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Chapter Five

Belief and Will

THE ETHICS OF BELIEF (1879) W.K. Clifford

I. THE DUTY OF INQUIRY

A SHIPOWNER was about to send to sea an emigrant-ship. He knew that she was old, and not over-well built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs. Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy. These doubts preyed upon his mind and made him unhappy; he thought that perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly overhauled and refitted, even though this should put him to great expense. Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy reflections. He said to himself that she had gone safely through so many voyages and weathered so many storms that it was idle to suppose she would not come safely home from this trip also. He would put his trust in Providence, which could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere. He would dismiss from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of builders and contractors. In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure with a light heart, and benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance-money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales. What shall we say of him? Surely this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in no wise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts. And although in the end he may have felt so sure about it that he could not think otherwise, yet inasmuch as he had knowingly and willingly worked himself into that frame of mind, he must be held responsible for it. Let us alter the case a little, and suppose that the ship was not unsound after all; that she made her voyage safely, and many others after it. Will that diminish the guilt of her owner? Not one jot. When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that. The man would not have been innocent, he would only have been not found out. The question of right or wrong has to do with the origin of his belief, not the matter of it; not what it was, but how he got it; not whether it turned out to be true or false, but whether he had a right to believe on such evidence as was before him. There was once an island in which some of the inhabitants professed a religion teaching neither the doctrine of original sin nor that of eternal punishment. A suspicion got abroad that the professors of this religion had made use of unfair means to get their doctrines taught to children.

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They were accused of wresting the laws of their country in such a way as to remove children from the care of their natural and legal guardians; and even of stealing them away and keeping them concealed from their friends and relations. A certain number of men formed themselves into a society for the purpose of agitating the public about this matter. They published grave accusations against individual citizens of the highest position and character, and did all in their power to injure these citizens in their exercise of their professions. So great was the noise they made, that a Commission was appointed to investigate the facts; but after the Commission had carefully inquired into all the evidence that could be got, it appeared that the accused were innocent. Not only had they been accused on insufficient evidence, but the evidence of their innocence was such as the agitators might easily have obtained, if they had attempted a fair inquiry. After these disclosures the inhabitants of that country looked upon the members of the agitating society, not only as persons whose judgment was to be distrusted, but also as no longer to be counted honourable men. For although they had sincerely and conscientiously believed in the charges they had made, yet they had no right to believe on such evidence as was before them. Their sincere convictions, instead of being honestly earned by patient inquiring, were stolen by listening to the voice of prejudice and passion. Let us vary this case also, and suppose, other things remaining as before, that a still more accurate investigation proved the accused to have been really guilty. Would this make any difference in the guilt of the accusers? Clearly not; the question is not whether their belief was true or false, but whether they entertained it on wrong grounds. They would no doubt say, "Now you see that we were right after all; next time perhaps you will believe us." And they might be believed, but they would not thereby become honourable men. They would not be innocent, they would only be not found out. Every one of them, if he chose to examine himself in foro conscientiæ [in the court of conscience – ed.], would know that he had acquired and nourished a belief, when he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him; and therein he would know that he had done a wrong thing. It may be said, however, that in both of these supposed cases it is not the belief which is judged to be wrong, but the action following upon it. The shipowner might say, "I am perfectly certain that my ship is sound, but still I feel it my duty to have her examined, before trusting the lives of so many people to her." And it might be said to the agitator, "However convinced you were of the justice of your cause and the truth of your convictions, you ought not to have made a public attack upon any man’s character until you had examined the evidence on both sides with the utmost patience and care." In the first place, let us admit that, so far as it goes, this view of the case is right and necessary; right, because even when a man’s belief is so fixed that he cannot think otherwise, he still has a choice in regard to the action suggested by it, and so cannot escape the duty of investigating on the ground of the strength of his convictions; and necessary, because those who are not yet capable of controlling their feelings and thoughts must have a plain rule dealing with overt acts. But this being premised as necessary, it becomes clear that it is not sufficient, and that our previous judgment is required to supplement it. For it is not possible so to sever the belief from the action it suggests as to condemn the one without condemning the other. No man holding a strong belief on one side of a question, or even wishing to hold a belief on one side, can

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investigate it with such fairness and completeness as if he were really in doubt and unbiassed; so that the existence of a belief not founded on fair inquiry unfits a man for the performance of this necessary duty. Nor is it that truly a belief at all which has not some influence upon the actions of him who holds it. He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart. If a belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future. It goes to make a part of that aggregate of beliefs which is the link between sensation and action at every moment of all our lives, and which is so organized and compacted together that no part of it can be isolated from the rest, but every new addition modifies the structure of the whole. No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may some day explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character for ever. And no one man’s belief is in any case a private matter which concerns himself alone. Our lives are guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social purposes. Our words, our phrases, our forms and processes and modes of thought, are common property, fashioned and perfected from age to age; an heirloom which every succeeding generation inherits as a precious deposit and a sacred trust to be handed on to the next one, not unchanged but enlarged and purified, with some clear marks of its proper handiwork. Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. An awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live. In the two supposed cases which have been considered, it has been judged wrong to believe on insufficient evidence, or to nourish belief by suppressing doubts and avoiding investigation. The reason of this judgment is not far to seek: it is that in both these cases the belief held by one man was of great importance to other men. But forasmuch as no belief held by one man, however seemingly trivial the belief, and however obscure the believer, is ever actually insignificant or without its effect on the fate of mankind, we have no choice but to extend our judgment to all cases of belief whatever. Belief, that sacred faculty which prompts the decisions of our will, and knits into harmonious working all the compacted energies of our being, is ours not for ourselves, but for humanity. It is rightly used on truths which have been established by long experience and waiting toil, and which have stood in the fierce light of free and fearless questioning. Then it helps to bind men together, and to strengthen and direct their common action. It is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements, for the solace and private pleasure of the believer; to add a tinsel splendour to the plain straight road of our life and display a bright mirage beyond it; or even to drown the common sorrows of our kind by a self-deception which allows them not only to cast down, but also to degrade us. Whoso would deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard the purity of his belief with a very fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any time it should rest on an unworthy object, and catch a stain which can never be wiped away. It is not only the leader of men, statesmen, philosopher, or poet, that owes this bounden duty to mankind. Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may

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help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race. Every hard-worked wife of an artisan may transmit to her children beliefs which shall knit society together, or rend it in pieces. No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe. It is true that this duty is a hard one, and the doubt which comes out of it is often a very bitter thing. It leaves us bare and powerless where we thought that we were safe and strong. To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances. We feel much happier and more secure when we think we know precisely what to do, no matter what happens, then when we have lost our way and do not know where to turn. And if we have supposed ourselves to know all about anything, and to be capable of doing what is fit in regard to it, we naturally do not like to find that we are really ignorant and powerless, that we have to begin again at the beginning, and try to learn what the thing is and how it is to be dealt with. if indeed anything can be learnt about it. It is the sense of power attached to a sense of knowledge that makes men desirous of believing, and afraid of doubting. This sense of power is the highest and best of pleasures when the belief on which it is founded is a true belief, and has been fairly earned by investigation. For then we may justly feel that it is common property, and holds good for others as well as for ourselves. Then we may be glad, not that I have learned secrets by which I am safer and stronger, but that we men have got mastery over more of the world; and we shall be strong, not for ourselves, but in the name of Man and his strength. But if the belief has been accepted on insufficient evidence, the pleasure is a stolen one. Not only does it deceive ourselves by giving us a sense of power which we do not really possess, but it is sinful, because it is stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind. That duty is to guard ourselves from such beliefs as from a pestilence, which may shortly master our own body and then spread to the rest of the town. What would be thought of one who, for the sake of a sweet fruit, should deliberately run the risk of bringing a plague upon his family and his neighbours? And, as in other such cases, it is not the risk only which has to be considered; for a bad action is always bad at the time when it is done, no matter what happens afterwards. Every time we let ourselves believe for unworthy reasons, we weaken our powers of self-control, of doubting, of judicially and fairly weighing evidence. We all suffer severely enough from the maintenance and support of false beliefs and the fatally wrong actions which they lead to, and the evil born when one such belief is entertained is great and wide. But a greater and wider evil arises when the credulous character is maintained and supported, when a habit of believing for unworthy reasons is fostered and made permanent. If I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done by the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest. What hurts society is not that it should lose its property, but that it should become a den of thieves; for then it must cease to be society. This is why we ought not to do evil that good may come; for at any rate this great evil has come, that we have done evil and are made wicked thereby. In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong

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things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery. The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and consequent support of false beliefs. Habitual want of care about what I believe leads to habitual want of care in others about the truth of what is told to me. Men speak the truth to one another when each reveres the truth in his own mind and in the other’s mind; but how shall my friend revere the truth in my mind when I myself am careless about it, when I believe things because I want to believe them, and because they are comforting and pleasant? Will he not learn to cry, "Peace," to me, when there is no peace? By such a course I shall surround myself with a thick atmosphere of falsehood and fraud, and in that I must live. It may matter little to me, in my cloud-castle of sweet illusions and darling lies; but it matters much to Man that I have made my neighbours ready to deceive. The credulous man is father to the liar and the cheat; he lives in the bosom of this his family, and it is no marvel if he should become even as they are. So closely are our duties knit together, that whoso shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call in question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing the life of that man is one long sin against mankind. If this judgment seems harsh when applied to those simple souls who have never known better, who have been brought up from the cradle with a horror of doubt, and taught that their eternal welfare depends on what they believe, then it leads to the very serious question, Who hath made Israel to sin? It may be permitted me to fortify this judgment with the sentence of Milton "A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determine, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy." And with this famous aphorism of Coleridge "He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all." Inquiry into the evidence of a doctrine is not to be made once for all, and then taken as finally settled. It is never lawful to stifle a doubt; for either it can be honestly answered by means of the inquiry already made, or else it proves that the inquiry was not complete.

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"But," says one, "I am a busy man; I have no time for the long course of study which would be necessary to make me in any degree a competent judge of certain questions, or even able to understand the nature of the arguments." Then he should have no time to believe...

Questions for Review 1. What are Clifford's examples of the Shipowner and the Baseless Rumor? What are they intended to prove? 2. Besides the risk of bad consequences, what other feature of unjustified beliefs makes them wrong, according to Clifford?

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3. What does Clifford say about seemingly innocuous unjustified beliefs which someone may argue wouldn't ever have any effect on the world, such as a "harmless superstition"? What would he say about the idea that a person's beliefs are his own business or that everyone has a right to her own opinion?

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THE WILL TO BELIEVE (1897) William James

IN the recently published Life by Leslie Stephen of his brother, Fitz-James, there is an account of a school to which the latter went when he was a boy. The teacher, a certain Mr. Guest, used to converse with his pupils in this wise: "Gurney, what is the difference between justification and sanctification? Stephen, prove the omnipotence of God!" etc. In the midst of our Harvard freethinking and indifference we are prone to imagine that here at your good old orthodox College conversation continues to be somewhat upon this order; and to show you that we at Harvard have not lost all interest in these vital subjects, I have brought with me to-night something like a sermon on justification by faith to read to you, I mean an essay in justification of faith, a defence of our right to adopt a believing attitude in religious matters, in spite of the fact that our merely logical intellect may not have been coerced. 'The Will to Believe,' accordingly, is the title of my paper. I have long defended to my own students the lawfulness of voluntarily adopted faith; but as soon as they have got well imbued with the logical spirit, they have as a rule refused to admit my contention to be lawful philosophically, even though in point of fact they were personally all the time chock-full of some faith or other themselves. I am all the while, however, so profoundly convinced that my own position is correct, that your invitation has seemed to me a good occasion to make my statements more clear. Perhaps your minds will be more open than those with which I have hitherto had to deal. I will be as little technical as I can, though I must begin by setting up some technical distinctions that will help us in the end. Let us give the name of hypothesis to anything that may be proposed to our belief; and just as the electricians speak of live and dead wires, let us speak of any hypothesis as either live or dead. A live hypothesis is one which appeals as a real possibility to him to whom it is proposed. If I ask you to believe in the Mahdi [a Messianic figure in Islam], the notion makes no electric connection with your nature, it refuses to scintillate with any credibility at all. As an hypothesis it is completely dead. To an Arab, however (even if he be not one of the Mahdi's followers), the hypothesis is among the mind's possibilities: it is alive. This shows that deadness and liveness in an hypothesis are not intrinsic properties, but relations to the individual thinker. They are measured by his willingness to act. The maximum of liveness in an hypothesis means willingness to act irrevocably. Practically, that means belief; but there is some believing tendency wherever there is willingness to act at all. Next, let us call the decision between two hypotheses an option. Options may be of several kinds. They may be 1, living or dead; 2, forced or avoidable; 3, momentous or trivial; and for our purposes we may call an option a genuine option when it is of the forced, living, and momentous kind. 1. A living option is one in which both hypotheses are live ones. If I say to you: "Be a theosophist or be a Mohammedan [Muslim]," it is probably a dead option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive. But if I say: "Be an agnostic or be a Christian," it is otherwise: trained as you are, each hypothesis makes some appeal, however small, to your belief.

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2. Next, if I say to you: "Choose between going out with your umbrella or without it," I do not offer you a genuine option, for it is not forced. You can easily avoid it by not going out at all. Similarly, if I say, "Either love me or hate me," "Either call my theory true or call it false," your option is avoidable. You may remain indifferent to me, neither loving nor hating, and you may decline to offer any judgment as to my theory. But if I say, "Either accept this truth or go without it," I put on you a forced option, for there is no standing place outside of the alternative. Every dilemma based on a complete logical disjunction, with no possibility of not choosing, is an option of this forced kind. 3. Finally, if I were Dr. Nansen and proposed to you to join my North Pole expedition, your option would be momentous; for this would probably be your only similar opportunity, and your choice now would either exclude you from the North Pole sort of immortality altogether or put at least the chance of it into your hands. He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he tried and failed. Per contra, the option is trivial when the opportunity is not unique, when the stake is insignificant, or when the decision is reversible if it later prove unwise. Such trivial options abound in the scientific life. A chemist finds an hypothesis live enough to spend a year in its verification: he believes in it to that extent. But if his experiments prove inconclusive either way, he is quit for his loss of time, no vital harm being done. It will facilitate our discussion if we keep all these distinctions well in mind.

II.

The next matter to consider is the actual psychology of human opinion. When we look at certain facts, it seems as if our passional and volitional nature lay at the root of all our convictions. When we look at others, it seems as if they could do nothing when the intellect had once said its say. Let us take the latter facts up first. Does it not seem preposterous on the very face of it to talk of our opinions being modifiable at will? Can our will either help or hinder our intellect in its perceptions of truth? Can we, by just willing it, believe that Abraham Lincoln's existence is a myth, and that the portraits of him in McClure's Magazine are all of some one else? Can we, by any effort of our will, or by any strength of wish that it were true, believe ourselves well and about when we are roaring with rheumatism in bed, or feel certain that the sum of the two one-dollar bills in our pocket must be a hundred dollars? We can say any of these things, but we are absolutely impotent to believe them; and of just such things is the whole fabric of the truths that we do believe in made up, matters of fact, immediate or remote, as Hume said, and relations between ideas, which are either there or not there for us if we see them so, and which if not there cannot be put there by any action of our own. In Pascal's Thoughts there is a celebrated passage known in literature as Pascal's wager. In it he tries to force us into Christianity by reasoning as if our concern with truth resembled our concern with the stakes in a game of chance. Translated freely his words are these: You must either believe or not believe that God is which will you do? Your human reason cannot say. A game is going on between you and the nature of things which at the day of judgment will bring out either heads or tails. Weigh what your gains and your losses would be if you should stake all you have

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on heads, or God's existence: if you win in such case, you gain eternal beatitude; if you lose, you lose nothing at all. If there were an infinity of chances, and only one for God in this wager, still you ought to stake your all on God; for though you surely risk a finite loss by this procedure, any finite loss is reasonable, even a certain one is reasonable, if there is but the possibility of infinite gain. Go, then, and take holy water, and have masses said; belief will come and stupefy your scruples, Cela vous fera croire et vous abêtira [“This will make you believe and make you more docile”, i.e. less guardedly skeptical] Why should you not? At bottom, what have you to lose? You probably feel that when religious faith expresses itself thus, in the language of the gaming-table, it is put to its last trumps. Surely Pascal's own personal belief in masses and holy water had far other springs; and this celebrated page of his is but an argument for others, a last desperate snatch at a weapon against the hardness of the unbelieving heart. We feel that a faith in masses and holy water adopted wilfully after such a mechanical calculation would lack the inner soul of faith's reality; and if we were ourselves in the place of the Deity, we should probably take particular pleasure in cutting off believers of this pattern from their infinite reward. It is evident that unless there be some pre-existing tendency to believe in masses and holy water, the option offered to the will by Pascal is not a living option. Certainly no [Muslim] Turk ever took to masses and holy water on its account; and even to us Protestants these means of salvation seem such foregone impossibilities that Pascal's logic, invoked for them specifically, leaves us unmoved. As well might the Mahdi write to us, saying, "I am the Expected One whom God has created in his effulgence. You shall be infinitely happy if you confess me; otherwise you shall be cut off from the light of the sun. Weigh, then, your infinite gain if I am genuine against your finite sacrifice if I am not!" His logic would be that of Pascal; but he would vainly use it on us, for the hypothesis he offers us is dead. No tendency to act on it exists in us to any degree. The talk of believing by our volition seems, then, from one point of view, simply silly. From another point of view it is worse than silly, it is vile. When one turns to the magnificent edifice of the physical sciences, and sees how it was reared; what thousands of disinterested moral lives of men lie buried in its mere foundations; what patience and postponement, what choking down of preference, what submission to the icy laws of outer fact are wrought into its very stones and mortar; how absolutely impersonal it stands in its vast augustness, then how besotted and contemptible seems every little sentimentalist who comes blowing his voluntary smoke-wreaths, and pretending to decide things from out of his private dream! Can we wonder if those bred in the rugged and manly school of science should feel like spewing such subjectivism out of their mouths? The whole system of loyalties which grow up in the schools of science go dead against its toleration; so that it is only natural that those who have caught the scientific fever should pass over to the opposite extreme, and write sometimes as if the incorruptibly truthful intellect ought positively to prefer bitterness and unacceptableness to the heart in its cup. It fortifies my soul to know That, though I perish, Truth is so sings Clough, while Huxley exclaims: "My only consolation lies in the reflection that, however bad our posterity may become, so far as they hold by the plain rule of not pretending to believe what they have no reason to believe, because it may be to their advantage so to pretend [the word 'pretend' is surely here redundant], they will not have reached the lowest depth of immorality."

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And that delicious enfant terrible Clifford writes: "Belief is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements for the solace and private pleasure of the believer. . . . Whoso would deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard the purity of his belief with a very fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any time it should rest on an unworthy object, and catch a stain which can never be wiped away. . . . If [a] belief has been accepted on insufficient evidence [even though the belief be true, as Clifford on the same page explains] the pleasure is a stolen one. . . . It is sinful because it is stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind. That duty is to guard ourselves from such beliefs as from a pestilence which may shortly master our own body and then spread to the rest of the town. . . . It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."

III. All this strikes one as healthy, even when expressed, as by Clifford, with somewhat too much of robustious pathos in the voice. Free-will and simple wishing do seem, in the matter of our credences, to be only fifth wheels to the coach. Yet if any one should thereupon assume that intellectual insight is what remains after wish and will and sentimental preference have taken wing, or that pure reason is what then settles our opinions, he would fly quite as directly in the teeth of the facts. It is only our already dead hypotheses that our willing nature is unable to bring to life again. But what has made them dead for us is for the most part a previous action of our willing nature of an antagonistic kind. When I say 'willing nature,' I do not mean only such deliberate volitions as may have set up habits of belief that we cannot now escape from, I mean all such factors of belief as fear and hope, prejudice and passion, imitation and partisanship, the circumpressure of our caste and set. As a matter of fact we find ourselves believing, we hardly know how or why. Mr. Balfour gives the name of 'authority' to all those influences, born of the intellectual climate, that make hypotheses possible or impossible for us, alive or dead. Here in this room, we all of us believe in molecules and the conservation of energy, in democracy and necessary progress, in Protestant Christianity and the duty of fighting for 'the doctrine of the immortal Monroe,' all for no reasons worthy of the name. We see into these matters with no more inner clearness, and probably with much less, than any disbeliever in them might possess. His unconventionality would probably have some grounds to show for its conclusions; but for us, not insight, but the prestige of the opinions, is what makes the spark shoot from them and light up our sleeping magazines of faith. Our reason is quite satisfied, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every thousand of us, if it can find a few arguments that will do to recite in case our credulity is criticized by some one else. Our faith is faith in some one else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case. Our belief in truth itself, for instance, that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other, what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social system backs us up? We want to have a truth; we want to believe that our experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it; and on this line we agree to fight out our thinking lives. But if a pyrrhonistic sceptic asks us how we know all this, can our logic find a reply? No! certainly it cannot. It is just one volition against another, we willing to go in for life upon a trust or assumption which he, for his part, does not care to make.

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As a rule we disbelieve all facts and theories for which we have no use. Clifford's cosmic emotions find no use for Christian feelings. Huxley belabors the bishops because there is no use for sacerdotalism in his scheme of life. Newman, on the contrary, goes over to Romanism, and finds all sorts of reasons good for staying there, because a priestly system is for him an organic need and delight. Why do so few 'scientists' even look at the evidence for telepathy, so-called? Because they think, as a leading biologist, now dead, once said to me, that even if such a thing were true, scientists ought to band together to keep it suppressed and concealed. It would undo the uniformity of Nature and all sorts of other things without which scientists cannot carry on their pursuits. But if this very man had been shown something which as a scientist he might do with telepathy, he might not only have examined the evidence, but even have found it good enough. This very law which the logicians would impose upon us if I may give the name of logicians to those who would rule out our willing nature here is based on nothing but their own natural wish to exclude all elements for which they, in their professional quality of logicians, can find no use. Evidently, then, our non-intellectual nature does influence our convictions. There are passional tendencies and volitions which run before and others which come after belief, and it is only the latter that are too late for the fair; and they are not too late when the previous passional work has been already in their own direction. Pascal's argument, instead of being powerless, then seems a regular clincher, and is the last stroke needed to make our faith in masses and holy water complete. The state of things is evidently far from simple; and pure insight and logic, whatever they might do ideally, are not the only things that really do produce our creeds.

IV. Our next duty, having recognized this mixed-up state of affairs, is to ask whether it be simply reprehensible and pathological, or whether, on the contrary, we must treat it as a normal element in making up our minds. The thesis I defend is, briefly stated, this: Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds; for to say, under such circumstances, "Do not decide, but leave the question open," is itself a passional decision, just like deciding yes or no, and is attended with the same risk of losing the truth...

VII. One more point, small but important, and our preliminaries are done. There are two ways of looking at our duty in the matter of opinion, ways entirely different, and yet ways about whose difference the theory of knowledge seems hitherto to have shown very little concern. We must know the truth; and we must avoid error, these are our first and great commandments as would-be knowers; but they are not two ways of stating an identical commandment, they are two separable laws. Although it may indeed happen that when we believe the truth A, we escape as an incidental consequence from believing the falsehood B, it hardly ever happens that by merely disbelieving B we necessarily believe A. We may in escaping B fall into believing other falsehoods, C or D, just as bad as B; or we may escape B by not believing anything at all, not even A.

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Believe truth! Shun error! these, we see, are two materially different laws; and by choosing between them we may end by coloring differently our whole intellectual life. We may regard the chase for truth as paramount, and the avoidance of error as secondary; or we may, on the other hand, treat the avoidance of error as more imperative, and let truth take its chance. Clifford, in the instructive passage which I have quoted, exhorts us to the latter course. Believe nothing, he tells us, keep your mind in suspense forever, rather than by closing it on insufficient evidence incur the awful risk of believing lies. You, on the other hand, may think that the risk of being in error is a very small matter when compared with the blessings of real knowledge, and be ready to be duped many times in your investigation rather than postpone indefinitely the chance of guessing true. I myself find it impossible to go with Clifford. We must remember that these feelings of our duty about either truth or error are in any case only expressions of our passional life. Biologically considered, our minds are as ready to grind out falsehood as veracity, and he who says, "Better go without belief forever than believe a lie!" merely shows his own preponderant private horror of becoming a dupe. He may be critical of many of his desires and fears, but this fear he slavishly obeys. He cannot imagine any one questioning its binding force. For my own part, I have also a horror of being duped; but I can believe that worse things than being duped may happen to a man in this world: so Clifford's exhortation has to my ears a thoroughly fantastic sound. It is like a general informing his soldiers that it is better to keep out of battle forever than to risk a single wound. Not so are victories either over enemies or over nature gained. Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf. At any rate, it seems the fittest thing for the empiricist philosopher.

VIII. And now, after all this introduction, let us go straight at our question. I have said, and now repeat it, that not only as a matter of fact do we find our passional nature influencing us in our opinions, but that there are some options between opinions in which this influence must be regarded both as an inevitable and as a lawful determinant of our choice. I fear here that some of you my hearers will begin to scent danger, and lend an inhospitable ear. Two first steps of passion you have indeed had to admit as necessary, we must think so as to avoid dupery, and we must think so as to gain truth; but the surest path to those ideal consummations, you will probably consider, is from now onwards to take no further passional step. Well, of course, I agree as far as the facts will allow. Wherever the option between losing truth and gaining it is not momentous, we can throw the chance of gaining truth away, and at any rate save ourselves from any chance of believing falsehood, by not making up our minds at all till objective evidence has come. In scientific questions, this is almost always the case; and even in human affairs in general, the need of acting is seldom so urgent that a false belief to act on is better than no belief at all. Law courts, indeed, have to decide on the best evidence attainable for the moment, because a judge's duty is to make law as well as to ascertain it, and (as a learned judge once said to me) few cases are worth spending much time over: the great thing is to have them decided on any acceptable principle, and got out of the way. But in our dealings with

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objective nature we obviously are recorders, not makers, of the truth; and decisions for the mere sake of deciding promptly and getting on to the next business would be wholly out of place. Throughout the breadth of physical nature facts are what they are quite independently of us, and seldom is there any such hurry about them that the risks of being duped by believing a premature theory need be faced. The questions here are always trivial options, the hypotheses are hardly living (at any rate not living for us spectators), the choice between believing truth or falsehood is seldom forced. The attitude of sceptical balance is therefore the absolutely wise one if we would escape mistakes. What difference, indeed, does it make to most of us whether we have or have not a theory of the Röntgen rays whether we believe or not in mind-stuff, or have a conviction about the causality of conscious states? It makes no difference. Such options are not forced on us. On every account it is better not to make them, but still keep weighing reasons pro et contra with an indifferent hand. I speak, of course, here of the purely judging mind. For purposes of discovery such indifference is to be less highly recommended, and science would be far less advanced than she is if the passionate desires of individuals to get their own faiths confirmed had been kept out of the game. See for example the sagacity which Spencer and Weismann now display. On the other hand, if you want an absolute duffer in an investigation, you must, after all, take the man who has no interest whatever in its results: he is the warranted incapable, the positive fool. The most useful investigator, because the most sensitive observer, is always he whose eager interest in one side of the question is balanced by an equally keen nervousness lest he become deceived. Science has organized this nervousness into a regular technique, her so-called method of verification; and she has fallen so deeply in love with the method that one may even say she has ceased to care for truth by itself at all. It is only truth as technically verified that interests her. The truth of truths might come in merely affirmative form, and she would decline to touch it. Such truth as that, she might repeat with Clifford, would be stolen in defiance of her duty to mankind. Human passions, however, are stronger than technical rules. "Le cúur a ses raisons," as Pascal says, "que la raison ne connaît pas;" [The heart has its reasons which reason does not know.”] and however indifferent to all but the bare rules of the game the umpire, the abstract intellect, may be, the concrete players who furnish him the materials to judge of are usually, each one of them, in love with some pet 'live hypothesis' of his own. Let us agree, however, that wherever there is no forced option, the dispassionately judicial intellect with no pet hypothesis, saving us, as it does, from dupery at any rate, ought to be our ideal. The question next arises: Are there not somewhere forced options in our speculative questions, and can we (as men who may be interested at least as much in positively gaining truth as in merely escaping dupery) always wait with impunity till the coercive evidence shall have arrived? It seems a priori improbable that the truth should be so nicely adjusted to our needs and powers as that. In the great boarding-house of nature, the cakes and the butter and the syrup seldom come out so even and leave the plates so clean. Indeed, we should view them with scientific suspicion if they did.

IX. Moral questions immediately present themselves as questions whose solution cannot wait for sensible proof. A moral question is a question not of what sensibly exists, but of what is good, or

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would be good if it did exist. Science can tell us what exists; but to compare the worths, both of what exists and of what does not exist, we must consult not science, but what Pascal calls our heart. Science herself consults her heart when she lays it down that the infinite ascertainment of fact and correction of false belief are the supreme goods for man. Challenge the statement, and science can only repeat it oracularly, or else prove it by showing that such ascertainment and correction bring man all sorts of other goods which man's heart in turn declares. The question of having moral beliefs at all or not having them is decided by our will. Are our moral preferences true or false, or are they only odd biological phenomena, making things good or bad for us, but in themselves indifferent? How can your pure intellect decide? If your heart does not want a world of moral reality, your head will assuredly never make you believe in one. Mephistophelian scepticism, indeed, will satisfy the head's play-instincts much better than any rigorous idealism can. Some men (even at the student age) are so naturally cool-hearted that the moralistic hypothesis never has for them any pungent life, and in their supercilious presence the hot young moralist always feels strangely ill at ease. The appearance of knowingness is on their side, of naïveté and gullibility on his. Yet, in the inarticulate heart of him, he clings to it that he is not a dupe, and that there is a realm in which (as Emerson says) all their wit and intellectual superiority is no better than the cunning of a fox. Moral scepticism can no more be refuted or proved by logic than intellectual scepticism can. When we stick to it that there is truth (be it of either kind), we do so with our whole nature, and resolve to stand or fall by the results. The sceptic with his whole nature adopts the doubting attitude; but which of us is the wiser, Omniscience only knows. Turn now from these wide questions of good to a certain class of questions of fact, questions concerning personal relations, states of mind between one man and another. Do you like me or not? for example. Whether you do or not depends, in countless instances, on whether I meet you half-way, am willing to assume that you must like me, and show you trust and expectation. The previous faith on my part in your liking's existence is in such cases what makes your liking come. But if I stand aloof, and refuse to budge an inch until I have objective evidence, until you shall have done something apt, as the absolutists say, ad extorquendum assensum meum [“to compel my assent”], ten to one your liking never comes. How many women's hearts are vanquished by the mere sanguine insistence of some man that they must love him! he will not consent to the hypothesis that they cannot. The desire for a certain kind of truth here brings about that special truth's existence; and so it is in innumerable cases of other sorts. Who gains promotions, boons, appointments, but the man in whose life they are seen to play the part of live hypotheses, who discounts them, sacrifices other things for their sake before they have come, and takes risks for them in advance? His faith acts on the powers above him as a claim, and creates its own verification. A social organism of any sort whatever, large or small, is what it is because each member proceeds to his own duty with a trust that the other members will simultaneously do theirs. Wherever a desired result is achieved by the co-operation of many independent persons, its existence as a fact is a pure consequence of the precursive faith in one another of those immediately concerned. A government, an army, a commercial system, a ship, a college, an athletic team, all exist on this condition, without which not only is nothing achieved, but nothing is even attempted. A whole train of passengers (individually brave enough) will be looted by a few highwaymen, simply because the latter can count on one another, while each passenger fears

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that if he makes a movement of resistance, he will be shot before any one else backs him up. If we believed that the whole car-full would rise at once with us, we should each severally rise, and train-robbing would never even be attempted. There are, then, cases where a fact cannot come at all unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming. And where faith in a fact can help create the fact, that would be an insane logic which should say that faith running ahead of scientific evidence is the 'lowest kind of immorality' into which a thinking being can fall. Yet such is the logic by which our scientific absolutists pretend to regulate our lives!

X. In truths dependent on our personal action, then, faith based on desire is certainly a lawful and possibly an indispensable thing. But now, it will be said, these are all childish human cases, and have nothing to do with great cosmical matters, like the question of religious faith. Let us then pass on to that. Religions differ so much in their accidents that in discussing the religious question we must make it very generic and broad. What then do we now mean by the religious hypothesis? Science says things are; morality says some things are better than other things; and religion says essentially two things. First, she says that the best things are the more eternal things, the overlapping things, the things in the universe that throw the last stone, so to speak, and say the final word. "Perfection is eternal," this phrase of Charles Secrétan seems a good way of putting this first affirmation of religion, an affirmation which obviously cannot yet be verified scientifically at all. The second affirmation of religion is that we are better off even now if we believe her first affirmation to be true. Now, let us consider what the logical elements of this situation are in case the religious hypothesis in both its branches be really true. (Of course, we must admit that possibility at the outset. If we are to discuss the question at all, it must involve a living option. If for any of you religion be a hypothesis that cannot, by any living possibility be true, then you need go no farther. I speak to the 'saving remnant' alone.) So proceeding, we see, first, that religion offers itself as a momentous option. We are supposed to gain, even now, by our belief, and to lose by our non-belief, a certain vital good. Secondly, religion is a forced option, so far as that good goes. We cannot escape the issue by remaining sceptical and waiting for more light, because, although we do avoid error in that way if religion be untrue, we lose the good, if it be true, just as certainly as if we positively chose to disbelieve. It is as if a man should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly sure that she would prove an angel after he brought her home. Would he not cut himself off from that particular angel-possibility as decisively as if he went and married some one else? Scepticism, then, is not avoidance of option; it is option of a certain particular kind of risk. Better risk loss of truth than chance of error, that is your faith-vetoer's exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field. To preach scepticism to us as a duty until 'sufficient evidence' for religion be found, is tantamount therefore to telling us, when

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in presence of the religious hypothesis, that to yield to our fear of its being error is wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it may be true. It is not intellect against all passions, then; it is only intellect with one passion laying down its law. And by what, forsooth, is the supreme wisdom of this passion warranted? Dupery for dupery, what proof is there that dupery through hope is so much worse than dupery through fear? I, for one, can see no proof; and I simply refuse obedience to the scientist's command to imitate his kind of option, in a case where my own stake is important enough to give me the right to choose my own form of risk. If religion be true and the evidence for it be still insufficient, I do not wish, by putting your extinguisher upon my nature (which feels to me as if it had after all some business in this matter), to forfeit my sole chance in life of getting upon the winning side, that chance depending, of course, on my willingness to run the risk of acting as if my passional need of taking the world religiously might be prophetic and right. All this is on the supposition that it really may be prophetic and right, and that, even to us who are discussing the matter, religion is a live hypothesis which may be true. Now, to most of us religion comes in a still further way that makes a veto on our active faith even more illogical. The more perfect and more eternal aspect of the universe is represented in our religions as having personal form. The universe is no longer a mere It to us, but a Thou, if we are religious; and any relation that may be possible from person to person might be possible here. For instance, although in one sense we are passive portions of the universe, in another we show a curious autonomy, as if we were small active centres on our own account. We feel, too, as if the appeal of religion to us were made to our own active good-will, as if evidence might be forever withheld from us unless we met the hypothesis half-way. To take a trivial illustration: just as a man who in a company of gentlemen made no advances, asked a warrant for every concession, and believed no one's word without proof, would cut himself off by such churlishness from all the social rewards that a more trusting spirit would earn, so here, one who should shut himself up in snarling logicality and try to make the gods extort his recognition willy-nilly, or not get it at all, might cut himself off forever from his only opportunity of making the gods' acquaintance. This feeling, forced on us we know not whence, that by obstinately believing that there are gods (although not to do so would be so easy both for our logic and our life) we are doing the universe the deepest service we can, seems part of the living essence of the religious hypothesis. If the hypothesis were true in all its parts, including this one, then pure intellectualism, with its veto on our making willing advances, would be an absurdity; and some participation of our sympathetic nature would be logically required. I, therefore, for one, cannot see my way to accepting the agnostic rules for truth-seeking, or wilfully agree to keep my willing nature out of the game. I cannot do so for this plain reason, that a rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule. That for me is the long and short of the formal logic of the situation, no matter what the kinds of truth might materially be. I confess I do not see how this logic can be escaped. But sad experience makes me fear that some of you may still shrink from radically saying with me, in abstracto [“in the abstract”], that we have the right to believe at our own risk any hypothesis that is live enough to tempt our will. I suspect, however, that if this is so, it is because you have got away from the abstract logical point of view altogether, and are thinking (perhaps without realizing it) of some particular religious hypothesis which for you is dead. The freedom to 'believe what we will' you apply to

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the case of some patent superstition; and the faith you think of is the faith defined by the schoolboy when he said, "Faith is when you believe something that you know ain't true." I can only repeat that this is misapprehension. In concreto [in the concrete], the freedom to believe can only cover living options which the intellect of the individual cannot by itself resolve; and living options never seem absurdities to him who has them to consider. When I look at the religious question as it really puts itself to concrete men, and when I think of all the possibilities which both practically and theoretically it involves, then this command that we shall put a stopper on our heart, instincts, and courage, and wait acting of course meanwhile more or less as if religion were not true till doomsday, or till such time as our intellect and senses working together may have raked in evidence enough, this command, I say, seems to me the queerest idol ever manufactured in the philosophic cave. Were we scholastic absolutists, there might be more excuse. If we had an infallible intellect with its objective certitudes, we might feel ourselves disloyal to such a perfect organ of knowledge in not trusting to it exclusively, in not waiting for its releasing word. But if we are empiricists, if we believe that no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp, then it seems a piece of idle fantasticality to preach so solemnly our duty of waiting for the bell. Indeed we may wait if we will, I hope you do not think that I am denying that, but if we do so, we do so at our peril as much as if we believed. In either case we act, taking our life in our hands. No one of us ought to issue vetoes to the other, nor should we bandy words of abuse. We ought, on the contrary, delicately and profoundly to respect one another's mental freedom: then only shall we bring about the intellectual republic; then only shall we have that spirit of inner tolerance without which all our outer tolerance is soulless, and which is empiricism's glory; then only shall we live and let live, in speculative as well as in practical things. I began by a reference to Fitz James Stephen; let me end by a quotation from him. "What do you think of yourself? What do you think of the world? . . . These are questions with which all must deal as it seems good to them. They are riddles of the Sphinx, and in some way or other we must deal with them. . . . In all important transactions of life we have to take a leap in the dark. . . . If we decide to leave the riddles unanswered, that is a choice; if we waver in our answer, that, too, is a choice: but whatever choice we make, we make it at our peril. If a man chooses to turn his back altogether on God and the future, no one can prevent him; no one can show beyond reasonable doubt that he is mistaken. If a man thinks otherwise and acts as he thinks, I do not see that any one can prove that he is mistaken. Each must act as he thinks best; and if he is wrong, so much the worse for him. We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist, through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? 'Be strong and of a good courage.' Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes…If death ends all, we cannot meet death better."

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Questions for Review 1. What three kinds of options between beliefs does James introduce? Give examples of each. (Section I) 2. Explain Pascal's Wager in your own words. (Section II)

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3. What is James’ reaction to Pascal’s wager, particularly his suggestion that if one does not believe, he take “holy water and masses” in the hope of softening his skepticism? (Section II) 4. What does James highlight as the downside of suspending judgement, i.e. not making a decision on an option between beliefs whenever one is without sufficient evidence? (Sections IV, VII, VIII) 5. Under what conditions, then, is it acceptable for one to believe without evidence? What sorts of beliefs fit this criteria according to James?

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Questions for Discussion 1. Who do you agree with more: Clifford or James? Why?

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2. What do you think about Pascal’s Wager? Is it a convincing argument? Why or why not? 3. What does James say about Pascal’s suggestion of indirect means such as taking holy water and attending mass to bring about faith? What do you think about the idea of doing things indirectly to bring about faith when you are not able to muster it by a direct act of will?

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CONCLUDING UNSCIENTIFIC POSTSCRIPT TO THE PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS (1844)

Soren Kierkegaard The problem we are considering is not the truth of Christianity but the individual's relation to Christianity. Our discussion is not about the scholar's systematic zeal to arrange the truths of Christianity in nice, tidy categories but about the individual's personal relationship to this doctrine, a relationship which is properly one of infinite interest to him. Simply stated, "I, Johannes Climacus, born in this city, now thirty years old, a decent fellow like most folk, suppose that there awaits me, as it awaits a maid and a professor, a highest good, which is called an eternal happiness. I have heard that Christianity is the way to that good, and so I ask, how may I establish a proper relationship to Christianity?" I hear an intellectual's response to this, "What outrageous presumption! What egregious egoistic vanity in this theocentric and philosophically enlightened age, which is concerned with global history, to lay such inordinate weight on one's petty self." I tremble at such a reproof and had I not already inured myself to these kinds of responses, I would slink away like a dog with his tail between his legs. But I have no guilt whatsoever about what I am doing, for it is not I who is presumptuous, but, rather, it is Christianity itself which compels me to ask the question in this way. For Christianity places enormous significance on my little self, and upon every other self however insignificant it may seem, in that it offers each self eternal happiness on the condition that a proper relationship between itself and the individual is established. Although I am still an outsider to faith, I can see that the only unpardonable sin against the majesty of Christianity is for an individual to take his relationship to it for granted. However modest it may seem to relate oneself in this way, Christianity considers such a casual attitude to be imprudent. So l must respectfully decline all theocentric helpers and the helpers' helpers who would seek to help me through a detached relationship to this doctrine. I would rather remain where I am with my infinite concern about my spiritual existence, with the problem of how I may become a Christian. For while it is not impossible for one with an infinite concern for his eternal happiness to achieve salvation, it is entirely impossible for one who has lost all sensitivity to the relationship to achieve such a state. The objective problem is: Is Christianity true? The subjective problem is: What is the individual's relationship to Christianity? Quite simply, how may 1, Johannes Climacus, participate in the happiness promised by Christianity? The problem concerns myself alone; partly because, if it is properly set forth, it will concern everyone in exactly the same way; and partly because all the other points of view take faith for granted, as trivial. In order to make my problem clear, I shall first describe the objective problem and show how it should be treated. In this way the historical aspect will be given its due. After this I shall describe the subjective problem.

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The Objective Problem of the Truth of Christianity. From an objective point of view Christianity is a historical fact whose truth must be considered in a purely objective manner, for the modest scholar is far too objective not to leave himself outside- though as a matter of fact, he may count himself as a believer. 'Truth' in this objective sense may mean either (1 ) historical truth or (2) philosophical truth. As historical truth, the truth claims must be decided by a critical examination of the various sources in the same way we determine other historical claims. Considered philosophically, the doctrine that has been historically verified must be related to the eternal truth. The inquiring, philosophical, and learned researcher raises the question of the truth, but not the subjective truth, that is, the truth as appropriated. The inquiring researcher is interested, but he is not infinitely, personally, and passionately interested in a way that relates his own eternal happiness to this truth. Far be it for the objective person to be so immodest, so presumptuous as that! Such an inquirer must be in one of two states. Either he is already in faith convinced of the truth of Christianity-and in such a relationship he cannot be infinitely interested in the objective inquiry, since faith itself consists in being infinitely concerned with Christianity and regards every competing interest as a temptation; or he is not in faith but objectively considering the subject matter, and as such not in a condition of being infinitely interested in the question. I mention this in order to draw your attention to what will be developed in the second part of this work, namely, that the problem of the truth of Christianity is never appropriately set forth in this objective manner, that is, it does not arise at all, since Christianity lies in decision. Let the scholarly researcher work with indefatigable zeal even to the point of shortening his life in devoted service to scholarship. Let the speculative philosopher spare neither time nor effort. They are nevertheless not personally and passionately concerned. On the contrary, they wouldn't want to be but will want to develop an objective and disinterested stance. They are only concerned about objective truth, so that the question of personal appropriation is relatively unimportant, something that will follow their findings as a matter of course. In the last analysis what matters to the individual is of minor significance. Herein precisely lies the scholar's exalted equanimity as well as the comedy of his parrotlike pedantry. The Historical Point of View. When Christianity is considered through its historical documents, it becomes vital to get a trustworthy account of what Christian doctrine really is. If the researcher is infinitely concerned with his relationship to this truth, he will immediately despair, because it is patently clear that in historical matters the greatest certainty is still only an approximation, and an approximation is too weak for one to build his eternal happiness upon, since its incommensurability with eternal happiness prevents it from obtaining. So the scholar, having only a historical interest in the truth of Christianity, begins his work with tremendous zeal and contributes important research until his seventieth year. Then just fourteen days before his death he comes upon a new document that casts fresh light over one whole side of his inquiry. Such an objective personality is the antithesis of the restless concern of the subject who is infinitely interested in eternal happiness and who surely deserves to have a decisive answer to the question concerning that happiness.

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When one raises the historical question of the truth of Christianity or of what is and what is not Christian truth, we come directly to the Holy Scriptures as the central document. The historical investigation focuses first on the Bible. The Holy Scriptures. It is very important that the scholar secure the highest possible reliability in his work. In this regard it is important for me not to pretend that I have learning or show that I have none, for my purpose here is more important. And that is to have it understood and remembered that even with the most impressive scholarly credentials and persistence, even if all the intelligence of all the critics met in one single head, still one would get no further than an approximation. We could never show more than that there is an incommensurability between the infinite personal concern for one's eternal happiness and the reliability of the documents. When the Scriptures are considered as the ultimate arbiter, which determines what is and what is not Christian, it becomes imperative to secure their reliability through a critical historical investigation. So we must deal here with several issues: the canonicity of each book of the Bible, their authenticity, their integrity, the trustworthiness of the authors, and finally, we must assume a dogmatic guarantee: inspiration. When one thinks of the prodigious labors that the English are devoting to digging the tunnel under the Thames, the incredible expenditure of time and effort, and how a little accident can upset the whole project for a long time, one may be able to get some idea of what is involved in the undertaking that we are describing. How much time, what diligence, what glorious acumen, what remarkable scholarship from generation to generation have been requisitioned to accomplish this work of supreme wonder! And yet a single little dialectical doubt can suddenly touch the foundations and for a long time disturb the whole project, closing the underground way to Christianity, which one has tried to establish objectively and scientifically, instead of approaching the problem as it would be approached, above ground-subjectively. But let us assume first that the critics have established everything that scholarly theologians in their happiest moments ever dreamed to prove about the Bible. These books and no others belong to the canon. They are authentic, complete, their authors are trustworthy-it is as though every letter were divinely inspired (one cannot say more than this, for inspiration is an object of faith and is qualitatively dialectical. It cannot be reached by a quantitative increment). Furthermore, there is not the slightest contradiction in these holy writings. For let us be careful in formulating our hypothesis. If there is even a word that is problematic, the parenthesis of uncertainty begins again, and the critical philological enterprise will lead one astray. In general, all that is needed to cause us to question our findings is a little circumspection, the renunciation of every learned middle-term, which could in a twinkle of the eye degenerate into a hundred-year parenthesis. And so it comes to pass that everything we hoped for with respect to the Scriptures has been firmly established. What follows from this? Has anyone who didn't previously have faith come a single step closer to faith? Of course not, not a single step closer. For faith isn't produced through academic investigations. It doesn't come directly at al 1, but, on the contrary, it is precisely in objective analysis that one loses the infinite personal and passionate concern that is the requisite condition for faith, its ubiquitous ingredient, wherein faith comes into existence.

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Has anyone who had faith gained anything in terms of faith's strength and power? No, not the least. Rather, his prodigious learning which lies like a dragon at faith's door, threatening to devour it, will become a handicap, forcing him to put forth an even greater prodigious effort in fear and trembling in order not to fall into temptation and confuse knowledge with faith. Whereas faith had uncertainty as a useful teacher, it now finds that certainty is its most dangerous enemy. Take passion away and faith disappears, for certainty and passion are incompatible. Let an analogy throw light on this point. He who believes that God exists and providentially rules the world finds it easier to preserve his faith (and not a fantasy) in an imperfect world where passion is kept awake, than in an absolutely perfect world; for in such an ideal world faith is unthinkable. This is the reason that we are taught that in eternity faith will be annulled. Now let us assume the opposite, that the opponents have succeeded in proving what they desired to establish regarding the Bible and did so with a certainty that transcended their wildest hopes What then? Has the enemy abolished Christianity? Not a whit. Has he harmed the believer? Not at all. Has he won the right of being free from the responsibility of becoming a believer? By no means. Simply because these books are not by these authors, are not authentic, lack integrity, do not seem to be inspired (though this cannot be demonstrated since it is a matter of faith), it in no way follows that these authors have not existed, and above all it does not follow that Christ never existed. In so far as faith perdures, the believer is at liberty to assume it, just as free (mark well!); for if he accepted the content of faith on the basis of evidence, he would now be on the verge of giving up faith. If things ever came this far, the believer is somewhat to blame, for he invited the procedure and began to play into the hands of unbelief by attempting to prove the content of faith. Here is the heart of the matter, and I come back to learned theology. For whose sake is the proof sought? Faith does not need it. Yes, it must regard it as an enemy. But when faith begins to feel ashamed, when like a young woman for whom love ceases to suffice, who secretly feels ashamed of her lover and must therefore have it confirmed by others that he really is quite remarkable, so likewise when faith falters and begins to lose its passion, when it begins to cease to be faith, then proof becomes necessary in order to command respect from the side of unbelief. So when the subject of faith is treated objectively, it becomes impossible for a person to relate himself to the decision of faith with passion, let alone with infinitely concerned passion. It is a self-contradiction and as such comical to be infinitely concerned about what at best can only be an approximation. If in spite of this, we still preserve passion, we obtain fanaticism. For the person with infinite passionate concern, every relevant detail becomes something of infinite value. The error lies not in the infinite passion but in the fact that its object has become an approximation. As soon as one takes subjectivity away-and with its subjectivity's passion-and with passion the infinite concern-it becomes impossible to make a decision-either with regard to this problem or any other; for every decision, every genuine decision, is a subjective action A contemplator (i.e., an objective subject) experiences no infinite urge to make a decision and sees no need for a commitment anywhere. This is the falsity of objectivity and this is the problem with the Hegelian notion of mediation as the mode of transition in the continuous process, where nothing endures

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and where nothing is infinitely decided because the movement turns back on itself and again turns back; but the movement itself is a chimera and philosophy becomes wise afterwards. Objectively speaking, this method produces results in great supply, but it does not produce a single decisive result. This is as is expected, since decisiveness inheres in subjectivity, essentially in passion and maximally in the personal passion that is infinitely concerned about one's eternal happiness. Christianity is spirit, spirit is inwardness, inwardness is subjectivity, subjectivity is essentially passion and at its maximum infinite personal and passionate concern about one's eternal happiness. Becoming Subjective. Objectively we only consider the subject matter, subjectively we consider the subject and his subjectivity, and behold, subjectivity is precisely our subject matter. It must constantly be kept in mind that the subjective problem is not about some other subject matter but simply about subjectivity itself. Since the problem is about a decision, and all decisions lie in subjectivity, it follows that not a trace of objectivity remains, for at the moment that subjectivity slinks away from the pain and crisis of decision, the problem becomes to a degree objective. If the Introduction still awaits another work before a judgment can be made on the subject matter, if the philosophical system still lacks a paragraph, if the speaker still has a final argument, the decision is postponed. We do not raise the question of the truth of Christianity in the sense that when it has been decided, subjectivity is ready and willing to accept it. No, the question is about the subject's acceptance of it, and it must be regarded as an infernal illusion or a deceitful evasion which seeks to avoid the decision by taking an objective treatment of the subject matter and assumes that a subjective commitment will follow from the objective deliberation as a matter of course. On the contrary, the decision lies in subjectivity and an objective acceptance is either a pagan concept or one devoid of all meaning. Christianity will give the single individual eternal happiness, a good that cannot be divided into parts but can only be given to one person at a time. Although we presuppose that subjectivity is available to be appropriated, a possibility that involves accepting this good, it is not a subjectivity without qualification, without a genuine understanding of the meaning of this good. Subjectivity's development or transformation, its infinite concentration in itself with regard to an eternal happiness-this highest good of Infinity, an eternal happiness-this is subjectivity's developed possibility. As such, Christianity protests against all objectivity and will infinitely concern itself only with subjectivity. If there is any Christian truth, it first arises in subjectivity. Objectively it does not arise at all. If its truth is only in a single person, then Christianity exists in him alone, and there is greater joy in heaven over this one than over all world history and philosophical systems which, as objective forces, are incommensurable with the Christian idea. Philosophy teaches that the way to truth is to become objective, but Christianity teaches that the way is to become subjective, that is, to become a subject in truth. Lest we seem to be trading on ambiguities, let it be said clearly that Christianity aims at intensifying passion to its highest pitch but passion is subjectivity and does not exist objectively at all. Subjective Truth, Inwardness; Truth Is Subjectivity. For an objective reflection the truth becomes an object, something objective, and thought points away from the subject. For subjective

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reflection the truth becomes a matter of appropriation, of inwardness, of subjectivity, and thought must penetrate deeper and still deeper into the subject and his subjectivity. Just as in objective reflection, when objectivity had come into being, subjectivity disappeared, so here the subjectivity of the subject becomes the final stage, and objectivity disappears. It is not for an instant forgotten that the subject is an existing individual, and that existence is a process of becoming, and that therefore the idea of truth being an identity of thought and being is a chimera of abstraction; this is not because the truth is not such an identity but because the believer is an existing individual for whom the truth cannot be such an identity as long as he exists as a temporal being. If an existing subject really could transcend himself, the truth would be something complete for him, but where is this point outside of himself? The I = I is a mathematical point that does not exist, and insofar as one would take this standpoint, he will not stand in another's way. It is only momentarily that the existential subject experiences the unity of the infinite and the finite, which transcends existence, and that moment is the moment of passion. While scribbling modern philosophy is contemptuous of passion, passion remains the highest point of existence for the individual who exists in time. In passion the existential subject is made infinite in imagination's eternity, and at the same time he is himself. All essential knowledge concerns existence, or only that knowledge that relates to existence is essential, is essential knowledge. All knowledge that is not existential, that does not involve inward reflection, is really accidental knowledge, its degree and compass are essentially a matter of no importance. This essential knowledge that relates itself essentially to the existing individual is not to be equated with the above-mentioned abstract identity between thought and being. But it means that knowledge must relate itself to the knower, who is essentially an existing individual, and therefore all essential knowledge essentially relates itself to existence, to that which exists. But all ethical and all ethical-religious knowledge has this essential relationship to the existence of the knower. In order to elucidate the difference between the objective way of reflection and the subjective way, I shall now show how subjective reflection makes its way back into inwardness. The highest point of inwardness in an existing person is passion, for passion corresponds to truth as a paradox, and the fact that the truth becomes a paradox is grounded in its relation to an existing individual. The one corresponds to the other. By forgetting that we are existing subjects, we lose passion and truth ceases to be a paradox, but the knowing subject begins to lose his humanity and becomes fantastic and the truth likewise becomes a fantastic object for this kind of knowledge. When the question of truth is put forward in an objective manner, reflection is directed objectively to the truth as an object to which the knower is related. The reflection is not on the relationship but on whether he is related to the truth. If that which he is related to is the truth, the subject is in the truth. When the question of truth is put forward in a subjective manner, reflection is directed subjectively to the individual's relationship. If the relation's HOW is in truth, the individual is in truth, even if the WHAT to which he is related is not true. We may illustrate this by examining the knowledge of God. Objectively the reflection is on whether the object is the true God; subjectively reflection is on whether the individual is related

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to a what in such a way that his relationship in truth is a God-relationship. On which side does the truth lie? Ah, let us not lean towards mediation and say, it is on neither side but in the mediation of both of them. The existing individual who chooses the objective way enters upon the entire approximation process that is supposed to bring God into the picture. But this in all eternity cannot be done because God is Subject and therefore exists only for the subjective individual in inwardness. The existing individual who chooses the subjective way comprehends instantly the entire dialectical difficulty involved in having to use some time, perhaps a long time, in order to find God objectively. He comprehends this dialectical difficulty in all its pain because every moment without God is a moment lost-so important is the matter of being related to God. In this way God certainly becomes a postulate but not in the useless sense in which it is often taken. It becomes the only way in which an existing individual comes into a relation with God-when the dialectical contradiction brings passion to the point of despair and helps him embrace God with the category of despair (faith). Now the postulate is far from being arbitrary or optional. It becomes a life-saving necessity, so that it is no longer simply a postulate, but rather the individual's postulation of the existence of God is a necessity. Now the problem is to calculate on which side there is the most truth: either the side of one who seeks the true God objectively and pursues the approximate truth of the God-idea or the side of one who is driven by infinite concern for his relationship to God. No one who has not been corrupted by science can have any doubt in the matter. If one who lives in a Christian culture goes up to God's house, the house of the true God, with a true conception of God, with knowledge of God and prays-but prays in a false spirit; and one who lives in an idolatrous land prays with the total passion of the infinite, although his eyes rest on the image of an idol; where is there most truth ? The one prays in truth to God, although he worships an idol The other prays in untruth to the true God and therefore really worships an idol. When a person objectively inquires about the problem of immortality and another person embraces it as an uncertainty with infinite passion, where is there most truth, and who really has the greater certainty? The one has entered into an inexhaustible approximation, for certainty of immortality lies precisely in the subjectivity of the individual. The other is immortal and fights against his uncertainty. Let us consider Socrates. Today everyone is playing with some proof or other. Some have many, some fewer. But Socrates! He put the question objectively in a hypothetical manner: "if there is immortality." Compared to the modern philosopher with three proofs for immortality, should we consider Socrates a doubter? Not at all. On this little if he risks his entire life, he dares to face death, and he has directed his life with infinite passion so that the if is confirmed-if there is immortality. Is there any better proof for life after death? But those who have the three proofs do not at all pattern their lives in conformity with the idea. If there is an immortality, it must feel disgust over their lackadaisical manner of life. Can any better refutation be given of the three proofs? These crumbs of uncertainty helped Socrates because they hastened the process along, inciting the passions. The three proofs that others have are of no help at all because they are dead to the spirit, and the fact that they need three proofs proves that they are spiritually dead. The

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Socratic ignorance that Socrates held fast with the entire passion of his inwardness was an expression of the idea that eternal truth is related to an existing individual, and that this will be in the form of a paradox as long as he exists; and yet it is just possible that there is more truth in Socratic ignorance than is contained in the "objective truth" of the philosophical systems, which flirts with the spirit of the times and cuddles up to associate professors. The objective accent falls on what is said; the subjective accent falls on how it is said. This distinction is valid even for aesthetics and shows itself in the notion that what may be objectively true may in the mouth of certain people become false. This distinction is illustrated by the saying that the difference between the older days and our day is that in the old days only a few knew the truth while in ours all know it, except that the inwardness towards it is in inverse proportion to the scope of its possession. Aesthetically the contradiction that the truth becomes error in certain mouths is best understood comically. In the ethical-religious domain the accent is again on the how. But this is not to be understood as referring to decorum, modulation, delivery, and soon, but to the individual's relationship to the proposition, the way he relates himself to it. Objectively it is a question simply about the content of the proposition, but subjectively it is a question of inwardness. At its maximum this inward how is the passion of infinity and the passion of the infinite is itself the truth. But since the passion of the infinite is exactly subjectivity, subjectivity is the truth. Objectively there is no infinite decision or commitment and so it is objectively correct to annul the difference between good and evil as well as the law of noncontradiction and the difference between truth and untruth. Only in subjectivity is there decision and commitment, so that to seek this in objectivity is to be in error. It is the passion of infinity that brings forth decisiveness, not its content, for its content is precisely itself. In this manner the subjective how and subjectivity are the truth. But the how that is subjectively emphasized because the subject is an existing individual is also subject to a temporal dialectic. In passion's decisive moment, where the road swings off from the way to objective knowledge, it appears that the infinite decision is ready to be made. But in that moment the existing individual finds himself in time, and the subjective how becomes transformed into a striving, a striving that is motivated by and is repeatedly experienced in the decisive passion of the infinite. But this is still a striving. When subjectivity is truth, subjectivity's definition must include an expression for an opposition to objectivity, a reminder of the fork in the road, and this expression must also convey the tension of inwardness. Here is such a definition of truth: the objective uncertainty, held fast in an appropriation process of the most passionate inwardness, is the truth, the highest truth available for an existing person. There where the way swings off (and where that is cannot be discovered objectively but only subjectively), at that place objective knowledge is annulled. Objectively speaking he has only uncertainty, but precisely there the infinite passion of inwardness is intensified, and truth is precisely the adventure to choose objective uncertainty with the passion of inwardness. When I consider nature in order to discover God, I do indeed see his omnipotence and wisdom, but I see much more that disturbs me. The result of all this is objective uncertainty, but precisely here is the place for inwardness because inwardness apprehends the objective uncertainty with

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the entire passion of infinity. In the case of mathematical statements objectivity is already given, but because of the nature of mathematics, the truth is existentially indifferent. Now the above definition of truth is an equivalent description of faith. Without risk there is no faith. Faith is precisely the contradiction between the infinite passion of inwardness and objective uncertainty. If I can grasp God objectively, I do not believe, but because I cannot know God objectively, I must have faith, and if I will preserve myself in faith, I must constantly be determined to hold fast to the objective uncertainty, so as to remain out upon the ocean's deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, and still believe. In the sentence 'subjectivity, inwardness is truth,' we see the essence of Socratic wisdom, whose immortal service is exactly to have recognized the essential meaning of existence, that the knower is an existing subject, and for this reason in his ignorance Socrates enjoyed the highest relationship to truth within the paganism. This is a truth that speculative philosophy unhappily again and again forgets: that the knower is an existing subject. It is difficult enough to recognize this fact in our objective age, long after the genius of Socrates. When subjectivity, inwardness, is the truth, the truth becomes objectively determined as a paradox, and that it is paradoxical is made clear by the fact that subjectivity is truth, for it repels objectivity, and the expression for the objective repulsion is the intensity and measure of inwardness. The paradox is the objective uncertainty, which is the expression for the passion of inwardness, which is precisely the truth. This is the Socratic principle. The eternal, essential truth, that is, that which relates itself essentially to the individual because it concerns his existence (all other knowledge is, Socratically speaking, accidental, its degree and scope being indifferent), is a paradox. Nevertheless, the eternal truth is not essentially in itself paradoxical, but it becomes so by relating itself to an existing individual. Socratic ignorance is the expression of this objective uncertainty, the inwardness of the existential subject is the truth. To anticipate what I will develop later, Socratic ignorance is an analogy to the category of the absurd, only that there is still less objective certainty in the absurd, and therefore infinitely greater tension in its inwardness. The Socratic inwardness that involves existence is an analogy to faith, except that this inwardness is repulsed not by ignorance but by the absurd, which is infinitely deeper. Socratically the eternal, essential truth is by no means paradoxical in itself, but only by virtue of its relation to an existing individual. Subjectivity, inwardness, is the truth. Is there a still more inward expression for this? Yes, there is. If subjectivity is seen as the truth, we may posit the opposite principle: that subjectivity is untruth, error. Socratically speaking, subjectivity is untruth if it fails to understand that subjectivity is truth and desires to understand itself objectively. But now we are presupposing that subjectivity in becoming the truth has a difficulty to overcome in as much as it is in untruth. So we must work backwards, back to inwardness. Socratically, the way back to the truth takes place through recollection, supposing that we have memories of that truth deep within us. Let us call this untruth of the individual 'sin.' Seen from eternity the individual cannot be in sin, nor can he be eternally presupposed as having been in sin. So it must be that he becomes a sinner by coming into existence (for the beginning point is that subjectivity is untruth). He is not born as a sinner in the sense that he is sinful before he is born, but he is born in sin and as a sinner. We

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shall call this state original sin. But if existence has acquired such power over him, he is impotent to make his way back to eternity through the use of his memory (supposing that there is truth in the Platonic idea that we may discover truth through recollection). If it was already paradoxical that the eternal truth related itself to an existing individual, now it is absolutely paradoxical that it relates itself to such an individual. But the more difficult it is for him through memory to transcend existence, the more inwardness must increase in intense passion, and when it is made impossible for him, when he is held so fast in existence that the back door of recollection is forever closed to him through sin, then his inwardness will be the deepest possible. Subjectivity is truth. Through this relationship between the eternal truth and the existing individual the paradox comes into existence. Let us now go further and suppose that the eternal truth is essentially a paradox. How does this paradox come into existence? By juxtaposing the eternal, essential truth with temporal existence. When we set them together within the truth itself, the truth becomes paradoxical. The eternal truth has come into time. This is the paradox. If the subject is hindered by sin from making his way back to eternity by looking inward through recollection, he need not trouble himself about this, for now the eternal essential truth is no longer behind him, but it is in front of him, through its being in existence or having existed, so that if the individual does not existentially get hold of the truth, he will never get hold of it. It is impossible to accentuate existence more than this. When the eternal truth is related to an existing individual, truth becomes a paradox. The paradox repels the individual because of the objective uncertainty and ignorance towards inwardness. But since this paradox in itself is not paradoxical, it does not push the spirit far enough. For without risk there is no faith, and the greater the risk the greater the faith, and the more objective reliability, the less inwardness (for inwardness is precisely subjectivity). Indeed, the less objective reliability, the deeper becomes the possible inwardness. When the paradox is in itself paradoxical, it repels the individual by the power of the absurd, and the corresponding passion, which is produced in the process, is faith. But subjectivity, inwardness, is truth, for otherwise we have forgotten the Socratic contribution; but there is no more striking expression for inwardness than when the retreat from existence through recollection back to eternity is made impossible; and when the truth as paradox encounters the individual who is caught in the vice-grip of sin's anxiety and suffering, but who is also aware of the tremendous risk involved in faith-when he nevertheless makes the leap of faith-this is subjectivity at its height. When Socrates believed in the existence of God, he held fast to an objective uncertainty in passionate inwardness, and in that contradiction, in that risk faith came into being. Now it is different. Instead of the objective uncertainty, there is objective certainty about the object-certainty that it is absurd, and it is, again, faith that holds fast to that object in passionate inwardness. Compared with the gravity of the absurd, Socratic ignorance is a joke, and compared with the strenuosity of faith in believing the paradox, Socratic existential inwardness is a Greek life of leisure. What is the absurd? The absurd is that the eternal truth has entered time, that God has entered existence, has been born, has grown, and so on, has become precisely like any other human being, quite indistinguishable from other humans. The absurd is precisely by its objective

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repulsion the measure of the inwardness of faith. Suppose there is a man who desires to have faith. Let the comedy begin. He desires to obtain faith with the help of objective investigation and what the approximation process of evidential inquiry yields. What happens? With the help of the increment of evidence the absurd is transformed to something else; it becomes probable, it becomes more probable still, it becomes perhaps highly and overwhelmingly probable. Now that there is respectable evidence for the content of his faith, he is ready to believe it, and he prides himself that his faith is not like that of the shoemaker, the tailor, and the simple folk, but comes after a long investigation. Now he prepares himself to believe it. Any proposition that is almost probable, reasonably probable, highly and overwhelmingly probable, is something that is almost known and as good as known, highly and overwhelmingly known-but it is not believed, not through faith; for the absurd is precisely faith's object and the only positive attitude possible in relation to it is faith and not knowledge. Christianity has declared itself to be the eternal that has entered time, that has proclaimed itself as the paradox and demands faith's inwardness in relation to that which is a scandal to the Jews and folly to the Greeks-and as absurd to the understanding. It is impossible to say this more strongly than by saying: subjectivity is truth, and objectivity is repelled by it-by virtue of the absurd. Subjectivity culminates in passion. Christianity is the paradox; paradox and passion belong together as a perfect match, and the paradox is perfectly suited to one whose situation is to be in the extremity of existence. Indeed, there never has been found in all the world two lovers more suited to each other than passion and paradox, and the strife between them is a lover's quarrel, when they argue about which one first aroused the other's passion. And so it is here. The existing individual by means of the paradox has come to the extremity of existence. And what is more wonderful for lovers than to be granted a long time together with each other without anything disturbing their relation except that which makes it more inwardly passionate? And this is what is granted to the unspeculative understanding between the passion and paradox, for they will dwell harmoniously together in time and be changed first in eternity. But the speculative philosopher views things altogether differently. He believes but only to a certain degree. He puts his hand to the plow but quickly looks about for something to know. From a Christian perspective it is hard to see how he could reach the highest good in this manner.

Clifford, James and Kierkegaard on Justification and Belief W.K. Clifford argues that it's always wrong at any time to believe anything without sufficient evidence. Clifford argues for his position with two analogies: The ship owner and the baseless rumor. Suppose the owner of a passenger liner has an unjustified belief that his old ship is seaworthy. Instead of having it inspected, he convinces himself that everything is fine. He has "faith" that his ship will reach its next intended destination. The ship, however, sinks, killing all aboard. Clifford says that the owner is guilty of the deaths of the passengers because his actions stemmed from an unjustified belief. But Clifford adds that the ship owner would be guilty even if by chance the ship had arrived safely. If it had arrived at its destination, it would have been pure

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luck that his belief formation process (believe what you hope to be true while disregarding the evidence) didn't produce bad consequences. Consider a parallel case of drunk driving. A person might become extremely intoxicated and weave home in their car and through blind luck end up safely at home, without harming themselves or others. Even so, the act is wrong because it was dangerous and was likely to have produced bad consequences (even though in fact, it didn't). Similarly, forming beliefs on insufficient evidence is dangerous--it tends to produce bad consequences, even though there may be some cases where we just get lucky and nothing bad befalls us. Note also that in the ship owner's case, he collects his insurance money. Very often it seems that those with unjustified beliefs make more trouble for others than themselves. In the baseless rumor example, a rumor is spread about a particular religious group living in a small island community. The rumor is that these people are indoctrinating children into their beliefs, even abducting children of other families to accomplish this goal. The rumor irrevocably ruin the reputations of the members of this sect. Again, Clifford says that the rumor mongering and public accusations would be wrong even if the rumors happened to be true. This is because spreading baseless rumors (forming beliefs on insufficient evidence, whipping others into a frenzy by spreading them) tends to produce bad consequences. But besides actually producing bad consequences or tending to produce bad consequences, unjustified beliefs are wrong in themselves or intrinsically wrong, according to Clifford. When you form a belief in an unjustified manner, it's a sin against all humanity; you spit in the face of every scientist, scholar, and teacher who ever lived. We are all benefiting from those who have come before us, "standing on the shoulders of giants" as Newton put it. We are violating our duty as the heirs of human civilization by forming our beliefs in a careless or haphazard manner. So, it is intrinsically wrong to have an unjustified belief according to Clifford, regardless of the consequences. Furthermore, Clifford says that no beliefs are personal or sacrosanct. Beliefs affect action and are thus public by nature. Irrational patterns of thought are like a virus, which can be spread if not treated. Due to the effect of belief to motivate action and the social nature of belief, Clifford says we have an absolute duty to only believe on the basis of sufficient evidence. But aren't there some innocuous unjustified beliefs without bad consequences? Take Wayne Green (http://www.waynegreen.com). Mr. Green is a founding member of Mensa, a society for geniuses, and a millionaire several times over (he founded Byte magazine, one of the earliest and most successful computer magazines, among other things). Mr. Green is also in his 70s and in top physical condition. By all appearances, Wayne is healthy, wealthy, happy and successful. But Mr. Green has seems to have many unjustified, many would say, crazy beliefs, such as that we never went to the moon and that plants are conscious. He has a list of "Books You're Crazy If You Don't Read". Looking at the list, one might come to the conclusion that you're crazy if you do read them (and believe what they say). Mr. Green believes that the moon landings were hoaxes, that plants are conscious, sentient beings, that the pyramids were built by aliens and that cold fusion is possible. What would Clifford say about Wayne Green? William James, contrary to Clifford, says that there are some circumstances where it is permissible to believe on the basis of insufficient evidence. These are cases where we are

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presented with an option to choose between two propositions and the option is living, forced and momentous. By living James means that it is a viable option for us to believe. It must seem within the realm of possibility to us. James is a realist with regard to belief and recognizes that an individual's upbringing and culture may constrain what beliefs are possible for him or her. By forced James means that it is a choice one cannot put off. An example of this might be voting. If you don't make a decision and act upon it by voting day, you've lost your chance to be heard. By momentous James means that it must be of great importance and value. James here is thinking particularly of religious beliefs. If you always withhold judgment until you're absolutely sure, you may avoid falsehood, but you lose your chance at truth. If you put off making a decision about God until you're absolutely sure he exists, you'll lose a chance at living a life infused with faith, hope and love. A more mundane example might be starting a business. If you wait until you're absolutely certain you will succeed, you may never start. Better to think through and research your plan as much as is practical, but then to plunge ahead and take a calculated risk. One interesting argument James brings up is the famous argument by philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal known as Pascal's Wager. Pascal says that since the objective evidence for God is ambiguous, you ought to decide the matter on pragmatic or practical grounds. What is at stake? What you we win if we bet on God? What can you lose if you bet against God? Pascal concludes that if you bet on God, you can't lose. If you believe in God and he exists you get eternal reward in Heaven. You receive infinite gain; you hit the jackpot. If you believe in God, and it turns out he doesn't exist, you still would have lived a good life. You will have had the comfort of the belief in a Heavenly Father who was watching over you in this life, of Heavenly reward in the next, reinforcement of your moral fiber, etc. What if you bet against God? Pascal says it's a bet you can't win. The best you can do is break even. If you bet against God and it turns out he doesn't exist, you don't get the benefits of the religious life, but you don't lose anything either. At worst, you'll lose your shirt. You'll bet against God, it turns out he exists after all, and he sends you to Hell. You face infinite loss. Pascal concludes that you should try to get yourself to believe in God even if you don't already believe in him by attending Church and acting as if you already believed. By embracing a religious life, religious faith will come. Soren Kierkegaard is regarded as the first existentialist. Existentialism begins with the belief that ordinary life is absurd or meaningless. Going through school, learning, getting a job, raising children, enjoying the golden years of retirement, are all empty pursuits. You forget most of what you were taught in school, typically in your job you're just a cog in a vast economic machine, your children's lives aren't anymore meaningful than yours, your health and enjoyment of life slips away as you grow old and what was it all for? All your life's accomplishments are rendered meaningless in death. Life is, as Shakespeare's Macbeth puts it, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." The existentialist response to this is that one must create one's own meaning in life and overcome this absurdity through individual free acts of courage. We can go beyond mundane life and transcend it through asserting our will. Typically, this takes the form of embracing some cause larger than ourselves. For Kierkegaard, there is the ethical stage and beyond that a religious stage

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where one can find meaning. Reaching this highest stage requires a "leap of faith" where one abandons cold, objective reason in favor of a passionate, subjective commitment to God. Kierkegaard disagrees most strongly with Clifford. He sees cold objectivity as a dead end street. One can study a matter, but then the question arises as to what one should believe and do? Kierkegaard sees belief as essentially a personal, subjective matter. After all the facts are in, one must take a leap of faith, make a passionate commitment. To the degree that one is objective, one always has a tentative, hesitant "let's see" attitude. One always has to consider "the other side of the question." Kierkegaard argues that this sort of fence sitter will never be capable of religious faith, which is the only thing capable of giving meaning to one's life. He'd find some agreement with James about religious faith being exempted from Clifford's requirement for sufficient evidence, but I think would see James as embracing Clifford's position, with some exceptions. Kierkegaard, I believe, would fault both Clifford and James for failing to see the essentially subjective element of belief. Objectivity, he would say, is not possible. To the extent one maintains the objective position on any matter, one does not have a belief. Belief only comes when one commits oneself in a subjective act to one among many possible particular positions. And to the extent that one occupies a position of belief, one is no longer "being objective". Thus, Kierkegaard asserts that it is neither possible nor desirable to escape subjectivity. Clifford asserts that it is both possible and desirable to do so. James adopts a sort of middle position that certainly just isn't possible in some cases and in those one is permitted to make a non-rational "leap of faith." While Kierkegaard is regarded by many as having an extreme position with regard to evidence and belief, there seems to be something to his argument about the problem of subjectivity. Two important epistemological goals seem to be at odds with each other: (1) having an objective belief, one justified by the best evidence and (2) being passionately committed to a belief, come what may, and being able to act upon it with confidence. Kierkegaard argues that, because we cannot have both, we should abandon objectivity and embrace subjectivity and passion. But couldn't one accept the incompatibility of objectivity and passion and recommend striving for objectivity and an attitude of detachment with regard to one's beliefs? It is a fact of human psychology that we tend to cling to our own beliefs and reject contrary evidence. We judge new beliefs as true or false based on the degree to which they fit in with our pre-existing beliefs. But how do we know that we are right and others are wrong? Perhaps the best way to be rational is to foster an attitude of epistemic humility (humility with regard to what we "know"). If we hold our beliefs in a tentative fashion, as maps or guideposts rather than part of who we are, we can be more open to the truth, whatever its relation to our present belief system. If we are willing to admit that we are wrong and avoid attachment to beliefs, we are less likely to hold onto beliefs which run contrary to the evidence and engage in self-deception and rationalization. Instead, we would revise our beliefs in the light of new experience or evidence and insight gleaned from reflection or analysis.

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Questions for Review 1. What is Kierkegaard's view on the relationship between subjective passion and objective truth? How does he compare with Clifford and James on this question? 2. What does the text suggest might be right about Kierkegaard's view? 3. What is the principle of "epistemic humility"?

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Question for Discussion 1. Is it possible to be truly objective? Is this something we should strive for? Is bias bad? Or is bias bad only if it is hidden and a person is pretending to be objective when he is not? If being objective is good, what are some ways we might attempt to avoid the pitfalls of defensiveness and rationalization?

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2. Is knowing the truth overrated? Consider the case mentioned earlier of Wayne Green or anyone else you think has crazy beliefs but has managed to live a happy, successful life. Are they the exception which proves the rule or is being in close touch with reality of less practical value than we may think?

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3. Clifford vehemently argues that you have a duty to justify your beliefs and form them in a careful matter, and that your beliefs are neither private nor demanding of respect simply because they are yours. Do you agree or disagree with Clifford? Why? Is it bad manners to tell someone you think their views are mistaken? If so, should manners trump considerations of truth and knowledge?

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Can We Freely Choose Our Beliefs? If We Can, Should We Exercise This Ability? Volitionism in epistemology is the view that one can has free will with regard to one's beliefs. Descriptive volitionism is the view that it is psychologically possible to form a belief through an act of will. After all the evidence is evaluated and weighed, this view says that one can put a mental finger on the scales and tip them in one direction or the other based one's own goals or desires. Prescriptive volitionism is the view that it is not only psychologically possible but also justified to form a belief through an act of will. That is, it says that one is justified in forming beliefs on the basis of one's own goals and desires. This theory assumes a normative theory of justification, seeing justification as a matter of what one has a right to believe. Being justified in holding a belief means having a right to hold that belief or not being blameworthy in holding it. Two arguments can be made against descriptive volitionism. The Phenomenological Argument against descriptive volitionism is that our experience of belief is of something that happens to us, not something we intentionally chose to do. If you consider how beliefs are formed, it is a passive experience. We take in the evidence and find ourselves believing according to what seems to be the best evidence at the time. Furthermore, it seems that there are at least some beliefs which you couldn't directly effect even if you wanted to. Could you, through an act of will, disbelieve that George Washington was the first President of the United States or believe that Oregon is located on the African continent? Could you choose to believe that you are Napoleon or that water freezes at 212 degrees, or that there wasn't a hand in front your face when you were holding it there, looking at it? Proponents of this argument suggest that we simply can't affect our beliefs in this way. Our mind forms beliefs based on the evidence along with perhaps some irrational desires or biases. We can perhaps control the process, by being careful about the way in which we form beliefs, trying to minimize bias and subconscious desires, but we can't choose the end result. The Logic of Belief Argument against descriptive volitionism asserts that since there's no logical relationship between desiring a belief to be true and its actually being true makes believing on the basis of desire irrational. The moment you say "I believe P only because I want P to be true", you lose confidence in P. That is, once you admit that you have no objective reason for believing P, but only a desire that it be true, you cease to believe it. Given that the ultimate goal of rationality is to have true beliefs and avoid false ones, there is something fundamentally confused using one's desires to determine one's beliefs. Suppose I have a strong desire to be immortal. The prospect of death and the extinction of my consciousness frightens me horribly. I want to live forever. Does this desire have any bearing on whether or not I actually am immortal or whether there is life after death? Does what I want have any bearing on the way things actually are? No, it has none whatsoever. So, given that I want to believe what's true, it's irrational to consciously choose to believe in life after death in the absence of convincing evidence for it. On the other hand, some arguments can be made in favor of descriptive volitionism. The phenomena of rationalization is widely known. In order to avoid damage to the ego or self-image, people will attempt to excuse or explain away evidence which runs contrary to their beliefs, especially beliefs about themselves and the appropriateness of their behavior. A mother, for example, might dismiss tell-tale signs of physical abuse because facing the fact that her

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husband is an abuser is too terrible to fathom. A member of a religious cult will dismiss out of hand convincing evidence against the group's beliefs as the lies of unbelievers or schemes of Satan to destroy their faith. When confronted with evidence that a political figure someone reveres is corrupt, a person will immediately bring up the faults of a figure of the opposition party and or make excuses or concoct explanations as to why things aren't really as bad as they seem. However, when made aware of the same evidence in the case of a politician of an opposing party, one embraces and emphasizes the seriousness of the allegations and their heinous and inexcusable nature. The truth may lie some place in the middle. Through severe torture one might be able to create a desire in someone strong enough to doubt even basic sensory beliefs, like how many fingers a person is holding up, as was done in George Orwell's 1984. Perhaps a philosophy class might cause one to doubt common sense beliefs, but when you walk out of the classroom, in minutes you revert to taking the common sense beliefs we all share at face value. Sustaining beliefs which are contrary to the evidence requires effort. The greater the evidence against the belief, the more difficult it is to sustain them. It seems that only in areas where the evidence is ambiguous do we have the ability to "tip the scales" of evidence in the direction we desire. So, given that it may be possible to some extent to consciously determine our beliefs, is it rational to do so? William James suggests that it is rational to choose one's beliefs under certain conditions. Kierkegaard seems to admit that it's irrational to choose one's beliefs on the basis of one's passions, but that it is nevertheless right and good to do so. Clifford, on the other hand, says that it is never justifiable to form one's beliefs on the basis of one's hopes or desires. This raises some interesting questions with the role rationality plays in our system of values. Goods can be divided into two kinds: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic goods are things which are valuable in and of themselves. Happiness is one such value which is regarded to be valuable just for its own sake. People rarely ask "Why would I want to be happy? What good is it? Where will being happy get me?" This is why people laughed when Comedian Henny Youngman asked "What good is happiness? It can't buy you money!" Happiness is good in itself, apart from any other benefits it might produce. Extrinsic goods are things which are valuable only because they are capable of producing additional goods. For example, money is an extrinsic good. There's nothing inherently valuable about having little green slips of paper, but money is valuable because it can be exchanged for goods and services. So, which type of value is having true beliefs? Is truth intrinsically valuable or only extrinsically valuable? Is true valuable for its own sake, or only because having an accurate picture of reality gives you a better chance of achieving goals such as happiness, safety, or control over your life? Under some circumstances, can ignorance be bliss? If one is able to choose, might there be some circumstances where one would be justified in choosing blissful ignorance over harsh reality?

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Questions for Review 1. What is volitionism in epistemology? 2. What's the difference between descriptive and prescriptive volitionism. 3. Describe the phenomenological argument against volitionism? 4. Describe the logic of belief argument against volitionism.

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Question for Discussion

How much control do we have over our beliefs? Is the control of a direct or indirect nature? To what extent are our beliefs influenced by our culture, upbringing and personal experiences? If we do have control over our beliefs, would it be best, in general, to try to believe what's true, whatever that happens to be, or to believe what we think will make us happy?

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Chapter Six

Religious Knowledge

AN ENQUIRY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING (1748) David Hume

Sect. X. Of Miracles

PART I.

86. There is, in Dr. Tillotson's writings, an argument against the real presence, which is as concise, and elegant, and strong as any argument can possibly be supposed against a doctrine, so little worthy of a serious refutation. It is acknowledged on all hands, says that learned prelate, that the authority, either of the scripture or of tradition, is founded merely in the testimony of the apostles, who were eye-witnesses to those miracles of our Saviour, by which he proved his divine mission. Our evidence, then, for the truth of the Christian religion is less than the evidence for the truth of our senses; because, even in the first authors of our religion, it was no greater; and it is evident it must diminish in passing from them to their disciples; nor can any one rest such confidence in their testimony, as in the immediate object of his senses. But a weaker evidence can never destroy a stronger; and therefore, were the doctrine of the real presence ever so clearly revealed in scripture, it were directly contrary to the rules of just reasoning to give our assent to it. It contradicts sense, though both the scripture and tradition, on which it is supposed to be built, carry not such evidence with them as sense; when they are considered merely as external evidences, and are not brought home to every one's breast, by the immediate operation of the Holy Spirit. Nothing is so convenient as a decisive argument of this kind, which must at least silence the most arrogant bigotry and superstition, and free us from their impertinent solicitations. I flatter myself, that I have discovered an argument of a like nature, which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently, will be useful as long as the world endures. For so long, I presume, will the accounts of miracles and prodigies be found in all history, sacred and profane. 87. Though experience be our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact; it must be acknowledged, that this guide is not altogether infallible, but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors. One, who in our climate, should expect better weather in any week of June than in one of December, would reason justly, and conformably to experience; but it is certain, that he may happen, in the event, to find himself mistaken. However, we may observe, that, in such a case, he would have no cause to complain of experience; because it commonly informs us beforehand of the uncertainty, by that contrariety of events, which we may learn from a diligent observation. All effects follow not with like certainty from their supposed causes. Some events are found, in all countries and all ages, to have been constantly conjoined together: Others are found to have been more variable, and sometimes to disappoint our expectations; so that, in our reasonings

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concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence. In such conclusions as are founded on an infallible experience, he expects the event with the last degree of assurance, and regards his past experience as a full proof of the future existence of that event. In other cases, he proceeds with more caution: He weighs the opposite experiments: He considers which side is supported by the greater number of experiments: to that side he inclines, with doubt and hesitation; and when at last he fixes his judgement, the evidence exceeds not what we properly call probability. All probability, then, supposes an opposition of experiments and observations, where the one side is found to overbalance the other, and to produce a degree of evidence, proportioned to the superiority. A hundred instances or experiments on one side, and fifty on another, afford a doubtful expectation of any event; though a hundred uniform experiments, with only one that is contradictory, reasonably beget a pretty strong degree of assurance. In all cases, we must balance the opposite experiments, where they are opposite, and deduct the smaller number from the greater, in order to know the exact force of the superior evidence. 88. To apply these principles to a particular instance; we may observe that there is no species of reasoning more common, more useful, and even necessary to human life, than that which is derived from the testimony of men, and the reports of eye-witnesses and spectators. This species of reasoning, perhaps, one may deny to be founded on the relation of cause and effect. I shall not dispute about a word. It will be sufficient to observe that our assurance in any argument of this kind is derived from no other principle than our observation of the veracity of human testimony, and of the usual conformity of facts to the reports of witnesses. It being a general maxim, that no objects have any discoverable connexion together, and that all the inferences, which we can draw from one to another, are founded merely on our experience of their constant and regular conjunction; it is evident that we ought not to make an exception to this maxim in favour of human testimony, whose connexion with any event seems, in itself, as little necessary as any other. Were not the memory tenacious to a certain degree; had not men commonly an inclination to truth and a principle of probity; were they not sensible to shame, when detected in a falsehood: Were not these, I say, discovered by experience to be qualities, inherent in human nature, we should never repose the least confidence in human testimony. A man delirious, or noted for falsehood and villany, has no manner of authority with us. And as the evidence, derived from witnesses and human testimony, is founded on past experience, so it varies with the experience, and is regarded either as a proof or a probability, according as the conjunction between any particular kind of report and any kind of object has been found to be constant or variable. There are a number of circumstances to be taken into consideration in all judgements of this kind; and the ultimate standard, by which we determine all disputes, that may arise concerning them, is always derived from experience and observation. Where this experience is not entirely uniform on any side, it is attended with an unavoidable contrariety in our judgements, and with the same opposition and mutual destruction of argument as in every other kind of evidence. We frequently hesitate concerning the reports of others. We balance the opposite circumstances, which cause any doubt or uncertainty; and when we discover a superiority on any side, we incline to it; but still with a diminution of assurance, in proportion to the force of its antagonist.

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89. This contrariety of evidence, in the present case, may be derived from several different causes; from the opposition of contrary testimony; from the character or number of the witnesses; from the manner of their delivering their testimony; or from the union of all these circumstances. We entertain a suspicion concerning any matter of fact, when the witnesses contradict each other; when they are but few, or of a doubtful character; when they have an interest in what they affirm; when they deliver their testimony with hesitation, or on the contrary, with too violent asseverations. There are many other particulars of the same kind, which may diminish or destroy the force of any argument, derived from human testimony. Suppose, for instance, that the fact, which the testimony endeavours to establish, partakes of the extraordinary and the marvellous; in that case, the evidence, resulting from the testimony, admits of a diminution, greater or less, in proportion as the fact is more or less unusual. The reason why we place any credit in witnesses and historians, is not derived from any connexion, which we perceive a priori, between testimony and reality, but because we are accustomed to find a conformity between them. But when the fact attested is such a one as has seldom fallen under our observation, here is a contest of two opposite experiences; of which the one destroys the other, as far as its force goes, and the superior can only operate on the mind by the force, which remains. The very same principle of experience, which gives us a certain degree of assurance in the testimony of witnesses, gives us also, in this case, another degree of assurance against the fact, which they endeavour to establish; from which contradiction there necessarily arises a counterpoize, and mutual destruction of belief and authority. I should not believe such a story were it told me by Cato, was a proverbial saying in Rome, even during the lifetime of that philosophical patriot.* The incredibility of a fact, it was allowed, might invalidate so great an authority. * Plutarch, Marcus Cato. The Indian prince, who refused to believe the first relations concerning the effects of frost, reasoned justly; and it naturally required very strong testimony to engage his assent to facts, that arose from a state of nature, with which he was unacquainted, and which bore so little analogy to those events, of which he had had constant and uniform experience. Though they were not contrary to his experience, they were not conformable to it.* * No Indian, it is evident, could have experience that water did not freeze in cold climates. This is placing nature in a situation quite unknown to him; and it is impossible for him to tell a priori what will result from it. It is making a new experiment, the consequence of which is always uncertain. One may sometimes conjecture from analogy what will follow; but still this is but conjecture. And it must be confessed, that, in the present case of freezing, the event follows contrary to the rules of analogy, and is such as a rational Indian would not look for. The operations of cold upon water are not gradual, according to the degrees of cold; but whenever it comes to the freezing point, the water passes in a moment, from the utmost liquidity to perfect hardness. Such an event, therefore, may be denominated extraordinary, and requires a pretty strong testimony to render it credible to people in a war climate: But still it is not miraculous, nor contrary to uniform experience of the course of nature in cases where all the circumstances are the same. The inhabitants of Sumatra have always seen water fluid in their own climate, and the

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freezing of their rivers ought to be deemed a prodigy: But they never saw water in Muscovy during the winter; and therefore they cannot reasonably be positive what would there be the consequence. 90. But in order to encrease the probability against the testimony of witnesses, let us suppose, that the fact, which they affirm, instead of being only marvellous, is really miraculous; and suppose also, that the testimony considered apart and in itself, amounts to an entire proof; in that case, there is proof against proof, of which the strongest must prevail, but still with a diminution of its force, in proportion to that of its antagonist. A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. Why is it more than probable, that all men must die; that lead cannot, of itself, remain suspended in the air; that fire consumes wood, and is extinguished by water; unless it be, that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and there is required a violation of these laws, or in other words, a miracle to prevent them? Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happen in the common course of nature. It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, but by an opposite proof, which is superior.* * Sometimes an event may not, in itself, seem to be contrary to the laws of nature, and yet, if it were real, it might, by reason of some circumstances, be denominated a miracle; because, in fact, it is contrary to these laws. Thus if a person, claiming a divine authority, should command a sick person to be well, a healthful man to fall down dead, the clouds to pour rain, the winds to blow, in short, should order many natural events, which immediately follow upon his command; these might justly be esteemed miracles, because they are really, in this case, contrary to the laws of nature. For if any suspicion remain, that the event and command concurred by accident, there is no miracle and no transgression of the laws of nature. If this suspicion be removed, there is evidently a miracle, and a transgression of these laws; because nothing can be more contrary to nature than that the voice or command of a man should have such an influence. A miracle may be accurately defined, a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent. A miracle may either be discoverable by men or not. This alters not its nature and essence. The raising of a house or ship into the air is a visible miracle. The raising of a feather, when the wind wants ever so little of a force requisite for that purpose, is as real a miracle, though not so sensible with regard to us. 91. The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), "That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish; and even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance

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suitable to that degree of force, which remains, after deducting the inferior." When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.

PART II. 92. In the foregoing reasoning we have supposed that the testimony, upon which a miracle is founded, may possibly amount to an entire proof, and that the falsehood of that testimony would be a real prodigy: But it is easy to shew that we have been a great deal too liberal in our concession, and that there never was a miraculous event established on so full an evidence. For first, there is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good-sense, education, and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves; of such undoubted integrity, as to place them beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others; of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind, as to have a great deal to lose in case of their being detected in any falsehood; and at the same time, attesting facts performed in such a public manner and in so celebrated a part of the world, as to render the detection unavoidable: All which circumstances are requisite to give us a full assurance in the testimony of men. 93. Secondly. We may observe in human nature a principle which, if strictly examined, will be found to diminish extremely the assurance, which we might, from human testimony, have, in any kind of prodigy. The maxim, by which we commonly conduct ourselves in our reasonings, is, that the objects, of which we have no experience, resemble those, of which we have; that what we have found to be most usual is always most probable; and that where there is an opposition of arguments, we ought to give the preference to such as are founded on the greatest number of past observations. But though, in proceeding by this rule, we readily reject any fact which is unusual and incredible in an ordinary degree; yet in advancing farther, the mind observes not always the same rule; but when anything is affirmed utterly absurd and miraculous, it rather the more readily admits of such a fact, upon account of that very circumstance, which ought to destroy all its authority. The passion of surprise and wonder, arising from miracles, being an agreeable emotion, gives a sensible tendency towards the belief of those events, from which it is derived. And this goes so far, that even those who cannot enjoy this pleasure immediately, nor can believe those miraculous events, of which they are informed, yet love to partake of the satisfaction at second-hand or by rebound, and place a pride and delight in exciting the admiration of others. With what greediness are the miraculous accounts of travellers received, their descriptions of sea and land monsters, their relations of wonderful adventures, strange men, and uncouth manners? But if the spirit of religion join itself to the love of wonder, there is an end of common sense; and human testimony, in these circumstances, loses all pretensions to authority. A religionist may be an enthusiast, and imagine he sees what has no reality: he may know his narrative to be false, and

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yet persevere in it, with the best intentions in the world, for the sake of promoting so holy a cause: or even where this delusion has not place, vanity, excited by so strong a temptation, operates on him more powerfully than on the rest of mankind in any other circumstances; and self-interest with equal force. His auditors may not have, and commonly have not, sufficient judgement to canvass his evidence: what judgement they have, they renounce by principle, in these sublime and mysterious subjects: or if they were ever so willing to employ it, passion and a heated imagination disturb the regularity of its operations. Their credulity increases his impudence: and his impudence overpowers their credulity. Eloquence, when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection; but addressing itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. Happily, this pitch it seldom attains. But what a Tully or a Demosthenes could scarcely effect over a Roman or Athenian audience, every Capuchin, every itinerant or stationary teacher can perform over the generality of mankind, and in a higher degree, by touching such gross and vulgar passions. The many instances of forged miracles, and prophecies, and supernatural events, which, in all ages, have either been detected by contrary evidence, or which detect themselves by their absurdity, prove sufficiently the strong propensity of mankind to the extraordinary and the marvellous, and ought reasonably to beget a suspicion against all relations of this kind. This is our natural way of thinking, even with regard to the most common and most credible events. For instance: There is no kind of report which rises so easily, and spreads so quickly, especially in country places and provincial towns, as those concerning marriages; insomuch that two young persons of equal condition never see each other twice, but the whole neighbourhood immediately join them together. The pleasure of telling a piece of news so interesting, of propagating it, and of being the first reporters of it, spreads the intelligence. And this is so well known, that no man of sense gives attention to these reports, till he find them confirmed by some greater evidence. Do not the same passions, and others still stronger, incline the generality of mankind to believe and report, with the greatest vehemence and assurance, all religious miracles? 94. Thirdly. It forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations, that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations; or if a civilized people has ever given admission to any of them, that people will be found to have received them from ignorant and barbarous ancestors, who transmitted them with that inviolable sanction and authority, which always attend received opinions. When we peruse the first histories of all nations, we are apt to imagine ourselves transported into some new world; where the whole frame of nature is disjointed, and every element performs its operations in a different manner, from what it does at present. Battles, revolutions, pestilence, famine and death, are never the effect of those natural causes, which we experience. Prodigies, omens, oracles, judgements, quite obscure the few natural events, that are intermingled with them. But as the former grow thinner every page, in proportion as we advance nearer the enlightened ages, we soon learn, that there is nothing mysterious or supernatural in the case, but that all proceeds from the usual propensity of mankind towards the marvellous, and that, though this inclination may at intervals receive a check from sense and learning, it can never be thoroughly extirpated from human nature.

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It is strange, a judicious reader is apt to say, upon the perusal of these wonderful historians, that such prodigious events never happen in our days. But it is nothing strange, I hope, that men should lie in all ages. You must surely have seen instances enough of that frailty. You have yourself heard many such marvellous relations started, which, being treated with scorn by all the wise and judicious, have at last been abandoned even by the vulgar. Be assured, that those renowned lies, which have spread and flourished to such a monstrous height, arose from like beginnings; but being sown in a more proper soil, shot up at last into prodigies almost equal to those which they relate. It was a wise policy in that false prophet, Alexander, who though now forgotten, was once so famous, to lay the first scene of his impostures in Paphlagonia, where, as Lucian tells us, the people were extremely ignorant and stupid, and ready to swallow even the grossest delusion. People at a distance, who are weak enough to think the matter at all worth enquiry, have no opportunity of receiving better information. The stories come magnified to them by a hundred circumstances. Fools are industrious in propagating the imposture; while the wise and learned are contented, in general, to deride its absurdity, without informing themselves of the particular facts, by which it may be distinctly refuted. And thus the impostor above mentioned was enabled to proceed, from his ignorant Paphlagonians, to the enlisting of votaries, even among the Grecian philosophers, and men of the most eminent rank and distinction in Rome: nay, could engage the attention of that sage emperor Marcus Aurelius; so far as to make him trust the success of a military expedition to his delusive prophecies. The advantages are so great, of starting an imposture among an ignorant people, that, even though the delusion should be too gross to impose on the generality of them (which, though seldom, is sometimes the case) it has a much better chance for succeeding in remote countries, than if the first scene had been laid in a city renowned for arts and knowledge. The most ignorant and barbarous of these barbarians carry the report abroad. None of their countrymen have a large correspondence, or sufficient credit and authority to contradict and beat down the delusion. Men's inclination to the marvellous has full opportunity to display itself. And thus a story, which is universally exploded in the place where it was first started, shall pass for certain at a thousand miles distance. But had Alexander fixed his residence at Athens, the philosophers of that renowned mart of learning had immediately spread, throughout the whole Roman empire, their sense of the matter; which, being supported by so great authority, and displayed by all the force of reason and eloquence, had entirely opened the eyes of mankind. It is true; Lucian, passing by chance through Paphlagonia, had an opportunity of performing this good office. But, though much to be wished, it does not always happen, that every Alexander meets with a Lucian, ready to expose and detect his impostures. 95. I may add as a fourth reason, which diminishes the authority of prodigies, that there is no testimony for any, even those which have not been expressly detected, that is not opposed by an infinite number of witnesses; so that not only the miracle destroys the credit of testimony, but the testimony destroys itself. To make this the better understood, let us consider, that, in matters of religion, whatever is different is contrary; and that it is impossible the religions of ancient Rome, of Turkey, of Siam, and of China should, all of them, be established on any solid foundation. Every miracle, therefore, pretended to have been wrought in any of these religions (and all of them abound in miracles), as its direct scope is to establish the particular system to which it is

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attributed; so has it the same force, though more indirectly, to overthrow every other system. In destroying a rival system, it likewise destroys the credit of those miracles, on which that system was established; so that all the prodigies of different religions are to be regarded as contrary facts, and the evidences of these prodigies, whether weak or strong, as opposite to each other. According to this method of reasoning, when we believe any miracle of Mahomet [Muhammad the Prophet, founder of Islam] or his successors, we have for our warrant the testimony of a few barbarous Arabians: And on the other hand, we are to regard the authority of Titus Livius, Plutarch, Tacitus, and, in short, of all the authors and witnesses, Grecian, Chinese, and Roman Catholic, who have related any miracle in their particular religion; I say, we are to regard their testimony in the same light as if they had mentioned that Mahometan [Muslim] miracle, and had in express terms contradicted it, with the same certainty as they have for the miracle they relate. This argument may appear over subtile and refined; but is not in reality different from the reasoning of a judge, who supposes that the credit of two witnesses, maintaining a crime against any one, is destroyed by the testimony of two others, who affirm him to have been two hundred leagues distant, at the same instant when the crime is said to have been committed. 96. One of the best attested miracles in all profane history, is that which Tacitus reports of Vespasian, who cured a blind man in Alexandria, by means of his spittle, and a lame man by the mere touch of his foot; in obedience to a vision of the god Serapis, who had enjoined them to have recourse to the Emperor, for these miraculous cures. The story may be seen in that fine historian;* where every circumstance seems to add weight to the testimony, and might be displayed at large with all the force of argument and eloquence, if any one were now concerned to enforce the evidence of that exploded and idolatrous superstition. The gravity, solidity, age, and probity of so great an emperor, who, through the whole course of his life, conversed in a familiar manner with his friends and courtiers, and never affected those extraordinary airs of divinity assumed by Alexander and Demetrius. The historian, a contemporary writer, noted for candour and veracity, and withal, the greatest and most penetrating genius, perhaps, of all antiquity; and so free from any tendency to credulity, that he even lies under the contrary imputation, of atheism and profaneness: The persons, from whose authority he related the miracle, of established character for judgement and veracity, as we may well presume; eye-witnesses of the fact, and confirming their testimony, after the Flavian family was despoiled of the empire, and could no longer give any reward, as the price of a lie. Utrumque, qui interfuere, nunc quoque memorant, postquam nullum mendacio pretium.* [“Both cases are still remembered by eyewitnesses today, and they have no reason to lie.”] To which if we add the public nature of the facts, as related, it will appear, that no evidence can well be supposed stronger for so gross and so palpable a falsehood. * Histories, iv. 81. Suetonius gives nearly the same account, Lives of the Caesars (Vespasian). There is also a memorable story related by Cardinal de Retz, which may well deserve our consideration. When that intriguing politician fled into Spain, to avoid the persecution of his enemies, he passed through Saragossa, the capital of Aragon, where he was shewn, in the cathedral, a man, who had served seven years as a doorkeeper, and was well known to every body in town, that had ever paid his devotions at that church. He had been seen, for so long a time, wanting a leg; but recovered that limb by the rubbing of holy oil upon the stump; and the cardinal assures us that he saw him with two legs. This miracle was vouched by all the canons of

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the church; and the whole company in town were appealed to for a confirmation of the fact; whom the cardinal found, by their zealous devotion, to be thorough believers of the miracle. Here the relater was also contemporary to the supposed prodigy, of an incredulous and libertine character, as well as of great genius; the miracle of so singular a nature as could scarcely admit of a counterfeit, and the witnesses very numerous, and all of them, in a manner, spectators of the fact, to which they gave their testimony. And what adds mightily to the force of the evidence, and may double our surprise on this occasion, is, that the cardinal himself, who relates the story, seems not to give any credit to it, and consequently cannot be suspected of any concurrence in the holy fraud. He considered justly, that it was not requisite, in order to reject a fact of this nature, to be able accurately to disprove the testimony, and to trace its falsehood, through all the circumstances of knavery and credulity which produced it. He knew, that, as this was commonly altogether impossible at any small distance of time and place; so was it extremely difficult, even where one was immediately present, by reason of the bigotry, ignorance, cunning, and roguery of a great part of mankind. He therefore concluded, like a just reasoner, that such an evidence carried falsehood upon the very face of it, and that a miracle, supported by any human testimony, was more properly a subject of derision than of argument. There surely never was a greater number of miracles ascribed to one person, than those, which were lately said to have been wrought in France upon the tomb of Abbe Paris, the famous Jansenist, with whose sanctity the people were so long deluded. The curing of the sick, giving hearing to the deaf, and sight to the blind, were every where talked of as the usual effects of that holy sepulchre. But what is more extraordinary; many of the miracles were immediately proved upon the spot, before judges of unquestioned integrity, attested by witnesses of credit and distinction, in a learned age, and on the most eminent theatre that is now in the world. Nor is this all: a relation of them was published and dispersed every where; nor were the Jesuits, though a learned body, supported by the civil magistrate, and determined enemies to those opinions, in whose favour the miracles were said to have been wrought, ever able distinctly to refute or detect them. Where shall we find such a number of circumstances, agreeing to the corroboration of one fact? And what have we to oppose to such a cloud of witnesses, but the absolute impossibility or miraculous nature of the events, which they relate? And this surely, in the eyes of all reasonable people, will alone be regarded as a sufficient refutation. 97. Is the consequence just, because some human testimony has the utmost force and authority in some cases, when it relates the battle of Philippi or Pharsalia for instance; that therefore all kinds of testimony must, in all cases, have equal force and authority? Suppose that the Caesarean and Pompeian factions had, each of them, claimed the victory in these battles, and that the historians of each party had uniformly ascribed the advantage to their own side; how could mankind, at this distance, have been able to determine between them? The contrariety is equally strong between the miracles related by Herodotus or Plutarch, and those delivered by Mariana, Bede, or any monkish historian. The wise lend a very academic faith to every report which favours the passion of the reporter; whether it magnifies his country, his family, or himself, or in any other way strikes in with his natural inclinations and propensities. But what greater temptation than to appear a missionary, a prophet, an ambassador from heaven? Who would not encounter many dangers and difficulties, in order to attain so sublime a character? Or if, by the help of vanity and a heated imagination, a

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man has first made a convert of himself, and entered seriously into the delusion I who ever scruples to make use of pious frauds, in support of so holy and meritorious a cause? The smallest spark may here kindle into the greatest flame; because the materials are always prepared for it. The avidum genus auricularum [“the tribe with ears greedy for gossip”],* the gazing populace, receive greedily, without examination, whatever sooths superstition, and promotes wonder. * Lucretius. How many stories of this nature have in all ages, been detected and exploded in their infancy? How many more have been celebrated for a time, and have afterwards sunk into neglect and oblivion? Where such reports, therefore, fly about, the solution of the phenomenon is obvious; and we in conformity to regular experience and observation, when we account for it by the known and natural principles of credulity and delusion. And shall we, rather than have a recourse to so natural a solution, allow of a miraculous violation of the most established laws of nature? I need not mention the difficulty of detecting a falsehood in any private or even public history, at the place, where it is said to happen; much more when the scene is removed to ever so small a distance. Even a court of judicature, with all the authority, accuracy, and judgement, which they can employ, find themselves often at a loss to distinguish between truth and falsehood in the most recent actions. But the matter never comes to any issue, if trusted to the common method of altercations and debate and flying rumours; especially when men's passions have taken part on either side. In the infancy of new religions, the wise and learned commonly esteem the matter too inconsiderable to deserve their attention or regard. And when afterwards they would willingly detect the cheat, in order to undeceive the deluded multitude, the season is now past, and the records and witnesses, which might clear up the matter, have perished beyond recovery. No means of detection remain, but those which must be drawn from the very testimony itself of the reporters: and these, though always sufficient with the judicious and knowing, are commonly too fine to fall under the comprehension of the vulgar. 98. Upon the whole, then, it appears, that no testimony for any kind of miracle has ever amounted to a probability, much less to a proof; and that, even supposing it amounted to a proof, it would be opposed by another proof, derived from the very nature of the fact, which it would endeavour to establish. It is experience only, which gives authority to human testimony; and it is the same experience, which assures us of the laws of nature. When, therefore, these two kinds of experience are contrary, we have nothing to do but substract the one from the other, and embrace an opinion, either on one side or the other, with that assurance which arises from the remainder. But according to the principle here explained, this substraction, with regard to all popular religions, amounts to an entire annihilation; and therefore we may establish it as a maxim, that no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any such system of religion.

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99. I beg the limitations here made may be remarked, when I say, that a miracle can never be proved, so as to be the foundation of a system of religion. For I own, that otherwise, there may possibly be miracles, or violations of the usual course of nature, of such a kind as to admit of proof from human testimony; though, perhaps, it will be impossible to find any such in all the records of history. Thus, suppose all authors, in all languages, agree, that, from the first of January 1600, there was a total darkness over the whole earth for eight days: suppose that the tradition of this extraordinary event is still strong and lively among the people: that all travellers, who return from foreign countries, bring us accounts of the same tradition, without the least variation or contradiction: it is evident, that our present philosophers, instead of doubting the fact, ought to receive it as certain, and ought to search for the causes whence it might be derived. The decay, corruption, and dissolution of nature, is an event rendered probable by so many analogies, that any phenomenon, which seems to have a tendency towards that catastrophe, comes within the reach of human testimony, if that testimony be very extensive and uniform. But suppose, that all the historians who treat of England, should agree, that, on the first of January 1600, Queen Elizabeth died; that both before and after her death she was seen by her physicians and the whole court, as is usual with persons of her rank; that her successor was acknowledged and proclaimed by the parliament; and that, after being interred a month, she again appeared, resumed the throne, and governed England for three years: I must confess that I should be surprised at the concurrence of so many odd circumstances, but should not have the least inclination to believe so miraculous an event. I should not doubt of her pretended death, and of those other public circumstances that followed it: I should only assert it to have been pretended, and that it neither was, nor possibly could be real. You would in vain object to me the difficulty, and almost impossibility of deceiving the world in an affair of such consequence; the wisdom and solid judgement of that renowned queen; with the little or no advantage which she could reap from so poor an artifice: All this might astonish me; but I would still reply, that the knavery and folly of men are such common phenomena, that I should rather believe the most extraordinary events to arise from their concurrence, than admit of so signal a violation of the laws of nature. But should this miracle be ascribed to any new system of religion; men, in all ages, have been so much imposed on by ridiculous stories of that kind, that this very circumstance would be a full proof of a cheat, and sufficient, with all men of sense, not only to make them reject the fact, but even reject it without farther examination. Though the Being to whom the miracle is ascribed, be, in this case, Almighty, it does not, upon that account, become a whit more probable; since it is impossible for us to know the attributes or actions of such a Being, otherwise than from the experience which we have of his productions, in the usual course of nature. This still reduces us to past observation, and obliges us to compare the instances of the violation of truth in the testimony of men, with those of the violation of the laws of nature by miracles, in order to judge which of them is most likely and probable. As the violations of truth are more common in the testimony concerning religious miracles, than in that concerning any other matter of fact; this must diminish very much the authority of the former testimony, and make us form a general resolution, never to lend any attention to it, with whatever specious pretence it may be covered. Lord Bacon seems to have embraced the same principles of reasoning. "We ought," says he, "to make a collection or particular history of all monsters and prodigious births or productions, and

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in a word of everything new, rare, and extraordinary in nature. But this must be done with the most severe scrutiny, lest we depart from truth. Above all, every relation must be considered as suspicious, which depends in any degree upon religion, as the prodigies of Livy: And no less so, everything that is to be found in the writers of natural magic or alchemy, or such authors, who seem, all of them, to have an unconquerable appetite for falsehood and fable."* * Novum Organum, II, aph. 29. 100. I am the better pleased with the method of reasoning here delivered, as I think it may serve to confound those dangerous friends or disguised enemies to the Christian Religion, who have undertaken to defend it by the principles of human reason. Our most holy religion is founded on Faith, not on reason; and it is a sure method of exposing it to put it to such a trial as it is, by no means, fitted to endure. To make this more evident, let us examine those miracles, related in scripture; and not to lose ourselves in too wide a field, let us confine ourselves to such as we find in the Pentateuch, which we shall examine, according to the principles of these pretended Christians, not as the word or testimony of God himself, but as the production of a mere human writer and historian. Here then we are first to consider a book, presented to us by a barbarous and ignorant people, written in an age when they were still more barbarous, and in all probability long after the facts which it relates, corroborated by no concurring testimony, and resembling those fabulous accounts, which every nation gives of its origin. Upon reading this book, we find it full of prodigies and miracles. It gives an account of a state of the world and of human nature entirely different from the present: Of our fall from that state: Of the age of man, extended to near a thousand years: Of the destruction of the world by a deluge: Of the arbitrary choice of one people, as the favourites of heaven; and that people the countrymen of the author: Of their deliverance from bondage by prodigies the most astonishing imaginable: I desire anyone to lay his hand upon his heart, and after a serious consideration declare, whether he thinks that the falsehood of such a book, supported by such a testimony, would be more extraordinary and miraculous than all the miracles it relates; which is, however, necessary to make it be received, according to the measures of probability above established. 101. What we have said of miracles may be applied, without any variation, to prophecies; and indeed, all prophecies are real miracles, and as such only, can be admitted as proofs of any revelation. If it did not exceed the capacity of human nature to foretell future events, it would be absurd to employ any prophecy as an argument for a divine mission or authority from heaven. So that, upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.

Commentary on "Of Miracles" David Hume in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding seems to be making the following argument against the possibilities of miracles:

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The laws of nature have no exceptions A miracle is a supposed exception to the laws of nature Therefore, a miracle can never occur

One charge against Hume is that his argument amounts to circular reasoning. He assumes there are no exceptions to the laws of nature and then simply defines miracles out of existence. Another objection is that Hume's argument seems to amount to a Cartesian a priori deduction, the sort of argument which Hume opposes earlier in the Enquiry on empiricist grounds. A third objection is that there is an even more astonishing conflict with Hume's treatment of cause and effect earlier in the Enquiry. There he asserts that the "necessary connection" between cause and effect exists only in the mind. But in the section on miracles, he seems to be assuming a realist position on causation, one in which the laws of cause and effect are incapable of being violated. What is a miracle anyway? A miracle can be defined as (1) an unusual event, out of range of normal human experience or (2) a supernatural, non-physical, spiritual, phenomenon which occurs contrary to known scientific laws. These two definitions don't necessarily describe the same set of events. One could imagine a world where a miracle in the second sense happened every day, whereas a miracle in the first sense is by definition a rarity. Hume seems to assume the second definition and conflate it with the first. Against Hume, one might argue that, given human history, it seems that the "laws of nature" aren't fixed and determined but are evolving. Science is replete with revised and abandoned theories and shattered paradigms. One might also argue that perhaps new as yet undiscovered laws of nature could validate supernatural phenomena some time in the future. Why should such phenomena be dismissed out of hand? Furthermore, if there's a God who created universe, he created the laws of nature and presumably is not bound by them. What's right about Hume's argument? It has been suggested that Hume's skepticism about miracles and testimony underscores the to the legitimate principle that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. At one point Hume says we need to ask ourselves which is "the greater miracle"--that the laws of nature have been violated or that a human being is lying for attention, fame, money, or an uneducated or superstitious person has a sincere but false belief, etc. Hume, of course, is arguing that it's no miracle that people lie or that uneducated people are given to fantastic or superstitious beliefs. This ought to make us more critical of testimony reporting miracles than other testimony. The principle of credulity asserts that you are justified in believing a report under normal circumstances unless you are given reason to doubt it. For example, if I tell you I taught as a lecturer at several California colleges before coming to Oregon, you should accept my claim at face value. I would have no reason to lie, and my claim isn’t anything particularly unusual or one which contradicts your other beliefs about the way the world is. But if I told you I saw Anti-Christ in my backyard wearing a gray Armani suit with his hair pulled back in a pony tail and that he waved “Hi” before disappearing as mysteriously as he appeared, you would be right to be skeptical and treat my claim with a great deal of suspicion. People don’t generally appear and disappear and you may not even be convinced that the Anti-Christ is a real person. Hume's

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argument might be revised to the more plausible and less absolutist argument that an extra burden of proof always lies with a person making an extraordinary claim.

The Presumption of Atheism? Theism is the belief that God exists. Atheism is the belief that God doesn't exist. Agnosticism is the suspension of belief about whether God exists or not--an agnostic is someone who doesn't know whether there's a God or not. Atheistic Philosopher Michael Scriven has made an argument that there should be a "presumption of atheism", that is, that we should presume that there is no god unless someone who can prove that there is a God. This is similar to the concept of "burden of proof" in the U.S. justice system. The burden of proof lies with the prosecution, and the defendant is considered innocent until proven guilty. Scriven asserts that the burden of proof is on the theist to must prove that God does exist; it is not up to the atheist to prove that he doesn't exist. This is in part because the burden of proof is on the person making the positive claim but also because "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". The concept of God not only goes beyond our everyday experience, says Scriven, it actually conflicts with many established beliefs about science and logic. However, one might take issue with Scriven in his assessment of the initial plausibility of theism. This might be supported by the fact that over 90% of the world believe in some sort of higher power or God. Certainly what's regarded as being extraordinary or unusual ought to be based on what the majority of people believe. Contrary to what Scriven asserts, one might argue that people experience God every day in their Churches, prayer and everyday life. As a matter of fact, Philosopher such as Alvin Plantinga has suggested that belief in God is such an integral part of the everyday experience of people and the communities of faith of which they are a part that it is justified even in the absence of any positive, objective evidence.

Questions for Discussion 1. What are two ways of defining a miracle? Which does Hume use?

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2. What is Hume's argument against miracles? How might one argue that Hume is engaging in circular reasoning? 3. How might Hume's argument against miracles conflict with other elements of his philosophy? 4. What is "the principle of credulity"? How does it suggest something might be right about Hume's argument?

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5. Define theism, atheism and agnosticism. 6. What is meant when Philosophers like Michael Scriven and Anthony Flew argue that there should be "a presumption of atheism"? What U.S. governmental institution is a good illustration of the principle of the "burden of proof"? "? With whom do Flew and Scriven argue the "burden of proof" lies, and why? 7. What counterargument is made by theistic philosophers like Alvin Plantinga?

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Questions for Discussion

1. What should be the "starting point" in debates about religion: theism, atheism or agnosticism? Justify your answer.

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2. Comment on how you evaluate or ought to evaluate religious claims or claims of supernatural occurrences.

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Chapter Seven

Moral and Political Knowledge

Moral Knowledge How do we know the difference between right and wrong? Or, even more fundamentally, how do we know if there actually is such a thing as right and wrong? Certainly people judge things as right and wrong, good and evil, and social and cultural institutions are built around such judgments, but how do we know that such judgments have some basis in reality? To take an analogous case, think of the concept of God, discussed in the last chapter. It is possible to study the concept of God as it affects the beliefs and behavior of individuals, cultures and nations, but then there is the further question of whether such a being actually exists. We might conclude that the concept of God serves a useful function in terms of certain desirable outcomes while still coming to believe that there is in fact no such being. Conversely, we might conclude that the concept of God has an overall negative impact on the goals of secular society because it fosters superstitious thinking or promulgates religious fanaticism or provides a distracting focus on the hereafter, but at the same time believe that such a being exists. In the same way, whether or not there is such a thing as objective morality is a separable question from (1) whether people believe objective morality or behave in ways that suggest that they do (2) whether believing in objective morality is beneficial or serves a useful function. It may very well be that moral skeptics are right but that that it would be prudent for those of us "in the know" to simply keep quiet about it. We can also talk generally about whether there is objective morality without necessarily delving into which of the various conceptions of morality is the correct one. Recall our discussion of the nature of truth from Chapter One. A true statement is one which corresponds with reality. Those statements which actually represent or describe reality are true; those which do not are false. So, if there are objective moral truths, then they also must correspond with reality. But what is the "reality" which moral truths describe? And what evidence do we put forth to justify morality in general or particular moral claims? We ordinarily justify statements about the material world through sensory observations. If I say "It is raining outside" we can easily check through walking outside and looking. If the weather in question is in a remote location, we can consult weather reports, themselves based on the sensory observations of others, perhaps further enhanced by satellites and other pieces of technology which augment those observations. Everyone understands conditions under which "It is raining outside" would be true (it's pouring rain) or false (sunny, cloudless day), though there might be some conditions where we might need to further qualify terms (does any precipitation at all count as rain, or do would we say that there is a light drizzle, but no rain, and so on). The conditions which justify the claim are public and empirically verifiable. But how do we justify claims such as "Wanton murder is wrong" or "It is a noble and praiseworthy thing to help those in need"? Suppose we are looking at gruesome crime scene photos of big city murders for the last year. Where will be see the "wrongness" of the crimes? Is it in the hue and saturation of the color of the dried, caked blood around the fatal wounds or in

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the shape and sheen of the victims' bulging, glossy eyes? If we analyze the screams on the 911 tape, will we be able to detect the signal pattern for immorality on the oscilloscope? What state of affairs can we point to which corresponds to the "wrongness" of the acts? Human bodies were catastrophically injured and as a consequence, biological life in them ceased, but on what do we base our judgement that such acts are bad or evil? David Hume suggested that because moral judgments could not be empirically verified, they must be subjective reactions in us to certain kinds of acts. This view became known as emotivism or non-cognitivism and holds that moral statements are neither true nor false, but simply expressions of attitudes and preferences. Because we have a common human nature and associate the suffering of others with our own past and future suffering, each of us has natural feelings of sympathy on which many of our moral attitudes are based. You might think of Hume's view as being analogous to Locke's analysis of color. Morality is not "out there" as a transcendental reality; it is the way we subjectively react to certain acts which tend to be antagonistic to human welfare. Wrongness, then, is simply the tendency of certain acts to create feelings of disapproval in us, while "right" actions are those which tend to create feelings of approval in human beings. However, one might think that the conception of morality that most people accept cannot be abstracted from mere squeamishness. For example, what if I lack the requisite natural sympathy, common to most human beings. Does that make me immune to moral criticism? And what validity does morality have if it's a simple fact of human psychology or biology? Sure, it may be true that most human beings react with revulsion to acts such as murder, lying, theft and so on. But it's also true that these sorts of acts may benefit me, at least in some particular cases. Such an analysis might rule out wanton murder, but not cold, calculated, carefully planned and executed murder or lesser moral transgressions of various kinds. If I do a cost benefit analysis and the queasy feeling I may get from, say, stealing from my elderly grandmother or bumping off my spouse for the insurance money is outweighed by the benefits I'd receive as a result, why should I act morally? Under Hume's conception, morality seems to lose much of its prescriptive force. It is merely descriptive of human nature; it doesn't give me any reason to do what I should do other than that this is what most people in fact naturally or normally do or approve. Nevertheless, Hume seems to make a persuasive argument that moral judgments, though based on empirical observations, do not themselves seem to be empirically based. Perhaps we should think of morality as more like other a priori truths, such as the truths of logic or mathematics. These truths are known through reason or rational intuition and not in need of proof via some more fundamental axioms. After all, one might argue, who seriously doubts that wanton murder or torturing babies for fun is wrong? And who seriously believes that lying for personal gain is virtuous or that one ought to steal when one can get away with it? Isn't claiming "theft is a virtue" tantamount to claiming "a triangle has four sides", a logical contradiction? Morality might, in this way, be considered to be a "brute fact" of the universe. Asking the question "Why should I be moral when I can get away with being immoral?" could be seen as begging the question, assuming that for morality to have any validity it must coincide with self-interest. But isn't the essence of morality the consideration of the interests of others? Maybe virtue is its own reward and to suggest that the reason one should act virtuously is for some external payoff is at odds with the very self-evident truth that one ought to act virtuously regardless of self-interest.

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Critics of this conception of morality as a fundamental fact of the universe might argue that without some metaphysical foundation, morality only amounts to a set of rules which, though they may be beneficial to society as a whole, don't always benefit the individual or give him reason to follow them. Doesn't answering the "Why be moral?" question with "Because you should be" itself beg the question and qualify as an instance of circular reasoning? As an alternative, some have argued that the reality to which moral truths correspond is the nature of a transcendent God who is wholly good and perfectly just. With no such being, it is claimed, morality is an empty shell with no claim over the individual. If God does not exist, then everything is permitted, as Ivan argues in Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov. Such theistically based theories are described as Divine Command Theory. However, a substantial problem with this view is the so-called Euthyphro Problem taken from a dialogue of Plato by that name, which asks the question, "Do the god love certain acts because they are pious, or are certain acts pious simply because the gods love them?" Recast in a monotheistic, Judeo-Christian context we might put it, "Does God command things because they are right or are things right simply because God commands them? For example, what if God commanded torturing babies for fun? You might say that God would never do such a thing, but why wouldn't he? Because it's wrong? This seems to assume a standard of morality outside of what God might command. Because he's good? But what does "good" mean? If good means kind, loving, just and so on, then, again, it seems that we have a moral standard outside of God's nature. If we simply mean "whatever nature God happens to have" then there's no reason why cruelty and sadism wouldn't be good. Yet another approach is to reject the idea that morality is transcendental but to attempt to show that morality always or usually pays off for the individual. This seems to have been the classical Greek approach. Plato argued through his mouthpiece Socrates that "doing evil is always worse than suffering evil" and portrayed evildoers as ignoble slaves to base appetites. Aristotle conceived morality and virtue as essential to a happy and successful life, though Aristotle was less concerned with demonstrating this and rebutting moral skeptics than his teacher, Plato. Aristotle conceived morality as the art of living well and saw the question thus not as whether one ought to live well, but which of the various ways of living was best. He saw virtues such as honesty, generosity, courage and self-control as necessary components of the good life. Conceived of in this way, morality might turn out to be empirically based after all. Aristotle sought to study human nature to discern what character traits led to the best actualization of human potential. A modern take on Aristotle might then see morality as a subset of psychology or sociology and study the conditions which lead human beings to flourish. But what if such study uncovers a gulf between what's good for the individual and what's good for society? Could morality then require lying, stealing or murder? There is also the more general question of how one would establish that social harmony, individual freedom, productivity or happiness are objective values, i.e. not just things people want but things they should want. Most philosophers think John Stuart Mill made this mistake in his book Utilitarianism, in which he attempted to argue that because happiness was subjectively valued and pursued by everyone it was therefore objectively valuable. Just because something is inter-subjectively valued doesn't necessarily imply it's objectively valuable. At one time everyone, or virtually everyone, believed things such as that the earth was flat or disease was caused by evil spirits, but that didn't make it so.

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Hume argued that you can't "derive an 'ought' from an 'is’", in other words, use statements about empirical facts as premises in an argument which draws a conclusion about what is of value. But then how can you derive objective values if you can't use empirical premises, a priori arguments seem circular, God won't work, and it seems like a dicey proposition to try to show that morality always coincides with self-interest? A fall-back position on the moral realist might be a position similar to G. E. Moore's approach to the skepticism about an external world of matter. Is it an interesting philosophical exercise to try to prove there is a world independent of our thoughts? Sure. Does anyone sincerely doubt the existence of such a world? No. Similarly, is the foundation of ethics a philosophical conundrum with no obvious solution? Perhaps. But does this mean that we junk morality and live immoral or amoral lives? One might argue that it does not, that no one seriously doubts the reality of the moral world any more than one doubts the existence of the material world. Let us suppose that we take that approach and accept moral realism "on faith" the same way in which we accept the existence of the material world or the validity of logic and mathematics, though these things cannot be proved by something more fundamental. How then do we then determine whether particular actions are right or wrong? We might agree on wanton murder or helping those in need, but what about telling a white lie to spare someone's feelings, downloading copyrighted music from the internet without paying for it, joining the military, eating the flesh of non-human sentient beings and so on? And with regard to helping those in need, how much help is enough? How much are we required to sacrifice in order to have done our moral duty? A little? A lot? Many contemporary philosophers who specialize in ethics suggest that a systematic analysis of our moral intuitions together with an analysis of related non-moral facts can be used to make reasoned moral judgments. Moral arguments usually have two kinds of premises: (1) fundamental moral principles and (2) empirical premises. Fundamental moral principles concern what is right, wrong, good, evil, courageous, dishonest, and so on. The tool for this analysis is thought experiments where we create hypothetical cases and see whether the actions imagined seem right or wrong. Sometimes these involve "far-out" scenarios involving doctors euthanizing patients to steal their organs for transplants or aliens invading earth and farming humans for food. The point of these examples are to hone our moral intuitions and abstract or prove general moral principles. For example, the fact that most people would think it wrong for a doctor to kill an innocent tonsillectomy patient to save five others in need of organ transplants is used to argue against the idea that the morality of an act depends purely upon its consequences. Here we have a case of the murder of an innocent human being producing the best consequences. Five live and one dies if we commit the murder (winning us 4 lives), while five die and one lives if we don't commit the murder (losing us 4 lives). However, most people would say that killing the tonsillectomy patient is wrong, leading to the conclusion that there is more to morality than the consequences, such as perhaps respecting an innocent individual's right to life. Like many experiments which occur in a laboratory, these thought experiments create scenarios which might never occur in the real world. Chemists use purified elements which do not exist in nature in order to isolate variables and determine the causative agents in chemical interactions. Similarly, moral philosophy creates sometimes fantastic (and sometimes entertaining) scenarios

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which highlight on one or two fundamental moral principles to see how they affect our moral judgments and test our moral intuitions. Empirical premises in moral arguments deal with facts about human nature, biology, psychology, economics and so on which are often relevant to making moral judgments. For example, facts about human life, biological reproduction and fetal development would seem necessary in order to draw a conclusion about the morality of abortion. Facts about the availability of work or the actual causes of homelessness ought to inform our moral assessment of the homeless and whether or how much money we ought to give to them or charities who help them. Sometimes a moral disagreement might boil down to a disagreement on empirical fact even if the two parities agree on the underlying fundamental moral principles. For example two people might agree that every human person has the right to life but disagree on whether a fetus ought to be considered a person.

Questions for Review 1. Explain the distinction between the question as to whether morality is objective and the question of what the consequences would be for civilization if most people did not believe in objective morality. Why are these different questions? 2. What special problem does the concept of moral truth have which other kinds of truth do not have?

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3. Explain Hume's emotivist conception of morality. What does Hume mean when he says you can't "derive an 'ought' from an 'is'"? 4. What are some problems with attempting to base moral truths on religious truths?

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5. How do modern ethicists use thought experiments to test moral intuitions and formulate moral principles? 6. How does moral skepticism compare to skepticism about the material world, cause and effect and the existence of the mind? Hume was skeptical about all of these things; is moral skepticism more or less plausible than other forms of skepticism?

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7. Argue for or against moral skepticism. Is objective knowledge of right and wrong possible? 8. Suppose you believed that morality was merely the byproduct of our evolution as social animals or a conspiracy of the weak against the strong, good for society but often bad for the individual. Would you live your life differently than you are now living it? If you already believe this, how do you think your life may differ from those who still believe in morality?

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Political Knowledge Many philosophers consider politics to be a subset of ethics. Like morality, there are both moral principles and empirical facts which come into play when making a political judgment. A disagreement over fundamental moral principles might be between, say, someone who thinks that the best society is one in which individuals are as equal as possible where as others conceive of the best society where individuals are as free as possible. An empirical disagreement might be had over whether the privatization of social security will save the system or sink it or whether the war in Iraq had an overall beneficial or negative impact on the national security of the United States. A recent Public Service Announcement attempting to get people to vote illustrates how people can have different empirical assumptions which affect their political outlook.

"You drive by the homeless and blame the politicians for the unemployment rate…"

The person who wrote this spot seems to be making several empirical assumptions (1) the primary cause of homelessness is a high unemployment rate (2) the rate is currently high or too high for homeless people to find work which would get them off the streets (3) "politicians" control the unemployment rate (4) if "politicians" acted properly, the rate could be lowered. These empirical beliefs naturally lead to particular moral and political conclusions. For example, because the author of the ad regards the homeless as victims of bad luck or impersonal economic forces over which they have no control, she may very well see them as deserving of aid from government programs, since "politicians" obviously aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing in providing jobs for these people. Such a person might also conclude that the existence of the homeless means that the government isn't spending enough money and vote for the candidate who promised to spend the most on government aid to "the unfortunate." These further conclusions involve fundamental moral and political assumptions about the culpability of the political class, the efficacy of government programs, individual responsibility and free will. But a listener to the spot might believe, contrary to what the ad says, that the primary causes of homelessness are irresponsible behavior, poorly thought out choices, willful drug and alcohol abuse or bad character. They might conclude from this that financial support of such people exacerbates the problem or have the fundamental moral or political view that such problems ought to be left to private charities, which are more efficient and provide better vehicles for behavioral change. Of paramount importance in making political judgments is the source and quality of the information on which that judgment is based, particularly with regard to empirical premises on which political judgments are based. Politics have traditionally been a part of academic life in America, and college is usually the time students become politically aware. Though academics have traditionally been left of center, since the 1960s, the curriculum on college campuses has become increasingly radicalized, so that political and ideological diversity is virtually non-existent on most campuses. Ironically, under the banner of "diversity", faculty and administrators are hired who, to quote Paul Greenberg "look like the rainbow but think like NPR."

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A recent study conducted by Andrew Jones for the Center for the Study of Popular Culture of 32 elite colleges and universities showed that in the Social Sciences, English and the Humanities, faculty registered as Democrats outnumbered registered Republicans overall by a factor of 10 to 1, though party registration is roughly equal in the population at large. The closest any college came to ideological parity was Northwestern, where Democrats only outnumbered Republicans by a factor of 4 to 1. On the other side of the spectrum, at Brown Democrats outnumbered Republicans by a factor of 30 to 1. In 2002 pollster Frank Luntz surveyed Ivy league Humanities professors and discovered that 57% were registered Democrats but only 3% Republicans with 89% voting for Al Gore in 2000 Presidential election. Another study featured in September 2002 by American Enterprise Magazine surveyed 20 colleges and universities where they sorted professors in English, Humanities and the Social Sciences into "party of the left" (Democrats, Greens other liberal parties) and "party of the right" (Republican or Libertarian) and obtained even more disparate numbers, showing that third party registrations have a heavy leftward tilt. Similar evidence was obtained when the Center for the Study of Popular Culture has surveyed professors on particular political questions. College curriculum has also become increasingly radicalized and politicized, with more and more required classes and programs which revolve around the issues of race, class and gender, presented from an activist point of view. Professors increasingly see their role as that of social activist, moving away from the ideal that students ought to be taught "how to think, not what to think." Students can even obtain college credit working on political campaigns or working for various activist groups. Various "public interest" groups such as OSPIRG use student fees to organize "non-partisan" political activities geared towards liberal causes. And academic departments such as Women's Studies and Ethnic Studies and heavily funded Multi-Cultural and Women's Centers become loci of political activity. Speakers invited to campus are also nearly always of a predictable ideological stripe. So from the local community college to Harvard University, with few exceptions, one is likely to get a view of the world, often at a formative time in one's life, from "experts" with degrees with a strong ideological bent in one direction. This is important to keep in mind when evaluating the selected texts and lecture information presented in courses in higher education. It is a similar story with the mainstream print and television media, though situation has somewhat improved in the past decade. A 1996 Roper Center Poll found that 89% of Washington bureau chiefs and correspondents voted for Bill Clinton in 92; 7% voted for George Bush (Sr.). In the country at large Bush only beat Clinton 43% to 38%. When asked to describe their political orientation, 61% described themselves as liberal or moderate to liberal and 9% described themselves as conservative or moderate to conservative; 50% identified themselves as Democrats while only 4% said they were Republicans. The same year a national survey of 61 newspapers of all sizes done by the American Society of Newspaper Editors asked reporters the question "What is your political leaning?" 61% said that they were Democrat or Liberal or leaned that way while only 15% said they were Republican or Conservative or leaned that way. A Kaiser Family Foundation/Roper Poll from 2001 showed that members of the media were four times as likely to identify themselves as liberal than conservative with 6% identifying themselves as conservative, 25% liberal and 59% moderate. 27% were registered Democrats while just 4% were Republicans. Since "liberal" has become an almost pejorative term in the last two decades, one might suspect that some of the self-described moderates would be classified by most people

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as liberal. Polls which have asked reporters and managing editors particular policy questions bear this suspicion out. Given human nature, it's hard to see these biases not making their way into what are supposed to be hard news stories as opposed to commentary. Moreover, many newspapers have language codes which further slant the way the news is presented, which require reporters to, for example, refer to illegal aliens as "undocumented workers" or referring to abortion advocates as "pro-choice" but opponents as "anti-abortion" instead of "pro-life". In recently years a number of books have been written on the subject of media bias. Bernard Goldberg's Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distorts the News gives a fascinating look into the news business from the point of view of a self-described liberal who was troubled by his colleagues' ideological coloring of the news. The deregulation of the AM band paved the way for talk radio, which caught fire as a format and came to be dominated by right wing hosts precisely because the lack of conservative voices in the mainstream media, despite widespread conservative beliefs and attitudes in the public at large. A similar phenomenon occurred with the Fox News Channel, which advertises "fair and balanced" news coverage mixed with conservative commentary programs. Some have suggested that the corporate ownership of big media gives it a conservative bias, but none of the empirical studies of news content have born this out. The truth of the matter is that shareholders and managers care about circulation and the bottom line. Baring any direct connection between a story and parent or subsidiary companies, the owners leave content to the managing editors, who are disproportionately left of center, as any cursory survey of managing editors of the major news players shows. Note that no judgment has been made about the merits of the liberal or conservative policy positions. Even Walter Cronkite, "the most trusted man in America", long-time former CBS news anchor, a liberal Democrat and friend of the Clintons admits such bias exists. Polls conducted by Harris and the Pew Foundation show that the vast majority of Americans see such bias in the news as well. What is being suggested is that you keep in mind the leftward tilt of the mainstream media when you evaluate the information it presents. To take an extreme example of media bias, in 2004 a CBS news program recently used forged documents as the basis for a story critical of President Bush's National Guard service. The forgeries were discovered within hours by internet bloggers, and further investigation revealed that CBS ignored experts who raised questions about the documents as well as contrary information gleaned from interviews with relatives of the documents' supposed author. After two weeks of stonewalling, CBS finally stated, under intense public pressure, that they no longer vouch for the documents and have launched an internal investigation, but still refused to admit what has been proved to everyone else's satisfaction—that they were forgeries. Is it any accident that producer Mary Mapes or anchor Dan Rather are fierce partisans? Most analysts don’t believe that Mapes or Rather knew the documents were forgeries; instead it is surmised that they wanted the story to be true and ran with it, without proper checking. Rather, a long-time CBS news anchor was forced to resign in the wake of the ensuing scandal. To take a more mundane example, unemployment during Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign was about the same as during President Clinton's 1996 reelection. However, many more news stories at the time gave a positive evaluation the Clinton Administration's handing of unemployment than they gave to the Bush Administration's handling of the problem. Bush’s numbers were actually slightly better.

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So, who can you trust when seeking information about politics? You can insulate yourself from bias to some degree by getting your news from a diversity of sources of all ideological strains. If you're a liberal, watch Fox News and listen to talk radio and pick up The Washington Times or The Wall Street Journal every once in a while. If you're a conservative, listen to NPR, watch the network evening news or pick up a big city newspaper. Probably the safest stories are the Associated Press and Reuters stories you find printed in regular newspapers and on Yahoo! News. Searching Google News can give you many different versions of the same news story from a multitude of newspapers, from the New York Times to the Salt Lake City Tribune, so you can cross-check facts and see what may have been left out or slanted. Breaking stories tend to be the most tenuous, as in the rush to be first, facts may not have been thoroughly checked. If you have ever been interviewed or been to an event and read a story about it later, it can be a rude awakening about the care, or lack thereof, some journalists taken in writing a story, especially when up against a deadline. Consider, too, that investigative reporting is expensive, and sometimes a reporter will simply use a press release from whatever interest group is sitting on his desk or came through the fax machine that day, perhaps filled with some stock research from the papers' files and one or two "local reaction" quotes he can get with a quick phone call. Serious research and fact-checking is often the exception rather than the rule. Keep in mind, too, that stories are likely to be biased towards what sells newspapers or gets ratings, and this means a disproportionate emphasis on domestic rather than international news, stories about celebrities, negative news (recall the old news adage "if it bleeds, it leads") and stories with high drama. Websites, blogs and podcasts vary in quality from being better than the mainstream press and serving as their watchdogs to being little better than rumor mills. The best sites will cite primary sources and link to mainstream news stories to back up their claims. Remember, in today’s digital democracy, anybody with a few bucks can put up a website and claim anything. In the end, as with other beliefs, the formation and justification of your political beliefs is ultimately up to you. Take in information from a variety of sources, analyze it with what you think you know to be true about the source, human nature and the way the world works, and make your best judgment. And finally, consider tempering the time you spend on politics with its significance to your life as a whole and to the larger scheme of things. Your time is a precious resource; focus on those things which seem to matter most.

Questions for Review 1. What two fundamentally different kinds of premises appear in both moral and political arguments? What are some examples of each?

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2. What does evidence from the text suggest about the ideological climate and bias in academia? What does the text suggest about the ideological bent of the mainstream broadcast and print media? 3. Besides political bias, what other sorts of biases are present in the media? 4. What does the text suggest can be done to work around these biases to get objective information on which to base one's social and political beliefs?

Questions for Discussion

1. Was the section on political knowledge in the text biased? What about other portions? To what extent do you think your judgement might be colored by your own political or religious orientation?

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2. If ideological or political bias exists on campus, what, if anything, should be done about it? What do you think about Students for Academic Freedom's suggestion of a "Student's Bill of Rights" which would protect students' right to dissent and put pressure on professors to give more balanced presentations, particularly in the Social Sciences?