Andrew,
I promise I will read Camus. I'll see if I can get something on Kindle.
I shamefully admit I have neglected him in my literary travels. I have a slight resistance to translations, even though some of my favorite books are translated, like Fitzgerald's Homer & Virgil (or is it Vergil? I like the way Virgil looks much better), and
William Weaver's tremendous translations of Umberto Eco. If you ever get time to read
Foucault's Pendulum, please do so, if you haven't already (I have a feeling you have). It's a great foil for wooers, tinfoil hatters, and conspiracy theorists (in which set I am very prone to fall when I'm feeling on fire, like now).
I don't agree with you about lies. It's perfectly legal to tell lies, and lies are protected under freedom of speech. Slander, however, is a different story. It's all about degrees. Telling a white lie is very often the decent and/or
only thing to do, as the Jim Carrey movie
Liar, Liar skillfully and hilariously demonstrates. But with other kinds of lies, the liar just digs himself a hole he can't get out of. If you tell one lie, you need another to back it up; then you need another lie to cover those, and pretty soon all you can do is lie.
I wrote a romance novel (insert laughter, but dammit, yes, I did!) about a young lady who is a compulsive liar. All she does is lie, to her fiance, to her mother, to her boss at work. The novel takes N all the way from ridiculous liar to triumphant truth-teller. It happened by accident, as it started out as erotica, several years ago, when my marriage was falling apart. But that's a
long story...
Then you go all the way up to slander. You know what that is. God Himself, and Christ, warn very adamantly about bearing false witness. I think greed and bearing false witness are two of the biggest sins going, along with pride, anger, fornication, adultery, and just about every behavior that is otherwise known as: Human.
I've always wrestled with the concept of sin. As I told Charlie in private, sin is nothing other than falling short of perfection. If imperfection is such an offense to God that He can't even LOOK at it, then I have to ask Him, why then, Lord, did you make us this way?
^ That's what I wrestle with every single moment of every single day. One (not necessarily you) might say, "Hey, ditch the sky-daddy altogether! Hitchens was right! Be free! Get rid of that bullshit! It's a bunch of mythology from bronze age sheepherders! Get over it already!"
But...nope.
I constantly remind myself that when I stopped kicking at the pricks and surrendered myself to Christ, I stopped having nightmares, hypnagogia, and sleep paralysis. And a great many other things happened, which it would take me a hundred pages to describe in any way that might be remotely persuasive to anyone who hasn't experienced the things I've experienced.
I know it
may be something simply material, and brain-oriented.
Maybe my faith has somehow done something to my dream patterns. I have read much on it. I'm no dummy. But I don't
believe that's the case. My faith rests on strong and passionate belief, not on certain knowledge. If I have certain knowledge, I don't need faith.
I'll get to what you said about rights and the attackers of rights after a break.