Certitude Read online

  Contents

  Introduction: Certitude and Its Discontents by Christopher Hitchens

  Pope Urban II (1042–99)

  Carry A. Nation (1846–1911)

  Martin Luther (1483–1546)

  Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)

  Prosper-René Blondlot (1849–1930)

  Ayn Rand (1905–82)

  John Cleves Symmes (1779–1829)

  Norman Mailer (1923–2007)

  Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna (1872–1918)

  Madonna (b. 1958)

  Donald Rumsfeld (b. 1932)

  Pope Leo X (1475–1521)

  Charlton Heston (1923–2008)

  Emma Goldman (1869–1940)

  Charles Augustus Lindbergh (1902–74)

  George Armstrong Custer (1839–76)

  Jeannette Rankin (1880–1973)

  Joseph Stalin (1878–1953)

  Nancy Davis Reagan (b. 1921)

  Edgar Degas (1834–1917)

  Anthony Comstock (1844–1915)

  James I, King of England (1566–1625)

  Tom Cruise (b. 1962)

  William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

  Mother Ann Lee (1736–84)

  Bush and Co.

  André Maginot (1877–1932)

  Sam Goldwyn (1879–1974)

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823–1911)

  Nelson Bunker Hunt (b. 1926) and William Herbert Hunt (b. 1929)

  John Wayne (1907–79)

  Girolamo Savonarola (1452–98)

  Walt Whitman Rostow (1916–2003)

  Henry Ford (1863–1947)

  Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910)

  James Jesus Angleton (1917–87)

  Henning von Holtzendorff (1853–1919)

  Elijah Muhammad (1897–1975)

  Delia Salter Bacon (1811–59)

  John Brown (1800–59)

  John Charles Hagee (b. 1940)

  Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)

  William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925)

  Aimee Semple McPherson (1890–1944)

  Winston Churchill (1874–1965)

  Lincoln Steffens (1866–1936)

  Pope John Paul II (1920–2005)

  Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)

  Introduction: Certitude

  and Its Discontents

  by Christopher Hitchens

  You sometimes hear people saying to their antagonists in debates on this or that topic: “I envy you your certainty.” One presumes that the origins of this expression must be ironic or even merely sarcastic, but there are also, rather touchingly, those who employ it literally and as a compliment. There are also those who, faced with doubt in its lack-of-faith form, will try to turn the tables by saying that unbelief is itself a form of fundamentalism. (This has lately become a favorite cheap debating trick of the religious Right.) By definition, of course, non-belief cannot be classified as a faith—and it’s interesting to speculate about the degree of subconscious self-hatred that may exist in a religious person who taunts an atheist with being no better than a “believer”!—whereas the person of faith must aver not only that there is a god, but that this god’s wishes and desires may be known. It can be stated confidently, for example, that he hates hams and clams and was otherwise engaged when homosexuals (who are somehow “against nature”) were created. In other words, the less evidence we possess, the more absolutely sure we must be.

  Certitude of this kind is by no means to be envied, and those who have for years been relishing Edward Sorel’s occasional cartoon-update “Religion in the News” will know what a rich seam of absurdity and worse can be mined from the credulous. (Credulous means, really, “one who craves certitude.”) Many of this fine book’s prime exhibits are necessarily also of the “faith-based” sort, and when confronted with the claims of such jackasses and poltroons it is always wise to keep in mind the work of David Hume on miracles. When confronted with an apparent miracle, remarked the great Scottish philosopher, it is prudent to ask oneself which is more likely: that the rules of nature have been suspended or that you yourself are under a misapprehension. Doubt, in such an instance, is the mind’s best friend. Certitude, by contrast, betrays the wish to be mindless. The case of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s unshakeable belief in fairies is not precisely an instance of religious tomfoolery but does show that certain kinds of belief are evidence-proof. The actual case was even more bizarre than Adam Begley has room to say; even the good folks at Kodak declared themselves taken in by the pathetically obvious darkroom hoax. The most sorry illusions and delusions have a way of spreading in a way that, alas for suffering humanity, cannot be copied by moments of lucidity.

  Let’s not be snobbish about the deluded. There may be crowds of what H.L. Mencken called “boobs,” who will stand in line to buy colored medicine water and let their jaws hang low at apparitions of the Virgin. But the great William Butler Yeats was never happier than at spiritualist séances that featured burblings (and scribblings) from the beyond. The hardheaded Henry Ford was an abject pushover for that preposterous hoax The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and not only fell for it himself but invested a huge tranche of valuable capital in trying to get others to become true believers, too. By the way, congratulations to Begley for getting this right and describing the Protocols as a “hoax”: They are too-often referred to as a “forgery” whereas a forgery is a copy of something authentic, and not a mere fabrication.

  When you have finished scanning David Hume on miracles you might like to take up Richard Hofstadter’s work on The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Here you will find the best definition of the paranoid that I have yet read: a man “who already has all the information he needs.” Again in these pages you will be put in mind of the phenomenon, and again you will find that much of the pathology is “faith-based.” Did Elijah Muhammad have to prove that every blue-eyed white devil actually possessed blue eyes? Not really. Best to regard it as a metaphor. But would he revisit the general, overarching theory that all whites of all eye colors were essentially diabolical? Never!

  Something of the same effect can be observed with the “infallibility” concept. This higher by-product of certitude means that it can be very difficult to correct a mistake. In my own lifetime I have seen a series of popes make public apologies to Jews (for the false charge of “deicide” and its consequences), to Protestants (for the Counter-Reformation), to Galileo, to forcibly converted and exterminated South American Indians, to Eastern Orthodox Christians (for the massacres in the Balkans), and to Muslims (for the Crusades). But having made these little course-corrections, inevitable perhaps in the life of a “one true Church,” the Vatican is now ready to go back to being infallible all over again. So that one day if—just suppose—it is discovered that AIDS was a worse affliction than the condom, rather than the other way around, the necessary admission will have to be delayed for years by the fact that there was once a sacred dogma involved.

  Nobody likes a ditherer. Both military and political leadership are best exercised by people who can make a decision and stick to it, rather than (as was once said of Lord Derby) “like a cushion, bear the impression of whoever last sat upon him.” However, a decided leader who does not listen to the doubts of others as well as his own may well become famous for other reasons. From George Armstrong Custer to the teak-headed British generals on the Western Front, we have shining examples of those who kept doing the same old thing, each time hoping for a different result. This conforms to George Santayana’s definition of fanaticism, which is “redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aims.” Only the wonderful consolation of knowing that you were right all along can get you through an ordeal like that. If it were not so, there would be no memoir industry and no “second act” racket in which gruesome exhibits like
“the new Nixon” can be dragged onto the amphitheater’s already bloodstained sand.

  I have some Humean disagreements with the authors here. (Which is more likely, that a Saddam Hussein who had both used and concealed WMDs would be telling the truth just for once, or once again concealing his hand?) But that’s because I think the same standard should apply to everyone, including myself. One day, perhaps, the Virgin Mary will appear in blue raiment with good visibility and on camera to a large throng of adult non-Catholics, and will speak intelligible words. On that day, if I am present, I will be inclined to think that I am suffering from an individual or collective hallucination. In fact, on balance, I’ll be absolutely sure of it.

  “To be positive: to be mistaken

  at the top of one’s voice.”

  —AMBROSE BIERCE

  “Convictions are more dangerous

  enemies of truth than lies.”

  —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

  “Doubt is not a pleasant condition,

  but certainty is an absurd one.”

  —VOLTAIRE

  Pope Urban II

  (1042–99)

  On November 27, 1095, the tenth day of the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II (a.k.a. Otho, Otto, or Odo of Lagery) gave a sermon historians now consider one of the most important in the history of Europe. By declaring a “bellum sacrum” (what Muslims call “jihad”) against the “infidels” occupying the Holy Land, he launched the First Crusade, a bloody rampage through Europe and Asia Minor, which, unlike subsequent crusades, actually achieved its purpose: to regain control of Jerusalem. The crusaders celebrated the capture of the Sacred City with a comprehensive, notoriously ferocious massacre of all its inhabitants—Muslims, Jews, and even a few stray Christians.

  You could be forgiven for failing to suppress a cry of historical anguish: What was Odo thinking? The answer depends on which version of his speech you prefer. There are a half dozen of them, all transcribed years after the event—after the pontiff’s death and after Jerusalem had been “liberated” (which of course conferred a retrospective righteousness on the entire sordid adventure).

  One account suggests that the pope was essentially exporting violence: “Let those who have been fighting against their brothers and relatives now fight in a proper way against the barbarians.” In another, he rages against the crimes purportedly committed by Muslims in the Holy Land: “They circumcise the Christians, and the blood of the circumcision they either spread upon the altars or pour into the vases of the baptismal font. When they wish to torture people by a base death, they perforate their navels, and dragging forth the extremity of the intestines, bind it to a stake; then with flogging they lead the victim around until the viscera having gushed forth the victim falls prostrate upon the ground.” There’s no mention, however, of WMD.

  In yet another account, Urban seems to be calling for suicide attacks: It is a “beautiful thing,” he says, “to die for Christ in that city in which He died for us.”

  But Odo’s fixation with Jerusalem was also geographic: He believed it to be the center of the earth (in one account, he repeats the claim for emphasis).

  Everyone agrees that he promised immediate remission of sins for those who died in battle against the “pagans” (though he said nothing about flocks of virgins awaiting them in paradise). And there’s general agreement that the sermon was a wild success with the three hundred-odd clerics at the council, who took up a cry that perhaps best distills Urban’s message: Deus vult—God wills it.

  Compare that sublime certainty with the Arabic phrase we’ve all grown familiar with in recent years: Inshallah—If God wills it.

  Carry A. Nation

  (1846–1911)

  Armed with her trademark hatchet (before that she used brickbats, rocks, and the odd billiard ball), Carry Nation would storm into a saloon and demolish it, an unstoppable force fueled by unyielding rage against intoxicating drink. Even more astonishing than the naked fury with which this fifty-four-year-old grandmother pursued her agenda—from 1900 to 1910 she wrecked dozens and dozens of bars, first in Kansas and then across the country—is the effectiveness of her tornado-style protest. Call her the anti-Gandhi—through violence, she galvanized the temperance movement and set in motion the political process that in 1919 gave us the 18th Amendment: Prohibition.

  She was not given to self-doubt: “I am appointed for this,” she wrote in her autobiography, The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation, and if anyone wondered exactly who appointed her, she set them straight by calling herself the “bulldog of Jesus.” She was arrested more than thirty times, beaten, pelted with rotten eggs, and ridiculed. Never for a minute did she question the wisdom of her mission or wonder about the consequences of success.

  She died eight years before the constitutional ban on liquor dried up every state in the union (with disastrous results, perverse effects on a grand scale)—but it’s safe to say that had she lived, Carry Nation would have been dissatisfied with the fruit of her labor. Prohibition, she might have said, was a half measure, feebly enforced. She’d have scoffed at anything less than a total ban—policed, one supposes, by hatchet-wielding harpies.

  Martin Luther

  (1483–1546)

  Maybe Martin Luther never did nail his world-shaking Ninety-five Theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg; or maybe he did, but doing so was simply standard practice—the 1517 equivalent of blogging. And yet there’s something in the image of the stern young theologian tapping forcefully with his hammer that captures the determined spirit of his reformist zeal.

  Now picture him battering away in a furious, spitting rage, howling curses and barking gutter insults. That’s Martin Luther when he turns his attention to the Jews.

  Unless you read for yourself his long, vile rant On the Jews and Their Lies, which he wrote just three years before his death, it’s hard to believe that so much undisguised hatred could pour out of a man who gave his name to a branch of the Christian church.

  His advice on how to rid the land of the “unbearable, devilish burden of the Jews”? Burn their synagogues and schools to the ground; raze and destroy their houses; confiscate their prayer books and Talmudic writings; forbid their rabbis to teach “on pain of loss of life and limb;” deny them safe conduct on the highways; ban usury; force them to do manual labor. And the kicker: “If this does not help we must drive them out like mad dogs.”

  Luther didn’t think up yellow stars or cattle cars or gas chambers—but those who did turned to him to justify their deeds.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  (1859–1930)

  Everyone recognizes Sherlock Holmes by the pipe and the hat, but the detective’s distinguishing trait is his unfailing logic, the brilliance of his deductive reasoning. And what of Arthur Conan Doyle, the struggling young doctor who created Holmes in 1887? Was Conan Doyle as lucidly rational and piercingly perceptive as the character he invented? Not quite.

  A lapsed Catholic in his youth, in later life Conan Doyle became a dedicated Spiritualist. He called it a “sacred cause” and wrote a whole shelf of books making the case that it’s entirely possible for the living to communicate with the spirits of the dead. One of his books on the supernatural, The Coming of the Fairies, is an ardent brief on behalf of a handful of photographs taken by two teenage girls; the photos purported to show fairies—cute little winged creatures—frolicking in a garden in the Yorkshire village of Cottingley.

  It’s difficult, at this distance in time, to believe that anyone, let alone the creator of Sherlock Holmes, could entertain even for a moment the idea that the Cottingley fairies might actually exist, and that the photographs—featuring sweetly innocent girls and what look exactly like paper-cutout fairies—were anything other than a hoax. (At the very end of their lives, decades after Conan Doyle’s death, the girls recanted: The fairies were indeed just pieces of cleverly painted paper.)

  If only Sherlock Holmes could have communicated with his credulous creator and repeated the
line he used so often with Dr. Watson: “You know my methods. Apply them.”

  Prosper-René Blondlot

  (1849–1930)

  A distinguished French scientist and head of the physics department at the university in his hometown of Nancy, René Blondlot was conducting experiments on the newly discovered X-ray in the spring of 1903 when out of the corner of his eye he noticed a detector spark glowing more brightly than it should have. He realized at once that this was his Eureka moment, that he’d discovered a new kind of radiation. He called it the N-ray, in honor of his place of birth.

  The news was greeted with great excitement in physics labs all over Europe. Ingenious experiments were devised to demonstrate that N-rays emanate from all sorts of substances, including the human body (especially from tensed muscles and nerves). Unfortunately, the trick of catching the variations in luminosity that signaled the presence of N-rays was not straightforward—literally: One had to look sideways, and have good eyes.

  The Académie des Sciences had seen enough: It had already announced that Blondlot was to receive its top prize when a young American physicist visited the labs in Nancy and proved conclusively that the experiments were a sham. What Blondlot was seeing was a function of peripheral vision, in other words, purely subjective.

  Asked to participate in a new round of experiments, Blondlot declined, saying, “The phenomena are too delicate.” Nothing would ever shake his faith in what he’d seen with his own eyes. But the N-ray, alas, was no more.

  Ayn Rand

  (1905–82)

  When Mike Wallace interviewed her on national television in 1959, Ayn Rand was fifty-four, a bestselling novelist, founder of her very own philosophical movement, Objectivism, and the adored heroine of a growing band of acolytes (among them Alan Greenspan). She was also a very scary person. It wasn’t just the thick Russian accent (which she never lost), or the rictus she presented in lieu of a smile, or even the crazed ricochet movement of her large dark eyes-what was scariest was her poorly concealed pre-occupation with an unseen audience: She couldn’t help glancing away from Wallace and straight into the lens of the camera.