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CHAPTER V
RELIGION AND SELF-DECEPTION
IT is sometimes said that religious thinking is a form of
self-deception, the implication being that religious convictions
and the religious view of life are not grounded in logic and
rationality.
What is the truth of the matter? To begin with, we need not
hesitate to acknowledge that religious people, like all others,
are fallible. The probability that a person will be led astray by
faulty thinking is as great whether he be of a religious or secular
temper. Opinions are seldom the result of mature and critical
thought, whether they be about religion, politics or the latest
popular novel. More often than not our opinions have an
emotional root, though we may be unaware of it. No very
careful examination of our own thinking is required to convince
us that brute facts and conclusions logically drawn from them
form a very small component of our judgments and convictions.
Opinions and the Intellect
Knut Kjellberg! writes in Mental Culture: ‘It is generally
supposed that we form our opinions about important questions
by clear thinking and logical argument; but the argumentation
often has nothing to do with the formulation of the questions.
It is secondary; that is, it comes in when the opinions have been
formed.” The old saying that the truth is unpleasant conceals
great wisdom. Many truths are distasteful. Some are pleasant.
Despite what our intellect says, or ought to say, we habitually
reject the unpleasant truths and welcome the pleasant ones.
Even when, on closer examination, they perhaps turn out to be
untruths in disguise, we discard them reluctantly—or not
at all.
Although in the formation of opinion intellect does not play
the dominant role as much as we like to believe, we must not
conclude that therefore the convictions we and our fellows form
are without meaning. This is nowadays a very popular fallacy.
1 Sjalskultur, Stockholm, 1922.
126
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