Orthodoxy (book)

Orthodoxy is a 1908 book by the Catholic commentator G. K. Chesterton in which he attempts to defend the Christian faith against its opponents, primarily members of the rationalist movement.Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton Many Christians, including James ParkerA Most Unlikely Saint and Benjamin Wiker10 Books Every Conservative Must Read: Plus Four Not to Miss and One Imposter by Benjamin Wiker consider it among the greatest theological works ever written.
==Erecting strawmen==
A strawman argument is defined as "a weak or imaginary opposition (such as an argument or adversary) set up only to be easily confuted,"straw man and it is, without any doubt, Chesterton's favorite tactic to use throughout this entire book, as he constantly attacks his opponents through saying it would be silly of them to hold positions that none of them actually hold. For example, Chesterton begins the sixth chapter of the book by asking the reader to imagine this situation:
First off, this analogy fails to make any sense because humans do not have "a heart on one side" of the chest, the heart is actually centered in the chest.Heart Anatomy In the same regard, it is also a massive reach to say humans have "twin lobes" in the brain given the left brain and the right brain have rather different functions.Left Brain vs. Right Brain: What Does This Mean for Me? In the same regard, one has to hope these aliens don't accidentally stumble upon, among other groups, any of the one in two hundred people who are missing an arm,Arm Amputation one of the similarly sized population lacking a leg,29 Limb Loss Statistics, Facts & Demographics or one of the thousands of people missing a finger in some way.Fingertip Injuries and Amputations: A Review of the Literature
However, it is also important to note who exactly Chesterton needed to have made this mistake. Alan Handscare, who wrote a book responding to Orthodoxy in 1921,Authorodoxy: Being a Discursive Examination of Mr. G. K. Chesterton's "Orthodoxy" by Alan Handscare specifically wrote in response to this hypothetical:
Handscare makes note of multiple examples of Chesterton creating cartoonish characters to represent his ideological opponents throughout the entire book. On another occasion, he writes that if Chesterton "were offered the wealth of the world" he would be able to "produce the Rationalist of whom he writes."
The specific claim of Chesterton's that Handscare was responding to involved him declaring, "A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth ; this has been exactly reversed." The implication being that the rationalists fail to believe in truth, a statement which fails to make sense even on the most basic levels. Obviously rationalists believe in truth, otherwise they would have no way of calling their ideology true, and the same can be said about materialists. Instead, as Handscare writes, these groups merely "do doubt is that Mr. Chesterton and his friends have got hold of it all."
===Made up paradoxes===
Chesterton also attempts to act like those who are critical of Christianity are inconsistent in their rhetoric for one reason or another. While talking about critics of the Christian religion, Chesterton writes:
Of course, some Christians could be overly violent while some are not violent enough because Christianity is a massive religion. Chesterton wrote this book at the very start of the twentieth century, when over half a billion people were followers of the Christian religion.Which religion will be the largest by the end of the century? The idea that some of them had contradictory flaws because of their faith, especially given they were following a book with over five hundred contradictions,Contradictions in no way sounds unbelievable.
Handscare has another response to the claims of Chesterton; he starts by pointing out that although Christianity teaches non-violence, the vast majority of Christians have never made an attempt to carry it out:
He then goes on to argue that Christianity says "The Christian must be meek, so that the Church may inherit the earth," basically making the point that the Christian is supposed to not resist the calls of the religious organization they belong to, even when it calls for violence. Although this might sound contradictory on a surface level, when you dig even slightly deeper, you find nuance, not a paradox.
Of course, even if we give Chesterton that these claims are contradictory, he still did nothing to debunk either of these arguments. The only point he made was that some unnamed critic of Christianity made both of these points despite them sounding mutually exclusive. Again, even giving Chesterton that much, he still needs to provide evidence that one of the claims, let alone both of them, are wrong before he can actually discredit the arguments themselves. Without doing such, all he has done is prove that one particular critic of Christianity is bad at arguing.
==References==
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