The History Of Doubt is an hour long Speaking Of Faith radio special consisting of a conversation between poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht and Speaking Of Faith host Krista Tippett covering many of the topics discussed in Hecht’s book Doubt: A History. Hecht began her research with the common idea that doubt is a relatively new idea and that, though a few of our ancestors can be labeled as doubters, doubt played no significant role in the development of history. As she dug deeper into he subject, she discovered that doubt was very prominent in ancient times and helped to form and mold the religions and societies we have today, stating that doubters have “found the possibilities of other answers.” Hecht also notes that the modern use of the word “doubt” is most often narrowly applied to the subject of religion. When some people would view times in history where widely diverging ideas began to clash amongst each other as times of decline, Hecht views those times as times of construction and growth necessary to the advancement of civilization. Their discussion travels the ages from the Greeks to the Bible to the medieval ages to modern day views and opinions.
Jennifer Michael Hecht
Krista Tippett
They begin their discussion with ancient Greece. They identify each of the major philosophies that began at the time that continue to reappear throughout the history of doubt and are still formative topics today. The cynics followed the philosophies that human should live like “dogs,” from which the word “cynic” derives its self. They sought to “go with the flow” of life and saw no use in trying to explain things, like God or science. Hecht recalls two stories involving Alexander the Great and Diogenes, one the most influential leaders of cynic philosophy. In both stories, Diogenes pursues his goals by conquering his own ambition in relaxation. The skeptics, of which Socrates was prominent, asked the question “If there are many different philosophies and religions, how can all of them be true?” This question sounds like the first question a future-atheist would ask. They questioned what did they did not know to find real truth. The Epicureans followed the idea that to be happy, one must refine their hunger, not their food. Epicurus, founder of the Epicureans, used the example of appreciating a simple thing like cold water when you are thirsty. He sought a world absent of religious gods. “Fear is what ruins our lives” Epicurus states: fear of pain, which is usually worse than the actually pain, fear of gods, which means nothing because Epicurus believes in no gods, and fear of death, which is inevitable and useless to fear.
One of the most prominent figures of doubt is Job. His story is told prior to the Jewish idea of an afterlife but after the idea that a good, moral person would have success on Earth. Job loses his family, friends, wealth, and health over a seemingly useless be between God and Satan yet Job only begins to doubt God when his friends try to console him by telling him that this must be according to some God’s just plan. He then begins to question why God would treat him so badly, especially when considering the fact that he was more moral than many of the people around him. The book concludes never mentioning divine justice with Job remaining in sincere ignorance about the matters that have recently befallen him.
One of the most well known philosophers of all time is René Descartes. He believed that to truly find truth, one must discard all their opinions and list the things that they know with absolute certainty to be true. He overthrew all of his old opinions and the only truth that Descartes could be entirely certain of was that he existed, a belief from which we get his famous phrase “I think therefore I am.” This concept seems to rid Descartes of doubt by finding one absolute, unarguable truth and discarding all of which he cannot be certain.
Christianity went through a great period of persecution of doubt. As Christianity takes over and Rome falls, doubters of the church were exiled and persecuted. Those doubters moved eastward to the Byzantine Empire and were outcast again for their doubting. They again moved east into Arabian territory where a new religion, Islam, was just beginning to form, claiming to has recently received their final prophet. Without question, this religion was formed with doubt as a major factor and that time period was marked with an increase in rational thinking and expansion in scientific reasoning. The doubt movement also entered Spain where the Jewish rabbi Moses Maimonides began to organize the doctrines of Judaism. He believed in Yahweh and vigorously strove for rational support of Jewish beliefs. This seems to me to be an example of reflective unity between Maimonides and Yahweh because he actively pursues truths about Yahweh and personally chooses to believe in his God.
Jen also gives her current opinion on doubt in our lives now. She views doubt as a “negation” not as a “positive theory of how to live.” She believes that atheists of older ages still relied partially on the idea of an outside force acing a people, the human experience whereas modern atheists disregard all aspects of the supernatural and unexplainable all together. She also believes that the beginning of the 19th century was a wonderful times to be a doubter and differing opinions were embraced. That ended when the Cold War began because religion was stressed in America to combat Communist atheism. She thinks that the terms “atheist”, “agnostic”, and “believer” are very ill-defined.