Welcome to "A World of Doubt"

Certainty vs. Doubt — it appears to be one of the abstract questions underlying the so-called "culture wars" in America today. These "wars" are often cast as "religious" vs. "secular." I see them as being mainly between those who insist on certainty and those who tolerate doubt.

For an overview of the nature of the dispute, see this recent article by an editorial page editor of The Baltimore Sun. Will Englund writes in "A Dawning Age of Unreason" that "with religiosity comes certainty, and with certainty comes a complete lack of curiosity."

On the other hand, secular science, at its best, is characterized by unquenchable doubt. "Philosopher Karl Popper's definition of the difference between religion and science," writes Englund, is that "science is always open to new facts."

Yet I doubt that scientists themselves are always as open-minded as the late Karl Popper would have had them be. Some scientists seem as bigoted against religion as some religionists are against science.

Meanwhile, I personally seem to exist in a world of doubt. This is not necessarily a bad thing — it just means that I have a hard time coming up with any pronouncements which I feel are absolutely and finally true. There always seem to be exceptions which are just as real as the pronouncements. For me, there can never be an end to questioning and curiosity.

I'd better mention right off that I happen to be a religious person. I'm a believer in God and a practicing Catholic. But I have doubts. And I find I resent any aspect of my religion, or any other religion, which becomes so self-certain that imposing that certainty on others seems the only righteous thing to do.

I'm also a believer in science. But I have doubts that science can ever hope to answer all the questions we have about where we came from and how we got here.

I have lots of doubts, and here in this blog, I plan to give vent to them all.

At the same time, I have a reasonably large amount of faith. As I go along, I'll try to spell out why I don't think doubt and faith are mutually exclusive.