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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