I've been listening to a lot of evolutionary history/psychology audiobooks this year and I believe Yuval Noah Harari, and others, have convinced me that without deception human civilization wouldn't exist.
I can understand how primitive people who had no explanations for the awesome phenomena of nature would make something up and agree it was the truth.
What I don't understand is why we cling to those fictions in the face of facts. We know volcanoes aren't angry deities nor are hurricanes malicious spirits because we know the science but some still believe it. I wonder how much longer will we be chimps before we finally emerge as gods.