Bernard Shaw's Remarkable Religion: A Faith That Fits the Facts

44 Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religion
we have no more case against theism than theists have against atheism.
Newman shewed that our line of argument led to an insufferably
repugnant conclusion. When we replied that we found the conclusion
congenial, he had nothing more to say. Similarly, all we can do
is to shew that his reasoning led to insufferably repugnant conclusions.
The Newmanite replies that the conclusions appear to him to
be perfectly satisfactory. What more have we to say? The irresistibility
of a chain of logic lies, not in the logic, but in the acceptability of
the conclusion to the person addressed. (302)
Shaw used similar arguments throughout his life against the claims of
those, particularly scientists, who claimed strict objectivity for their views,
but here his position is particularly strong and general. Here is another
apparent case of Shavian inconsistency, for this extreme subjectivist viewpoint
coincides almost exactly with the publication of the Quintessence,
yet the realist Shaw describes there would appear to be quite immune to
the criticism that he “sees what he looks for, and hears what he listens for,
and nothing else.” And Shaw had written two years earlier that “we have
had in this century a stern series of lessons on the folly of believing anything
for no better reason than that it is pleasant to believe it” (“The Economic
Basis of Socialism” 26). Contradiction seems inherent in the very
presentation of the argument, as anyone who could point out, as Shaw
does, that his own side’s logic is no stronger than that of his opponent
would not seem to be seeing and hearing only what desire dictated. But
does the realist’s immunity to this subjective blindness really invalidate
the argument?
Realism and Wishful Thinking
In a paradoxical way it actually helps to confirm it, for the realist’s faith in
the sufficiency of his own will is precisely what frees him from the blinders
imposed by his “will-to-believe.” Even liberating ideals are the refuges
of cowardice; they are masks we use to pretend that the objects of our wills
have greater authority than our mere desire. Only the realist is strongminded
enough to drop
the pessimism, the rationalism, the theology, and all the other subterfuges
to which we cling because we are afraid to look life straight in
the face and see in it, not the fulfilment of a moral law or of the
deductions of reason, but the satisfaction of a passion in us of which
we can give no account whatever. It is natural for man to shrink from