The criticism is sometimes leveled against rationalists: "The Inquisition thought they had the truth! Clearly this 'truth' business is dangerous."

There are many obvious responses, such as "If you think that possessing the truth would license you to torture and kill, you're making a mistake that has nothing to do with epistemology." Or, "So that historical statement you just made about the Inquisition—is it true?"

Reversed stupidity is not intelligence: "If your current computer stops working, you can't conclude that everything about the current system is wrong and that you need a new system without an AMD processor, an ATI video card... even though your current system has all these things and it doesn't work. Maybe you just need a new power cord." To arrive at a poor conclusion requires only one wrong step, not every step wrong. The Inquisitors believed that 2 + 2 = 4, but that wasn't the source of their madness. Maybe epistemological realism wasn't the problem either?

It does seem plausible that if the Inquisition had been made up of relativists, professing that nothing was true and nothing mattered, they would have mustered less enthusiasm for their torture. They would also have had been less enthusiastic if lobotomized. I think that's a fair analogy.

And yet... I think the Inquisition's attitude toward truth played a role. The Inquisition believed that there was such a thing as truth, and that it was important; well, likewise Richard Feynman. But the Inquisitors were not Truth-Seekers. They were Truth-Guardians.

I once read an argument (can't find source) that a key component of a zeitgeist is whether it locates its ideals in its future or its past. Nearly all cultures before the Enlightenment believed in a Fall from Grace—that things had once been perfect in the distant past, but then catastrophe had struck, and everything had slowly run downhill since then:

"In the age when life on Earth was full... They loved each other and did not know that this was 'love of neighbor'. They deceived no one yet they did not know that they were 'men to be trusted'. They were reliable and did not know that this was 'good faith'. They lived freely together giving and taking, and did not know that they were generous. For this reason their deeds have not been narrated. They ma

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