William D. Waltz

from The Atomic Weight of God

If facts reside in the cold light of day, then they germinate in skepticism’s warm loam. The rolling fields of doubt nourish us. Inspiration and insight flourish there. Science, philosophy, and poetry chase the shadows of doubt. Almost religiously skeptics revise and reinvigorate their fields. The physicist who challenges the prevailing paradigm isn’t against physics, but against wrongheaded thinking, and the atheist isn’t so much against God but for truth and understanding. We know so little. Without skepticism we are crippled by ignorance and arrogance while discovery slips us by. It must be human nature that makes us leap into the arms of certainty, but it is life that sets us down on our feet.

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