In this post I'm going to borrow some from people I admire greatly Justin Schieber and Dan Carlin, for the sake of this post I will also be assuming a monotheistic god of some kind exists and (hopefully) give reasons for why that god would want to lie to us
If we adopt skeptical theism, that is that god has reasons to allow suffering to happen. Then we must also adopt that god could have reasons to lie to us even if those reasons are unknown. I'm not convinced that those reasons are necessarily unknown or at least I can conceive of good reasons for a god to lie to us.
Why would a god allow books like the Bible and Qur'an be written about him if those books are not true? IF the believers of those religions think that their religions have helped mankind more than they have hurt AND that the good would not have happened without the influence of those books. Just like god allowing suffering to happen because some greater good only he would know about came from it, god could very well have lied to the authors of the holy books for very similar reasons.
A second but just as valid reason for god to lie to us would be very similar to reasons the Catholic Church did not want to Bible translated into languages the common person could read. That is god does not want to give us information that is beyond our current level of reasoning. Imagine an alien race coming down with superior technology and the "correct" version of god's word. The catch is that it's written in an alien language that no one on earth can read. We must rely on the word of the alien priests to tell us, until one rogue alien decides to translate this new holy book. What are the consequences to the religious here on earth? If you believe that they could be very detrimental than you have accepted a viable reason for god to lie to us. We are only given what he knows we can absorb even knowing we can, at times, only absorb a lie.
If you would like to listen to the audio files that helped inspire this go here for Divine lies and here for Common Language Problem
questions or comments welcome
@UnicornOnMoon
