Certainty, a hallmark of the true believer, signals the death of curiosity, progress and learning– those traits that make us human. Confusion acknowledges awareness that life has more to show us, and that we feel more willing to acknowledge our own ignorance than to, by proclaiming faith, pretend to know the unknowable. Science allows only three results for its investigations, all of which must be tentative. They are: acceptance, rejection, abeyance. Abeyance– the willingness to set aside an answer to await more information –is what the believer has replaced with faith in a creed’s messengers. That is the difference between science and religion, and between atheism and the practices of faith.
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