Do you wish there's a god?

[Alan V]

Van Eyck, Brueghel, Rembrandt, and some others, made some of the most profound and wonderful objects ever created by human beings. They did so entirely through the structure of their religion. To do it, they had to be amazingly integrated people, with the heart, the mind, the eye, the hand, the will, the daily routine, all working together and not, as with most of us, at odds or neurotically. This alone is a model for how human beings could be. This is more than a talent for making things look good, and to call such works "propaganda" is, let's say... a bit reductive. 

Have you never learned something important from fiction? Again, Dante, Goethe's Faust, Blake's poetry. There are true and important things there. It takes years of work (enormously pleasurable hard work) to open oneself up to these things. We give up easy pleasures because the difficult pleasures are so much more rewarding -- Eros pulls upwards.

Lipstick on a pig is still on a pig.

I enjoy fiction, but that is a different word game than telling the truth more directly. It's not lying per se, and I think that's where we cut some slack for the mythologists and storytellers. So it's really rather difficult to say in hindsight how seriously religious people really took their ideas historically. I just know that the effects have been to promote propaganda in many cases.

I am a talented individual who has largely spent his life avoiding painting exactly because I would rather communicate something true than simply show off my talents promoting questionable assumptions, including consumerism of art. Nature is already filled with beauty unsullied by all the self-display of artists.

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I do not believe that lies are more utilitarian than truths, to individuals or societies.

That's a pretty strong faith you got there. That no lie has ever been more useful than the truth, nor will it ever be. Not to mention pretty profound statement about the nature of reality. That a fulfilling existence is dependent on a true recognition of it. It sounds a bit too religious.

I personally think my assertion is a matter of logic. The more accurate our perceptions, the better adapted we are to realities.

The problem with lies is that the advantages are short-term. They have long-term disadvantages which typically outweigh any short-term gains.

But don't worry about humans becoming too accurate. There is always a struggle with our more opportunistic and short-sighted tendencies.