History of Doubt Summary
To doubt is to question what is given in order to invest ones days with meaning. Doubt has an illuminating role in history. A doubter is both bold and brave. The speaker is suprised by doubters.
History suggests doubt is a modern Phenomenon, but the speaker says it is not. She traces doubt through eras starting with the Greeks. Only in modern times is doubt narrowed to a rejection of faith. Periods of diverging beliefs,cosmopolitan eras, are often classified as periods of decline. She says to celebrate these very satisfying times.
Some philosophies of doubt in anceint Greece are:
Cynicism - means dog. Live life like a dog. Try not to defend desires and dinity against the world. Live outside to not defend a house. Don't be ashamed of one self and do not try to accomplish anything. Reject a great deal of the human world. You do these things to be happy. It is like a religious model. Diogenes is the founder. He wanted no gift from Alexander the Great except for him to step out of his sun. Alexander respected him and said if he was not Alexander he would be Diogenes. Diogenes left behind no writings.
Diogenes once asked Alexander what his plans were. Alexander said he planned to conquer and subjugate Greece. Then Diogenes asked, "Then What?" Alexander said he planned to conquer and subjugate Asia Minor. Diogenes asked, "Then what next?" Alexander said he would then conquer and subjugate the entire world. For a final time, Diogenes asked, "Then what next?" Alexander said that after he finished conquering and subjugating he would relax and enjoy himself. Diogenese asked him why he did not save himself the trouble and just relax right now.
Skepticism
question what you know. The human mind is not designed to know things. Know the world by questioning what we can't know. One origin is Socrates(delphic oracle). Ask how can everyone be right. Find philosophies to be brilliant since they all convince you when you hold their book in your hand but do nothing to convince when the book is gone. Ask which one holds real truth. First skepticism was a denial of ability to know anything and then it became a study of probabilities.
Epicureanism - refine our hungers. Love what we have. There is nothing better than cold water when you are thirsty. Questions ideas of religion and meaning. Makes suggestions on how to live in the absense of a religious world. Fear is what ruins our lives. Forget fear of pain,it's much worse than actual pain. Intense pain is short lived. Fear of gods is useless since there are none. Fear of death is biggest challenge. Accept death is real but is ok and makes life sweet. This moment is the moment that we have and all we have. Nothing to mourn since death is so final. Founded by Epicurus.
A modern definition of doubt:
An outright rejection of beliefs and theologies.
The speaker disagrees with this definition and goes on to say that doubters often articulate good philosophies, graceful life philosophies. Here is a quote from Epicurus:
Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young or grow weary in the search thereof when he is old, for no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. Saying the season for studying philosophy has not yet come or that is is past and gone is like saying the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more. Both old and young are to seek wisdom. Exercise our selfs in things that bring happiness.
Most doubters do not hate religion. Most are not against religion but are actually more akin to religious thinkers than non-doubters. Great doubters try to figure out how to live and they come up with similar answers to religion. They just do not believe the world is being guided or that you are being judged by a higher being or force. This gives you more responsibility for your fate and your actions. Though they think of morality in different ways, their morality ends up being similar to relgious morality since they believe humans are born with it so of course humans would come up with similar moralities regardless of religious beliefs.
Great heros of faith are great doubters too. Job is a great example of this.
Individual Divine Judgment(Jewish belief before belief of afterlife)- if you are a good person then you will have success. It is a doctrine that is difficult to uphold when things go wrong. Job has this belief. His own children are killed and he becomes the bottom of society but keeps faith until his friends come. That is when he starts to question individual divine judgement. How can he be this low when he has shown more morality than he has seen from the universe? He gave to poor widows but God took his ability to do so away so how can that be a good and powerful God? Job learns of the injustices of the world and starts to doubt individual divine judgement but refortifies his faith in God by the very end of the story.
The speaker includes Jesus in her story of doubt. She does not see him as a classic figure of doubt but he contributes to it. He deals with his doubt. He makes what you believe an important part in religion instead of just what you do or how much you follow the law. Three out of four of the synoptic gospels contain the line where Jesus says, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"Matthew 27:46. Catholicism contains doubt in a way that helps the faith. A Catholic experience of belief is not just believing the sky is blue without question.
Most importantly, a doubter knows he does not know and looks for certainty.
If I am mistaken I exist. From Augustine of Hippo's City of God.
René Descartes
Decided that to arrive at absolute truth he must disregard all that can be doubted.He found the fact that he existed and wrote a book called Meditations.
Some asian relgions have doubt as their core and at one time Christianity embraced doubt but in Middle Ages the church killed doubters.
Ironically the church created a new source of doubt when they exiled and tried to kill it. After Rome's fall and the close of schools of thought, philosophers and doubters escaped to Byzantine but the emperor kicked out the schools of philosphy and they ran to the Muslim empire where doubt is born again.
Islam came along after Judiasm and Christianity thinks the age of prophets is over. Muslims defend that their prophet is true on evidence of the miracle of the Koran. Some people doubt that the Koran was a miracle and say the metaphors in it are not that miraculous and they could write better couplets within minutes. Others say a good God would not have sent prophets but would have told everyone the truth. They say prophet in any religion do not make sense.
After more persecution, these same doubters leave the Middle East and head into Africa eventually making it into Spain and influencing Jewish doubters that lived there. They were willing to question the Torah and only accept the truth that there is God. These same ideals then spread back into the Christian West. Martin Luther was a doubter there. He was a re-energizing and reneweing force in religion.
Zen Buddhism wants doubt. According to the speaker Zen Buddhism sees reality as it really is. Then the next generation someone doubts even something with doubt at its core. One generation's doubt is another one's certainty in some ways.
Benjamin Franklin doubted revelation itself:
My parents had early given me religious impressions, and brought me through my childhood piously in the Dissenting way. But I was scarce fifteen, when, after doubting by turns of several points, as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself. Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle's Lectures. It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist.
The speaker once thought of doubt as more of a negation instead of a theory on how to live. Doubters take things from religion accept they throw out idea of a God watching over us and forming the world. They do not referenct the supernatural.
The speaker is still uncomfortable with modern atheism and its dismissal of all wonder and when she read the great doubters she sees that they wanted us to our keep eyes on wonder and feeling that feels as if they come from outside you. Dismissing religion dismisses these religious experiences. Although, she believes that sports and parades can sometimes replace these experiences.
Thomas Jefferson
told the New York Times that he did not believe in an afterlife. In today's world most would not do that. Doubt is what democracy needed back then.
The speaker says Doubt is not nihilistic. It has substance and it has virtues and thought and knowledge along with self doubt. Great Doubters continue constantly to question. A true doubter recognizes no higher authority that is always right.
She considers herself a doubter. She finds modern terms like athiest, agnostic, and believer are misunderstood and wrong headed. She hesitates to align herself with any of them. She also does not like Doctrines that call religion bunk or a fad but does not believe in a higher force herself. Doubters are in no war against religion but co-exist with it peacefully. Epicurus said that if it feels good to pray then you might as well. You do not have to be against mystery or religion if you are a doubter. Mystery does not mean you have to fill in the blanks though.
Other Links
Doubt: A History-The speaker's book on doubt. Read the one stat reviews as well as the five star reviews to see a summary of what others think of her research.
A History of Doubt- The program that this page summarizes. You can take a scale of doubt quiz there and download the program and listen to it for free.