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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6860025" data-attributes="member: 4937">No, there isn't.  Words as you say have meaning.  And to be convinced that something is true based on the intellectual arguments of others, is quite often the same as believing it is true based on an authority having presented their argument.  That is to say, most people believe that the source of a person's authority is the truth of what they say, and the truth of what they say is made evident by the reasonableness of what they say.  Hardly anyone believes that what they believe is unreasonable to believe, and it is unreasonable to believe that someone holds a belief despite believing it to be unreasonable.  So for example, a Catholic if they are a pious Catholic believes that the Pope on certain matters is absolutely correct.  But they believe that the Pope is absolutely correct, not merely because he is The Pope, but also because on those matters the Pope is divinely inspired to be absolutely perfect in his reasoning, which the Pope will lay out in his teachings.  The sort of person likely to take the Pope as being reliable authority, also believes that the Pope is also a reliable intellect who has offered up sufficient intellectual proof.The mistake I usually see made here is the assertion that someone believes the Pope's (or the Church's) teachings only because they are the Pope's and because the Pope has authority, and that therefore they believe these teachings without intellectual investigation.  In fact, the Pope himself is acting very much in the same manner as any other scholar, and in outlining a teaching will appeal to reliable authority to show how the teaching conforms with what is considered to be reliably argued and hence already known to be and accepted as truth.  I advise you to for example read some GK Chesterton.(Full disclosure.  I'm not Catholic.  It's just a useful example.)</blockquote>

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