"If your faith is opposed to experience, to human learning and investigation, it is not worth the breath used in giving it expression"
About this Quote
A small-town editor’s version of a heresy trial, flipped: the accused isn’t science, it’s faith that can’t survive contact with the real world. Howe’s line is built like a moral ultimatum, but its real force is editorial. “Opposed to experience” is the tell: he isn’t arguing against belief as comfort or tradition; he’s condemning belief as a rival authority that demands obedience even when facts, observation, and inquiry disagree. That word “opposed” matters more than “faith.” He’s not asking religion to be perfect, just not adversarial to reality.
The sentence also carries a newsroom subtext. “Human learning and investigation” reads like a credo for reporting: go, look, test, revise. In that context, faith that refuses evidence isn’t merely wrong, it’s irresponsible speech. Howe’s finishing swipe - “not worth the breath” - is classic editor’s disdain for empty copy: if a claim can’t be checked against lived experience and collective knowledge, it’s noise masquerading as conviction.
Placed in Howe’s era, the barb lands amid a late-19th/early-20th-century America wrestling with modernity: higher criticism of the Bible, Darwin’s aftershocks, expanding public education, and the growing prestige of professional expertise. Howe isn’t serenely championing reason; he’s policing boundaries. He’s telling readers that belief has every right to exist - until it tries to veto the methods by which a society learns anything at all.
The sentence also carries a newsroom subtext. “Human learning and investigation” reads like a credo for reporting: go, look, test, revise. In that context, faith that refuses evidence isn’t merely wrong, it’s irresponsible speech. Howe’s finishing swipe - “not worth the breath” - is classic editor’s disdain for empty copy: if a claim can’t be checked against lived experience and collective knowledge, it’s noise masquerading as conviction.
Placed in Howe’s era, the barb lands amid a late-19th/early-20th-century America wrestling with modernity: higher criticism of the Bible, Darwin’s aftershocks, expanding public education, and the growing prestige of professional expertise. Howe isn’t serenely championing reason; he’s policing boundaries. He’s telling readers that belief has every right to exist - until it tries to veto the methods by which a society learns anything at all.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
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