Doubt and the Vain Search for Certainty

Fantastic article for anyone who wrestles with needing certainty for things. Click here

Here's an excerpt:

Two major surveys of the religious beliefs of scientists, carried out at the beginning and end of the twentieth century, bear witness to a highly significant trend. One of the most widely held beliefs within atheist circles has been that, as the beliefs and practices of the “scientific” worldview became increasingly accepted within western culture, the number of practicing scientists with any form of religious beliefs would dwindle to the point of insignificance. A survey of the religious views of scientists, undertaken in 1916, showed that about 40% of scientists had some form of personal religious beliefs. At the time, this was regarded as shocking, even scandalous. The survey was repeated in 1996, and showed no significant reduction in the proportion of scientists holding such beliefs, seriously challenging the popular notion of the relentless erosion of religious faith within the profession. The survey cuts the ground from under those who argued that the natural sciences are necessarily atheistic. Forty percent of those questioned had active religious beliefs, 40% had none (and can thus legitimately be regarded as atheist), and 20% were agnostic.

The stereotype of the necessarily atheist scientist lingers on in western culture at the dawn of the third millennium. It has its uses, and continues to surface in the rehashed myths of the intellectual superiority of atheism over its rivals. The truth, as might be expected, is far more complex and considerably more interesting.

The point of these reflections is obvious. Any worldview—atheist, Islamic, Jewish, Christian or whatever—ultimately depends on assumptions that cannot be proved. Every house is built on foundations, and the foundations of worldviews are not ultimately capable of being proved in every respect. Everyone who believes anything significant or worthwhile about the meaning of life does so as a matter of faith. We’re all in the same boat. And once you realize this, doubt seems a very different matter. It’s not a specifically Christian problem—it’s a universal human problem. And that helps to set it in its proper perspective.