In Other Words

the doubt principle (one)

Now I’m feeling slightly better, so I might be able to talk about something slightly more interesting (or at least understandable).  Lets talk about doubt.

Two days ago Krist, a guy from my office, and myself started a discussion about science.  We came to the conclusion that doubt is essential for us human beings.  Its what kept us alive in the stone ages (and still does today), it is what drives technological innovation.  Its what drives reasoning, its what drives learning and its what drives our understanding of ourselves.

Only by doubting can we grow to understand.  If we accept something as a given (like gravity, say) then we will never explore it further.  Only when we accept that we might not understand gravity fully (i.e. doubt our understanding of gravity) might we improve our understanding.

All well and good, but then a major institution comes along and says ‘do not doubt, for we have the answers’ you can probably guess what institution I’m referring to, that’s right, the church.  (any organised religion, actually, but for now I’ll refer to organised religion as ‘the church).  The church suppresses doubt.  Do not think about these things for this is the answer, for we have them here already.

The church even teaches its followers to not question their faith.  They consider it wrong of outsiders (like myself) to try to get other people to question their faith.  That, they believe, is tempting the devil.

Yet we had just concluded that doubt is essential for human progress.  What’s up with that?  I mean, yes I can understand that you can’t go through life doubting everything every single moment of your existence, but shouldn’t the fundamental questions always be doubted?  Wasn’t that what gave us the ability to survive?  Should we leave it behind, simply because ‘they’ say so? 

More thoughts on that soon.

posted by Symbol @ 30.7.04