Skeptic Lies

What is worse, believing in a lie or not believing in anything?

None of us are likely to be right about everything, so if you believe in many things you are probably wrong about some of them. You believe in some lies. Terrible isn’t it?

If you choose not to believe, if you leave blank spots in your system, throwing up your hands and not even venturing to make a qualified guess or an estimate, you are sure not to believe in a lie at least. Sure, you should be allowed to be indifferent to many things in this world and since there is just too much to acquaint yourself with, it makes no sense to keep jumping to conclusions just to pretend you have an opinion. But never to believe that anything might be the truth, to refuse ever to take a firm stand is not only self-destructive, it’s an outright lie directed at yourself.

Even the most apathetic character would be alert enough to register something around him and form a judgment about the truth of what he sees. If you don’t do even that, you deny the reality of the world and yourself in it. Self-denial is a rather sad thing, and it’s even sadder when it is an obvious lie. You think, therefore you are, and whatever the world is, it is something. If you believe in nothing, you choose to believe there is nothing, even though you see something. You lie into your own face.

If, when seeing a dog, you think you see a cat, you are simply mistaken. If you tell yourself you see nothing, you lie to yourself. Better to take a dog for a cat than to deliberately go blind.

It is better to believe in a lie by mistake, than to believe in nothing and lie on purpose.