AN OPEN LETTER TO SIDNEY HOO K
o
navis referent in mare te novi fluctus!
o
quid agis? Fortiter occupa portum!
In your contribution to the PR symposium on "Religion and
the Intellectuals" (March, 1950) you have convincingly shown that re–
ligious beliefs cannot be logically justified.
But when you attempt to show that religion is unnecessary or
noxious to society, you require more faith from the reader than any
church does. The faithful believe-to paraphrase William James-in
something doubtful, unknown or unknowable. You require more. Yours
is a faith contrary to the evidence: You believe that most men, if left
alone, are as reasonable as you are. This is admirable but also danger–
ously wrong. I must prefer a belief demanding less of my credulity, for
my supply of faith is low and my view of society scientific; further,
secular faiths are, in effect, less reasonable than ultra-mundane ones.
(A secular religion is faith in redemption on this earth by some human
action social or individual. It satisfies the same needs satisfied by belief
in celestial salvation. The effects, in terms of social and individual
action, tend to be more specific and dangerous to freedom and rational
conduct. While Catholicism is an ultra-mundane religion, and Marxism
and political antisemitism are two instances of secularized faiths differing
in degree of elaborateness and comprehensiveness, Christian Science
represents an interesting compromise.)
Perhaps I misinterpret your essay. But if you did not mean that
religion is, at best, socially useless, then your essay is a charming but
socially irrelevant disquisition in logic. You show that religious doctrines
can be used to justify almost anything and therefore have no proposi–
tional meaning; and you imply surprisingly that they are not needed
to help our society. But it is precisely because it is willing to defend
almost any society that tolerates it that the Church is important in ours.
Religious sanction is required-just as the police force is-for any society
which wishes to be stable without being totalitarian. It is required for
ours not logically, but psychologically. (Surely you know that few people
hold any belief-right or wrong-for sufficient reasons. Beliefs are held
because of more or less institutionalized myths. We must make sure that
they permit freedom and reason to survive; and the motley array of
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