Dispatches from the Culture War brings us H.L. Mencken’s Creed. I’d never seen this before, but it’s fairly powerful, imho:
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind – that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty…
I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech…
I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.
I believe in the reality of progress.
I – But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.
Obviously Mencken could go too far at times. As the Clarence Darrow said to the Mencken character in Inherit the Wind:
You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something.
The bolded section sounds an awful lot like some of the great Christian reforming voices. I could hear those words coming from the mouth of Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, Jr., or even Christ himself. Organized religion often messes up that promise.
The only point I really find myself disagreeing with is the one about immortality. I trust by faith that life continues after death. And the way it is stated in this credo is close-minded.
Reverend, I have to ask, you agree with point 1, religion on balance has been a curse? I’ve got a bit of a problem with that. I’d say extremism in any form, which unforunately seems to be a proven human tendency throughout history, is the curse–whether the “ism” at issue is Communism, National Socialism, Social Darwinism, or Fundamentalism.
I think that is the cross we have to bear. If Christians are to be transparent in their faith, we have to realize all the ways throughout history that we have proven those words to be true. (Think about how the Papacy denounced and excommunicated many of the great thinkers throughout history.)
Religious institutions have had their times of being a curse to Christianity. As far as being a curse to humanity…well I do believe that statement is going too far.
But I can see where the Inquisition, etc. would make a non-believer feel that way.
Thanks for posting this, Doug. Mencken is one of my heroes.
Extremism and absolutes… I’ve found Goldwater’s “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” to be a useful exception in the aversions to absolutes. Sure, moderation in all things… including moderation? At that point, you get into a circular sophistry that isn’t very useful, but great fun as a freshman college student.
In the real world, as regards extreme health, kindness, well-being, wealth, and yes liberty: I’ll take them all, with extreme gratitude.
The unspoken extreme alluded to, Mencken’s “I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty” is also useful, not in the literal as even as strident a libertarian as I concedes the need for government in its’ proper role, scope, and size; but in the philosophical. To fall back on another quote (George Washington), A government is like fire, a handy servant, but a dangerous master.
Mencken hadn’t seen anything in the way of big government yet in his lifetime, and yet this is how he felt. I tend to think that if he were to see what we have today, he would have been incomprehensibly extreme in his views.
Perhaps, it all sounds so wonderfully rational, but speaking of progress I think back to “Harry Lime’s” famous line in “The Third Man”:
“In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed — they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? – The cuckoo clock.”
To echo the first line of Mencken’s creed (in a way he would never have intended).- Mankind, by his nature and under the law, is indeed cursed.