The Retreat of Science and Humility.

Socrates
unknown artist
Photo Credit: Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford [CC  BY-NC]

The evangelicals laid hands on Donald Trump in the Oval Office earlier this month, eyes closed, faces contorted into supplication to the Big Man. I have no idea whether the president believes or merely pretends to believe, but there is no doubt that we are witnessing something remarkable not just in America but beyond: 300 years after the Enlightenment, there is an accelerating influence of fundamentalist religion in the decisions that affect our world.

We already knew about this about the Middle East, of course. We knew that the ayatollahs believe they have absolute truth....

But while we castigate these fanatics, I think we should at least pay attention to a milder form of this disease seeping back into the West. Look at Pete Hegseth on Friday telling Americans to pray for US troops "on bended knee with your family, in your schools, in your churches, in the name of  Jesus Christ"...

Look at him last month speaking to evangelicals at the White House, some of whom have called the current conflict a "holy war", saying : "There's a direct throughline from the Old and New Testament to ... the United States of America."...

Ted Cruz is one of dozens of senators whose views seem immune to evidence (or compromise) since they are based not on rationality but received truth. In a recent interview, he said his support for Israel was drawn from Sunday School: "The Bible commands it."...

While it is true that we have much to be grateful for to the Christian creed, and that our moral codes exist within a complex matrix in no small part derived from Christian teaching, it is also true that our prosperity and strength was built from science, empiricism and the blessings of intellectual humility that rationality rescues from the dogma of the clerics. I have no problem with private worship - but how can it ever be a strength in the public sphere to base policy on superstition rather than evidence?

Indeed in this age of competing certainties - religious, ideological, doctrinal - I wonder if we need to once again celebrate the value of doubt, perhaps the most civilising of all virtues...

In a world of algorithmic amplification based on ever more shrill self-certainty, this might sound a bit limp., but there is a civilisational truth at stake. Doubt is not a weakness in a society but a subtle form of strength, for it helps us to listen, debate and appreciate that it is often in the coming together of opposing ideas that both sides find, somewhat to their surprise, that we have found a synthesis that transcends both.

This is the creed we must defend against the rising tide of dogmatism in all its forms.

(Matthew Syed, The Sunday Times, 2026)

"I know that I know nothing" was a saying attributed to Socrates. How many politicians, when asked a question, reply, "Sorry I don't know the answer to that." Is it because they think it makes them look stupid or weak if they make such a reply? Is it the tribal nature of politics to disagree on nearly every aspect of what the other party says? Would there not be benefits to a country if opposing parties got together and made long term plans for issues like health and education? Unfortunately, the rising tide of dogmatism has been with us for many a long year.