Japle
Member
I’m reading Ben Franklin’s autobiography.
In 1744, Franklin had a conversation with a senior member of the Dunkers religious sect named Michael Welfare. Mr. Welfare complained that members of other sects were making up false and derogatory claims about the Dunkers and those claims were difficult to dispute, because they had to be answered one at a time.
Franklin asked why the Dunkers didn’t just “publish the articles of their belief and the rules of their discipline”. Mr. Welfare responded that, “When we were first drawn together as a society, it had pleased God to enlighten our minds so far as to see that some doctrines, which we once esteemed truths, were errors; and that others, which we had esteemed errors, were real truths. From time to time, He has been pleased to afford us farther light, and our principles have been improving, and our errors diminishing. Now we are not sure that we are arrived at the end of this progression, and at the perfection of spiritual or theological knowledge; and we fear that, if we should once print our confession of faith, we should feel ourselves as if bound and confined by it, and perhaps be unwilling to receive further improvement, and our successors still more so, as conceiving we their elders and founders had done, to be somewhat sacred, never to be departed from”.
Franklin comments: “This modesty in a sect is perhaps a singular instance in the history of mankind, every other sect supposing itself in possession of all truth. And that those that differ are so far in the wrong; like a man traveling in foggy weather, those at some distance before him on the road he sees wrapped up in the fog, as well as those behind him, and also the people in the fields on each side, but near him all appears clear, tho’ in truth he is as much in the fog as any of them.”
We see the result of this in every religion that has published its principles and doctrine. Members are forever “bound and confined by it” and unable to change when new truths are revealed. We often see the absurd arguments people use to try and defend the myths that are written down in their holy books. Since the myths are written down, followers are trapped. Their choices are to go to ridiculous lengths to defend the claims of their religion, take the “cafeteria” approach and ignore the parts that make them uncomfortable or simply abandon their religion. Most, in my experience, take door number 2.
In 1744, Franklin had a conversation with a senior member of the Dunkers religious sect named Michael Welfare. Mr. Welfare complained that members of other sects were making up false and derogatory claims about the Dunkers and those claims were difficult to dispute, because they had to be answered one at a time.
Franklin asked why the Dunkers didn’t just “publish the articles of their belief and the rules of their discipline”. Mr. Welfare responded that, “When we were first drawn together as a society, it had pleased God to enlighten our minds so far as to see that some doctrines, which we once esteemed truths, were errors; and that others, which we had esteemed errors, were real truths. From time to time, He has been pleased to afford us farther light, and our principles have been improving, and our errors diminishing. Now we are not sure that we are arrived at the end of this progression, and at the perfection of spiritual or theological knowledge; and we fear that, if we should once print our confession of faith, we should feel ourselves as if bound and confined by it, and perhaps be unwilling to receive further improvement, and our successors still more so, as conceiving we their elders and founders had done, to be somewhat sacred, never to be departed from”.
Franklin comments: “This modesty in a sect is perhaps a singular instance in the history of mankind, every other sect supposing itself in possession of all truth. And that those that differ are so far in the wrong; like a man traveling in foggy weather, those at some distance before him on the road he sees wrapped up in the fog, as well as those behind him, and also the people in the fields on each side, but near him all appears clear, tho’ in truth he is as much in the fog as any of them.”
We see the result of this in every religion that has published its principles and doctrine. Members are forever “bound and confined by it” and unable to change when new truths are revealed. We often see the absurd arguments people use to try and defend the myths that are written down in their holy books. Since the myths are written down, followers are trapped. Their choices are to go to ridiculous lengths to defend the claims of their religion, take the “cafeteria” approach and ignore the parts that make them uncomfortable or simply abandon their religion. Most, in my experience, take door number 2.
