Because they did not receive a love of the truth, God sent them a strong delusion that they might believe a lie            

  Aletheia     LOVE THE TRUTH    Veritas

                                   You Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free      
                                      

 

                                Essays Moral and Political                          Index

 

On Religious Controversy        "Truth springs from argument amongst friends. " --David Hume

I don't enjoy arguing anymore; there's not enough energy.  When I was young and full of vinegar, I dearly loved a good controversy.  I still believe that the public airing of differences is a good thing.  Even at its worst, even when conducted acrimoniously, it has the merit of presenting both sides of the question in dispute. The audience gets to hear the strengths and weaknesses of both positions.

An earnest, amiable intellectual struggle between two keen-minded opponents is to me like a summer holiday in the mountains. It delights, refreshes, invigorates. I think of the good-natured way G. K. Chesterton used to skewer his opponents and the (usually) courteous way they responded.  There were two exceptions in Chesterton's case. He was unfair to the puritans, who could not answer him. And he was quite hard on W. R. Inge, a liberal clergyman, who did answer him--with a vengeance. Inge referred to Chesterton as "that obese mountebank who crucifies the truth head downward." There was a ton of truth in Inge's slur. Chesterton was fat, quite fat.  And he loved to stand the truth on its head to present it from his unique angle.  Besides that, Chesterton exaggerated far too much.  He would tell a dozen little lies to defend one great truth. But as a controversialist, and as a character, Chesterton was a pure delight, and all the more because most of his views agree with mine.

I would like to see religious debate revived. I mean it.  But only if those who represent opposing views love and respect each other.  Only if each heartily believes the sincerity of the other. And only if truth, not mere victory, is the objective. 

When two honest, earnest, learned souls publicly dispute a point of truth, it's more fun to me than the World Series, more wholesome than broccoli, and more useful than Kleenex.
 
   
  Gilbert Keith Chesterton