After the previous letter, I received a great response, to which I wrote this additional, long letter. You’ll find, again, that I am on a Chesterton kick. This time I quoted him in my original letter!

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You asked, “First, supposing the farmer actually did see things he firmly believed were real and tangible but seemed outrageous to others, would this be evidence of an omnipotent omniscient being? If the vision were personal evidence of an omnipotent omniscient being, how would one then come to a conclusion that seeing this particular vision justifies that their vision stumps the previous, differing visions of everyone on earth (i.e. Buddhists visioning turtles as messengers of goodness and Shintoists having visions of Monkeys)?”

My story began with “Imagine for a moment that there once was a farmer who was contacted telepathically by aliens.” I’m basically saying “assume for the purposes of argument that an omniscient being did exist.” And furthermore, I am assuming that the revelation that this person received seemed to them to be entirely real. It’s not a question of whether someone seeing a vision is evidence to the whole world that his vision is true, and that everyone should take this evidence seriously. Of course not. What I am saying is simply this: if someone unequivocally rejects the man’s claim up front, he does so because it is not compatible with his world view—it’s nonsense because, to borrow from Oz, he doesn’t “believe in spooks.” We all assimilate new data into our paradigm of the world. He who believes in aliens might see an alien, but he who does not can only see a mirage. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, if he sees the ghost of Marley he will accuse it of being “a bit of bad cheese” or “a bad potato” that he ate. See what I mean? That’s why I’m interested in dialoging primarily about whether there is a God and what he is like, because that’s the wellspring.

You asked: “Would not knowing the causation of a disorder be a reason to pose a hypothesis that an omnipotent omniscient being was the cause of it?”

The question is, rather, would not knowing the causation of an experience be a reason to pose a hypothesis that a disorder was the cause of it? (The answer: not without ye old presupposition.)

You asked: “If an omnipotent omniscient being existed, how could people know for sure that the one they believe in is not one of the other thousands of false ones, and how do they know that this being expects certain behaviors of them?”

Well, you can never know for sure. There must be a leap of faith. But it should be a reasonable leap, with a running start of facts. The best worldview is the one that explains the human experience the best.

And yes, there are plenty of false deities, but that fact in itself does not make it less likely that any one is true, but rather more likely that at least one of them is true. You won’t find a Walmart knock-off purse in an African market, but you will find plenty of Gucci knock-offs. The more genuine the article, the more imitations will be made.

As for knowing that this being expects certain behaviors of mankind, that would be quite possible assuming this being existed as a real entity and communicated with us. If he/it exists and can communicate, then he can certainly communicate what he wants.

You asked, “Finally, could we both agree that it is much more plausible that a farmer might have seen a great number of deer on a hill because there is evidence that deer exist and could have been seen by all present at the siting rather than a vision of the unexplained?”

Of course it might have been deer that he saw. The question is rather whether it might have been an alien. The townsfolk would rightly question the farmer in terms of plausibility. “What did it look like?” “Where was it?” “Were you drinking?” “Was it maybe just a deer?” But the man would insist that he was in his right mind and it was no deer. So the townsfolk would be forced to conclude one of two things: If they believed it was plausible for the man to have seen an alien, then they would conclude that he might have seen an alien, or his eyes might have deceived him. If, however, they believe it is not plausible (believable, possible, etc.) that he saw an alien, then it must have been deer. In this case they would have to conclude that he was crazy, seeing things, afflicted with SPD. And this conclusion See? The materialist position ambitiously requires an absolute knowledge of everything that exists in the universe, because only then could we say, “No, aliens do not exist anywhere in the universe.”  In my opinion the agnostic position, the might, is the much easier one to believe. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” (Hamlet).

Okay, having spoken to those questions, I would like to move to the last section of what you wrote. Thank you for your honesty in saying that you disbelieve in an omniscient being. You say that it is unfortunate because it makes your life less ordered and easy to explain. But I don’t believe you mean that, and I wouldn’t mean it either, because this is the thing about us: we would rather follow what is true than what is convenient. We are no sheep. It’s like in The Matrix, when that one guy sells out the rebels in exchange for having his memory erased and being put back in the Matrix on an island with tons of money and stuff. He is a villain because he traded what was true (the war-torn, sad world) for what was comfortable. I respect you for having the guts not to do that. If I do believe that your belief is unfortunate, it is because I believe it to be lacking both real comfort and real truth.

You mentioned some things that led you away from believing that there was a God, and I would love to hear your thoughts on any of those in detail in the future.

The last thing that I would like to say is in reply to your final paragraph, that you do not deal with religion anymore because it is divisive, and instead you try to unite people against the US government and the Religion of the State, which is even more dangerous.  I totally agree that there are things that the US does that are very wrong so for the sake of argument I’ll say, “Yeah, the US is a corrupt oligarchical state.” However, I believe that true faithfulness to your belief in political freedom from oppression requires an even more radical position. If you would do me the liberty of reading this admittedly huge chunk of G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy (the book I brought in the other night) as if it were my own words, I would be grateful. He says exactly what I’m trying to say in much better words. I have added a couple editorials in [brackets] and bolded them and some other sentences. Also pardon some archaic historical references and slightly different meaning of some terms—it was published in 1908.

We have remarked that one reason offered for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow better. But the only real reason for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow worse. The corruption in things is not only the best argument for being progressive; it is also the only argument against being conservative. The conservative theory would really be quite sweeping and unanswerable if it were not for this one fact. But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post. But this which is true even of inanimate things is in a quite special and terrible sense true of all human things. An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old. It is the custom in passing romance and journalism to talk of men suffering under old tyrannies. But, as a fact, men have almost always suffered under new tyrannies; under tyrannies that had been public liberties hardly twenty years before. Thus England went mad with joy over the patriotic monarchy of Elizabeth; and then (almost immediately afterwards) went mad with rage in the trap of the tyranny of Charles the First. So, again, in France the monarchy became intolerable, not just after it had been tolerated, but just after it had been adored. The son of Louis the well-beloved was Louis the guillotined. So in the same way in England in the nineteenth century the Radical manufacturer was entirely trusted as a mere tribune of the people, until suddenly we heard the cry of the Socialist that he was a tyrant eating the people like bread. So again, we have almost up to the last instant trusted the newspapers as organs of public opinion. Just recently some of us have seen (not slowly, but with a start) that they are obviously nothing of the kind. They are, by the nature of the case, the hobbies of a few rich men. We have not any need to rebel against antiquity; we have to rebel against novelty. It is the new rulers, the capitalist or the editor, who really hold up the modern world. There is no fear that a modern king will attempt to override the constitution; it is more likely that he will ignore the constitution and work behind its back; he will take no advantage of his kingly power; it is more likely that he will take advantage of his kingly powerlessness, of the fact that he is free from criticism and publicity. For the king is the most private person of our time. It will not be necessary for any one to fight again against the proposal of a censorship of the press. We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press. [I think you’d agree with that!]

This startling swiftness with which popular systems turn oppressive is the third fact for which we shall ask our perfect theory of progress to allow. It must always be on the look out for every privilege being abused, for every working right becoming a wrong. In this matter I am entirely on the side of the revolutionists. They are really right to be always suspecting human institutions; they are right not to put their trust in princes nor in any child of man. The chieftain chosen to be the friend of the people becomes the enemy of the people; the newspaper started to tell the truth now exists to prevent the truth being told. Here, I say, I felt that I was really at last on the side of the revolutionary. And then I caught my breath again: for I remembered that I was once again on the side of the orthodox.

Christianity spoke again and said: “I have always maintained that men were naturally backsliders; that human virtue tended of its own nature to rust or to rot; I have always said that human beings as such go wrong, especially happy human beings, especially proud and prosperous human beings. This eternal revolution, this suspicion sustained through centuries, you (being a vague modern) call the doctrine of progress. If you were a philosopher you would call it, as I do, the doctrine of original sin. You may call it the cosmic advance as much as you like; I call it what it is—the Fall.”

I have spoken of orthodoxy coming in like a sword; here I confess it came in like a battle-axe. For really (when I came to think of it) Christianity is the only thing left that has any real right to question the power of the well-nurtured or the well-bred. I have listened often enough to Socialists, or even to democrats, saying that the physical conditions of the poor must of necessity make them mentally and morally degraded. I have listened to scientific men (and there are still scientific men not opposed to democracy) saying that if we give the poor healthier conditions vice and wrong will disappear. I have listened to them with a horrible attention, with a hideous fascination. For it was like watching a man energetically sawing from the tree the branch he is sitting on. If these happy democrats could prove their case, they would strike democracy dead. If the poor are thus utterly demoralized, it may or may not be practical to raise them. But it is certainly quite practical to disfranchise them. If the man with a bad bedroom cannot give a good vote, then the first and swiftest deduction is that he shall give no vote. The governing class may not unreasonably say: “It may take us some time to reform his bedroom. But if he is the brute you say, it will take him very little time to ruin our country. Therefore we will take your hint and not give him the chance.” It fills me with horrible amusement to observe the way in which the earnest Socialist industriously lays the foundation of all aristocracy, expatiating blandly upon the evident unfitness of the poor to rule. It is like listening to somebody at an evening party apologising for entering without evening dress, and explaining that he had recently been intoxicated, had a personal habit of taking off his clothes in the street, and had, moreover, only just changed from prison uniform. At any moment, one feels, the host might say that really, if it was as bad as that, he need not come in at all. So it is when the ordinary Socialist, with a beaming face, proves that the poor, after their smashing experiences, cannot be really trustworthy. At any moment the rich may say, “Very well, then, we won’t trust them,” and bang the door in his face. On the basis of Mr. Blatchford’s view of heredity and environment, the case for the aristocracy is quite overwhelming. If clean homes and clean air make clean souls, why not give the power (for the present at any rate) to those who undoubtedly have the clean air? If better conditions will make the poor more fit to govern themselves, why should not better conditions already make the rich [substitute: educated] more fit to govern them? On the ordinary environment argument the matter is fairly manifest. The comfortable class must be merely our vanguard in Utopia.

Is there any answer to the proposition that those who have had the best opportunities will probably be our best guides? Is there any answer to the argument that those who have breathed clean air had better decide for those who have breathed foul? As far as I know, there is only one answer, and that answer is Christianity. Only the Christian Church can offer any rational objection to a complete confidence in the rich. For she has maintained from the beginning that the danger was not in man’s environment, but in man. Further, she has maintained that if we come to talk of a dangerous environment, the most dangerous environment of all is the commodious environment. I know that the most modern manufacture has been really occupied in trying to produce an abnormally large needle. I know that the most recent biologists have been chiefly anxious to discover a very small camel. But if we diminish the camel to his smallest, or open the eye of the needle to its largest—if, in short, we assume the words of Christ to have meant the very least that they could mean, His words must at the very least mean this— that rich [substitute: educated]  men are not very likely to be morally trustworthy. Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), but that the rich [substitute: educated] are trustworthy, which (for a Christian) is not tenable. You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich [substitute: educated] man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man. The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony. They have said simply that to be rich [substitute: educated] is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the rich as violators of definable justice. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown the rich as convenient rulers of society. It is not certainly un-Christian to rebel against the rich or to submit to the rich. But it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard the rich as more morally safe than the poor. A Christian may consistently say, “I respect that man’s rank, although he takes bribes.” But a Christian cannot say, as all modern men are saying at lunch and breakfast, “a man of that rank would not take bribes.” For it is a part of Christian dogma that any man in any rank may take bribes. It is a part of Christian dogma; it also happens by a curious coincidence that it is a part of obvious human history. When people say that a man “in that position” would be incorruptible, there is no need to bring Christianity into the discussion. Was Lord Bacon a bootblack? Was the Duke of Marlborough a crossing sweeper? In the best Utopia, I must be prepared for the moral fall of any man in any position at any moment; especially for my fall from my position at this moment.

Do you see what Chesterton and I are getting at? If we are to be really honest about oppression, we must admit that it follows mankind like a shadow—because we ourselves cast it. We have to embrace the real solidarity of the human race: The paradoxically mixed good and evil of human nature. We are all half perpetrator and half victim. None of us is fit to rule. It’s not the USA, or THOSE RICH GUYS, it’s ALL OF US. By itself this would lead to a useless despair—“We’ll never get free!” or as Chuck said, “Might as well be the US because someone else will oppress us if they don’t.”

But Christianity does not leave us there. It does not write off the problem, or tune it out, it amplifies it—“oppression is ubiquitous”—but then it introduces a hope into the equation which is bigger than any country or league of countries. It gives us a remedy for human nature, and a trustworthy king, trustworthy because he is not merely human. And it allows us to relocate our hope from earthly kingdoms to the kingdom of God. It promises that justice will be served and all the powerful oppressors humbled one day. And it gives us the courage to fight to bring that kingdom, full of social justice and peace, to reality on the earth even now. Christianity ushers in the liberation of the human soul from his own bonds of oppression of himself and others. This ultimate liberation—the kind you are looking for—is only found in the rule of the rightful king. I know you don’t believe the Bible but permit me to quote a poetic vision from Psalm 99 about as I close:

The strength of the King loves justice;

You have established equity;

You have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.

I hope that this has made some sense—it’s big stuff for me too, strong in my head but hard to catch and stuff into words. I’m eager to hear your thoughts and replies and I promise I will read anything even as long as this was J.

Your fellow yearning earthling,

Ben