“When Man ceases to worship God, he does not worship nothing, but instead worships everything.”–attributed to Chesterton
The failure of authority, and not only religious authority, has left people vulnerable to all manner of woo. One may reasonably reject authority but one must not then replace it with superstition.
A big and discouraging part of online discussion is the discussion of how many people believe crank theories. To some extent this is the result of the ease of publication. There has always been a lot of crankery, but it never used to be in wide distribution. These days anyone can just go to X or Facebook or TikTok and talk up their crank theories and, if they hit the right notes, the engagement software will automatically give them wide distribution and it’s the startle emotions, fear and anger, that the engagement software will amplify. But feel-good AI slop is also a problem. One never knows how much of the inspirational stories one sees are true; I remember one which touched on a field I knew that had obvious error. All of this bad writing, now with a gloss of automated editing, takes us away from reality.
It’s not that people must worship god, or worship anything. People don’t respect the argument from authority, good, fine. But to respect instead arguments from volubly confident good-looking people, without reference either to authority or one’s own personal knowledge, is to make oneself vulnerable to madness.
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