Doubt

Finally, a book that deals with doubt and the extraordinary people who possess(ed) this most valuable trait.

"Cited midway through this magisterial book by Hecht (The End of the Soul), the Zen maxim "Great Doubt: great awakening. Little Doubt: little awakening. No Doubt: no awakening" reveals that skepticism is the sine qua non of reflection, and discloses the centrality that doubt and disbelief have played in fueling intellectual discovery. Most scholarship focuses on the belief systems that have defined religious history while leaving doubters burnt along the wayside. Hecht's poetical prose beautifully dramatizes the struggle between belief and denial, in terms of historical currents and individual wrestlings with the angel. Doubt is revealed to be the subtle stirring that has precipitated many of the more widely remembered innovations in politics, religion and science, such as medieval Jewish philosopher Gersonides's doubt of Ptolemaic cosmology 200-300 years before Copernicus, Kepler or Galileo."

For me, I have much better feelings for one who professes NOT to be a person of faith rather than one who does because to question who we are and what place we have in reality is, to me, far braver than giving way to a "higher power" and acquiescing to that entity the essential characteristics of what it means to be human.

"Question everything." - Einstein