False belief

“ You cannot denounce the immorality of the old dogmas with the infidel, and then proclaim their infinite value with the believer. You defend the doctrine by showing that in its plain downright sense,—the sense in which it embodied popular imaginations,—it was false and shocking. The proposal to hold by the words evacuated of the old meaning is a concession of the whole case to the unbeliever, and a substitution of sentiment and aspiration for a genuine intellectual belief. ”

“ And in a word, to this belief are owing all the false revelations that ever were in the world; and except we allow there are certain tests flowing from the Nature of Things, whereby the meanest capacities may distinguish truth from falsehood, we shall forever be liable to be imposed on by madmen as well as impostors. ”

“ At certain stages of social development, false beliefs are simply inevitable. For example, the Ptolemaic view of the solar system was bound to precede the Copernican. And false beliefs do both good and harm before they are outgrown. How many of the down-trodden have looked to another world to right their wrongs! ”

“ We have seen and shown, we trust, that this grand and imposing scheme of necessity is, in reality, based on a false psychology,—directed against a false issue,—supported by false logic,—fortified by false conceptions,—recommended by false analogies,—and rendered plausible by a false phraseology. And, besides, we have ascertained that it originates in a false method, and terminates in a false religion. As such, we deem it far better adapted to represent the little, narrow, dark, crooked, and perverted world within, than the great and all-glorious world of God without. ”

“ The theists have maintained, as we have seen, many300 false beliefs that have cost the lives of innumerable men and suffering incalculable; beliefs which they themselves have subsequently recognized as false but relinquished only by the onslaught of rising secular knowledge. ”

“ Give it scope and it would sweep away every means in our power to distinguish truth from falshood,—blot out all the lights of science, reason and revelation. In its dark embrace the condition of its deluded votaries would resemble that of a mariner in mid-ocean, without compass or quadrant,—surrounded on all sides by dense fog, without a single star for his guide. To acknowledge the pretentions of Spiritualism would be, to surrender society with all its cherished institutions into the hands of false prophets. ”

“ Men have denounced it and demonstrated that it is false both in history and science; then, unexpectedly, the stroke of a pick or the turn of a shovel uncovers some startling witness of its exact truth and the excuseless folly of those who deny it. ”

“ Know you not that, that which is truly false, if it may be permitted me so to speak, all, both gods and men detest?—How do you mean?—Thus: No person is willing to falsify in matters of the highest concern to himself concerning those matters, but fears, above all things, lest he should accept falsehood.—Yet, I understand you not.—You think that I mean something profound. ”

“ When a simple, honest hearted man, sent of God with the truth to the world, shall question the most learned upholders of false theories, the gilding falls off, and falsehood, in all its deformity, stands naked and exposed. ”

“ When the evidence of Spirit
296:24 and matter, Truth and error, seems to com-
mingle, it rests upon foundations which time
is wearing away. Mortal mind judges by the testimony
296:27 of the material senses, until Science obliterates this false
testimony. An improved belief is one step out of error,
and aids in taking the next step and in understanding
296:30 the situation in Christian Science.
Belief an autocrat
Mortal belief is a liar from the beginning, not deserving
power. It says to mortals, "You are wretched!" ”

“ On the other hand, if the effect of error be not exceedingly pernicious, why should we be so frequently, and solemnly warned against false teachers—false doctrines—false Christs—against making shipwreck of faith and a good Conscience—and against the danger of all delusion? Some affect to believe in the harmlessness of error; and that all opinions and speculations in religion are of little or no consequence. ”

“ But what? They call knowledge good, and error evil; so that even in regard to what is false there arises a good, that is, the knowledge that the false is false. So it ought to be, then, also with our life. ”

“ That which, of itself, is fallible and liable to err, can not determine the quality of infallibility; and whenever an individual affirms, upon some authority, the truth of any thing which, by his acknowledgment, lies beyond the plane of his intellectual development, he asserts something unphilosophical and false. That is only truth which, in our minds, corresponds to the actuality. It matters not who speaks, even though it be God; just so long as you must depend upon your understanding to interpret the meaning of what is said, you are liable to get a falsehood instead of truth. ”

“ No matter how glaringly absurd, how palpably erroneous, or how demonstrably false an opinion or doctrine is shown to be, they cannot see it, but will still continue to hug it to their bosoms as a divinely-revealed truth. ”

“ False priests, false prophets, false doctors, false patriots, false prodigies of every kind, veiling their proceeding in mystery, have always addressed themselves at an immense advantage to the popular credulity, and have been, perhaps, more indebted to that resource in gaining and keeping for a time the upper hand of Truth and Common Sense, than to any half dozen items in the whole catalogue of imposture. ”

“ Therefore all the truths which such persons had learned from the Word and from the doctrine of the church, and had called the truths of their faith, are taken away from them, and they are imbued, instead, with every false persuasion which is in agreement with the evil of their life; for all are let into their own loves, and into the falsities which agree with them; and then they hate and turn from and thus reject truths, because they are repugnant to the falsities of evil in which they are. ”

“ So, all along the centuries, the religious teacher who holds to the line between truth and falsehood as an eternal line must, if logically consistent, refuse to admit any possible justification of lying. Only he who denies an eternally absolute line between the true and the false could admit with consistency the justification by God of an act that is essentially hostile to the divine nature. ”

“ Before truth could penetrate such an armour of ignorance, it was necessary that nature be stripped of these false ascriptions in order that there might be a common ground upon which to consider the arguments for the Christian faith. ”

“ In looking at the table of contents, and seeing the catalogue he gives of evil effects of belief in the barest scheme of Natural Religion, one becomes aware, as if for the first time, of the atmosphere of falsehood against which we ought to have recoiled all our lives since becoming capable of thought. ”

“ Now Truth is the opposite of Falsehood; whence then arose Falsehood with its opposition unto Truth, and how cometh it to be possible that it should be confounded therewith and become doubtful to human beings, so that they need to distinguish between the twain? And doth the Creator (to whom belong Might and Majesty) love Falsehood or hate it? An thou say He loveth Truth and by it created all things and abhorreth Falsehood, how came the False, which the Creator hateth, to invade the True which He loveth? ”

“ It is not right that they be exploited and deceived with false views of life, false characters, false sentiment, false morality, false history, false philosophy, false emotions, false heroism, false notions of self-sacrifice, false views of religion, of duty, of conduct, and of manners. ”

“ To their more incisive and less humble way of thinking, true was true and false was false, and to confound the boundaries of truth and falsehood was only to pay homage to canting hypocrisy. 83 There was no distinction for them between an illusion and a plain lie, nor would they rest satisfied with a suppression of truth as known to individual reason, in order to leave room for a practical faith as taught by public experience. So it happened that the philosophes as a body were not theoretical sceptics merely but militant atheists. ”

“ Thus a false theory nullifies the Word of God; and the fact that it does is sufficient to expose its fallacy and render it worthy of condemnation by all who are willing to "let God be true though all men are liars." ”

“ After this illustration, having in several sections exhibited an account of his own faith, and in some established it, he made in other sections a digression upon the creed of others, and the digressive sections are frequent; the proofs and disquisitions by controversy with regard to false religions, and the disquisitions by concordance with regard to the rightfulness of his own religion, are distinct from the totality of those arguments, which are between truth and falsehood, and the contrast between truth and falsehood, and that between small and great is made evident. ”

“ If the supernatural attributes there claimed for him are a pretence, he was either self-deluded or he was an impostor, or the compilers of the four gospels have borne false witness, or are recorders of inflated hearsay, or the inventors of fiction, all the while asserting that they were eye-witnesses, or narrators of the testimony of eye-witnesses. And what is to be said of a system founded either on self-delusion or imposition? Are not noble and pure doctrines put to the basest use when they are made supports of pretence and falsehood, and should they not be rescued from such contamination? ”

“ Even the Divine Founder of our Faith and Religion was stigmatized as the broacher of false opinions, and one who misled the people, by his ignorant and malicious accusers, whose frauds and delusions it was the object of his mission to confound and overthrow, as well as to free mankind from the bondage of their errors. ”

“ In my judgment, everything in the Old Testament contrary to the experience of the civilized world, is false. I do not say that those who told the stories knew that they were false, or that those who wrote them suspected that they were not true. Thousands and thousands of lies are told by honest stupidity and believed by innocent credulity. ”

“ We may lay it down as a general principle that the greater the apparent resemblance which a false religion, utterly and fundamentally different in its spiritual character, and moral tendency, externally bears to the [121] true, the more reprehensible will it be in itself, and the greater its hostility to the truth. ”

“ Then receiving that as a truth which every mind affirms—it can not suppose the contrary of it to be true—we must set down every thing as false which conflicts with this proposition, no matter whether it overthrows authority or not. ”

“ In the spiritual sense, to bear false witness means to persuade that falsity is truth in a matter of faith, and that evil is good in a matter of life, and the reverse; but it is to do these of purpose, and not from ignorance, that is, to do them after one knows what is true and good, and not before. ”

“ In some cases, where false doctrine has been deeply reasoned upon, and ground, as it were, into the mind, the process of its removal and rejection is attended with deep and prolonged suffering.
As the good reject all false ideas in the world of spirits, so the evil cast off all true ones. ”

“ Holding a quickened sense of false environment, and suffering from mentality in opposition to Truth, are significant of that state of mind which the actual understanding of Christian Science first eliminates and then destroys. ”

“ III. The preservation of knowledge by the Lord counteracts the evil and false words of wicked men. Acquaintance with truth concerning anything overthrows all false ideas and teachings concerning it. The coming of the morning light scatters all the darkness of night, and with it many false conceptions as to what is around a traveller on an unknown road. So a knowledge of Divine truth scatters error, and overthrows false conceptions concerning God and godliness, and convicts their enemies of falsehood, thus rendering them powerless to do harm. ”

“ When a person says what is false and is convinced that all who hear him know it is false, the contradiction between his mind and its expression is said to be material, and not formal; and in this the essence of a lie does not consist. ”

“ Let the books of false religion be opened; it will be found that their moral system is, in all its good features, the same. The impostors who composed them were compelled to pay this homage to the uniform moral sentiments of the world. ”

“ You, then, who know these things, think not, suppose not, that I encounter unworthy treatment for any false doctrines. Dwell in the truth, and confide yourselves to the mercy of God, who has given you the truth through me, his faithful preacher, to know and defend the truth, and beware of false teachers. ”

“ On the one hand, it is absurd to suppose that the temple of truth could be erected on the quagmire and morass of falsehood—impossible to believe that the one system in the world of mind which has attracted the true to its allegiance, and been the stimulus of truth-seeking throughout the ages, can have originated in a tissue of deliberate falsehoods. ”

“ Error, the opposite of Truth, names the qualities and effects of what it terms matter, and so rouses the law of belief that holds the preponderance of power in human opinions against Spirit and Truth. ”

“ Hereby we learn a lie is all the satan there is, and marking its footsteps we gain this proof, all the discords of earth proceed from false conceptions of God and man; besides, falsehood preys on harmony in society, and hides individual character. Truth is generally unperceived, because a lie is a more natural conclusion for the wicked. Expose sin, and it turns the lie on you ”