The gospel according to John Stuart MIll:
“The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments–of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue–are complete skeptics in religion.”
Should I be in the least bit astonished by how such a claim could even be verified? Really. How does one go about proving such a statement?
Certainly it becomes a matter of how words are being unpacked.
Would I be “astonished” in finding out this number of God-deniers to be not so great as implied by this quote (would the quote be any less true if such was the case)? What of the categories of “brightest” or “distinguished” described in such a way that excludes many or most that are God-believers of some sort? What cultures of the world are included in this “popular estimation” that is being made? Who are these “complete skeptics” that he mentions (atheists, agnostics, or perhaps even people who distrust the church for any number of reasons)?
One thing can be known for certain and I believe it to be a reasonable inference. Mr. Mills is wise enough not to exclude from the group of “brightest ornaments” those who do have faith and do believe in God.
This reveals a measure of reality that many atheists are quick to deny.
Embracing faith as a way of solving the riddle of life doesn’t equate to the abandonment of the mind or its ability to reason. Just as the embrace of Atheism as a way of assuming our reality to be a closed-system doesn’t equate to being any more or less rational.
The quality of intellect crosses over both sides of the fence.
Some atheists and theists make a “leap of faith.” Some atheists and theists take a smaller step into the riddle of life. There are simple-minded atheists as there are theists with the same caliber of faculties. In both of these groups, there are those who know how the car works and others who are content just knowing that it works and they can drive to the local grocery to get dinner.
There are atheists and theists in this group described as “the brightest ornaments.”
