there are other people who testify with all their hearts that there is. Even though those two groups can't both be right, it's possible for neither group to be lying. They are both sharing their beliefs, beliefs about which they feel so sure that they are willing to state those beliefs as fact, just as I stated as fact my belief that Hector was not a werewolf. The atheists aren't lying and the theists aren't lying, even though one of those groups has to be wrong.

There are at least two lessons we can learn from that fact (or from that evaluation which I have stated as fact). The first is that it may be wise to place qualifying phrases on certain statements, even when we're certain of their validity. For example, instead of saying "It's going to rain tomorrow," we could say "It's probably going to rain tomorrow," or "It looks like it's going to rain tomorrow." I don't expect that many people will feel comfortable applying words like "probably" to their affirmations of religious (or irreligious) belief, so perhaps the second lesson is the more important one.

We should be patient and understanding of others' beliefs, even when their wrong. I never meant to lie to anyone about whether or not Hector was a werewolf. I wasn't trying to deceive people or mislead people, and I don't think that many of the people who are wrong in their religious (or irreligious) beliefs are either. Most of us are just saying what we think is true. I thought that Hector had succeeded on his saving throw and shaken off the curse of lycanthropy, and I said as much. Though I stated it without qualifiers, I wasn't lying; I was just wrong. There are many other people who believe things far more strongly than I believed that Hector wasn't a werewolf, and they share those beliefs emphatically, and without qualifiers. Those people are not liars or tricksters, even if it turns out that they were wrong.

So, let's be careful which statements we declare as facts, and let's be patient with the declared "facts" of others. Any of us could be wrong about something and not know it. Many people say things that aren't necessarily true, but that, in my opinion, does not make us all liars.