In praise of doubt, maybe | Mark Vernon (Guardian)
Why do we have such an unbalanced attitude to doubt, demanding certainty where
there is none, and pretending to doubt what everyone knows?
Ann Widdecombe makes an arresting observation. We live in an odd world, she
told me when I interviewed her for In Doubt We Trust. Doubt in relation to
religion is almost mandatory in public life, whereas doubt in relation to
politics is almost forbidden.
The secular world demands an agnostic position on religious beliefs for fear
of intolerance. The notion that you believe in God has become synonymous with
the notion that you hold things with a rigid, possibly violent, certainty.
Take matters to God in prayer, as Tony Blair once confessed, and people assume
that means you've set your heart on a course that's as blind and destructive
as a runaway train.
Tony Blair's record, viewed from the outside, lends credence to that view for
some. And Ann Widdecombe is not known for her anxious agonising ? though to be
fair, she also told me how becoming a Catholic was the end of a process of
struggled. What was important for her, though, was to find a church that
reached a resolution ...
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