It’s amazing how many lies go undetected because people simply don’t care. I can’t tell a lie to fool God, but I can certainly achieve my aims by telling even blatant, obvious lies to human beings, who rarely bother trying to sort out the lies and when they do aren’t very good at it.
It sounds to me like you’re overreaching for a pragmatic reason not to lie, when you either need to admit that honesty is an end in itself or admit that lies are useful.
It’s amazing how many lies go undetected because people simply don’t care. I can’t tell a lie to fool God, but I can certainly achieve my aims by telling even blatant, obvious lies to human beings, who rarely bother trying to sort out the lies and when they do aren’t very good at it.
It sounds to me like you’re overreaching for a pragmatic reason not to lie, when you either need to admit that honesty is an end in itself or admit that lies are useful.