'They hung Truth personified on a cross mainly because He exposed those living a lie. Nothing has changed.'

thanks for demonstrating that Foxy.

runner,

In that case - you need to stop living
the lie. And follow His teachings of -
"Judge not..."

To Dr. Page.

If you lead with lies, then you can't be surprised when others do the same. It's a corrosive element.

There's no question that there's benifits to lying. Any child almost caught doing what they shouldn't can attest that lying can keep them out of trouble. Moving past that, the same child can find out that by lying they can get what they want by telling people "what they want to hear."

Then there are the limits to these benifits. Lie too much and you are not trusted, or worse, you lose out on privalages and favors because people desciples you for your lies. The bigger the lie the harder the loss of trust. This usually affects those close to us more then those who we never knew and never knew us.

Bring this argument to not just personal gain or loss, but to terms of "the greater good," and you have the situation you seem to be talking about. Benefitual lies for the interests of the public. It can even be romanticized that the hustlers and swindlers are performing a Nobel sacrifice to sacrifice their morals for the greater good.

Don't trust any of those rationales though. A lie is a sign of weakness. Either in you for not being strong enough to stand by the truth, or a sign you think your audience is too weak to know the truth. It's a trap when caught off guard, and it's a poison against others because they lose their trust in you. It's also something that fights being corrected. If a lie gets big enough, or starts big enough, it fights off any truth that could expose it, making it a corrosive element that is best if only allowed for a short term before coming clean, or better still not to get stuck in a lie in the first place.
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In my opinion it is better to be patient with the truth and hold solid ground, then to be trigger happy with a lie. If you can't say the truth, don't say anything at all.

People can't handle the truth ! In fact all Leftists prefer sanitised versions of their failed social experiments.

Individual,

It's by experimentation that one gets results.
Sure, some are bound to fail at first, but
one doesn't give up and keeps trying until
one succeeds. Giving up is intellectual
laziness. Nothing is achieved by giving up.

Nothing is achieved by giving up
Foxy,
ditto for perpetual failing !