Good comment and this is really where I am at the moment. A sort of impasse, where Truth should be the highest sought after ideal but also realizing religion acted as a sort of technology that forwarded Western and Eastern culture, notably on the West toward the Enlightenment which shook off our bonds of pope and king but regardless we wouldn’t have arrived without that cultural ‘vehicle’ of religion. Truth by way of untruth.

Sometimes a lie reveals more “truth” than truth - not Orwellian here - in the example Sam Harris brings up of “a gun is always loaded”. Whether or not it is, and whether or not you absolutely know it is not, you act though it is - checking the chamber, safety and magazine - before handing it to someone else who then checks it in the same manner, as if it were loaded.

The idea being the lie of “the gun is loaded” represents a larger truth - that the gun is a killing instrument and should always be approached or interacted with knowing that very real truth.

Religion of course can function similarly, its stories a lie representing a larger truth that is more easily conveyed through stories or scripture.

Which is why 2020 is so difficult. Truth is the highest ideal, but of the current trend of lies to which we are forced to bend the knee, which ones are representing a more true ‘Truth’ and which are self-interested dogma clawing is back to the Middle Ages?

Or even more specifically, even if we can delineate between the good ‘untruths’ that reveal truth and those of more selfish origin - how can we rightfully claim Truth is the highest ideal while acknowledging the gun is always loaded?