Doubt, if tempered with optimism and curiosity, can encourage dialogue and exploration. It offers more opportunity for the changing of minds. If nothing else, doubt will help us follow one of the most rudimentary rules taught to us: look before we leap. Doubt can inhibit rash behavior. That’s important because despite our relatively advanced intellects, we can be spectacularly stupid.
Also for the show notes: For the philosophers out there, Hugh recommends Hume’s The Natural History of Religion (1757) and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) for some early empirical support of doubt.