DOUBTLESS ... Chapter 1

 

[This reflection is the beginning of my attempt to tackle the question of religious doubts from another angle.  Further reflections will roll out as I muddle through them.]

CHAPTER 1.  What is beyond doubt?

One question which people do not ask when they are subject to doubts is perhaps the most important question of all:  What is beyond doubt?

The answer, of course, is nothing. 

There is nothing in life that is beyond doubt, except of course for death and taxes.  If we want to know how many doubts there are, we have only to count the number of things we believe and we will arrive at the number of doubts. 

For example, we may doubt the divine inspiration of the Bible, the stories and instructions contained in it, the number of the sacraments, their efficacy, whatever there number is, the legitimacy of church order (bishops, priests, deacons etc.) etc. etc.  How can people not have doubts about the faith?

However, it turns out that when we turn away from religion and look at the rest of our knowledge, there is nothing else that is beyond all doubt, either.  For example, how do I know that there are eight or nine planets?  How do I know that I am on the third planet out from the sun?  How do I know that there is a sun?  How do I know that my senses are not deceiving me?  How do I know that my wife of 30+ years is not really a space-alien engaged in long-range and long-term reconnaissance? 

Although some of these doubts are pretty silly, the question of what is beyond doubt is sobering.  “It is often very illuminating,” says Walter Lippmann, in Public Opinion (1922),

to ask yourself how you got at the facts on which you base your opinion. Who actually saw, heard, felt, counted, named the thing, about which you have an opinion?  Was it the man who told you, or the man who told him, or someone still further removed?  And how much was he permitted to see?

As a result of this circumstance, we may conclude that

on all but a very few matters for short stretches in our lives, the utmost independence that we can exercise is to multiply the authorities to whom we give a friendly hearing (ibid.). 

So far are we from dismissing a legion of religious doubts, then, we cannot even lay claim to having any more than the smallest amount of certainty for most of what we think we know.  The population of the town we live in—the facts of history and their inner connections—the workings of governments and economies—all the things we would most like to know are known at so many degrees removed from the facts themselves that it is not too much to say that most of what we think we know is rank speculation. 

Therefore, when we worry about our religious doubts, we must remember that doubts are very cheap.  The difference between what we would like to know and what we can prove that we know is great, because doubt is an immediate byproduct of mere attention.  We have only to think hard for one moment about one thing lying beyond the light of our candle to be lost in doubts. 

This conclusion may seem dismal.  A moment's thought, however, will cheer us up:  if doubts are so numerous, then there is nothing about them to agitate us.  If people get unhappy about their religious doubts, it is because they are unaware of or unconcerned about all the other doubts with which they live.  

Also, as we will find out in the following chapters, we are not doomed to live in doubt.