In GK Chesterton’s famous work, Orthodoxy, he discusses several important ideas but one of his most important stances - at least one of my favorite stances of his as you can hear about on Trailer Park Chesterton - is on the dogma of the skeptics. The general opinion of an average person at the streets is that the Christian is some sort of dogmatic believing in spite of a complete lack of evidence and the skeptic is the scientific man who believes based on proper evidence, Chesterton shows this to be not just wrong but actively the opposite of the truth:
Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracle accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in a miracle deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them. The open, obvious, democratic thing is to believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a miracle, just as you believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a murder. The plain, popular course is to trust the peasant’s word about the ghost exactly as far as you trust the peasant’s word about the landlord.
This is a beautiful testimony to Chesterton’s love of the common man. Chesterton is so democratic - as he believes the word to mean - that he truly demonstrates that we should trust the apple-woman and the peasant as much as anyone else in any topic, up to and including miracles. He is also incredibly right to say that the main reason that people deny these stories - whether they be Christian miracles or actual myths - is not out of lack of evidence but is out of a true dogma they have themselves that this story could not have happened. This is a common problem from the time Chesterton wrote until today that will continue well into the future. However, there is one person who wrote it better than Chesterton.
I rarely admit anyone could have done anything better than Chesterton, however, the way this could have been done better was a lesson actually taught by Chesterton himself. Chesterton has written that
People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are.
This is not to claim that the science textbooks are untrue - though that is certainly sometimes a very serious reality today - rather it is to claim that the novel is more true. The novel teaches a lesson on a deeper level. Now, Orthodoxy is not exactly a book of science or a book of metaphysics, but it is moreso such a book than it is a novel. Which is the reason that it is unfortunately less read and teaches the lesson less so than it could otherwise. However, CS Lewis (a man who converted largely in part due to Chesterton’s Orthodoxy - which you would know if you watched more Trailer Park Chesterton) put this same thought into his most famous novel, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion The Witch, and The Wardrobe. When Lucy returns from the wardrobe claiming that it leads to a magical other world, Susan replies “Don’t be silly, Lucy,” and Peter follows up saying “She’s not being silly at all, she’s just making up a story for fun.” The siblings ultimately go to see the evidence themselves, but they had made up their mind long before seeing a regular wardrobe. They returned to look at the evidence to humor Lucy, but their skepticism was for one reasons: a dogma that wardrobes do not lead to magical worlds. However, they had as much evidence as the apple-woman or the peasant’s testimony. Just as the apple-woman’s testimony of the miracle and the peasant’s testimony of the ghost cannot be trusted because apple-women and peasants are not more trustworthy than the skeptic’s dogma, just as the little girl is not more trustworthy than the wardrobe skeptic’s dogma.
Where does this leave us? Must we always listen to the little girl, the apple-woman, and the peasant? Surely there are some scenarios in which their testimony is wrong. The answer is that we turn to Hilaire Belloc’s old drinking song and say that “we that sit in sturdy youth and still can drink strong ale, let us put it away to infallible truth that always shall prevail.” When the infallible dogma of the Church tells us the little girl, the apple-woman, and the peasant are in the wrong or in the right, we must put it away to that infallible truth. However, when the Church leaves us in a more open ended position, it would do us well to listen to the apple-woman, the peasant, and even the little girl in the wardrobe.