G. K. Chesterton called the 1900s a “century of uncommon nonsense” (The Dumb Ox, 1). Chesterton died in 1936, God thus sparing him the earthly spectacle of how accurate his judgment turned out to be. It is paradoxical that a century that witnessed the most mind-boggling technological developments also suffered a dramatic intellectual and moral decline rarely seen in human history.
It was also Chesterton, I believe, who said also that he who does not have a true religion will inevitably opt for a false one. The twentieth century waged war on “dogmas” (dubbed a sad remnant from the Dark Ages) but adopted dogmas of its own making. One of them—highly acclaimed in colleges and universities—is that “verifiable” statements alone deserve the label of truth. All other assertions are to be rejected as remnants of a past mired in prejudices that should not be given intellectual citizenship in a world finally liberated from the myths and metaphysical fairy tales that go by the name of faith.
The primary tactic of this intellectual “purgation” is to condemn religious beliefs as nothing more than superstitions. The reasoning goes that dogmas were inventions of a clergy eager to dominate the minds of immature believers by making them swallow intellectual nonsense and threatening them with eternal damnation if they refused to believe.
Although religious charlatans—thriving today as never before—have often ensnared people, this does not legitimate the conclusion that all religious teachers are charlatans, and still less that everything must be verified in order to be accepted as true. That would be like claiming that sounds do not exist because they cannot be seen or that colors do not exist because they cannot be heard. (This is why logical positivism was dead by 1960.)
Some twenty-four centuries ago, Aristotle wrote that “if everything had to be proven, nothing could ever be proven” (Posterior Analysis, 1:3:72B). He is making the rightful claim that only what is uncertain is in need of proof. A statement that is intelligible and luminous (such as the principle of noncontradiction) does not need to be proven. In fact, it cannot be proven, not because of its weakness but because of its strength: The validity of any proof presupposes the validity of this principle.
Modern man, inebriated by the amazing “progress” that took place in the twentieth century, easily forgets that if there are statements which are “below” reason (i.e., nonsensical), then some statements are “above” reason—that is, they transcend the perimeter of man’s limited mind. Blaise Pascal wrote, “There is nothing more comfortable to reason than this disavowal of reason” (Pensees, 272).
Trust
All personal relationships rest on one key virtue: trust. The hell prevalent in totalitarian states can be encapsulated in the words “trust no one.” In such a political climate, love, friendship—relationships of any sort—not only cannot endure but are impossible. How is one to relate to a cleaning maid who is dishonest? How is one to entrust one’s money to a bank whose managers are crooks? How is one to trust the head of a state if he is proven to be a professional liar? How is one to trust one’s husband, one’s wife, one’s children? Without trust there can be no love, and life becomes hellish.
Much of our knowledge rests also on trust. We trust scientific experts because of their credentials. We trust the diagnoses of doctors because they have undergone long years of training. We trust the judgment of airplane pilots for the same reason. Nevertheless, even those whom we have legitimate reasons to trust can make mistakes—be it due to fatigue, carelessness, or some other flaw, it can happen and does happen that in certain instances our trust is betrayed. Medical doctors can make erroneous diagnoses; pilots can overshoot runways. This does mean we are gullible to trust in these cases. It means only that the world—and those in it—are not perfect.
The whole question centers therefore on whether the act of trust is justified or not. All of us would be reluctant to trust our purse to an unknown person that we happen to meet. But all of us (hopefully) have the blessing of friends to whom we can give our full trust. As a matter of fact, to distrust a friend who year after year has given proof of his love, honesty, and fidelity is not only deeply offensive but shows a severe flaw in the character of the distrustful person. There are persons who deserve our trust; their credentials have been tested and re-tested, and to trust them is an act of justice. We owe them our trust.
A cynic or a pessimist could object that the fact that a person has proven himself to be trustworthy for a long time is no guarantee that he will persevere. “He has been honest because he has not been tempted to cheat; but if he found himself in dire need, who can guarantee that he would not steal?”
But this argument can be rebutted by saying, “Granted men are weak, and many of us know the bitterness of being disappointed by a friend’s conduct. But this does not apply to God; our faith is based on the holiness of God himself.” In his epistle to the Hebrews, Paul writes, “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised” (Heb. 11:11, emphasis added). And she conceived Isaac. Her trust in God’s faithfulness justified her faith. To refuse to believe when the person informing us is Truth itself is either a plain act of rebellion or indicative of a grave intellectual flaw. The paradox of faith is that it grants man a firm, unshakable conviction, even though this conviction is based neither on proof nor on self-evidence.
Gullibility
There are people whose intellectual talents are so anemic that they are likely to give their assent to any nonsense if a dynamic, convincing person presents it to them. This is a plain case of stupidity that we can discard without further ado.
But gullibility can take more subtle forms. Once again, it presupposes both a person whose reasoning power is untrained and therefore easily impressed by eloquence and a “teacher” who combines a certain brilliance with self-assurance. Almost all charlatans have these qualities, and the number of their victims is, alas, legion. The quantity of religious sects that have proliferated in the course of the last forty years is appalling and belies the proud assertion of those who claim that man has come of age and no longer swallows the nonsense propagated in the Dark Ages.
That man’s imperfect mind can be tempted by gullibility may be shown by recalling the early life of Augustine. No doubt he was one of the great minds that have graced the Catholic Church. Yet even he fell prey to the nonsense of the Manicheans and—to his later shame—gulped down wholesale the following teaching: “A fig weeps when it is plucked . . . and that if some ‘saint’ ate this fig—providing, forsooth, that it was picked not by him but by another’s sinful hand—then he would digest it in his stomach, and from it he would breathe forth angels” (Confession 3:10).
That someone who deserves the title genius should fall victim to such nonsense should make us wary and teach us humility. If this happened to such a great mind, which one of us can assert with impunity that it would never happen to him? Augustine has scathing words for the methods used by these perverters of the mind who use “birdlime” to catch their victims (ibid., 3:6). Men crave sensations and are likely to respond positively to any religious phenomenon that smacks of the extraordinary. The whole gamut of scams follows the same pattern. Knaves will always find victims.
All men are capable of falling victim to false teaching. Christ tells us that at the end of time false prophets will abound, and he warns us that they will perform amazing miracles “so as to lead away, if possible, even the elect” (Matt. 24:24). Paul repeats the same warning: Christians are warned constantly to “stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us,” for he alone who does so has a chance of overcoming the overwhelming power, charm, and brilliance that will characterize the Antichrist (2 Thess. 2:3–15).
Gullible people are duped by their own lack of judgment and prudence. By intellectual sleight of hand, a charlatan—having first ascertained that his victim’s critical faculties have been anesthetized—convinces him to swallow specious arguments and believe whatever is presented to him. Mountebanks make a profitable career of their art in cheating people because they possess self-assurance, eloquence, and dynamism that impress insecure minds.
Faith
Why is faith confused with gullibility? They share one common feature: belief in facts that are neither scientifically proven nor self-evident. This common trait leads minds imprisoned by narrow rationalistic categories to draw the erroneous conclusion that they are identical. Their dogma then reads “Faith is nothing but gullibility.” This dogma is practically universal in institutions of higher learning. He who believes in God is therefore a man whose intellectual powers are stunted.
But if logic teaches us that something validly proven should be accepted as true, it also tells us that a statement not satisfactorily proven is not necessarily false. The valid conclusion in the latter case is that we cannot know whether the statement is true or not. Moreover, logic tells us that if two things (e.g., faith and gullibility) share a common characteristic (e.g., belief in what is not scientifically provable), it does not mean they are identical.
Many so-called intellectuals who assume that faith is nothing but gullibility do not even condescend to refute the claims of faith. Rather, they denigrate it by derision and ridicule. This method of attacking faith by deprecation was contested by Soren Kierkegaard, who wrote, “The realm of faith is thus not a class for numbskulls in the sphere of the intellectual, or an asylum for the feeble-minded” (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [Princeton University Press], 291).
It is a sad fact that the religious sphere is one in which swindlers have a field day. Because deep down men have a longing for something which transcends the dullness and narrow framework of everyday life, they are easily tickled by what is extraordinary, sensational, or exciting. Spiritual quacks have easy access to such souls (hence the incredible number of religious sects which—like tare—proliferate everywhere). Their aim is to enrich themselves by playing the role of spiritual leaders.
In fact, there is an abyss separating faith from gullibility. This becomes evident when we realize that the gullible person bases his assent on an unjustified trust, whereas the man of faith claims with Paul, ” Scio in cui credidi” (“I know whom I have believed”) (2 Tim. 1:12).
Finally, a tree is to be judged by its fruits. That Christ is God is attested to by the fact that those who accept his holy teaching and live it can become saints. That man’s fallen nature, so severely wounded by sin, can become “another Christ” is an overwhelming fact that can only be explained by the truthfulness of God and the power of his grace. “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48) is a command (for it is not just the expression of a wish) that is nonsensical if God’s revelation did not deserve our absolute trust.
The Christian knows that his faith is not gullibility because Christianity produces saints. The reality of holiness is a proof that trust in God is fully justified, the most convincing proof that our faith is based on the rock of truth. Indeed, we can say with Paul, “I know whom I have believed.”