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  "id": "CH09.P005",
  "oid": 225,
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  "work": "orthodoxy",
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    "title": "Orthodoxy",
    "authors": [
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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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  "text": "It would be the same if I examined the second of the three chance rationalist arguments; the argument that all that we call divine began in some darkness and terror. When I did attempt to examine the foundations of this modern idea I simply found that there were none. Science knows nothing whatever about pre-historic man; for the excellent reason that he is pre-historic. A few professors choose to conjecture that such things as human sacrifice were once innocent and general and that they gradually dwindled; but there is no direct evidence of it, and the small amount of indirect evidence is very much the other way. In the earliest legends we have, such as the tales of Isaac and of Iphigenia, human sacrifice is not introduced as something old, but rather as something new; as a strange and frightful exception darkly demanded by the gods. History says nothing; and legends all say that the earth was kinder in its earliest time. There is no tradition of progress; but the whole human race has a tradition of the Fall. Amusingly enough, indeed, the very dissemination of this idea is used against its authenticity. Learned men literally say that this pre-historic calamity cannot be true because every race of mankind remembers it. I cannot keep pace with these paradoxes.",
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      "title": "An ancient account of progress beside an ancient indictment of sacrifice",
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            "question": "What do the Isaac and Iphigenia narratives establish about sacrifice, and what cannot be inferred from their presentation?"
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      "title": "Isaac and Iphigenia: horror does not date a custom",
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      "title": "Learning to trust the garden: authority, evidence, and the recovery of joy",
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