Thought of the Day 06.04.09

Many Americans believe that faith is naïve and gullible whereas doubt is savvy and sophisticated. In reality, faith and doubt are the very same thing, merely in opposite directions.

Faith is the word we use for belief in the presence of uncertainty, and doubt is the word we use for disbelief in the presence of uncertainty. This means that both faith and doubt are forms of unwarranted belief in the sense that neither is demonstrably provable. Yet despite having this same basic substance, our culture has somehow internalized the surprising notion that unproven disbelief is superior to unproven belief.

So, if I have faith in God, then I might just claim to doubt the non-existence of God. Likewise, I might say the atheist simply has faith in God’s non-existence. If doubt is better than faith, I can thus win the God argument just by inverting the proposition. The silliness of such a move shows why saying doubt is better than faith is a lot like saying negative numbers are better numbers than positive ones.