8
inquiry in every area: “All fresh facts, all acquisition and application of knowledge,
introduce a change in these sequences, and therefore break in upon the laws of nature.”
15
The church succeeded in stifling inquiry through cultivating habits of uncritical belief in
its adherents, Bentham argued. In the first place, it prized ignorance and prejudice at its
foundation, because of the unknowability of God’s will. Although it was impossible to
know which behaviors God would or would not approve of, the Church encouraged men
to reject practices without harmful consequences, and in this way “contributes to distort
or disarm public opinion in its capacity of a restraint upon injurious acts.”
16
The capacity of the community to judge the viciousness or virtue of a given act
was corrupted, and the individuals comprising the community were left with
compromised faculties of judgment. While a person uncorrupted by natural religion
would require evidence to assent, and would dissent in case of refutation, faith distorted
the judgment of an individual, and “foist[s] in, by means of his hopes and partiality, a
belief which unbiased reason would not have tolerated.”
17
Hope and fear provided a
motivation for a belief supported by only fragmentary evidence, leading one to reject
contradictory claims out of hand. Indeed, in the absence of compelling evidence for
doctrinal “truths,” the more important faithful belief would become. The person would
begin to take pride in the triumph of belief over reason: “He accordingly speaks in the
most degrading terms of the fallibility and weakness of human reason, and of her
incapacity to grasp any very lofty or comprehensive subject. It thus becomes a positive
merit to decide contrary to reason, rather than with her.”
18
Corrupting as faith may have been to faculties of judgment, even more pernicious
was the church’s claim that priests possessed infallible knowledge as to God’s will, a
Convention