A survey shows that cheating and lying have become more prevalent in high schools.

Religions teach people not to lie. Yet evidence suggests that lying now is a deeply ingrained habit among American youth (to say nothing of adults).

A recent mini-scandal in which a Gamma Phi Beta sorority member at the University of Missouri-Columbia urged her sorority sisters in an e-mail message to “LIE” so they could donate blood in a campus competition was simply new evidence of this disheartening reality.

Every two years, the Josephson Institute of Ethics, a nonprofit advocate of ethical standards, does a survey of cheating, stealing and lying by high school students. The results are horrifying. The most recent study, released in 2002, confirms a decade-long trend of more and more unethical behavior.

The 1992 survey of 12,000 high school students showed 61 percent admitted cheating on an exam at least once in the previous year. By 2002, that figure had risen to 74 percent (and cheating is growing increasingly high-tech).

Lying was even more prevalent. The 2002 figures showed more than 80 percent of students admitted they lie to teachers. And get this: Students who attend private religious schools were more likely to cheat on exams (78 percent versus 72) and more likely to lie to teachers (86 percent to 81) than students in other types of schools.

“The evidence,” concluded Michael Josephson, president of Los Angeles-based institute, “is that a willingness to cheat has become the norm. … The scary thing is that so many kids are entering the workforce to become corporate executives, politicians, airplane mechanics and nuclear inspectors with the dispositions and skills of cheaters and thieves.”

Boys and girls, can you say “Enron”? How about “Jayson Blair”?

Lying has become a regular subject for researchers. It’s not that deception is a new phenomenon. It’s as old as the Adam and Eve story. But in some cultures, including ours, the practice now is so widespread that it affects how we live, how we relate to each other and whom we trust (hardly anyone, it seems).

At a congressional briefing a few weeks ago – called “International Deception: Research to Secure the Homeland” – a Texas Christian University psychology professor, Charles F. Bond, released findings on deception in various cultures and religions.

In the United States, Bond said, people believe they can get away with lying 56 percent of the time, whereas the comparable figure for residents of Moldova and Botswana is more than 75 percent. Protestants, Bond reported, think 55 percent of their lies go undetected, while for Catholics the figure is about 50.

“Muslims rate themselves the worst at lying,” Bond said. They believe they get away with it only 47 percent of the time.

The sacred texts of religion are full of warnings about lying. In fact, lying made the Top Ten list of commandments the Bible says God gave to Moses: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” (And who is your neighbor? In Jesus’ answer, found in the parable of the Good Samaritan, neighborliness requires mercy, not deceit.)

The Hebrew Scriptures – especially Psalms and Proverbs – are full of admonitions about lying. Psalm 34:13, for instance, advises: “Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit.” Similarly, Proverbs 12:22 says: “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord.” And in Surah 3 in the Quran, God is asked to curse liars.

And yet even the Bible opens the door for people to avoid public expressions of honesty. Consider Proverbs 11:12: “Whoever belittles another lacks sense, but an intelligent person remains silent.” It suggests that your mother was right when she told you not to say anything about someone if you couldn’t say something nice. But is that silence, at base, dishonest.

Ethicists, philosophers and theologians have wrestled with such questions for ages, including whether it’s right to lie for a greater good, which some Christians did in the Holocaust to protect Jews. The Josephson survey and other evidence makes me think that families and faith groups should join this discussion, with everyone (including me) starting by admitting to lying sometimes.

The most distressing thing about the sorority case at the University of Missouri was that it appeared that the young woman who urged people to lie could have put other people’s health in jeopardy. She knew that the Red Cross tells people who are sick or have recently had tattoos or piercings not to donate blood, but she asked them to give anyway.

The Red Cross said the blood supplies are safe because donations are tested before they are used. But it takes only one small human error for damage to be done. That’s what lying often leads to – harm to people who, religions say, are precious to God.

Bill Tammeus is a columnist for The Kansas City Star.