Moderate Skepticism

There is nothing so dangerous as a moderate skepticism. A radical skepticism is at least logical: nothing is known, nothing is knowable, the chain of logic has no starting point. Such an idea has reached its terminal form. It has discovered the one thing that is definitely true— that nothing is definitely true— and is ready to reveal itself for what it really is: not an insight into the uncertainty of knowledge but a simple mis-understanding of what it is to know. It is then only one easy final step to abandon the fantasy of absolute knowledge and plunge back, open-eyed and unburdened, into the world.

What is dangerous is a partial skepticism, a skepticism that says: all those other ways of knowing are uncertain, but here is the One Way that is certain, here is the path to positive absolute knowledge.

At different times, in different places, different paths are given this idolatrous privilege. In some circles, it is a certain book; in others, a set of research methodologies. It is not that the bible is not full of wisdom. It is not that statistical studies will not generate knowledge. But this wisdom and this knowledge are subject to the same fundamental uncertainty that characterizes all human knowing. To know still means what it has always meant: that we have hold of a thought that has so far proved useful. And what we find, when we consider our experience in the world (like good empiricists), is that many of the thoughts that prove most useful are of the most indefinite sort: hazy, contingent, un-anointed by any magical source of transcendent truth.

But we are not satisfied with this mortal kind of knowing. We want to know as God knows: definitely, perfectly. Which is why we keep raising up these systems of knowledge, which are precisely Towers of Babel: projects of lifting ourselves up as high as God, to see as far as God. We do this even when we no longer believe in God— and why not? If there’s not already someone up there, that just leaves more room for us!