The Effects and Consequences of Doubt in one's Life

Doubt is often the reason behind new discoveries and inventions that can change the world. However, it can also set back evolution in certain fields if there is too much of it with little evidence to support it. Doubt is defined as the uncertainty or to question something. Knowledge, on the other hand, is the acquaintance with fact, truth or principle. This essay will focus on how the former can affect the latter, how doubt can change people’s knowledge and affect the way people see certain things. I believe that doubt can affect knowledge as people use doubt to test certain aspects of life such as natural sciences and religious knowledge systems. Natural science is often backed by reason, while religion is viewed through faith. Both however can be affected by imagination, and that is what can lead to doubt.

Doubt can benefit natural science as it changes imagination into reason and fact. Natural science is the branch of knowledge that deal with the study of the physical world. It is made up of discoveries made by humans about the world around us. Many discoveries were founded on the doubt of something existent. When a person doubts an already existent discovery, they often work to find evidence for such claim, this results in two possible situations; the discovery that was doubted is proven wrong and replaced by another, more reasonable and evident based discovery, or the discovery is further ensured to be true, all based on the evidence found from doubting the discovery. Imagination is often the reason for the doubt, but it can also be reason. When seeing something that, upon analyzing, makes little sense. Reason can cause doubt in that thing, while imagination can create an alternative or a replacement to what is doubted. Doubt can also correct wrongs that were left unnoticed and can lead to advancements in the sciences that would not be possible without the doubt. Despite the developments in science that might occur from doubt, it can also hinder advancements in the fields of science, hence hindering humans’ advancements. Doubting a discovery can lead to an advancement in said discovery or lead to the hindrance of evolving and studying the discovery. This can be explained through Nicolaus Copernicus, as he doubted that everything revolved around the world, as that was the common thought in his days. This doubt lead to him studying and researching other planets and stars around us until he discovered that the Earth revolves around the sun. His theory, however, was doubted after being published by scientists and religious figures alike. This doubt caused his theory to be pushed aside, not considered for a long time. When it was finally studied further, and proven to be right, it showed how many years were lost, and how much time was wasted doubting it, with no evidence, when that time could’ve been used to evolve the theory and evolve astronomy itself. Although doubt caused this discovery, doubt also hindered it and hindered the evolution that could come from it.

Religion can be doubted using imagination and reason, but is difficult to change. Religion is the belief in a power controlling over the world, whether it is a single God or many entities. Religion is not only a source of worship but also a source of studying human nature. Many people have a certain faith that they follow and believe in. Many of those religions, however, are built on faith and have little to no tangible evidence to back them up. This can create doubt in many people, as they may state that there might not be a higher power. The argument made there is that science has more evidence for the creation of the world, compared to an entity creating the world. Doubt in religion can spark up some arguments and imagination can create different entities, proven by mythology in different cultures. Despite that, it is very difficult to actually change religion in the slightest. It is possible to change a person’s belief, but very difficult to change the belief and make new discoveries off of it, as most religious sources date back thousands of years ago. The way religion is interpreted, however, is fairly easy to change. As most religions are based off of a religious book or source of some kind that dates back a long time ago, the message that is learned can vary over the years. Many religious extremists, for example, state that religion is their reason for committing acts of violence and/or hate, even if their source material has never talked about the issue they are acting up for. The doubt that people have towards a religion can result in their abandonment of said religion or it can lead to them interpreting the religion in a different sense, more suitable to their needs. Many people follow some aspects of a religion, but ignore others. In extreme cases, doubt in a religion is seen as intolerable and change in the religion is not possible, even though it has changed over the course of history, despite it being the same religion. The base that religious knowledge is built on cannot be changed, or at least is very difficult to change, with doubt but people’s interpretation of said message will vary through time as a result of doubting certain areas of the religion.

Doubt can affect different areas of knowing, using different ways of knowing and end up with different results. In natural science, reason is used to doubt discoveries made that result in new ones, better ones, or just reinstate the discovery. However, too much doubt can cause paranoia, and can hinder the evolution and advancement of science and discoveries. In religion, doubt has a smaller effect, as it has been proven very difficult to change religion as a whole, but over time, doubt in small quantities can change the message people take from religion based on what they doubt and how they want to interpret it. Doubt can result in a greater understanding of certain fields and areas in life, but in certain amounts and with evidence to back it up.