Book Review One of the characters in Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel, The Satanic Verses , argues that doubt rather than disbelief is the opposite of faith because disbelief is as certain as faith. Doubt is uncertainty, a refusal to take sides. Doubt is the ultimate openness towards phenomena. Doubt can question both, faith as well as disbelief. Jennifer Michael Hecht’s book, Doubt: a History , is a masterpiece that presents to the reader all the great doubters from the ancient Indian Carvakas and the Greek Xenophanes to our own Salman Rushdie and Natalie Angier. The best feature of the book is its readability in spite of the highly philosophical themes it deals with. The next best is that it does not confine itself to philosophers, rather it discusses novelists, scientists, historians and others of some significance who have contributed to the history of doubt. Thousands of people have been killed merely because they questioned certain religions. In the hey
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