But among these million facts all flowing one way there is, of course, one
question sufficiently solid and separate to be treated briefly, but by itself; I mean the objective occurrence of the supernatural.
In another
chapter I have indicated the fallacy of the ordinary supposition that the world must be impersonal because it is orderly. A person is just as likely
to desire an orderly thing as a disorderly thing. But my own positive conviction that personal creation is more conceivable than material fate,
is, I admit, in a sense, undiscussable. I will not call it a faith or an intuition, for those words are mixed up with mere emotion, it is strictly
an intellectual conviction; but it is a primary intellectual conviction like the certainty of self or the good of living. Any one who likes,
therefore, may call my belief in God merely mystical; the phrase is not worth fighting about. But my belief that miracles have happened in human
history is not a mystical belief at all; I believe in them upon human evidences as I do in the discovery of America.
Upon this point there is a simple logical fact that only requires to be stated and cleared up. Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has
arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some
dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The
disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them. The open, obvious, democratic thing is to believe
an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a miracle, just as you believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a murder. The
plain, popular course is to trust the peasant’s word about the ghost exactly as far as you trust the peasant’s word about the landlord. Being a
peasant he will probably have a great deal of healthy agnosticism about both. Still you could fill the British Museum with evidence uttered by the
peasant, and given in favour of the ghost.
If it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human testimony in favour of the
supernatural. If you reject it, you can only mean one of two things. You reject the peasant’s story about the ghost either because the man is a
peasant or because the story is a ghost story. That is, you either deny the main principle of democracy, or you affirm the main principle of
materialism—the abstract impossibility of miracle. You have a perfect right to do so; but in that case you are the dogmatist. It is we
Christians who accept all actual evidence—it is you rationalists who refuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed. But I am
not constrained by any creed in the
matter, and looking impartially into certain miracles of medieval and modern times, I have come to the conclusion that they occurred. All
argument against these plain facts is always argument in a circle. If I say, “Medieval documents attest certain miracles as much as they attest
certain battles,” they answer, “But medievals were superstitious”; if I want to know in what they were superstitious, the only ultimate answer is
that they believed in the miracles. If I say “a peasant saw a ghost,” I am told, “But peasants are so credulous.” If I ask, “Why credulous?” the only
answer is—that they see ghosts. Iceland is impossible because only stupid sailors have seen it; and the sailors are only stupid because they say
they have seen Iceland. It is only fair to add that there is another argument that the unbeliever may rationally use against miracles, though
he himself generally forgets to use it.
Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here. Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.
Musings on science, the Bible, and fantastic literature (and sometimes basketball and other stuff).
God speaks to us through the Bible and the findings of science, and we should listen to both types of revelation.
The title is from Psalm 84:11.
The Wikipedia is usually a pretty good reference. I mostly use the World English Bible (WEB), because it is public domain. I am grateful.
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I have written an e-book, Does the Bible Really Say That?, which is free to anyone. To download that book, in several formats, go here.
The posts in this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You can copy and use this material, as long as you aren't making money from it. If you give me credit, thanks. If not, OK.
The posts in this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You can copy and use this material, as long as you aren't making money from it. If you give me credit, thanks. If not, OK.
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, 66
Labels:
belief,
Chesterton,
G. K. Chesterton,
materialism,
Miracles,
Orthodoxy,
supernatural
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