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  "id": "CH02.P008",
  "oid": 26,
  "kind": "paragraph",
  "label": null,
  "work": "orthodoxy",
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  "work_metadata": {
    "title": "Orthodoxy",
    "authors": [
      "G. K. Chesterton"
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    "description": "G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy (1908), his account of how he came to Christian belief: the full text with annotations, cited sources and commentary.",
    "original_publication_year": 1908,
    "alternate_titles": [],
    "subjects": [
      "Christian apologetics",
      "Christianity",
      "Philosophy of religion",
      "Paradox",
      "G. K. Chesterton",
      "English literature, 20th century"
    ],
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    "metadata_updated_at": "2026-11-07T20:29:57Z"
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  "url": "/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH02.P008",
  "text": "The madman's explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's.",
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      "revision_oid": 164905,
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      "updated_at": "2026-11-07T16:10:56Z",
      "title": "The rejected Christ and the evidence of works",
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            "approach": "Philosophical contextualization: then and since",
            "question": "What distinguishes an explanation's immunity to a particular objection from its truth, and how does Locke's account of reasoning from false premises illuminate Chesterton's examples?"
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          {
            "approach": "Biblical references",
            "question": "Which Gospel passages illuminate the rejected claimant to divinity, and does the Gospel itself distinguish rejection from evidence?"
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      "title": "An objection can fail without the claim becoming true",
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          "exact": "the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable",
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          "prefix": "ry. Or, to speak more strictly, ",
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            "approach": "Biblical references",
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      "title": "A home large enough for discovery: the developing argument of Orthodoxy",
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      "title": "What a complete explanation can leave out",
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        "task": "Developing argument of chapter II, The Maniac",
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