If we don’t accept both the commonality and importance of doubt, we don’t allow for the possibility of mistakes or misjudgments. While certainty frequently calcifies into rigidity, intolerance and self-righteousness, doubt can deepen, clarify and explain. This is a subject far broader than belief in God. The philosopher Bertrand Russell put it best. The whole problem with the world, he wrote, is that ‘the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt’.
