USC philosophy professor Dallas Willard makes the comment in one of his popular talks entitled ‘How to be a Morally Responsible Skeptic‘: “you should not only believe your doubts and doubt your beliefs, but you should believe your beliefs and doubt your doubts.” A skeptic is someone who doubts any number of things. A religious skeptic is one who doubts particular religious claims, or else any and every religious claim. A complete skeptic, of any variety, is one who doubts everything. But, it’s an often overlooked fact that in some peoples’ disposition to be skeptical of everything, they lose the right to be skeptical of anything. Two points about this statement:
1) I say ‘disposition’ because I think radical skepticism reflects more about a person’s psychology than it does about one’s epistemology. In other words, a person who doubts everything lacks the moral courage and the psychological ability to admit to the reality that is there. As Willard also points out, “truth is what we run into when our beliefs are false.”
2) The reason a skeptic cannot doubt everything is precisely because the skeptic’s own skepticism would fall under one such belief. But, the one thing the complete skeptic cannot let go of is their firm grasp on the belief in the truth of their own skepticism.
When it comes to religious skepticism, I’m not interested in the one who doubts one or more particular claims of one or more particular religious systems. We all doubt and we ought to be skeptical of many religious claims that are made. What I do find interesting is the more general skeptical attitude toward God’s nature and existence. My point is quite simple and it is one that other’s have made before me: to say that nothing can be known of God’s nature or existence is to claim one dogmatic truth about God and his nature, namely, that he is, and he is such that nothing can be known about him. This kind of skepticism undermines itself. It cannot be rationally maintained.
WPF
