Lesson 2: Don’t be a heretic in the truth!

In my John Milton class, we read Milton’s Areopagitica, which apparently served as a crucial inspiration for our first amendment right of freedom of the press.

Milton was a prolific English writer who lived through the 17^th century English Civil War.  Milton was a puritan, and puritans tended to butt heads with the Church of England concerning just about everything.  But, the Church of England was closely wedded to the Crown and the English government, making the puritans not simply religious dissidents, but political dissidents as well.  So, many of the puritans writings were closely scrutinized by the government before they could be published and were often censored.

And so Milton penned the Areopagitica in which he calls for a free press and an end to censorship.  He crafts a brilliant argument:

He argues that nothing should be censored and that every written piece should be allowed to stand on its own.  If a given piece contains fallacious reasoning or weak arguments, then any rational person would be able to recognize such fallacies and reject the argument accordingly.  He argues that if everything were freely published, than the truth would win out as rational people read and evaluate opposing arguments and writings.  Milton challenges the established authority.  He argues that if their positions and arguments are valid and true and his are invalid and false, then why should he not be able to publish his writings and show all of England how foolish and wrong he and his fellow puritans are.

During the revolution, the crown was overthrown, Cromwell ascended to the Protectorate, and Milton held a prominent office in the new government.  Sadly, Cromwell’s government, now the oppressor and not the oppressed, gladly censored the opposition.  Darn it Milton!  You hypocrite!

But Milton’s moral failings aside, the logic undergirding the Areopagitica still obtains.  If we are really serious about knowing and believing the truth, then we have to take Milton’s pre-hypocrisy epistemological rigor seriously.  We have to be willing to read any argument or viewpoint and let reason speak for itself.

Clearly, it’s bad to believe the wrong things for the wrong reasons, but equally unjustified according to Milton, is believing the right things for the wrong reasons.  Milton uses the example of a parishioner who adopts the attitude of “If the preacher says it, then I believe it, and that settles it.”  He argues that even if what this parishioner believes is indeed the truth, he believes it for the wrong reasons.  He hasn’t carefully considered the issue and weighed opposing arguments and evidence.  He simply is spoon fed one line of thought and as for anything that conflicts with this line of thought, he plugs his ears and says, “LA, LA, LA, NOT LISTENING! NOT LISTENING.”  In short, he is a heretic in the truth.

This sounds ridiculous, but people do this all the time.  Perhaps they merely parrot what one church’s denominational doctrine says and disregard opposing viewpoints because this one denomination or tradition, they believe, somehow succeeded in correctly understanding all of the Bible’s passages.  Perhaps they only get their news from one cable network because they figure that all the rest are biased and unreliable.  Perhaps they perfectly align themselves with their political party of choice policy-for-policy because this party is always right (or at least, always more right than the other party).

Are things true because we believe them, or do we believe things because we think they are true?  If what’s true is true irrespective of our beliefs, then we should have no qualms about reading and considering fair arguments that cast the opposing view in the best light possible.  No cable network should be off limits whether it is MSNBC or Fox News.  No book should be off limits whether it is God Delusion or the Bible.

Figuring out what is true isn’t supposed to be easy.  If it does seem easy, then there is a good chance that what we believe to be true, isn’t.  And if we did get lucky and believe the right thing by happenstance without the necessary intellectual rigor, then we’re still just heretics in the truth.