Telling Falsehoods without Being a Liar

There is this notion that if someone genuinely believes something to be true and repeats it, then they cannot be lying, therefore the proposition they are claiming must be true. In other words, one cannot tell a falsehood without knowingly lying. This is patently false and particularly dangerous, yet seemingly widely believed, or at least hinted at, to make arguments. People have Unwarranted Certainty about false things all the time. People are mistaken all the time. There are a 1,000 ways to be slightly incorrect, but only one path to being exactly, precisely correct. Therefore spreading falsehoods despite thinking you are attempting to be truthful is the norm, not the exception. The world would be a better place if people understood this better.

One simple example is when a believer claims that Jesus’ disciples could not go around falsely stating that Jesus was risen without either (1) it being true, or (2) knowingly lying (which presumably they would stop doing once it caused them harm instead of gain). I think this is a dangerous false dilemma. I think the truth is probably much more complicated, and that people being mistaken is the norm, therefore they thought they were telling the truth, but they were mistaken. It’s a simpler explanation. (When someone follows up and says that these disciples would not have gone on to be persecuted for a lie, I find this unconvincing, because the disciples’ Cognitive Dissonance would have forced them to double down, not admit they were wrong, in the face of adversity. If all martyrs must be telling the truth, then how come they all contradict—Jewish martyrs, Mormon martyrs, Protestant martyrs, Catholic martyrs, Muslim martyrs. If they cannot all be telling the truth (since the claims that they died for all contradict one another) and thus most of them are mistaken, how difficult is to believe they were all convinced that they were not lying, but they were all still mistaken? It not only seems possible but highly probable. To the point where I would bet a lot of money on this being the case, or wage the possibility of Eternal Life against it.)

On a separate note, when someone repeats enough falsehoods, whether knowingly or unknowingly, it doesn’t matter if they are a liar or not. It matters that they are a fountain of falsehood as evidenced by the fact that they don’t care one lick about the truth. If someone will say anything, so that functionally they are a liar, then who cares if they know inside of their head what is true and what is false? They aren’t using that filter anyway, to prevent harm to the people around them, ergo we should treat them as a liar, even if they are convinced by their own Bullsh!t. Some people never grow up beyond a childish understanding of the world, and some people know exactly what is going on, but in practice, who cares if they are clever but devious, or if they are really just that inept. It has the same appearance from the outside.