Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating and Amazing!
Review: This book is a must-read! My sister gave it to me and now I'm giving it to several people for Christmas. I couldn't put it down! I've always been interested in religious doubters, but this book changed the whole way I think about the subject. The book covers famous philosophers' doubt and also the doubt of a lot of ordinary men and women, like victims of the Inquisition, or less-known people in the Bible. There are also a lot of people in the book who are famous for something else now but were known for their doubt when they were alive, like Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, Emily Dickinson, Thomas Paine, and Madame Curie. Jefferson's thoughts on doubt were astonishing to me. Like Howard Zinn says on the cover, she brings all the people in the book to life in a way that really engages the reader. It's one surprising, thought-provoking story after the next and adds up to an alternative history of the world that made much more sense from my point of view. Brilliant, inspiring, and a great read!
Rating:
Summary: teriffic!
Review: This is a terrific book, whether for traditional believers or doubters. It shows that, despite the extreme polarization around matters of faith and belief, we're actually not in some dualism. Instead we're on a continuum of belief/faith and the book validates those who secretly or silently harbor doubts. Heart and mind, reason and belief must ultimately be reconciled inside each one of us or we have a shallow, untested faith. The world is a hostile place for doubters or those with unconventional beliefs/faith. In public religious discourse these days, people get publicly shamed or humiliated for not having capital 'F' Faith, meaning a publicly identifiable faith. But we all have to face these life questions and best to do it having read a book explicating the doubting side of the equation. I agree with Hecht that doubt (doubting, questioning, and discerning) helps us arrive at our own truth and own understanding (not some version of received wisdom). This is foundational to a life well lived.
Rating:
Summary: Your Uncle Is A Monkey and So Is Mine
Review: This study of "Doubt," the venerable thought system that places logic and reason above superstition and ignorance, is timely, important, inclusive and necessary. Indeed, our great American experiment in democracy that was initiated by those who were, at the least, mostly tolerant seems to be tottering on a precipice of faith based bigotry so insidious that the core at the very center of the idea of freedom could actually be in jeopardy. Theocratic impulses from the right have recently been expressing themselves openly and blatantly through many talented and articulate, seemingly sensible talk radio hosts as never before. Conservative bastions of thought police politicos surely have a increasingly powerful stranglehold on our culture or rather our culturally deprived society as never before. Religious dogma from obviously discredited institutionalized groups constituting the "major" world religions has nevertheless not so amazingly fought its way into the minds of men who in our modern world would otherwise be confronted directly with the absurdity of life itself as demonstrated by scientific inquiry.
The present historically embryonic combination of politically and economically motivated mindset manipulators and a new media menacing in its pervasiveness threatens the secular humanist tradition in a manner more ominous than the inquisition itself as its electronic reach is without parallel. To read the most recent reports regarding the reinvigorated dispute between the efficacy of the Book of Genesis and the Darwinian theory of Evolution, as though they were in the some meaningful way of equally tenable merit is horrifying. Is this where we as a nation ought to be? Is the Scopes monkey trial chapter 2 on the horizon?!
Egad mama! Jennifer Michael Hecht's treatment of a major theme that runs throughout recorded history makes it clear that we as a species, though in part capable of magnificent creativity along with technical and artistic expression and achievement is in truth the reality of an extremely small percentage of those born human.
The great mass of mankind, Hecht demonstrates, have always been not only subject to the quiet desperation inherent in a squalid survival effort but always as well to the cynical machinations of powerful and ruthless leaders adept at maximizing the hold of superstitious fantasy on their constituents.
As Spinoza suggested, Hecht reminds us, our human ability to comprehend the nature of what a God might be is as inadequate as an earthworm's capability of analyzing Shakespeare. And yet we have our Falwells, the revered Reverend Graham, the great healer, Oral Roberts, the sanctimonious Pat Robertson, et. al. and so on.
As a doubter I found this treatise exhilarating. Why must we hold back when announcing the obvious? Why not call a spade a spade? Religious faith is a sign of ignorance and fear. Nothing more. Religions are a fraud and an insult to our intelligence. Nothing less. They have been the proudly announced cause of death for millions. Its time that doubt takes its proper place in our world. Let's be sensible. Let's be reasonable. Doubt based initiatives should be on the move.
Rating:
Summary: A WONDERFUL AND IMPORTANT BOOK
Review: While some people see it as negative and unproductive, doubt does lots of work. Doubt toils in the fields of philosophy, science, politics and the arts and does its most mysterious work in the field of theology by inspiring new religions: Doubt fathers devotion. This is one of many lessons we learn in "Doubt, A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson," by Jennifer Michael Hecht, historian, professor and award-winning poet.
We also learn that doubt is older than most faiths, that it includes many categories, schools and practices, and that doubt has a pantheon of heroes, who still to speak to us across the ages. And who would question the importance of studying faith and doubt - you can't grasp one without the other - in this post 9/11 world? "Since I began writing this book, well before September 2001, the significance of its subject has redoubled," Hecht writes in the concluding chapter. "The book is now offered as a way to contextualize the struggle over religion and secularism that is at the heart of the crisis." In short, the book is not only fascinating, it's also timely and important.
Hecht begins her account by pinpointing the origin of faith and doubt in one simple but profound sentence: "We live in a meaning-rupture because we are human and the universe is not." Hecht calls this, "The Great Schism," and it causes us staggering problems because we have an almost "violent" desire for knowledge and control. Enter a host of philosophical and theological geniuses to help us cope with the cruel facts of life: that natural forces can wipe out a lifetime of dreams in an instant; that the vast, empty spaces of the universe fill some people with dread; that happiness is elusive; that morality is fragile; and that death is mysterious, terrifying and certain.
Hecht explains that some prophets and thinkers try to heal the schism by writing a human meaning back into the universe; this results in a story of God or gods, who care about our welfare. Other religious innovators have gone the other way, urging us to steep our souls in the cool indifference of those vast and silent spaces; this results in the great non-theological belief systems of the East: Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. Philosopher-scientists have taken a third path: They believe reason can solve the meaning-rupture by exposing and explaining everything. And "graceful-life" philosophers open a wider way forward: They say awe and wonder give the best approach to life รณ learn what you can, know your limits, and don't fear death because it's not something you'll experience anyway, or to paraphrase Epicurus: Where I am, death is not; where death is, I am not.
And lest we think otherwise, Hecht reminds us that billions of moral and principled people have lived without recourse to a personal God or hopes of eternal salvation, and they didn't degenerate into beasts or go mad with fear and uncertainty. In fact, many of them have taught us courage as they performed the heavy lifting for cultural advancement.
It is perhaps an unstated thesis of Hecht's book that as our communication-saturated, Web-wired world shrinks, we reach greater levels relativism, pluralism and diversity, which is to say doubt, more than ever, is forcing itself on us whether we like it or not. So we all have a stake in understanding the intricacies of doubt and why our free society frightens other cultures and their time-tested, doubt-denying beliefs. Our praise of freedom and equality rings false and our commitment to diversity remains shallow if we don't grasp the ongoing importance of doubt. Moreover, one of the best weapons in the war on terror is improved intelligence, not the kind you get from agents in the field or experts in Washington, but the kind you get from quiet study in the privacy of your own home.
Have a little faith in doubt and read this wonderful book.
A more complete review of this book can be found at www.fobes.net
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