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RELIGION AND SELF-DECEPTION
Learning that there are emotional grounds for theories of life
supposedly based on logical thought, too many people hastily
conclude that opinions—and especially the opinions of others—
have no rational foundation. They therefore neglect to examine
views with which they disagree and attack instead what they
assume to be the emotional attitudes of their opponents. The
method is ill-chosen, for it works both ways. Thus, when the
unbeliever argues that religion is an illusion because faith is
rooted in sentiment, the believer need only reply that unbelief is
also rooted in sentiment, and the tables are turned. Indeed, all
the advantage is now with the believer, for of the two sentiments
faith is the more natural and positive.
No healthy and sound person can retain a belief about
anything that affronts his sense of intellectual honesty. By an
act of faith, no doubt, we tentatively accept an assumption;
but if we do not think about it, weigh its pros and cons, attend
to criticisms of it, we are under continual accusation from
within. A voice from the depths charges us with betrayal of
truth. Except at the expense of deliberate self-deception we
cannot for long maintain an opinion without testing it in the
crucible of reality.
Intellectual Dishonesty
The light of intellect cannot, however, illumine and reveal
to us the whole world of reality. Every new experience is a leap
in the dark. Every experiment by which a theory is tested means
a journey into the unknown. Over the continents into which the
light of the intellect does not penetrate faith is the torch that
enables us to walk without fear.
Those who hold their faith with simplicity, and yet with a
clear consciousness of intellectual honesty, believe—and rightly
—that faith is a means to knowledge of the realm of the spirit
in precisely the same sense as practical reason is a means to
knowledge of the physical world and its phenomena. In a person
whose faith is of this order the demand for reality is insistent.
His faith does not diminish his reasoning powers; on the
contrary, it sharpens his intellectual perception and refines his
judgment.
The light of intellect can illumine. It can by its very brilliance
also blind. There are few human tragedies more pathetic than
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