For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
Interpretation
Mencken critiques how theologians oversimplify complex mysteries by trivializing them.
In this quote, H. L. Mencken highlights the tendency of theologians to reduce profound and unknowable spiritual concepts to easily dismissible ideas. He suggests that instead of embracing the complexity and mystery of the unknowable, they have chosen to frame these mysteries in a way that renders them unworthy of serious consideration. This reflects a broader commentary on human attempts to understand or explain the divine or the mysterious aspects of existence, often through reductionist perspectives.
In practice
In a debate about the essence of faith, one might use this quote to illustrate the limitations of conventional theological explanations.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded. It is a doctrine alike of the oldest and of the newest philosophy, that man is one, and that you cannot injure any member, without a sympathetic injury to all the members
Because cheating is easier when we can justify our behavior, people often cheat in small amounts: We can come up with an excuse for stealing Post-It notes, but it is much more difficult to come up with an excuse for taking $10,000 from petty cash.
Dreams are the eraser dust I blow off my page._x000D_ _x000D_ They fade into the emptiness, another dark gray day._x000D_ _x000D_ Dreams are only memories of the plans I had back then._x000D_ _x000D_ Dreams are eraser dust and now I use a pen.
Because war and preparations for war have acquired legitimacy, and because of the tremendous proliferation of arms through production and export, so that they are now available more or less to all and sundry, right down to handguns and stilettos, the cult of violence has by now so permeated relations between people that we are compelled to witness as well an increase in everyday violence.
There's hostility to lying, and there should be.
I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.