Certainty and religion

[sawyl]

From Philip Pullman's interesting article on freedom of speech, published in Saturday's Grauniad:

Those who are passionate adherents of their faith, who are willing to kill and die for it, are less likely to take a wide and considered view of the subject. And the fact that religion makes people willing to do these extreme things is one of the reasons we need to examine it. Something in the nature of religious conviction gives believers the chance to experience sharp and intoxicating tastes; those inclined to it can become addicted to the gamey tang of the absolute, the pungency of righteousness, the furtive sexiness of intolerance. Religion grants us these malign sensations more strongly and more deeply than any other human phenomenon.

While I suspect it's unfair of Pullman to restrict the taste for "pungency of righteousness" to religion alone, I think he underlines an important point: the arrogance of absolute certainty is a corrupting influence wherever it occurs. It seems to me that in order to do politics, science, religion, philosophy, or any other significant area of human activity, it is necessary most of all to have an open mind, humbly to admit that you might not know all the answers and that your current view might be incorrect or incomplete.

Ever the man with a soundbite, Bertrand Russell neatly summarised the situation when he said, "I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine." Amen.