Absolutes are hard to find, but I believe that Bertrand Russell’s succinct statement is one such truth.

“There is nothing accidental about the difference between a church and its founder. As soon as absolute truth is supposed to be contained in the sayings of a certain man, there is a body of experts to interpret his sayings, and these experts infallibly acquire power, since they hold the key to truth. Like any privileged caste, they use their power for their own advantage. They are, however, in one respect worse than any other privileged caste, since it is their business to expound an unchanging truth, revealed once for all in utter perfection, so that they become necessarily opponents of all intellectual and moral progress.”

This privileged group of men are burdened with the effort of trying to protect an absolute that is not absolute. This monkey on their back gets heavier by the day as new information is discovered. Since the founder professes his close relationship to an omniscient being that reveals absolute truths, the privileged group is forever trying to explain the ever changing history.

Their primary protection from these changes is to protest any doubt in their authority as apostasy. Accusing the doubter of sin seems to be the next step in protecting their dominion. The last line of defense is a metaphysical testimony. Nothing is sillier than using a metaphysical testimony as proven fact. “I know” becomes an infliction rather than an asset.