March 12, 2008
Chesterton Thursdays, VII.
"What I venture to criticize in certain men, whom some call scientists and I call materialists, is their perpetual use of Mythology. One half of what they say is so true as to be trite; the other half of what they say is so untrue as to be transparent. But they cover both their platitudes and their pretenses by an elaborate parade of legendary and allegorical images. I read this in some remarks on Darwinism by one of the last surviving Darwinians:
"Among the individuals of every species there goes on, as Malthus had realised, a competition of struggle for the means of life, and Nature selects the individuals which vary in the most successful direction."
Now when men of the old religions said that God chose a people and raised up a prophet, at least they meant something; and they meant what they said. They meant that a being with a mind and a will used them in an act of selection. But who is Nature, and how does she, or he, or it, manage to select anything or anybody? All that the writer actually has to say is that some individuals do emerge when other individuals are extinguished.
It hardly needed either Darwin or Darwinians to tell us that.
But Nature selecting those that vary in the most successful direction means nothing whatever, except that the successful succeed...this tautological truism is wrapped up in clouds of mythology, by the introduction of a mythical being whom even the writer regards as a myth."
(Myths and Metaphors, by G. K. Chesterton. Originally published in The Illustrated London News, 26th January 1929.)
I couldn't agree more.
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December 07, 2007
Chesterton Thursdays, VI.
"My complaint of the anti-domestic drift is that it is unintelligent. People do not know what they are doing; because they do not know what they are undoing...People ought to decide in a philosophical fashion whether they desire the traditional social order or not; or if there is any particular alternative to be desired.
As it is they treat the public question merely as a mess or medley of private questions. Even in being anti-domestic they are much too domestic in their test of domesticity. Each family considers only its own case and the result is merely narrow and negative. Each case is an exception to a rule that does not exist.
The family, especially in the modern state, stands in need of considerable correction and reconstruction; most things do in the modern state. But the family mansion should be preserved or destroyed or rebuilt; it should not be allowed to fall to pieces brick by brick because nobody has any historic sense of the object of bricklaying."
Chesterton, The Thing.
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November 22, 2007
Chesterton Thursdays, V.
"...it would certainly infuriate me, to open a book expecting to find a cosy, kindly, human story about a murdered man found in a cupboard, and find instead a lot of dull, bad philosophy about the upward progress and the purer morality.
I would rather read any detective book than that book.
I would rather spend my time in finding out why a dead man was dead than in slowly comprehending why a certain philosopher had never been alive."
Chesterton, The Common Man.
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November 08, 2007
Chesterton Thursdays, IV.
"It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious."
Chesterton, The Thing.
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March 01, 2007
Chesterton Thursdays, III.
"If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat."
Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Orthodoxy online.
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February 23, 2007
Chesterton Thursdays, II.
"There is another proverb, 'As you have made your bed, so you must lie on it'; which again is simply a lie. If I have made my bed uncomfortable, please God I will make it again.
We could restore the Heptarchy or the stage coaches if we chose. It might take some time to do, and it might be very inadvisable to do it; but certainly it is not impossible as bringing back last Friday is impossible. This is, as I say, the first freedom that I claim: the freedom to restore. "
Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World
(Scarcely got that one in...)
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February 15, 2007
Chesterton Thursdays, I.
As G.K. Chesterton happens to be a favorite author of mine, I think it would be fun to quote him once a week. The fun begins today, and it is perfectly fitting that it should. Today is, after all, Thursday.
"In truth there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don't know it."
(Chesterton, Fancies Versus Fads.)
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