I think it's a combination quote, paraphrase, original:

To see the artifice in art is good, unless it robs you of the meaning therein. To see the truth in art but not see the invention is a fantasy. There can be wisdom in tales told that never happened.

“Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.”

― G.K. Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown

I'd just go with "humility is greatness." Because it is the lack of vapid ego. I love that style of person.

"Humility is all-important and may save your soul but false modesty is pride’s veiled twin." –Norm Macdonald

I have to be careful not to deify this guy. Chesterton would say celebrity worship is an American phenomena and to a large extent, he's probably right.

Well, not sure why I ordered Orthodoxy instead of The Everlasting Man, given the title of the thread. I think in reading the jackets and descriptions it seemed more interesting.

I'm meh on the guy. He lands on orthodoxy of what turned out to be an appallingly corrupt institution. Somehow that level of corruption is channeling the holy of holies. Nope.

He was called a blowhard and windbag and for good reason. His effusive self-deprecation went way too far, too deep-seated.

Orthodoxy is just religious writing, churchy sophistry. All kinds of flowery language that is unsound, unfounded, leads nowhere, but just appeals to religious impulses. Meh.

The institution doesn't consist of only corrupt elements. People from all over the world and throughout the years are part of it. There is an entire history of saints, tradition, writings and art going back two two millennia. Cases of corruption aren't reason to discard those things.

“There is something else which has the power to awaken us to the truth. It is the works of writers of genius. They give us, in the guise of fiction, something equivalent to the actual density of the real, that density which life offers us every day but which we are unable to grasp because we are amusing ourselves with lies.” ― Simone Weil

A less profound observation would be that in order to have an emotional reaction to a story, the story itself must portray truths about our experiences already understood by the reader, otherwise they wouldn't be capable of evoking such feelings. Whether or not the reader is actively looking for truth is beside the point.

Yup, stories about things that never happened can have deep moral and emotional meaning. We already covered that. Once we say the stories in the Bible never happened, there is a whole lot of religionizing that goes out the window with that.

I'd have the find the original context of the Chesterton quote, but what he seems to be saying is something like: It's not that science is not true (fallible, yes) but that it is a lesser truth. The reason that people are generally more drawn to novels than books of science and metaphysics is because novels convey truths that we understand—often implicitly—are more significant than mere facts and philosophical theories about the world. There is nothing more real than what we experience. Whether someone is falling in love for the first time, seeing their favorite band, riding a rollercoaster or arguing with a friend, concerns about facts and philosophies fall to the wayside and disappear.

A primary reason people are drawn to fiction is that it is often a stylized, romanticized, idealized, edge-taken-off-of-an-unforgiving-reality type experience. We can't say it's a greater truth, but a more artistic vision of life. I agree completely that the most meaningful part of life is experience, and that to the extent science discounts this in preference of repeatable experiments, it is wayward. As empiricism rose, one can hear Jung saying, the subjective got "counterfeited" (poker lingo) ... but this is a colossal error. Our spirituality is found in that experience, but that spiritual experience itself is insulted and counterfeited by canned supernatural religion.

... insulted also by all the self-proclaimed messengers of god who fancy themselves at the top of the spiritual ladder, with absolutely no explanation as to how or why this came about, but just as some kind of given ... very suspiciously like all the other messengers of all the other countless gods. Give us a reason to think it's something else because all the other revealers of the other gods, all false, were doing the same thing.

When believers criticize nonbelievers and try to convince them of God's existence or that their religion is the right one, they're basically fighting the wind. I enjoy talking about theology, but I'm not under the illusion that I can change anyone's mind when it comes to the big question; it's not my aim. If anything, maybe someone will have an epiphany one day and be able to look back on past conversations and say, "Oh, now I get it!" That was my experience, anyway.

I think that most believers come to know God through suffering, and I also believe that God reveals Himself to people when He decides. It's not up to the subject. The reason theists such as myself can't offer an explanation is because it isn't something that can be communicated through words to someone who has never had the experience. It's kind of like what I was saying about how it's impossible to describe green to a blind person, or love to a person who has never felt the emotion. However, I do think theists can understand each other to a certain extent due to having had similar experiences. I can't read anyone's mind, but Craig, for example, has shared some insights that have made me go, "Wow," while others make fun of him for it.

Then there are those who just parrot some teaching, and when they try to argue their view as objective truth, they fall into traps. Religion is deeply personal and very subjective. That isn't to say that the Bible can't or shouldn't act as a foundation. I believe the writers of the those books had great revelations, and whether the truths revealed come from something that developed over time or are built in to us as humans, isn't really my concern. What matters if that I find truth in them; I find answers, but they're not as straightforward as a lot of "mainstream" Christians or critics would have one believe. And even if I wanted to rationalize those beliefs away, I couldn't.

I'd like to add that I don't think it's devoid of errors. Books have been translated, edited and removed; cultures have evolved, and so on. Nonetheless, there is an incredible amount of wisdom in those stories, and the reason they pierce so many hearts is a consequence of more than mere indoctrination, even if roots play a role one's religion of "choice." It's also true that being honest with oneself proves difficult when conflicted.

Keeping with the quotes, a few more from Simone Weil that you might like:

“We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them. Man cannot discover them by his own powers, and if he sets out to seek for them he will find in their place counterfeits of which he will be unable to discern the falsity.”

“No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope. Consequently, the only choice is between worshipping the true God or an idol. Every atheist is an idolater — unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters.”

I'm on board with most of that. The part about the experience being undescribable with words I don't buy. Are not all the religious texts/scriptures a communication in words to human beings about religious experiences? "Undescribable' is code there for "It wouldn't seem the least bit supernatural if I tried to describe it, and I prefer to hang on to my inner narrative that it is supernatural. Therefore I will never attempt to describe it."

I'm fully capable of understanding, grokking, feeling, appreciating, etc. a transcendent experience, an epiphany, a religious experience. But the description is more elusive than the Loch Ness Monster. Scratch a theist and you get a dogmatic, gullible, non-critical thinking, fanciful believer; scratch an atheist and you get a contrarian, inane ego ... each about 99% of the time. Of course I'm interested in the 1% and I don't discount the experiential.

As you obviously realize from your post, the vast majority of religion is just the parroting of what's expected sans any real personal experience. And then when someone perhaps does have an experience they refuse to describe it, saying it's impossible. So religious experience is the one experience that doesn't translate to other human beings???? I guess we have to go back to the book of stories and fables to get a dramatic revelation story. Exactly how reliable is that? When we know quite well it is a book chock full of stories and tales that never happened?

No doubt there is marvelous story telling, wisdom, and beautiful literature (Ecclesiastes is my favorite) in the Bible. I often read it with a feeling of reverence. But you don't get to just ignore or skip over the horrendous messages, lessons, morals, etc also in it. Every preacher on earth it seems is guilty of that. Another of their tricks is quoting the 1.5 billion figure or whatever, when they know darn well the vast majority are lip service only and don't qualify as disciples. The orthodox religion is a house of cards. So we are back to the mystic, the gnostic, to experience. And there is a conspiracy of silence around that.

You've made some interesting references, so I'll recommend William James, Jung, Dan Barker, and Aron Ra to you in terms of ideas about this.

Mythical figures correspond to our own experiences and inner configuration, arising from what Jung called "archetypes," which are like psychic templates or patterns specific to the nature of human consciousness. NATURE being a big word there. We don't know the Source of that nature. Some claim to and maybe .1% of them have had corresponding experiences that lend one to have justification for thinking that nature leads to another realm of "supernature" or a god. The "perennial philosophy" of Huxley would hold that all of the various religions envisioned there are pieces of the puzzle toward understanding.

These so-called archetypes are kind of loosely formed ideas which take form, which crystallize, into specific "manifestations" or prototypes of that, one might say, canon, and are held dear within cultures. Jesus is one of those, Muhammad is one of those, Buddha is one of those, Paul Bunyan is one of those, Ebenezer Scrooge is one of those, the Medicine Man is one of those, the Trickster is one of those, the old man in the cave on top of the mountains sage is one of those. Some are actual beings, some aren't.

Drawing from this archetypal spirituality -- after all, the nature of man's consciousness and our connection to or alienation from it is quite a a natural based spirituality -- a great richness arises in the human experience. It's a path to be walked discretely. As soon as a canned religion sits in for this gnostic, experiential process the whole thing is undercut and cheapened, and leads not to exploration of the self's reality in this world but to its blind obedience, subjugation, and self-sacrifice. This type of religion, drawn from primitive and barbaric cultures, is immoral.