"LIAR!!!"

"Liar" said Gavroche!

Is a lie still a lie if you don’t know it is a lie?

Suppose someone tells you that a friend is a Republican, but the friend is actually a Libertarian. You believe the person and tell someone else that this friend is a Republican. The first person lied to you. So the question is did you lie when you passed on the information or did you tell the truth?

I suppose there is some arcane philosophical discourse about this that involves truth tables or logic trees or something, but I am looking for a simple answer. And I think I have one: Yes, you are lying too. Why do I think this? Because I believe it is up to each of us to investigate the truth to the best of our ability before repeating an assertion. This could be time consuming and difficult but necessary if you want to be truthful. In the example above you simply make a phone call or send an email and ask, assuming you give a crap. If not, don’t pass it on.

The core of the question goes to the idea of “belief”.  If you “believe” something is true and pass it around as “truth” you are a potential liar. If the belief is actually true, then you don’t lie. If not, you do. You are the person responsible to verify the facts of your assertions before you assert them. You think there is a tooth fairy? Check it out and then tell your kids. You think there is a Santa Clause? Check it out. You think there is a God? Check it out before you go around proclaiming “TRUTH”. If you can’t come up with a factual basis for your belief in the tooth fairy or Santa Claus or God, qualify yourself with “I believe this to be true, but I have no evidence to support my assertion.” Now, what you really might mean is “I know this is true but a moron like you will never see my reasoning so I won’t even try.”

It is really simple: You pass on a lie, you are a liar. You question or qualify a lie, and you might just be a thinking person.

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