Doubt is a Necessity of Certainty

Man’s long attempts to obtain knowledge have gone through multiple stages. Man cannot obtain the truth directly, as certainty cannot be reached at once, whether the certainty we are talking about is religious, scientific, philosophical, or otherwise.

Certainty is a word that indicates the state in which the mind is straightened whenever a person perceives something, and believes that his perception is identical to the specific thing, and that the thing can only be like this, that is, as he perceives it.

But can we really achieve certainty, and how is it done?

Doubt appears while trying to answer the previous question, as it is not possible to reach a truth before going through a stage in which a person feels doubt about it, and history tells us about this very clearly. A force that created the heavens and the earth, and he sought to search and scrutinize to reach the knowledge of this force, so he considered that the star is God, but he returned and doubted that because the star is in demise, and after that he moved from one doubt to another until he reached the certainty that God cannot be a star, moon, sun or An idol or something that can be seen with the naked eye, it is unparalleled, it was neither born nor was it born, and this certainty was the highest degree of faith knowledge he had.

Absolute doubt... an unattainable certainty

We must pay attention to the fact that doubt has taken two main forms in the intellectual history of man. Some thinkers and philosophers, such as the sophists, considered it impossible to reach the truth. Certainty is a form of imagination, and therefore they called for absolute doubt, which means that man is the measure of all things, and this means Truth is relative, changeable, and not generalizable, and this kind of doubt was an explicit rejection of universal knowledge, and acceptance of partial knowledge that changes according to people and circumstances.

So, the sophists doubted the possibility of knowledge in itself, and considered that subjective knowledge is possible, while objective knowledge is impossible, and that the only truth is that no certainty can be reached, and the best of what was said about that came from Gorgias:

There is nothing, and if there is something, the human being is deficient in comprehending it.

Accordingly, we can summarize the foregoing about absolute doubt in what came in the Arab Philosophical Encyclopedia that: objective, honest knowledge is impossible, there is no way to prove the tangible world, and there is no basis for the truthfulness of empirical laws in the natural sciences, meaning that there is no certainty that can be perceived.

Systematic doubt...a self-reflection and the attainment of certainty

On the other hand, with the development of human tools, specifically as a result of scientific discoveries that man was able to reach, doubt appeared as a previous stage to reach the truth, and the French philosopher Descartes considered this idea the godfather of this idea. We follow the path of skepticism as one of the steps of the scientific method, and only through it can we sort out the knowledge we have obtained, choose the most accurate and discard what is less.

Accordingly, Descartes tried to reach certainty through doubt, so he doubted the senses and the data of the sensory world first, considering that the empirical knowledge that we acquire through the senses cannot lead us to certainty, as it deceives us often, and doubts about the world around it, but he did not doubt one thing. It is the fact that he is a thinking being, and that a logical sequence of thinking leads naturally to scientific and even religious certainty.

On the other hand, Islamic history tells us about scholars and thinkers who proceeded from skepticism to reach certainty. Here is Al-Jahiz in his book Animals that proceeds from a basic axiom, which is not to rush to make judgments about the news that reaches us, and this made him put basic steps that lead us to certainty, the first of which is not accepting news What and not to deny it, and this is similar to our saying to stop issuing judgment so that we will, during that, examine the weaknesses and strengths in dealing with the news in order to reach the required certainty.

Certainty heightened doubt

This is what the famous mystic al-Junayd says, confirming, as well as many followers of the Sufi doctrine, the method of doubt as the first level of access to certainty, and this made knowledge of God and belief in Him linked to mental doubt that the mystic followed and followed in his footsteps, to reach at some point to absolute faith, the shining of God In the hearts it begins with mental doubt that leads to final certainty.

Despite all of the above; Certainty remains a dream that is not within the reach of man, and a goal that he seeks to feel calm and reassured, whether in matters of faith, or in the acquisition of scientific knowledge. And if a person today cannot verify the scientific facts definitively, the issues of faith today seem less susceptible to doubt, for the certainty of God’s existence is something that enhances peace and comfort of the heart, and motivates the person to continue and gives life a meaning through which he resists all the difficulties of life.