The credulity of dupes is as inexhaustible as the invention of knaves.
Edmund Burke, "Letter to a Member of the National Assembly"
The nineteenth century decided to have no religious authority. The twentieth century seems disposed to have any religious authority.
G K Chesterton [Illustrated London News, April 26, 1924]
In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don't know it. --G K Chesterton
Our twentieth century, far from being notable for scientific scepticism, is one of the most credulous eras in all history. It is not that people believe in nothing - which would be bad enough - but that hey believe in anything - which is really terrible. Recoiling, as they do, from accepting the validity of miracles, and priding themselves on seeing the Incarnation as a transcendental con-trick, they will accept at its face value any proposition, however nonsensical, that is presented in scientific or sociological jargon - for instance, the existence of a population explosion, which has been so expertly and decisively demolished by Professor Colin Clark of Monash University. Could any mediaeval schoolman, I ask myself, sit through a universally applauded television series like Bronowski's Ascent of Man without a smile of derision at such infantile acceptance of unproven and unprovable assertions?
Malcom Muggeridge, Vintage Muggeridge, ed. Geoffrey Barlow, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985, pp. 74-75, "The Bible Today," from a lecture delivered on 7 October 1976
You believe easily that which you hope for earnestly.-- Terence
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