There are political and social factions that have waged all-out war against their enemies; that is, anyone and anything that is truly good for the well-being of humanity. You see, for them — good is evil, evil is good, and there are no limits to what they will do to carry through with their goal of ruling as omnipotent gods over creation. Be sure to know, those "People Of The Lie" are masters of deception and manipulation. When the truth would serve them much better, they choose the lie, so much so, not only are they people of the lie, but that is what they have become — the lie personified.

The sad point is that many of those who reach the top of the world's pecking order, especially in the weed fields of politics and the news media, are shameless liars. They appear to be more at home with their lies, accusations, and innuendoes than in the honorable household of truth. These artisans of rhetoric paint graphic pictures with their words, and a wide range of people trust their lives to them, even when the facts contradict their claims.

Not all lies, however, are known by the perpetrators to be lies. It is not unusual for them to believe that what they say is true, especially when it comes to political and religious doctrines. For instance, many of us at one time believed and taught lies as well; but we were innocent of our ill deeds. Until we heard the voice of the Spirit to come out of her, there was no way of knowing they were off target while thinking they were good beliefs upon which to build.

Good beliefs are the guiding principles that provide accurate direction and pure meaning in life. Moreover, beliefs, good and bad, are filters to our perception of the world. They are like internal commands to the mind as to how to react to what is happening, and depending on our filters, we believe it to be true or not. Regardless which belief it is, whether true or false, it was said by one researcher that in the absence of beliefs, people feel disempowered.

Beliefs are instilled in us by a number of things. They can originate from what we hear, and keep on hearing it from others, especially, if we are hearing from those we love, honor, look up to, and respect.

The causes of beliefs also include family life, school, experiences, events, the environment, knowledge, seeing for oneself, etc. Beliefs are also formed by choosing to do so, for some have the understanding and power to choose what to believe.

For instance, a good friend of ours, now deceased, aggressively defended his beliefs by verbally attacking me after reading one of my studies concerning the erroneous doctrine of "sinners condemned by a loving, yet angry God, to eternal torment in hell." Each argument he lodged against me was countered with a simple word of truth. Two minutes had not passed before his face was flushed and glistening with sweat. His eyes glared as he shouted out the dogma of eternal damnation for the lost, and quoted a few mistranslated scriptures. His anger had swelled to the point that I am sure he came close to smacking me in face. His security had been threatened, and it showed.  *

Over a period of time, almost everyone becomes a believer of whatever they are subjected to. The family environment in which they live is instrumental in their beliefs as well as school, the friends with whom they spend time. Once they are formed, it is nigh to impossible to change them. An exception to this is when a child reaches maturity and leaves home.

Some of those youngsters feel so grown up that they choose to believe and do anything that is different from their old-fashioned parents whom they see as being out-of-touch with the real world. The norm, however, is to remain in those beliefs that had been rooted deep within them day by day throughout the years.

"The finding suggests that the emotion-driven processes that lead to biased judgments likely occur outside of awareness, and are distinct from normal reasoning processes when emotion is not so heavily engaged.

"The investigators hypothesize that emotionally biased reasoning leads to the stamping in or reinforcement of a defensive belief, associating the participant's revisionist account of the data with positive emotion or relief and elimination of distress. The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data. Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it with the elimination of the negative emotions and activation of positive ones."

Professor Westen went on to tell Live Science:

Both Republicans and Democrats came to biased conclusions by ignoring facts which could not be rationally disregarded, according to Weston and his associates. After they came to their conclusions, those areas of the brain that dealt with negative emotions went dormant. However, as mentioned above, the brain was highly active in the parts that dealt with rewards. The pattern was very similar to what a drug addict would register after getting a fix.

It seems that reasoning, logic, and a love for the truth, was not a part of the Democrats or Republicans consideration as they were making their decisions. One would think that during such activity, the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is associated with reasoning, would have been quite active during the exercise. It was not.

We all would like to believe that we are basically honest. At least, we would like others to think that of us. Usually, we get along better in life if we can convince others that they can trust us. But scientific evidence seems to indicate we lie and believe our lies much more than we care to acknowledge especially about many things that are important to us like our political and religious views.