Why is it okay for missionaries to lie?

[HoreTore]

Your problem, HoreTore, is that you're equating credulousness with stupidity (or perhaps ignorance would be more accurate). On one level, that's fine; you're welcome to think that someone must be daft to believe in something without satisfactory evidence. But on another level, it's simply wrong. Very intelligent people can end up believing in things without evidence, whether it be religion, the benefits of organic produce, some of the more questionable claims regarding climate science, or whatever. The point is, a person doesn't have to be stupid to be irrational.

Yet you're relying on the (false) premise that only stupid people can believe in irrational things. Your argument seems to be: believing these miracles occurred is irrational, western missionaries are not all stupid, only stupid people can believe in irrational things, therefore, the missionaries do not believe these miracles occurred. Then from that, you further deduce that the missionaries must be lying, and since the very religion they espouse is opposed to lying, you find yourself stuck with a paradox: how can people opposed to lying lie so cheerfully? But the whole problem goes back to that one incorrect premise.

Ajax

Very good post.

So, then the question becomes: how can a medial proffessional discard everything he knows about medicine and "jump on the miracle bandwagon", so to speak?

How fully functional, sane and intelligent people can believe the most absurd things(raising the dead, ET rectal exams, enlightened masters living under the himalayas, etc) is a question that has puzzled me for a very long time.