The Science of Discworld IV

wrong in Roundworld?’
    Marjorie’s self-control finally snapped. ‘Such concepts of the gods as there were on Roundworld didn’t work!’ she cried. ‘Proud people and smart people started to put their ideas into the mouths of the gods, and shamefully it has not been unusual for two countries, ostensibly both running on the rules of the same one sacred God, to nevertheless engage one and another in combat such as never been seen on
this world
– the deliberate destruction of whole cities and even attempts to slaughter whole races. Today, many of those who saw the name of God invoked as part of this dreadful pantomime have stepped back and very much prefer reason to faith, because it is self-checking.’
    Lord Vetinari sat for a moment taking this in. Then he stared at Marjorie like a cat assessing an amazing new type of mouse, and said, ‘I do not believe I know your name,
madam
, or your occupation; be so good as to enlighten me, will you?’
    fn1 At this point it must be said that Marjorie also had a smile for a gentleman known as Jeffrey, who travelled the world inspecting, reviewing, cataloguing and pricing – and
in extremis
also restoring – the libraries of a very large number of people and organisations across the world. The two of them had an understanding, and understood quite a lot, especially about Bliss. In case anybody is now thinking of librarian pornography, this is an alternative way of cataloguing books: a system created by Henry E. Bliss (1870–1955), still in use in America and specialised libraries.

TWENTY
----
DISBELIEF SYSTEM

    Roundworld has its own home-grown Omnians. We’re not referring to the great majority of religious believers, who are entirely normal people who happen to have been brought up in a culture that has its own distinctive set of beliefs in things that lack objective evidence. Neither are we referring to Roundworld’s equivalent of mainstream Omnians, who since the overthrow of the extremist Vorbis and his rerun of the Inquisition (see
Small Gods
) have been decent-enough sorts and kept themselves to themselves.
    No, it is the Vorbises of Roundworld who cause all the trouble. Believers with a capital B. These are the people who not only
know
that their worldview is The Truth – the sole truth, the only truth, the truth revealed from the mouth of God himself – but are intent on forcing it onto everyone else, whether they want it or not, at any cost.
    Most sane, rational human beings learn quite early on that you feel just as certain even when you’re wrong: the strength of your belief is not a valid measure of its relation to reality. If you have scientific training, you may even learn the value of doubt. You can certainly have religious beliefs and still be a good
scientist
; you can also be a good
person
and understand that people who disagree with your beliefs need not necessarily be evil, or even misguided. After all, most of the world’s people – even the religious ones – probably think your beliefs are nonsense.
They
have a different set of beliefs, which
you
think are nonsense.
    But religious extremists seem unaware of the human tendency towards self-delusion, and decline to take even the simplest steps to counteract it. When the British Humanist Association hired a bus to tour the UK with the advert ‘There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life’ on its side, the immediate response from some religious authorities was: ‘They don’t seem terribly confident about it.’ No, what they did with the ‘probably’ was to try not to let opponents score an easy point by criticising them for being dogmatic. Being too confident of their view. More practically, they were also worried about potentially breaching the Advertising Code. Another response from some of those of a religious persuasion was synthetic outrage and claims of persecution.
    But Humanists are just as entitled to put their views on the side of a bus as tens of thousands of churches worldwide are to stick ‘The wages of sin is death’ on their walls. That’s why the Humanists hired the bus – one small voice crying out against the multitudes, many of whom were clearly intolerant.
    Belief is a very odd word, and it is used in several ways. ‘Belief that’ differs greatly from ‘belief in’, which is again different from ‘belief about’. Our belief
about
science, for example, is that it’s simply our best defence against believing (in) what we want to. But