Sunday Sermonette: H. L. Mencken

This week's Sunday Sermonette comes from American newspaperman H. L. Mencken:

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.

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.

I'm not signing on to the "all government is evil" line, but other than that, it's a great credo.

Here's another Sunday Sermonette from a great American journalist.

Update: Today's Supplementary Sermonette comes from Gold in the Mine.

Comments

[Squashed Lemon]

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 think how we as society view religion is overated and blown out of proportion. A lot of people actually willingly accept religion claim to be the ultimate source of ultimate truth.

If we instead see religions as just another note of human experiance, another source of knowledge to give insight while searching for the truth. Everything will be that much saner.

PS. I still don't get this sermonette thingie. :P

[Hawise]

Good choice for sermonette. Too many people equate religion and faith and end up missing the point of both. Religion allows a community to find solace and strength, it can also perpetuate bad choices and wrong ideals. Faith, built on strong ethics, can bring an individual strength in the face of community. Without truth, freedom and knowledge,the whole religion thing is just a prop for the unwary.

[Troutsky]

I view evil as a religious construct making his statements about government and religion a bit contradictory.Government might do "bad" things, but if it remains "of the people ,by the people and for the people" it shouldnt get to far off course.

[1984 Was Not a Shopping List]

I think that anyone considering how to view any religion's precepts should apply the "duh" rule: does the precept offend your logic and morality? If so, reject it; if not, and if it improves someone's life, accept it. The "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" rule seems a good one that most people agree on. But as for strictures on other aspects of your behavior, just look at them soberly as they come along.

I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.

I completely disagree with this, as mentioned earlier: an atheistic poster here responded to a question about reincarnation by saying that he was certain that the mind's energy simply dissipates impotently, once its host (the body) is no more.

My response, still unchanged: why is the concept of reincarnation or the perseverance of the mind as a package (instead of a ball of energy, now dissipating without its host) any more ridiculous than it is for my wireless laptop to transmit an intangible email, and for another computer to receive and reconstitute it, in a similar form?

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

"Evil" doesn't necessarily have any supernatural connotations. Some religious people reify evil, but I don't think we have to cede the term to them.

If I say that prisons are a necessary evil, nobody should assume that that I believe in Evil or Evil forces.

[1984 Was Not a Shopping List]

One definition of evil: hatred.

[BEZEL MORPHONDRIA]

Despite fundamentalism, this age, at least in the west, is too steeped in relativistic irony to hear in Mencken's
words about truth and falsity much more than a naive certainty and self-righteousness.

I agree with him, though, that all government sucks.
But surely , absence of government would be worse.

Common decency, the golden rule, could perhaps prevent most folk from taking your new
SUV if suddenly government and law were absent. But there are many natural predators out there who would not mind eliminating
you and taking all you've got. And certainly vigilante revenge would arise and then rule by the strong in social units of varying size until, unit by unit they were combined by some proto-king. I think that would be the simplified scenario. It is your basic rise
of civilization story and a bloody one it is. Read the Old Testament for more detail.
Absence of some kind of government would be temporary, but who knows what depredations and paranoia and sleepless nights would
ensue until some semblance of government re-emerged.
I believe, alas, that we are stuck with government and stuck with the henchmen of government-- the police, for the same reason
that women get stuck with husbands: having is only marginally advantageous but at least you know where you stand.
Getting more sleep at night --- keeping the anarchic wolf from the door-- is at least as good a reason for having government as
the tyranny and oppression of taxation is a good reason for not having it.
It's a mixed bag.

Don't get me started about religion.

[1984 Was Not a Shopping List]

we are stuck with government

I don't know, after Katrina, I felt that our government had finally called it a day. We should have told the anarchists, "be careful what you wish for--it may look like Michael Brown."

all government sucks

Then again, maybe if government's nature is to suck, then America's government is government perfected: a perfect vacuum.

[1984 Was Not a Shopping List]

Common decency, the golden rule, could perhaps prevent most folk from taking your new SUV if suddenly government and law were absent. But there are many natural predators out there who would not mind eliminating you and taking all you've got. And certainly vigilante revenge would arise and then rule by the strong in social units of varying size until, unit by unit they were combined by some proto-king. I think that would be the simplified scenario.

You're right, of course. On another thread, we were discussing the golden rule as advanced by Confucius and Jesus. The exact same rule was promoted by a leveller (as one poster aptly put it), Jesus, reacting to an all-powerful imperial and religious hierarchy, and by Confucius, who sought to restore societal harmony to a fractured nation. Two very different situations in which to apply the golden rule.

I think the golden rule is always valid, and that those who break it, whether in the absence or presence of a strong legal system, bear the karma (many of our posters found the idea of karma untenable, but I believe strongly that carrying the knowledge of bad deeds leads people to blunder into situations that carry their own punishment). Further, even with a strong law enforcement presence, lawbreakers still find a way, if they're committed to doing such things. However, if the police disappeared tomorrow, then many more people would feel free to take advantage, just as you say. Look at Oakland.

[NBarnes]

The Gilded Age was as present to Mencken as LBJ's Great Society or the Civil Rights movement is to us. He had reason to rail against government and little to defend it.